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 artificial intelligence creation. Senator Katie Britt has proposed a database of pregnant people. We're not going to regulate guns, but we are going to regulate uteruses. We have such a great show for you today the Washington Post. Caroline Kitchener, who is a dogged reporter on the abortion beat, stops by to talk to us about
what post row America looks like. Ben, we will talk to Democracy Dockets Mark Elias about the GOP's effort to stop counting votes before all of them are counted and also after. It's amazing stuff. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the one, the Only, Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Rick Wilson, Hello, Molly John Fast. I'm joining you from your fair city today as we record this.
And that's right, Rick is in New York, so let's talk about But of course we're not in the same room because where would we be, right.
Why would that even be possible?
So last night Trump gave a speech bafflingly in New Jersey Wildwood, New Jersey, which.
You know he's swinging state New Jersey.
I was puzzling through this and I was told by someone pretty smart that it is actually the Philly media market Wildwood. Yes, so he's trying to get local Philly, I think press.
Now.
What struck me about this was it was out at the beach and there were a lot of people, like a lot, maybe not four hundred thousand like they said or whatever crazy made up number they did, but a lot of people. And I thought, oh, wow, this is probably not so good for Joe Biden. But then those people started leaving in droves. And by the time he was done, I saw a photograph from a reporter at USA Today or video that really looked just like there
were very few people laughed. So talk to me about that.
I think you have. As always, the illusion of Trump's rallies has some been something that has trick reporters since way back in twenty fifteen. And are there places in the country where a lot of yeah, who's want to get together and go see Donald Trump. And these people are like the Juggaloos, only with red hats. They are not coming to this thing because you know that they want to have political Enlightenment. They're coming because there's no
monster truck rally. Though I know I'm sounding like a really dickish elitist right now, but you may have met me by now and know that I have, in fact, in dickish elitis when it comes to certain things. But the thing, Molly is I think the rally was so bizarre of Trump once again, like yes, we did a great thing with Arbertrinity Row and we're not done, and going on and on and on about it, about doctor Hannibal Lecter, the late great doctor Lector, I mean a
poll wick. I tried to test me once Leva with Saba. Oh God, madness.
It was really interesting to me because the door is open. People are mad at Biden for any number of reasons. I'm not and you're not. We both really do.
Like rational adult human beings.
Yeah, well, we just don't think that president is going to give us a Christmas list. But I do think that the door is open to trump Ism. But the thing is, Trump has never been an organized politician. So like last night, he did all the things that if you were a political strategist you would tell him not to do. He bragged about overturning Row. He mused about what a good person Hannibal Lecter was, the late great you know, he just did a lot of stuff that
he sort of bragged about his unforced errors. And I wondered if ultimately people just got bored and went home.
Yeah, you can't sit and watch I mean I think one cannot, but maybe some people can't. You can't sit and watch, you know, monkeys throw their feces all day long. It's briefly amusing and then you run, you know, instead of everybody lasts about it later. But the Trump Show that goes on and on and on and three, and it's like these Castro esque linked speeches that are just this stream of consciousness rattling, you know, kooky, weird, whatever it is. All of it just gets tired. After a while.
You just get you just get sort of worn down by it. And I don't mean by people who just people who are critics or antagonists and Trump, I mean everybody. I mean people who like the guy eventually go Okay, that's enough for one day. I can't do this.
So that's really my question when we look at this from like again, we're six months out from this election. So I was chastising a pundit for saying that he was sure Joe Biden was going to be a one term president. And I said to him, why do you say that? And he said because the person asked me, and I only say the truth. And I was like, but you don't know the truth. I said, you just know your.
Opinion, right, that's an opinion.
And I said, based on polls. I said, so you don't actually know the truth. You just have an opinion based on poles. And I don't necessarily think that's true. But I also know enough to know that six months from the election, none of us really know what's going on because most of the country is not paying attention.
To use a phrase beaten to death over many generations, opinions are like the human asshole. Everyone has one. But the idea that none of Trump's infirmities, weirdnesses, that the meltdowns, the craziness, the self led legal defense efforts are not weighing on Americans are just wrong. There are a lot of reporters who are incentivized, for a hundred different reasons, to make it overse race, to make a competitive to drama, drama, drama all day long, and God bless them. Okay, that's
their work, that's their livelihood. I get a totally and a lot of them who are following along on this stuff are very amused by Trump doing his trick again on America, of Trump doing his act once again of making the press incapable of covering him. And right now they are, they're once again showing us they're incapable of covering Donald Trump. They don't know what to do. They they do not know what to do with this guy.
And I'm sorry. I feel bad for them professionally, and I feel bad for the country because too many people right now still believe that Donald Trump does not obey any political laws of physics. One other things that I want to make very clear, there's this idea out there that Joe Biden is somehow completely helpless, snake fit and helpless. He's running and his campaign is running a good campaign. They are running a good campaign.
With a lot of money.
And that was my next point. With essentially unlimited resources right now, that will start to add up over time. I know it's not happening as fast as people want, or as deeply and immediately st people want, but it will happen. It is underway right now, and Trump is getting you know, he's getting out spent one hundred to one in a lot of these early states right now. And that's it takes time to add up. It takes time to add in, and you know, the economy to
use bubb a little long. People keep underestimating that, but the economy keeps like stubbornly refusing to go into a recession. For Donald Trump's.
Right, and also when we look at this inevitability of trump Ism, which I think is largely based on anxiety from twenty sixteen. Trump has lost every election since twenty sixteen. He lost twenty eighteen, he lost twenty twenty, he lost twenty twenty two, he lost twenty twenty three, he lost the Virginia State House. And even you see like these Republicans are now even trying to not run along with him,
like you have swing state senatorial candidate. It's saying they're not going to lie about the twenty twenty election because swing voters don't molly.
There is something that I think is really important to keep in mind that many of our colleagues and friends in the journalism world have I think I don't know they've deliberately forgotten it, but it's less fun and as dramatic the Republican Party. Although the Magam movement is utterly dominant inside the Republican Party, the Republican Party is in a state of profound, wretched, terrible collapse and crisis. The
normies are gone, the crazies are largely in charge. When Mike Johnson is the bastion right now sanity in the Republican Party. You don't operate in a sane universe. You know, You've got a party tearing itself apart. And they have lost seats again, as you point out, starting in twenty eighteen. Nationally speaking, this is at the state House, State Senate, gresh always you know, very they've lost around a thousand
elected offices since Trump got elected in twenty sixteen. Trump single handedly did all the work the Republican Party did between the year two thousand and the year twenty sixteen, because the Republicans were making a lot of gains in the states over those years. And now those things are being swept away. And that counts things like local school boards and all this stuff. And so the GOP is at a profound crisis, and I know they want to pretend that's not the case, and so oh were you
know we're going to win this or that. But right now they are desperate and a lot of the ones that McConnell has out there that he's filled in, these billionaires and these rich guys, there's trapped because the Maugus don't like them, and the only thing keeping them them alive is that they're writing checks with many, many, many zeros.
Say you're a GOP donor, So I mean, are you wouned back? This is something you actually know about because you know GOP donors. You talk to GOP donors all the time.
I mean I do.
So we have Mitch McConnell trying desperately to raise money because they are trying to pick up the Senate. You have Mike Johnson really behind the eight ball, trying desperately to raise money. You've Donald Trump trying desperately to raise money. So what do you think their pitches to Republican donors and do you think it's working well?
If you bifurcate the pitch among Johnson versus McConnell, they're very different appeals.
So let's hear them.
Mitch mcconne was telling big Republican donors. I can still save this. I can still be a firewall. We can still prevent Trump if he's back in office from doing the worst things.
Or do you think they're worried though, or do you think they don't care about the worst things.
Here's the thing. Republican mega donors believe that Trump is a disaster, an immediate threat to American democracy. He could plunge the entire world into a billion years of nuclear darkness and all that. But they will kill their own children with a bloody, rusty butcher knife to get a tax cut.
Right.
There's nothing that appeals to them more than that. So McConnell's trying to give them the best of both worlds. I'm going to get you your tax cuts, and I will prevent Trump from plunging the world into nuclear darkness. Right, and is adopting a little bit more of a message to donors. I actually talked to a donor who Johnson pitched recently and failed. But pitched him, and sadly I failed when I pitched him too. But the guy's just stubborn.
But Johnson's argument was, if you let the low Democrats take over, they'll destroy your company. I'm not doing this for Trumpian reasons. I'm a free market, small government Republican. No, not true.
What did the guys say when he said that?
He just like, I have trouble taking you seriously about that. And then the guy brought up to me, he goes, yeah, a guy with the poor An app on his phone. I don't think.
So so right, small government?
You know, you saw the stories last week where trump Is goes to the you know, the energy sector guys and says, give me a billion dollars and I'll undo every regulation. Joe Biden. Ever, that is some third world cuptocracy right there.
Yeah, so let's talk about that for a minute, because I think that a lot of us were just horrified because of the planet. But I always wonder or who is that for? Like how many oil billionaires are there who are affected directly by regulation like that? I mean, is that ten people? Is that five people?
I won't say they're all billionaires, but in that energy sector there are about sixty or seventy donors right in a whole variety of corporate roles. It could be as big as a chevron, but it could also be the people who are in the infrastructure part of the oil and gas industry. The pyramid is very broad of people, the guys who build offshore rigs and helicopters to service the option. There's a huge it's a gigantic industry.
But do you think it works. Do you think they do that for him?
Listen, a billion dollars is a lot of money. The problem with any gift to Trump of that scale, Okay, a problem with that, and they all know it, is that Trump is going to demand they go through a certain pathway where he gets a skim right, And none of these guys are in the business.
Of being stupid right with money, So it's going to be hard for that.
So it's going to be difficult to do that. Now. Look, will be oil and gas industry raised Trump one hundred million dollars? Sure? I think they could do that without breaking a sweat. Yeah, But I don't think they're going to raise him a billion dollars, no matter how much he asks for it.
But it's interesting. He clearly is quite panicked.
Oh, no question, no doubt about it. He is nervous that the world is fluid in a way that he's not as quick and agile enough to keep up with as he might have been in twenty sixteen.
Right.
I think the guy we're seeing in court, the cranky, you know, tired, exhausted, drawn, bitter, nasty, old man, I think that's the real Trump. I think that he knows that all of the posturing in the world about the crooked judges and blah blah blah isn't true. He knows that. I think he's starting a sense that there is a Again, and I've said this one hundred times, I'll say it again. I do not believe that Donald Trump is going to have any of these trials meaningfully affect whether he goes
to prison before November. Would I like it, of course it would. But I don't think he's happy. There's no joy with Trump right now. And look he enjoyed twenty sixteen.
He also had to spend one hundred million dollars to keep from going into trials, so like his legal fees. I had an argument with someone about this because some of his lawyers, Alena Habba is a disaster. But like some of these lawyers are quite good. Now they have a client who tells them what to do, and that's not good.
Todd Blande is well regarded as a defense attorney. I know Chris Kuyse, I was friends with Chris Kuyz years and years ago.
And Susan Necklace. I mean, these are mo stupid people now. Luckily for US an American democracy.
What lay life is left a terrible coin.
They have a terrible client who won't let them actually do law stuff, which is the good news. But I do think, I absolutely think that we are seeing these lawyers. He's gonna need another I mean, will he need another one hundred million dollars to keep kicking the can before the election? I think so.
You know, I'm absolutely certain that the burn rate of Trump's legal herald will be the thing in the end of the day, because Joe Biden pulls this thing off. We're going to look back and go, you know what, if Donald Trump had spent seventy million dollars in in the early States or in the Keys wedding States early, he might might have beaten Biden. But right now it's Joe Biden and Biden's allies that are on the air in places like Arizona and Wisconsin, in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
And while Trump is still able to raise that small dollar money. The hesitation level among most people is increasing. They're dropping off the big dollar guys. They're taking a lot of beating and seduction at phone calls and Susie Wilds holding their hands to get them to write those million dollar checks. It's not like twenty six even now,
it's not like twenty sixteen. I think there's just such a unscored amount of legal peril that has hurt him in ways that I certainly can tell you reporters have not calculated it fully and adequately. I don't think most people in the political environment right now have correctly.
There's no president for like, your candidate is in criminal trials at one hundred Center Street while the adult film actress that he paid hush money to is testifying about having almost non consensual sex with him.
Right I was writing something this morning when I was
on the plane coming up to New York House. I was writing something about the bizarre nature of a world where a former president is in court with the with the adult film star who he threatened, abused, and continues to abuse even after he's already been adjudicated as a sexual assaulter with the aging care case and has been forced to pay defamation for attacking her over and over again, that we still live in a world where people don't think about Trump as a form of political pornography enjoyed
by a few Americans, but that like tentacle porn or something else, it's going to become an increasingly sort of specialized taste. You can't look at this guy anymore. I go, that's a regular guy. I can have a beer with that guy. He's the normal He's the normal guy in the room. I mean, Joe Biden may suffer from being too much normal and too basic in the minds of the press, not colorful enough or whatever, not young and
vibrant enough. People at the end of the day make a lot of political decisions based on fear, and I think Trump every day gives you more to fear and more to load and more to be, more to be disturbed about. And people who are disturbed by the behavior of a Trump, I don't think there's any way where
they reverse their decision and go, you know what. I know it's August now, and I've been thinking about vote for Joe Biden, But suddenly Trump's going to be more sane and cogent and not talking about imaginary serial killers and not pretending he's a martyr on the same level as Gandhi and Martin Luther King at Smith dell.
Rick Wilson, Thank you.
You are welcome.
Spring us here, and I bet you are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com. Caroline Kitchener is a national reporter doggedly covering abortion at the Washington Post. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Carolyne Kitchener.
Thank you.
You have this beat, which is abortion. It is in post row America. Just every piece is just an incredible shit show. So I want you first to talk to us about Florida. Let's talk about Florida first and then we'll get to I mean, every abortion story in this country, of which in post or America there are now millions you cover basically, But let's talk about Florida first, because Florida, it just happened last week, right.
Yeah, I would love to talk about Florida. I think that people are not really yet realizing how big of an impact Florida is going to have on abortion access through the entire country.
Yeah, so set this stage here.
I went last week. I was there for like twenty four hours. I was there on the day before the band took effect.
And this is a six week band enacted by DeSantis.
Yeah, he find it. So it's a ban on most abortions and it's going down. Florida had a fifteen week ban in place, and so this replaces that now. Yeah, I mean so I was there on Tuesday, and it was a wrenching day for these women because it was the last day that they could provide abortions. But because Florida also has a twenty four hour waiting period.
So what does that mean? A twenty four hour waiting.
Period, So that means that they have to come in for their first appointment and have an ultrasound and a consultation twenty four hours before they get the actual abortion.
So the tuesday that I was there, you were having first people turn away because they came for their consultation and they were told that they were farther than six weeks along, because most people are by the time that they get in, and they were turned away and well, it was one of the most emotional settings that I have been in this reporting maybe ever, because I was
just sitting there. I mean I sat there as these women, one after the other, was turned away, and I saw them, you know, I saw them learning this, learning that they were eight weeks or ten weeks and that they couldn't get an abortion, and just one after the other, they're just sobbing, just breaking down because they knew, they knew
what this meant. The advocate that the clinic director who was there, was trying to assure them, you know, there are resources, there's funds, you can go out of state. But it's like I think for a lot of these women, like they have kids at home, they have like a very little money, So they were being told to go to d C because that's just how far away Florida is, and that you might as well have been telling them that they could go to the moon.
You talk about that in the story that one of these women, they say, well, you can go to DC and will help you pay, and the woman is like, I have two kids and no mine.
Yeah, that opposition just felt like insane for her, Like what I go to d C right now, Like I have my life, I have my kids, Like you know, it was really like she was being told that she had to have a third child.
Right because she was basically being told she had to have a third child that she can't afford. So explain to me Florida. What I think about when I think about Florida. That's interesting is this is a state with real libertarian leanings, which for a long time was sort of a place where you could safely get an abortion in this house.
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that. I mean, Florida has been a sort of like abortion haven for lack of a better term, for a really long time because of this provision in the state constitution in Florida, this very very strong privaca clause in the Florida Constitution that was passed by voters in the nineteen eighties that
has long long been interpreted to protect abortion rights. So well, when you had all these other even you know, long before the DABS decision, when you had all of these other states in the South passing all of these restrictions, Florida often resisted those restrictions because of this privacy clause in the state constitution. What changed recently is you had the State Supreme Court, which was totally remade by Ron Desanthos.
You had them say that, actually, no, this privacy provision does not protect abortion rights, and therefore this six week man that the legislature has passed can take effect.
So one of the things I'm hoping that we could just talk about for one more minute is your DeSantis.
I think knew this was a bad this was a bad law, or knew that it would be unpopular with voters because he signed it into law, not in a big ceremony, but actually in the middle of the ninety Can you sort of talk about that, because my theory of the case is that he did it because he thought it would help his presidential run, because when he signed it in it was still when he thought he might have a shot.
Right. Well, it was very striking the contrast because I covered, you know, one year before he signed six week Lack, he signed in the fifteen week law. The contrast between how he did each of those laws was like day and night. Because the fifteen week law he stayed like a massive event in the middle of the day. He invited everybody. It was like a real dog and Plenty show. And then like you said the other one he's signed late at night. I think it was in his office.
It was not you know, there might have been like one picture taken, but it was very quiet. And then if I'm remembering right, I think it was like the next day or the day after, he actually spoke at Liberty University and he didn't talk about this, which, like I thought, was like very striking because obviously that's like the setting, right that is, like, if you're ever going to talk about your like anti abortion achievement, that's going to be the setting that you're going to do it in.
And so his like, his silence was very striking. And I don't know, I mean, I think, like, you know, that theory that you black positive like certainly sounds plausible.
I don't.
I mean, I think he was certainly getting an enormous amount of pressure from the base and from you know, anti abortion activists in the state that have really helped him in a lot of ways to do this. He's never spoken about why.
Yeah, it seems like it has political calculus written all over it. So let's go to this Texas story you wrote about. Power is such a central here and it brings up the architect of SB eight, which was the law that ultimately Republicans used to overturn Row. It's the State Bill eight. I want you to do two seconds on Jonathan Mitchell and then I want you to talk about SBA.
Yeah. So Jonathan Mitchell is I would say, the most well known anti abortion attorney in the country. He is known for kind of coming up with new and extremely aggressive and like I mean, I would say creative, like very like out of the box ways to crack down on abortion. He has a real reputation for that and he's trying a lot of different things and he has been for several.
Years, including like a fugitive slave law basically that had bounties on women who went and got abortion. So if you were a taxi driver who drove a woman to get an abortion, you could theoretically be charged.
Well, so with Senate Bill A, the way that this law got around Roe v. Wait, it's all about private civil enforcement. So basically what that means is that any person in Texas can you know, file a lawsuit against anyone that they spec might have helped somebody to get that abortion. And that was a really I mean, we've now seen several states sort of refashion that, but at the time that was really really novel and nobody had
had really done anything like that before. I that was Jonathan Mitchell's idea.
So crazy. Explained to us a little bit about what it looks like with Texas now is woman wants to get an abortion and the father of the fetus is able to explain this to us.
Yeah, anytime it's Texas, there's a lot of like weird legal things. I just find that if they're reporting. But there's something in Texas called the Rule two O two petition that allows you to basically petition a court to allow you to investigate before even a lawsuit is filed. So when there's like if you say, you know, look, I'm like suspecting that there's some illegal activity happening here, and you know, I want to investigate, you can like petition a court to allow you to do that. So
there's a big if no lawsuit filed. But basically what has happened is this man, represented by Jonathan Mitchell, has gone to a court and said, look, my former partner got into abortion against my wishes and I want to investigate that. Now, what is like particularly striking about this case? I think is that it's very clear from the records that she went out of state. She went to Colorado where abortion is still legal, and there's nothing illegal about that.
Right, states rights. They pretend to care about states.
Right, there's nothing illegal about that. I mean, we have seen anti abortion activists really go after this, like really clearly wanting to stop this, but there's nothing illegal about that. So that for a lot of people ring a lot of alarm bells in a lot of ways.
Yeah, explain to us a little bit about what is there anything that Jonathan Mitchell can do or is it just to sort of make people afraid?
Well, I mean, I think the vast majority of certainly of abortion rights activists see this as a chilling mechanism, you know, something to do that people will hear about this, you know, and then they will be afraid. But basically, what he is arguing in this petition is that, you know, even though like the woman herself could not be charged or could not be you know, punished in any way, the people who like aided her in getting out of
state could be. Now, abortion rights attorneys vehemently disagree with that statement. They said, say that nobody involved could be charged, but that's what he's arguing.
So crazy. So we have this Florida six week ban now, and then Arizona has a pretty interesting situation. Can you talk about.
That Arizona's law has now been repealed, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not going to take effect. And it's very confusing what's happening in this area. But the leadest that I heard is that it cannot. The earliest that it could take effect is mid to end of June.
I mean, I think because Arizona has a democratic attorney general, like, there's a lot in a democratic governor, there's a lot that you know, obviously, those are extremely powerful leadership positions, and they're sort of trying to do whatever they can to stop this from taking effects. But we're sort of in uncharted toiratory and nobody really knows what's going to happen.
Okay, so we don't know, because I thought for sure that the eighteen sixty law had to go into effect at some point. Even though they were able to ultimately overturn.
It, they're still using conditional language like the governor and the attorney general. I mean, my impression is that they're still trying to figure out a way to stop this from happening, because initially they had said the earliest was June eighth, and now they're saying the leadst that I that I saw on I do think that this is a this is kind of evolving. But then the latest that I saw was meddle to to end of June, So I think we don't know for sure yet.
But right now the landscape is there's likely to be a sixteen week ban, maybe worse, but something to that effect in Arizona, which is also another state with real libertarian leanings.
Talk to me about that there is a fifteen week ban.
That's the Doug Doocey right.
For over a year like that has been alot on the land in Arizona. But you know, they like Florida, are almost certainly going to have abortion on the ballot in November. You know a lot of this is going to come down to the election.
You are seeing these women and you're really seeing those firsthand. I mean, so I read this like amazing report from Lyft to Louisiana which talked about how Louisiana they're seeing doctors unable or unwilling to treat pregnant women in the first trimester because of the anxiety about miscarriage is an abortion? What do you think about that?
I mean, it's certainly happening. I thought that maybe by now things like that would have sort of settled out and you know, people would realize that, Like, you know, cases are cases like this, as far as we know, are not being filed against doctors. We have not seen that against any sort of like medical emergency or anything like that. But it really it hasn't. Like I mean, people in emergency situations are still being turned away. It seems like every day, and you know, I think that
just speaks to doctors have a lot to lose. Obviously, they're you know, in most of these places, they're facing jail time, they could lose their licenses, and that's a lot paraska of a doctor, right And there are certainly some that are willing to kind of put it on the line like that, but many more I think that aren't.
So there's an Mdollar case right now at the Supreme Court. MDALA is this emergency medicine federal statute which says you can't leave people to die. Very American that we had to pass that the Biden administration is doing I hope, because you have these women who are being menevacked out of the state because doctors are refusing to formal life saving abortions on them. Are you seeing that? I feel like you're on the ground, so you're and you're traveling
around and you're talking to people. Are you seeing that other places? And also what do you think the downstream effect of that is.
I'm definitely hearing about this in multiple different states, and I would wager to guess that it's happening everywhere because the laws are very similar and the fear is the same. Something that hasn't been talked about as much is the
role that the hospitals have to play. I mean, doctors that I'm talking to are extremely grateful when their hospitals give them guidance about how to interpret these laws, because what happens sometimes is that like some of these common difficult conditions that women come in with, pregnancy complications that women come in with, sometimes hospitals will say that one
is okay. You know, we have looked at the law and we have sided together that that one is okay, And that is so important for the doctor to hear. But you have a lot more hospitals in my know that I found in my reporting that they aren't say anything, they're not giving any kind of guidance, So it's like totally just the doctor out there on their own, you know, encountering these emergency situations and having to figure out what to do.
You don't feel like in these states with the bands, the life of the mother protection is being focused on or being respected. I mean, that's what it sounds like from what you're hearing anecdotally.
They all phrase these exceptions in different ways. I would say, I think the most common one that we hear is medical emergency, like there is a there is an exception for medical emergency. Now, the problem is that that's extremely vague, Like any any doctor that you talk to will say like, I don't know what medical emergency means, like, and I don't want to risk, you know, acting in a situation that then other people say, is not a medical emergency.
Right.
A lot of these conditions that they're really reckoning with are you know, and not all of them. Some of them are like, you know, there is an urgent situation and still somebody is being turned away. But a lot of these situations are like you know, well, if she's like, if the pregnancy is allowed to continue, she's at a high risk for sepsis, she's at a high risk for hemorrhaging, but it's not like immediately she could die now. And so those are the sort of situations. It's sort of
like gray area situations that doctors are reckoning with. And sometimes I'll step in and say, you know, you can treat them in that situation, but yeah, more often they don't.
Yeah, Wow, thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you'll come back.
Thank you for having me on. I really love talking to you.
Mark Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Mark, thanks for having me again.
I'm such a fan of yours. But also, more importantly, like I feel like this story because there's so much other news. We're sort of sleepwalking through it and there's so much I mean, I was listening to Laura Trump on television the other day basically telling Republicans to practice voter intimidation. So what is happening?
Yeah, I'm outside. I do you started there?
Because I don't want people to walk away thinking I don't think you should follow the Trump trials because obviously it's important that you follow the Trump trials, but there is this crowding out of what is happening to democracy that I fear people are going to wake up in September October and be shocked at what is befollowing them. The Republican Party is openly saying it wants to engage
in voter suppression and election subversion. You know, you have the Laura Trump, the vice share of the Republican Party, you know, using language that you know is at best coded around violence. You also have her saying that they believe they can get the R and C can get partisan people touching ballots, remember that, and that kind of means.
And then you have I think her saying what I think you were referring to, which is that they want to stop you know, Donald Trump tweeted in twenty twenty stop the count She basically said, they're going to litigate to try to prevent ballots from being counted after election day. And you know at the same time that by the way, Republicans prevent states from counting ballots before collection day. They're being pretty out in the open about what they are
planning to do. Donald Trump, you know, gave an interview that said he won't necessarily abide by the outcome of the election, and then Tim Scott, who is supposed to be one of the moderates in the Senate, refuses say he would. So I think we need to be careful at not letting ourselves be distracted from all of the really bad authoritarian commentary and the voter suppression activity that is going on while the trials take place.
What's happening behind the scenes in the courts, Because you are in these courts trying to preserve our right to democracy, So what's happening there?
Yeah, So, as we sit here today, there are one hundred and forty two separate lawsuits in various states of the courts in thirty seven states. The majority of them, about eighty of them, are pro democracy lawsuits, but it's important to understaid the other sixty some odd are actually brought by votes pressers and election deniers. These are lawsuits to make it harder of an easier cheat in the
twenty twenty four election. And the macro trend is that we are seeing more and more of those lawsuits being filed every day. The trend is towards the election deniers, bringing more and more litigation, including the Republican National Committee that is doing so. So that is kind of the very macro trend. I would say underneath that, there are
a couple of notable things. The first is the Republicans and their allies have brought three separate lawsuits around the country, one in Arizona, one in Nevada, one in Minnesota for the right to harass election officials. I want you to take that yet, like you wake up one day and you say, you know what law needs a challenge.
There's a law that says I cannot harass or intimidate an election official. Let's challenge that law.
Yeah?
Wow, right, So what does that tell you, Molly about what we're going to see this fall?
Right?
I mean, if they're willing to spend money on lawyers to litigate to be able to harass election officials, one can assume that harassing election officials is on their dance card.
When we get to a.
Too, do you think the courts will protect these people?
I mean no, I doubt they've already lost the case Nevada. I believe they're going to lose the cases in Arizona and Minnesota. But I also don't think that they're done bringing that litigation elsewhere.
Okay, so this litigation is like kind of just trying to move the goalposts, but not necessarily going to succeed.
Yeah. I think it's trying to do two things.
And I think as we get closer to the election, and hopefully this won't be the last time I talked to you, I think we should keep this in mind that there are goals that these that this litigation has. One is to win the lawsuit. The second is to shift the Overton window of what is.
Except that's always these great right So.
Even if they lose these lawsuits, they have sort of put into play the idea that there may be there's some first amount of right to harass election. I like you and I will know they lost the case, but like the gestalt that is the national sense of what's going on in elections, they will have shifted what is considered normal.
I mean, it's like the trumpmmunity, right, he needs blanket immunity. But they didn't really know. They knew they weren't going to get blanket immunity. They just wanted to buy some time and maybe get a little immunity.
That's absolutely right, and that's actually there's probably no better case that illustrates the danger to democracy and frankly, in my view, the failure of the courts to protect democracy than that case.
Because here's the thing. After that argument, which you know, everyone agreed, went off.
The rails, you know, with the justices at this point, if they came back and said, there's not total immunity, right, you can't kill your political opponents.
People would be like, oh, wow, well that this reword did something reasonable, even if what they're doing is less reasonable than we thought they should be doing at the beginning. And and Molly, I know you comment a lot on the you know, the trial in New York. I want to be frankly somewhat critical of the judge there. I can't imagine a criminal defendant being held in contend ten times before a judge lets them in jail.
They have shifted. What the behavior is that Donald Trump? Donald Trump has ten times now been contemptuous of the court. Ten times he has violated a court order knowingly and intentionally, and yet we're still in this like, well, let's give him another future.
Let's give him another fut chance.
Trump benefits from law expectations, right, you know, at every point they say, well, if we hold him accountable, then da da da. You know, they've gamed it out, which is not how any of us do criminal law, you know, in this country. But I do think that Mershon in his I think is mostly focused on, like, you know,
just trying to get this thing done. Now, that's not a defense, but it's more of just that Trump had so primed the pomp for special legal treatment that Mershon has sort of found himself in this look.
I'm not singling him.
I would say the same thing about the trial judge in Georgia who let a side issue sort of derail the trial. I honestly would say even the same thing about the trial judge in DC who has had her case put on hold. But she also frankly, if you look back, he's just a criminal defendant, Like he's a candidate who is a criminal defendant.
That's all. He is, nothing else than that.
Also, I would add that he decided to become a candidate because he thought it would help him with these criminal cases.
And that's a really good point, which.
I feel like is just been lost in the United States of amnesia. I feel like there's a lot of voter role purging stuff going on. That's really scary.
Yeah.
So I've talked before about voter mass voter challenges, which is when private citizens tried to get large numbers of people removed from the roles. When the government does it, it is referred to as a purge. Right, So this is what I. Purge is when the state or the county decides to remove large numbers of people in violation
of the protections against them being disenfranchised. And what we have right now is the Republican Party in some instances their allies in many instances are suing states to force urges, to force the state eight to remove voters, some of whom are lawfully on the rolls, being from being able to vote. And you know this is at the same time or shortly after, many of those same states or Republicans advocated those states leave ERIC, which is an interstate
compact to keep voter rolls clean. So I want everyone to understand how what this two step meant. Step number one, you have an agreement between states to share information to make sure you don't have dead people and people who have moved and other other people on your voter rolls and that they're cleaned So step one is, if you're a Republican, you get your state to leave that compact, so now you have fewer ways to remove those people
who should be removed. You wait a few months, then you file a lawsuit against those states saying, look at all the people on your voter roles who shouldn't be on the voter roles, we think you need to purge, not just those voters, but other voters.
Right.
So it so the first serves as an excuse as a reason why you now need to engage in a purge. And yes, we are seeing an unprecedented level of voter purge litigation. Mike Firm and I are involved in fighting it back in a number of states, as are other people. I don't think this will succeed, but again, what it does, even if they lose Molly, they get to then say on Fox News and in their other you know, Donald
Trump on the stop, look at these states. Their voter rules are purge and these Obama judges or these liberal judges or the Democrats are fighting to have illegal voters. Right, they win either legally or they win by creating you know, disinformation and rallying, you know, lying to their base.
Yeah, and that's this trumpy thing of you fight this case in court and out of court. That's what it's about. Let's talk about what this election is going to look like. One of the things that Republicans are furious about was the expanded ballot access mail in voting. You know, it was a once in a lifetime pandemic. It's not the same setup. So certain things will go back to normal, but will they be able to sort of take back
some of the more kind of like early voting. I mean, how worried are you about that?
I'm very worried.
I'm worried about early voting, but I'm particularly worried about vote by mail because that has become even more than early voting. You know, pre pandemic, if you were looking for the partisan split, it actually would have been early voting. You know, a lot of Democrats did a lot of emphasis on early voting souls to the polls among black voters, for example. With the pandemic, you really saw a very
sharp partisan split around vote by mail. And yes, there'll be less vote by mail in twenty twenty four, and there wasn't twenty twenty, but it, you know, it is still people actually started doing it and they found it convene and they like it, and it does have a it continues to have a strong partisan divide. So we are continuing to see laws and litigation. Sometimes we're bringing litigation over vote by mail. In fact, vote by mail
is the most litigated topic right now. In that one hundred and forty two cases, there are more cases involving vote by mail than any other. There's going to be a case argued in the next few days in the Wisconsin Supreme Court over whether dropboxes are legal. So my firm has sued to restore dropboxes.
To be legal.
They were legal in twenty twenty, the conservative state courts struck them down said no drop boxes in twenty twenty two. We are now suing and I think will succeed in there being dropboxes. But we're seeing this around a whole range of issues involving vote by mail. Whether it is the Republican Party is suing in Nevada to try to throw out ballots that are casked in postmarked before election day,
but which come in say the day after election day. That'll, by the way, to also disenfranchise our military servicemen and women oversee, there's no question, Molly, that the fight over vote by mail, the whole naked ballots, misdated ballots in Pennsylvania that you remember from twenty twenty, All of those things are coming roaring back into the forefront.
What is there any good news? Give us a little bit of good news.
Yeah, so, look, the good news is that they're not succeeding. Here is the way I think your audience should think about politics. Joe Biden's going to win the popular vote in a landslide. Just pause for a moment and think about that. Okay, it is simply not true when people say that we are an equally divided country. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes. Joe Biden won the popular vote last time by seven million votes.
If you put a gun to my head, I said, Joe Biden wins the popular vote next time by nine and a half million votes. But he will win the popular vote by millions of votes. So what that means is that the only way Republicans can win at this point, because they're running out of runway to know count on the electoral College. The only way they can win is about making it harder to vote, easier to cheat.
And right now we are in.
The harder to vote phase, and we will get to the easier to cheat phase as we did after twenty twenty, you know, sometime in October November. But the good news is they didn't succeed in twenty twenty and so far they're not succeeding in twenty twenty four. So it's a serious threat. It's something we need to take seriously. But if you ask me, do I think they will succeed, the answer is no, I don't think they'll succeed. What makes me pessimistic, Molly, is not the outcome of the
twenty twenty four election or these cases. What makes me pessimistic is that we are now perpetually in a place in which only one party can win or else our democracy decip.
No, I know, that is the thing. I mean, there are many things that keep me up at night, but that is like top three, I mean, the only thing that makes me feel a little better. And again, the vibes right now are bad. The Acela cord Or vibes are bad. But the one thing that I do think could happen is Nikki Hlly is still getting tons of votes. She's getting you know, she's got one hundred and thirty thousand votes in the Republican primary that happened on Tuesday,
Mike Brown, So whatever state that is Indiana, Indiana. So like, clearly never Trump is still never Trump.
Yeah, and he is historically unpopular. Again, I come back to how I think about our elections, which is more people want the Democrats. The question is whether or not between gerrymandering and the House, between the natural situation with the Senate being divided by states by the electoral college, will that be enough for Republicans to keep control. I think that they don't think that that's enough. I think
that the Republicans don't think that's enough. I think Donald Trump doesn't think that's enough, and that they need to suppress voters and they need to cheat on the outcome. So our job, my job as a lawyer, and you know, all of our jobs as citizens, it's to be vigilant and not let that happen. You know, make sure you know. The thing I always say to the average folks is that, Molly,
you have an enormous town square. You are in any given week, millions of people literally millions of people hear you, they see you, or they'd read you like in some form of fashion. They are influenced by what you're saying. But that doesn't mean that for Molly Jones right now, who is sitting in Scarsdale, New York, that she doesn't also have a town square. Her town square may be different, maybe the local coffee shop, or her workplace, or her Facebook.
And I think if we all project the importance of protecting democracy and frankly voting for President Biden and Democrats like I think the election will actually take care of itself.
Mark, I hope you'll come back. We have to keep following this. It's like one of the many places where being vigilant is so important.
Look, here's the thing, Molly, I am like the guy who is like hanging outside your favorite coffee shop, just waiting for you to say a lot. So you tell me where you want to be dot dot and I will be here. No moment, fucker requisi my moment of thuckery. Molly John's fast. He has my favorite moment of fuckery. As you know, and you and I've known each other a long time now, As far back as twenty fifteen, I would tell people, Nope, leave Baron out of it. Kid's innocent. The kid is a kid. Let it be
a kid. They attacked my kids, but I said to people, don't attack Baron Trump. Here's my moment of thuckery though. That article in the Daily Mail last week about Baron Trump's political com out how he's a brilliant athlete like his father and he's so strong like his political genius. That was obviously Donald Trump going to the Daily Mail and planting a story about his own teenage son entering politics, and no one seems to have picked up on that.
This wasn't some random source. This was like, you know, Donald Trump pulling a classic I'm gonna call Maggie at three in the morning. That was so obvious that Donald Trump was trying to make bear in the next inheritor, And the fuckery of it was Trump doing the John Baron routine and calling a news outlet and planning a story. The second part that was amazing about the fuckery was that Milagnia cock blocket in the worst way last week. He says, no, then they'll not be going to a convention.
Yeah, he won't be Benjon.
Two Slovakia with me to work on Far is Better lifestyle.
Yeah, that wasn't amazing. He got the children jobs as delegates, and then Milania is like nope, and honestly, like, you know, I'm no fan of Mlania's because I think she's just as trumpy as everybody else. But you know, good for her. Protecting your kids is always good. My moment of fuckery is, ma is this Steve Bennon thing that is.
So going to jail?
So he is he like, is just stuck, right, He's basically going to jail. And so now he's going to try to have them here at en banc, which is not going to happen. And he's going to try to go up to the Supreme Court, which maybe, I mean, look, never bet against the brainworms of one Justice Alito and Justice Thomas. But if they're willing to put the whole organization in jeopardy to appeal to Steve benn and then, you know, respect, but I think Steve Bennon, it's going to jail.
If they're willing to burn down a reputation that.
Is allfctly good lifetime appointment.
And they've already spread enough gas around the place and stacked up enough kindling around the place exactly. But if they think that bailing Steve Bannon out of a And basically, here's the thing. Bannon did this for clicks and they know it. This is not some deeper legal question of Steve Bannon being a bold resistor to some sort of certainly whatever. Just classic. But you know what, you only get one shirt in prison.
Yes, Steve Mannon going to jail for four months? Are mentus four months? Who cares? Four months? Right before this election. He is one of the primary sources of trumpy propaganda. Yeah, and it's like the death of Rush Limbaugh.
It's a bigger deal than people think. Yeah, that's right, it's not just trumpy propaganda. Yes, the war room, all this stuff is a lot. It feeds the MAGA base. But folks, you would be shocked how many mainstream reporters take Steve Bannon's bullshit without a single grain of.
Salt, right to everybody in the world.
And by the way, yeah, don't think Steve Bannon like he may mock the New York Times. He's on the phone with reporters and the Times of Political the watch of us every single day for our wors working then, So don't anybody fool you about that.
Yep, I think that's right.
Okay, thank you, see you later.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.