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 an NBC News poll finds that fifty two percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans in Congress for the ongoing shutdown. Well forty two percent blame Democrats in Congress. We have such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Trump's government being unable to keep airports functioning.
New York Magazine's own Earin Carmone stops by to talk about her new book Unbearable, Five Women and the perils of pregnancy in America. But first the news, Molly.
We have a new poll that shows something that will not be the least bit shocking to you, and I Pew Research is saying that Democrats are frustrated with their party and there's a huge increase in the ones who.
Are Honestly, anyone who has talked to a person who is not in the business in the politics business knows that the American people are fucking pissed, and they're pissed of Republicans and they're pissed at Democrats. Now they're more mad at Trump, which is good and is true because Republicans control the House, the Senate, the Presidency, the Supreme Court, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But Democrats are also mad,
and they're mad at their leadership. And you know this, sixty seven percent of Democrats say they're frustrated with their party, up for about half in Pew polls from twenty twenty one and twenty nineteen. That's because in twenty sixteen, American people felt that the Democrats were doing what they wanted. They were fighting in a way they wanted. Now a lot of Democrats are mad. They feel that they're not
getting the kind of fight they want from Democrats. And that's why Chuck Schumer really had to do this shutdown, because his constituents wanted him to shut down the government. And I I think it was really a smart thing to do. I think it actually has got people talking
about healthcare. And it was the only thing Democrats could do to get the conversation going about healthcare and to throw some sand in the gears because the Republican Party is just at a breakneck speed taking stuff away from the American people.
Yeah, and it's said Etaly. New friend of the show Woke Marjorie Taylor Green. She was on Bill Maher this weekend and she was talking about how the Republicans have no plan whatsoever to deal with healthcare and that her party. You know, it's like kind of one of those funny things. Is it really seems like she's in this thing where a lot of the like right wing populists are waking up like, oh, this has all been a fucking grift and they've never had any plan for this.
Yeah. You know, it's so funny because if you think about all of the many times we have dealt with Donald care and healthcare, Like remember during the campaign when he was going to debate against Harris and he was like, I have concepts of a plan, right, Like, you could never get jumped to ever say I have a plan because you know why he doesn't have a plan because healthcare in this country is super expensive and if you don't set standard pricing, then you can't make it cheaper.
And it doesn't matter what you do. And the problem is to set standard pricing. It's very complicated and you have to make a lot of people really mad. Doctors, insurance companies, medical trial lawyers. I mean, it just will be a big sea change. It's what they do in Europe. But that's the way to do it. But Republicans can't admit that right for obvious reasons. So here's what they say. They say, we have a plan, and our plan is to come up with something better, something better. That sounds good.
I like something better. But the problem is they're not going to tell you what it is, because that would mean you'd have to know what it was, and since it's nothing, you will not hear about it. And that is how we got here. Some people say this is one of the stupidest moments in American history, but I don't believe it. I really do, truly believe that things can get stupid.
From here A strong agree.
I have an enormous faith in my countrymen.
Well let me demonstrate that by going there. So one of the things Republicans are doing instead of their jobs are plotting all sorts of things that will make their most racist followers happy. This week, while you and I were on vacation, we unfortunately did not get to discuss that on Piers Morgan's show. Katie Miller, wife of Steven Miller melted down when Jane Kueger challenged her on putting
America first instead of israel Ed. She said, the plan that they have which is going to be that they're going to deport elan Omar. And now we have legislation of the House that they want to deport Zora Momdani if he gets elected.
Katie Miller is the wife of Stephen Miller. She has overtweezed her eyebrows.
Really, I did not notice.
I take no pleasure to report that despite being wealthy and powerful, she's somehow nobody has told her the truth about her eyebrows. She is exploring podcasting as a podcaster. I would like to offer this advice. There are so many better things to do with your life. But that said, she has decided that she wants to be in the pundit space, and who am I to dissuade her. They can't deport ilhan Omar. But it's nice to see the
people in Congress trying to do anything. The good news is Congress is never coming back, So you can try to deport anyone you want. It's not happening because if you want to deport anyone, you will have to come back and swear in that two hundred and fifty first vote for the discharge petition for the Epstein files. And since Mike Johnson will never do that, you can do whatever you want.
So are you sure that's two hundred and fifty one votes.
I think it's two hundred and fifty one for the discharge petition, but perhaps my producer Jesse can it will check anyway. The question is you need to swear in Adlita Grihaaleva, whose father got in office, who is waiting to be sworn in, cannot be sworn in by Mike Johnson because if she is sworn in, she will be the two hundred and eighteen signature for the discharge petition, which will then actually do nothing. And this is my
favorite part about Mike Johnson. So once they do this discharge petition, it still goes to the Senate and dies anyway. So it's like Mike Johnsen has made things worse for himself for no reason, like just swear it, like it's not going to make any difference.
But they don't want to be on record voting for to protect the pedophile cabal.
I guess sure that's the logic.
I've heard them say on the right side broadcasting network.
Right, the best, Everyone's favorite. So the point of this is How's Republicans, the gang that couldn't shoot straight, have a lot of real racist legislation, none of which they can pass because they are a not very smart and be not in sesh. That is not our moment of fuckeray, but it certainly is another moment in our lives, which are filled with fockeray.
So speaking of that, Pete Haigsith a man who really is not a free speech warrior because he loves shutting down any speech he hasn't given permission for.
But he has a beautiful head of hair.
I just saw Azalea Banks saying this on Twitter, and factory really think.
Yes, I did see Exanda Banks. Her and I separated at birth.
I think of you two as similar souls.
Oh, very similar.
Heigsith has barred military officials from discussing drug boat strikes with Congress without prior approval.
Yeah.
So the five people who still work in the Pentagon press pool, I think it's like a Turkish news network and one American news right, I mean it's like three people because everyone else refused to sign his draconian thing which said you can only ever report on anything if we gave it to you and told you were allowed to. Anyway, the point of this whole story is that now we have a Pentagon, millions of people, billions of dollars, and we don't know what the fuck is happening in there
because there's no news there. There's no reporting there. And this is by design. This is so that Donald Trump can do stuff which is very likely illegal. And there's a reason they don't want people reporting on those drug boats, and it's because they're not drug boats. They're probably fishing boats. Wick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host of The Enemy's List. Welcome back to fast pologics.
Right, well then, probably drunk fast?
How are you? Friend?
You know what? I am better than I was on Friday?
And wow, you know who is even better? Donald J.
Trull hit a weekend off, just as we all have, and he's down there in Marlago having a sort of end of the era party to express his understanding and his truly deep connection to the working people of America by having a party with the Pussycat Dolls or whatever the fuck it was.
Gats be themeds themed as one does, as one does. But the federal government itself is just moving along smoothly. And no place is that more clear than in the Department of Transportation, which is was once a DEI project but is now run by white men.
And you know, all I can say is thank God that we've got the crackerjack team of former reality TV star Sean Duffy and a variety of other window licking morons in charge of the of the of the nation's air traffic control system right now. Because and here's the part, as a pilot, because pilots always like to say that, as.
A pilot, so both then you and I are longtime friends, and I have never flown with you.
Well I'm gonna make I'm gonna fix that problem.
No you won't, right, I do know that you are a very skilled pilot.
You know what, I am a safe pilot and I'm a I'm a guy in the instrument pilot safety cult. And if you're a pilot right now flying a big iron aircraft with passengers in it, you have a deep sort of respect for the trust all those people put in you, and you rely on a system that the taxpayers pay for to help you stay safe in the air and to avoid those big metal tubes running into each other in the sky, which is a very bad outcome.
And right now it's literally on the backs of individual pilots trying to talk to each other in the air because the air traffic control towers in this country, one after the other, are shutting down right now.
Explain to us for why, Rick Wilson.
We're in now day twenty nine, stuff like that of a shutdown when it's going to be when we air this, right it's let's call it a month. The air traffic controllers are not getting paychecks. Now you know who is getting paychecks. The masked thug guys jumping out of car's zip tying children, they're getting their full paycheck.
People who couldn't necessarily make it into the army or the police.
Well look, most of these people couldn't make it into being into the Paul Blart Rental cop Academy.
Yes and all bar we would never do this.
But long story short, right now we are shutting down the government because Donald Trump cannot have the two hundred and eighteenth person sworn in who would vote to release the Epstein files and because there is a faction inside the White House led by Russell Vatt who believes we need to punish those poor black shirkers by taking away their food. And when I tell you that, I mean that is literally what they are saying inside the White House to one another.
And I do want to point out that, like just for two seconds, forty percent of the people on SNAP Supplemental Assistant Food Stamps, thirty nine percent of them are children. Yeah, forty three percent are white. They're not even black, They're white. They're in Red States and their children.
But go off right, But do tell us more how they have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps at this point, we took a look around our local area and yesterday and when people realize that the that there was no SNAP benefits a local an excellent local food bank program here in Tallahassee that had six hundred and fifty people waiting in their cars overnight because there's no STEP. We had people with women and children sleeping in their effing cars.
Molly yeah.
Red state, Red state governed by the one of the kings of Trump is oh yeah.
And Ron DeSantis has done nothing, nor have any nor to my knowledge, of any of the Red state governors done a goddamn thing to say to Donald Trump, Hey, our people are going to starve because of this, why don't you open the goddamn government.
But I do think Sean Duffy, in charge of our airspace, former reality television host, what we're seeing again and again is like in the DoD we had a former weekend Fox News host Pete hag Sas.
Oh.
Yeah, he also has not really been able to rise to the job.
No, And look, I think the reason we don't see them rising to the job is these people are subpar intellects, and they are are in the broadest poss works in the broadest possible sense of explaining it to people, they have no idea what the hef they're doing, And then that problem is not improving their ability to manage these complex, multivariate cases. Now, Pete Hegseth is very excited about going to war both with Venezuela and now Nigeria.
Yes, Nigeria out of nowhere. What was the impetus of that.
I do not really understand the let's go to war with Nigeria idea quite yet, but I will say this, I doubt we will be greeted as liberators.
Well, we've had such success going into other countries and doing war with them for no reason, so why not why wouldn't this.
Work out just as well?
When you're asking, But yeah, I would love you to take a minute to talk about so we are pro bailouts for certain South American countries, but pro war for others.
It is a magical It is a magical set of mysterious criteria that we use now because Argentina, which just to remind everybody, has a has A, has an emergency food program for the poor, has universal childcare, has universal health care, has universal education for pre k N and university.
I'm just going to say, we're okay paying forty billion dollars to bail them out so that that Malay could win his election, But we're not okay unleashing the six billion dollars that is still in the government's bank account, that is the snap emergency fund for food aid to the poor. It is a very it is a very tempting thing to say that this is just Trump, you know,
doing Epstein. But there is also an element of this we have to think about and talk about that is the deliberate theater of cruelty where Trump is canceling Thanksgiving for millions of Americans.
Trump is doing cruelty. But Trump is also doing authoritarianism, right, Like, there's a one hundred percent that he loves those people, and it's because they provide a roadmap, you know, Putin.
Or Bond, absolutely absolutely correct. They're his peer group, they're his pals. They're the people that he says, man, I want America to look a lot more like those guys. For all that we can bitch and moan about Donald Trump being an incompetent in all this, he has a tremendously skilled instinct for the authoritarian theater that the MAGA base really likes.
Correct, And that's how he I mean, that's when you look at that split screen. Okay, Saturday night, great gats feed party, celebration of wealth. You know what the do you know how much it costs to join mar A Lago.
Now it's like a million dollars now, right.
It's a million dollar initiation fee. It used to be, and that like these golf clubs have high initiations. A million dollars on president.
Yeah, look, he he is getting a million dollars for memberships at mar a lago. Let's all remember the reason of this, because he is the singularly most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America. There is nobody even close to this. And while he's off doing this this whole like Great Gatsby deal, It's not just that Snap has been canceled. It's that the government is closed. It's that the economy is tetering around the age.
Let's not forget, folks. And it was it was a it was a classic let's do it Friday night news dump. The Federal Reserve dumped a whole ship ton of equity into the markets Friday night, on Halloween night and after hours.
And also Scott Bessett was shopping. I think this is like my favorite headline of the Sunday Shows. If the Fed doesn't cut raids, we may have a recession. Oh no, baby, that's not why we're gonna have.
Oh no, no, no, no, We're having a resent because of y'all.
Yeah, Like it's like, if only the Fed will cut interest rates, It's like, I don't know who twisted him up into that, but it was like, yes, it was.
It was a thing of beauty. Though, Yeah, I mean that that is a guy who's whose contortions. He's like a He's like an Eastern European gymnast at the Olympics in the seventies. He knows if he doesn't like do the triple backflip and stick the landing, his family allens to go work on the on the collective labor potato farm or whatever.
But what you realize when you look at Scott Besson, who was I was told he was going to be the moderating voice.
I was told Scott Bessant was a grown up, a.
Smart guy who made with George Soros.
Yeah, yeah, you know why don't be afraid of Scott Besson. He knows how to talk to Wolf Street and knows exactly what the country's economy needs is So who.
Is a bigger coward and disappointment Marco Man of all jobs or Scott Besson just terrible at what he does but also very snobby Marco.
In my mind, just because I know the guy is a worse disappointment because he had before the Trump era, at least to every single person who knew him from either intimately knew him or slightly knew him, this great hatred of authoritarianism yes, it was a defining characteristic. It
was the defining characteristic of what Marco was. And now it's like, yeah, you know, I'm just gonna let the boss and I are going to go and shoot up a bunch of boats and uh and then invading Venezuela and Nigeria because why not.
They might be drug boats?
Yeah, you know, they might be drug boats or or it could just be you know, are they you know, much like the sort of truthiness thing that Stephen Colbert always talks about. They could be drug boat.
Ish, their drug boat adjacent their boats with people in them.
And sometimes people Bolts have taken drugs in their lives, and therefore we really have to take.
Steps, we have to take steps. So it is, it is the truthiest of truth isms. I want to get back for another minute to just like the sheer insanity of this moment, because it does feel very much like a moment teetering on the edge, like the food stamps, the government funding, the government paycheck, you know, Chicago having ice in these fancy neighborhoods, fighting with the moms and dads during the Halloween poole.
Well, let me tell you that that is an absolute provocation on their part. And I get why Trump is sending them in there and mill are sending them in there because they're trying to send a message to elite opinion types that they will exercise their alleged authority no matter what they want.
Right, So say more about that, because I think that's pretty interesting. So the idea here is they're going into fancy white neighborhoods to show fancy white people that they are the bosses, and that they are that crime. They mean you and your kids doing Halloween.
Yeah, and and and this is this is one more notch I think, with Bovino, who like shows up in his Hugo boss flowing Nazi style trench coats and and and all his cosplay body armor and all this other bullshit, and Miller and Nome having to actually admit something. They were not able of the whatever the X is of of of folks who are not here with documentation, right,
they were not able to find fifty percent who were criminals. No, because because there weren't anything like those numbers, and and and Joe Biden and Barack Obama and before them, George W. Bush were finding those criminals, the criminal legals and say them the fuck back.
Yeah, we don't.
So this idea that they were going to round up like twenty five million illegal criminals, they're all in MS thirteen. It was always bullshit. It was always a lie. And they can't find them because they ain't out there. So now they've got to get you know, jose the gardener, or a guy who's a roofer, or a woman who's a home healthcare nurse and pull them out of their car in front of their kids and beat them in
front of their children. Right to do this show, and this show is all that matters to the media content machine of MAGA.
Right, So when you look at those numbers, and I saw a reporting this week that showed the numbers were like, you know, and again I don't want to say poetry, because these are human beings being shipped on planes to places who the fuck knows.
Foreign death camps, yeah right, yeah, foreign fourg gulags. Yeah yeah.
But they're small numbers considering like Obama numbers, And so I wonder, like Molly, we.
Were told, we were told this was the absolute existential crisis for this country and if we didn't get these people out right now the world was going to fall apart and millions of Americans would die of fentanyl.
And I was told that Stephen Miller was pulling out all the stops. So now does that mean he's no longer pulling out the stops?
This is why they're still doing the bullshit of dragging American citizens out of their cars and out of their homes and raiding neighborhoods during a Halloween parade. And by the way, they really screwed up last week they raided a festival out in Montana, a fall festival thing. All of the ICE agents in the country that are operating under a very very narrow provision where the emergency is
only legal within one hundred miles of the US border. Okay, So that's why even in Chicago, all over Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, they've got this big area they can they can claim as the US border. Right, this thing was five hundred miles from any United States border. They done fed up. So yeah, and look, and I will say this, you know, I'm always like, we're only as good as our next legal ruling. But we are seeing right now more and more judges saying, wait a minute, no, sir,
I mean Bavino. Bavino, who more people should know about.
Explain to us the list and our listeners who Bavino.
Is, if you're, if you're, if you're a World War two historic history official. He's the Gauleiter of Ice. He's the military governor of these provinces. They send him in to Chicago, and he ignores the civilian law enforcement, ignores the civilian political leadership, and says, here's how we're going to do it, and if you don't, I'll arrest you and I'll send you off to a camp. This guy is about four foot eleven as one is, but he
wears fancy flowing Hugo boss style not see greatcoats. Yeah, and he never shows up anywhere unless he's wearing body armor and his like tactical timmy bullshit mall cop outfits. And he is widely known as a guy who really likes to brutalize people. He is a fucking thug.
We're kind of back to ma Mall cops again.
We really are, but we're also we're also at Nuremberg cops because he's like, I'm just following my orders from a civilian leadership. This last week we literally had Tom Homan saying, yeah, we got to cool off on some of these tactics.
Tom Holman, you'll remember Tom Holman. I'm like, well, he lives in my heart for when he took that fifty thousand dollars of cash in a kava bag, in a kava bag and just kiss baby refused to deny it. And then when asked about it, was that Pam Bondi who said, I'm sure he's taken fifty thousand.
Dollars, but I'm sure all of you take him fifty thousand dollars. He kind of says something, I've never taken fifty thousand dollars in a bag.
Yeah, well, it's early days, Rick Wilson, early days, you know. Especially, and by the way, the sheer elegance of having it in a kava bag.
Yeah, gorgeous, man, it's gorgeous. It is a work of It is a scientific work of beauty to put it in a kava bag.
We would be laughing if we were not, if.
We were not living in the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States government.
And I include Grant Teapot Dome, Baby.
Teapot Dome two, Electric Bugaaloo that's right.
Will you come.
Back as always?
Irene Carmone is a senior correspondent in New York Magazine and the author of Unbearable, Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America. Welcome too Fast, Politics, arenn.
I'm so happy to be here.
I'm so excited to have you because you are a great journalist, and you write about the stuff you know, in a world that was last sexist and misogynistic, like the stuff that is so important would be on the front page of every newspaper.
Well, I mean, I know it's important to us, and I know that there are people out there who care about it.
So I just to keep doing the work that we do.
By the way, I have kids, but my kids are old. And you wake up one day you are eight months pregnant, and the Supreme Court overturned Roby Wade. That's the start of this book.
Yes, Well, the funny thing is part of the start of this book is I have been for fifteen years covering the fight of a reproduction in America and the ways in which America manages to treat us like a vessel. And four days after Alito's statement of contempt for American women becomes official, right, So we read the leak, then we see the official opinion and immediately because there was still a chance that it would change. And I was at your friend and mine's Rebecca Tracter's kitchen table in
Maine when it finally came out officially. And a few days later I went for ultrasound because I was, I think thirty three weeks pregnant. I was excited to be pregnant, but I still had this feeling of the extra indignity of it, because you know, even when you're excited to be pregnant, your very bones are kind of creaking and shaking, and your organs are being smushed, and every normal interaction with the world is somehow shaped by someone else's opinion
of your pregnancy. And so I go in for this ultrasound and we're really excited because suddenly we can see the fetus's face and the ultrasound Texas and I say it to my husband, she's starting to look more like a person, and the ultrasound text says, to the image of the fetus, you were a person from day one, like a doler And I'm like, I'm in Manhattan and I'm just like.
Can you read the room please?
All over the country people are being forced to say pregnant against their will. We are about to see people at this point, this is twenty twenty two, bleeding out in parking lots, waiting to go septic, to receive miscarriage care. People forced to take matters into their own hands, to have abortions, like can you give me the right to define my own pregnancy? When half the country right now is under this regime. So even in New York City.
This is part of the animating principle of writing the book Unbearable is to draw connections between these different experiences of pregnancy, and what they have in common is contempt for the person who's pregnant.
So my kids are in their late teens, early twenties, and so I was pregnant twenty little last years ago. And like one of the things that I was struck by during that experience, like and I have an obgyn who I adore and who is my friend and who is very liberal, and you know, there were certain things that happened where I was like, huh, I had this rare Jewish genetic disease, and they were like, this baby
may die, you may have to have an abortion. And my gynecologist, who I love, was like, I don't do second trimester, so we're going to have to get you to someone who does. And I was like, and I mean that kind of stuff. You know. Ultimately he was fine, but that kind of stuff is like real, and you know I wrote about him, people were like, Oh, she just wants to abort babies that don't look the way she wants them to. And I was like, yeah, he
was gonna die. Ultimately, as soon as you get pregnant in this country, it's almost as if your body no longer belongs to yourself, which is what you said before.
It is absolutely the case, and I think your experience also shows something that I write about in the book is that abortion care being separated out, at least not in people's lives, but in medicine and law and the way that they're structured, has actually impoverished all of medical care. So the fact is, if you had needed or decided to have an abortion, you know, why couldn't you get
it from your same doctor? Well, okay, maybe later on it's a more specialized procedure, but even a very simple early abortion, which is the same as having an iud or taking a pill has been again, even in New York, separated out because of politics and fear and STI and I think any given person's experience of pregnancy in life is so much more complicated, so much messier, and at different points in your life you might need different things.
But medicine says, no, there's the good mother, there's the bad mother. There's the one who needs the abortion and has to walk into the clinic where people are screaming at her or do something that might put them in trouble with the law, versus the perfect mother who would never abort.
And so part of the argument of my.
Book is, in fact, this is all of us as different parts of our lives, and we think it would never happen to us, or we'll never need that kind of care, we would never be policed in this particular kind of way. But the way America treats you when you're pregnant, it can totally happen to any of us.
Yeah, there's so much value judgment and women's health decisions period. Paragraph abortion not abortion right. But the thing that I think is a sort of one of the things we saw in the Harris campaign try to do was say, like, this is not about aborting, this is about having a healthy pregnancy. Talk us through how it affects that.
I think Dobbs accelerated something that was already happening, because we already have the highest maternal mortality rate among any comparable wealthy country in the world. No matter how you crunch the numbers, pregnancy related debts in the United States outpace all of our pure nations, and we tolerate that somehow, like we tolerate also a complete lack of support when somebody gives birth what happens after that. Up until very recently, you'd get thrown off your insurance in a couple of
weeks in many states. I think that to invest in a healthy pregnancy, you would have to believe that the people who get pregnant, mostly women, matter, And so I think it's connected to the abortion battle or war, because it has to do with the same lack of respect and regard for those of us who can become pregnant. So, whether we want to carry to term, which the women in my book, several of them do carry to term and then find themselves treated horrifically when they give birth,
or whether we don't want to be pregnant. It would a true investment in maternal health, which Kamala Harrison was talking about with a reproductive justice informed lens. If we're truly respected people who can become pregnant in America, we would invest resources and we would also listen to them about what it is if they need or we need and want.
Yeah, but we don't do that. In fact, we do the opposite. So talk me through what this looks like in America post DOBS.
Immediately, we were told, after the abortion bands that were empowered by DOBS went into effect, that this would only affect abortion.
And mind you, the law that.
This report was asked to hear was a fifteen week abortion band. So in the beginning it was, oh, this will only affect later abortions, and then all of a sudden, it's in many states all abortions or from six weeks on. It did not only affect abortions, as we well know, women seeking miscarriage care were immediately affected, women having stillbirths, women whose behavior during pregnancy did not meet what the
law or medicine thought that they should do. Immediately, you know, we were told that women wouldn't be criminalized for miscarriage. We have seen that happen in multiple states. We've seen arrests.
One of the women that I write.
About her experience actually took place a little bit before Dobbs. This is a woman, Haley Burns in Edowa County, Alabama. Even before the Supreme Court allowed states to ban abortion, Edowa County was the nation's capital of criminalizing pregnant women by locking them up for positive drug tests. And even if you were pulled over for speeding and they found let's say this is a case of the rule, when they found marijuana in her car, they would take her
into jail. They were pregnancy tester, and they would drug test her. And if you were pregnant and you were positive for any kind of substance use, you would then beat charged with chemical endangerment of a fetus of a child. And so in the case of the woman I write about, Haley, she was arrested six days postpartum in her son's hospital room. The way that this is playing out is the same logic a fetal personhood, the same logic of policing women's bodies.
If she had had an abortion in Alabama, they could not have locked her up. She actually did what they said she was supposed to be doing. She had her baby now because she had an opioid addiction problem. Instead of offering her support and services, they lock up a six day postpartum woman in jail for two months, and she still doesn't have custody of her children, even though she's been cleaned for years. None of that would have
happened if she hadn't gotten pregnant. And so one thing I really want to do with this FOC is to draw these connections between these seemingly desperate experiences of pregnancy and show how Dobs made them much worse, but did not invent them, because this is something that goes back to our country's most profound idea and history of how we feel about women and people who can become pregnant.
So one of the things that I think is really important about this story is when a pregnant woman or postpartum woman is arrested, they then have less of a claim on their own children. Talk us through that absolutely.
I mean, like I said, if she had had an abortion when it was still legal in Alabama, which she considered doing and then ultimately felt like it was against her religious views, the state of Alabama, you know, could not have had a claim on her, but because she was pregnant and charage a term and they drug tested her while she was pregnant, the medical providers called the cops on her, and they called social services and all. This is an extremely common story even here at New
York City. Women have lost custody of their children that marijuana use when it is legal. It's another way in which the state undermines the rights of women when even if there is no medical harm, even if somebody has shown that they are have received treatment, that they're clean. In her case, as I mentioned, she's been clean for two years and she still only has visitation with her kids. She's got a job, she's put her life together, she
served her time. The punishment for being a quote unquote bad mother can be lifelong.
Yeah, I want you to talk to us about the ways in which these laws have helped abusers. In case you thought this wasn't completely about misogyny. I think these bits really show what's going on. Yeah.
I mean, you know, I've reported on some of the cases that have come up in the post stops era where they're trying to bring civil cases and Texas in particular, the law is really set.
Up for this.
They really hate women in Texas. I feel like the state legislature like in Texas, they're like, you may hate women in Alabama, but we really hate them.
Yeah, Texas has been willing to experiment with innovated the bounty hunter law, even or roby Wood was a return the Spome court let them do it. And so in that vein of allowing people to bring civil claims against abortion providers, we've seen you know, as you know, the reason that we don't have women lying bloody in the street with coat hangers is because of the Revolution and abortion pills. People are accessing abortion through courageous shield providers
who are setting their bills across state lines. The one way in which this has gone wrong so far is by abusive boyfriends finding out about this. You know, there was a really high profile lawsuit in Texas in which a man sued the friends of his wife for helping her access and abortion, and it later came out that he was threatening her. He was threatening to expose her.
He was saying that if she didn't continue having sex with him and doing his laundry, he would publicize the fact that she had an abortion in that case, he later withdrew his claim. This was brought by a so called Christian right lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell, who's the father of many lawsuits.
Yeah, that guy sucks. In case you're wondering that guy socks. Yeah.
Look, anyone can engage in reproductive coercion, but I think the moment that you make this exercise of an individual person's will something that they can be locked up for and lose their rights and lose their rights to their children, the state becomes one of the abusers alongside the abusive partner.
This is not about children, right, we know this is not about children. This is not about preventing abortion. It's about power and control. So talk us through the ways in which you feel like the show us that thesis.
Well, so let's go back to that Chaill in Alabama. The woman that I wrote about, Haley, she gets a rest a six days postpartum. She immediately ends up in a bunk where all of the other women are pregnant.
Wow, they have locked up so many.
Women in Atawa County, Alabama through this logic of chemical endangerment, which is to say, if you test positive for drugs when you're pregnant, you will be charged with child abuse against your own feedents. There are so many of them that they can all be roommates at the same time. And at that point they had aarticular kind of like even if you had ten thousand dollars cash bail, which was not imposed on other non violent offenders, you also had to get a spot in rehab at the same time.
So they had this catch twenty two where these women were, you know, trapped, this Kafka esque situation where pregnant women are trapped in the hospital.
Poor pregnant women because nobody who's upper middle class they're paying that ten thousand dollars.
True, in Ediwack County, they are poor, but Alabama has also prosecuted upper middle class women for using prescription drugs during their pregnancy, So.
It's very egalitarian of them.
Were trying to show how walk they were.
Yeah, they actually did change the law to say that if it was a prescription drug only after they prosecuted upper middle class women.
But I think nobody is safe here.
That said, Edwick County is a poor, rural county, predominantly white and working class, not a lot of jobs. There's a lot of people who aren't dealing with substance dependencies. And if it were really about babies, would you lock up a pregnant woman and not give her access to prenatal care?
Oh, they don't provide pre they.
Don't provide even access to pads.
In the course of the reporting that I did on this jail, there's a case that was brought against the State of Alabama for one of their jails. A woman had a premature birth and she was asking for medical care and they would not transfer to the hospital. When she finally, belatedly was transferred to a hospital, she had a still birth. Who can say that incarcerating women are making them afraid to seek prenatal care because they're worried that the hospital or the doctor's office will call the cops.
Can be good for babies.
If it were good for babies, we wouldn't have outcomes like a woman having a totally preventable still birth. That story, of the five women's stories that I tell, they're all really difficult. That is a really difficult one that I think really illustrates that if this was about babies, we wouldn't be locking up their mothers. It's not good for anybody. The other thing that I write about is doctor Yoshika Robinson, a former abortion provider in Alabama who was providing abortions
till the day was overturned. No longer able to do that, wants to still be there for her patients, and so she proposes turning the shuttered abortion clinic into a birth center, because that's not an option that exists in there part of Alabama. You have a low risk pregnancy and you want to get birth with midwives, that that can be an option for you. What does the state do. They pass laws that look just like the restrictions they pass on abortion. They make it almost impossible because they don't
want to compete with the doctors. We're talking about a state that has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the country, and so she actually has to go to court just to offer women safe birth care. Again, if this were about babies, if this was about women's health, none of this would be happening.
Correct, What unbelievable fucker?
Right?
I mean just infuriating. Tell me what the thing that when you were reporting this book where you were like, how like the thing that just got you the most upset or that you feel is the thing we need to know.
I think it's really important to know that even in blue states, pregnancy is not supported and could be safer. Here in New York City, black women are much likelier to die giving birth than white women, and our race shit is worse than Alabama.
And so I actually.
Write about two women.
Yes, at the time that I was writing about in the book, the last couple of years, a black woman was eight times more likely to die of childbirth related issues here in New York City. The ragio in Alabama is four. So New York City is doing worse than Alabama when it comes to protecting Black women who give birth. And I write about two such women who went to the same hospital. Both had really shitty experiences, one white, one black.
The white woman.
Barely survived but lived to raise her children. The black woman. Her husband has become a maternal health activist. His name is Jose Perezi, actually just became a doula. I discovered the worst of my reporter that they had had the same doctor shortly after Christine Feels the second woman died. And so the moment in which I felt like I was going to throw up was when I discovered this revelation, which is in the book of how it could be that two women were so intertwined and both of them suffered,
but only one of them lived. And it's a testament to the profound inequalities of this country. Even here in New York.
City does a doctor still practice.
No, but he was still practicing for quite a while afterwards until it was exposed.
Thank you so much, Oren.
I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
No, Rick Wilson may drug fast.
I have a moment of fockery that I get these MSNBC transcripts that emailed to me if there's like a big interview, and I read this and I was like no. And then I was like this cannot be. And then I saw a Koppaman and I was like, oh my god. So the Weekend Morning Shows has Eugene Daniels, Jonathan K. Park and Jackie alamany three people, all different people, Okay, none of whom are the same person. No, No, they are not asked a question about diversity. Cuomo has this
insane answer about how sometimes diversity can be bad. Already perhaps a bizarre like sometimes diversity can be bad, and then he goes, well, Jonason.
They all look the same. Tomorrow at the Cloma.
I was like, oh, man, come on, and that, my friends, is not how you do it.
No, listen. I mean this because I love New York City passionately. It is a city with people from one hundred and seventy seven countries or whatever the number is, who speak hundreds of languages, who have every possible background in the world, and they have come to that city for hundreds of years now because it is unique in the universe. And if you're going to be mayor of the city, you are not going to be talking to a bunch of white bros from the Upper East Side.
So you might want to respect people a little bit and pay a little bit of fucking attention if you want to be the mayor of New York City.
I just think that the lesson here is that if you're going to run someone for elected office, they have to actually want to have the elected office.
Well there is that.
It's and this is the lesson to the Democratic Party. Just because your guy is famous, if he does not want the job, voters will know well.
And I think I think you saw over the weekend there was a big push in the right wing ecosystem to say, oh, the race is tightening, Quomo's coming up fast, even Sliwa has a chance. No, none of that is real. None, that's real.
No, it's not, none of it. None of it. By the way, if you have a moment, watch the Saturday at Live.
Oh it was. We watched it this morning and it was just like picture perfect on all three of them, including them Dami. By the way, it was very That was good comedy.
It was really like the best description of our mayor's race that I've seen, and it just nailed it. And I have so much respect for all parties involved.
The best part of it was I think they constantly what it's like. You know, I'm the only one here who's been dangled by my genitals off the Verizonta bridge.
It's probably true. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.