Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and the anti trans Missouri ag can now access trans people's medical records. We have such an interesting show for you today. Cereals co hosts Sarah Koenig and Danish Shivis join us to talk about their newest season on Gwintanamo Bay. Then we'll talk to Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood Arizona, doctor Jill Gibson, about women's
reproductive health in the state of Arizona. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the One, the Only, Rick Wilson. Welcome back, my friend, the Monday Special with the Rick Wilson.
Happy Monday to everyone, and happy Donald Trump's squirming like a miserable worm in court all day to those who celebrate.
So let's talk about this week. The thing I'm so incredibly irritated with is the people are like, wow, this is the least good case. You know, it's his state case that goes up to a federal case. Right. The idea is that when you pay off the adult film star that you're having an affair with after your third
wife is delivered your fifth child. If you do that in the hopes of keeping it from coming out right before in a presidential election, that's technically a campaign finance violation, which I mean, the problem is it's just like the idea of like Trump having to technically follow a lot like the rest of us is kind of like not how we do it.
It irritates him greatly, but also like.
The whole country has been set up to like, let Trump do what Trump does.
You know. That's one of the things that we keep under counting I think in our politics right now is that we hear this all the time talking to reporters, Like I'll call reporter and say, you know, this thing is that it's like, oh yeah, everybody knows. Oh yeah, everybody knows that bad that's what he is. It's just Trump being Trump, and they have wired it so far into their discount rate of Trump that the horror of these things, which should horrify people, people should be like,
oh shit, not whoo who weird. Yeah, they should be shocked about these things. They just don't seem to have a reaction to them that is merited by the extremity of the criminality that he engages in all the time.
Yeah, it's almost as if like this sort of DC intelligentsia has overthunk Trump. I mean, part of it is that none of us are over twenty sixteen, right, And so you know, in twenty sixteen, we all thought we knew, I mean, talk about that.
So twenty sixteen, I think there were three mental breakpoints. This is not particularly a novel thought. The first was, ha, Trump could never win the general, never could win the primary a true conservative like Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz. That Republicans would never accept a profligate, morally bankrupt, lifetime philanderer, adulter, scumbag, weirdo former Democrat Hillary donor You feel like.
He's listening, right. I feel like when you go in these tangents, it's because you know someone from the RNC is listening to this, and you just want them to hear every.
Pope poke poke any way. Yeah, no, but we thought that, you know, initially in sixteen, everyone thought that Trump's absurdity and lack of conservative credential would disqualify him. Okay, cool. Then they thought all the things people were discovering about Trump and that Trump was doing and saying John McCain wasn't a war hero, suckers and all the you'll pile it up, pilot up. And then there was like that
disqualifies them. And then and this was on the media and on the Democratic side, why no one could ever defeat the great Hillary Clinton, the best candidate ever?
Right, Okay, you're so naughty, because it's like, yeah, right, she was not a good Yeah.
She's not a good candidate. Set aside her other merits and virtues. I think even she would tell you she's not a natural at the politicking. Part.
Part of it is that part of it is that America just is not ready to have a woman president at least well.
And part of it was that Roger Ails and Rupert Murdock had spent thirty years turning her into the demonic Queen of Hell and blah blah blah.
Right, a really good point she had, and that really did work.
It worked at scale. So what I'm saying is the misapprehensions of twenty sixteen led reporters to say, Okay, well, you know what, everybody knows that about Trump. Everybody gets it about Trump. But people didn't. They did not get it, They did not know it. These were things that they still haven't internalized, and that today the Republicans work the
refs better than any anything else. They work the rest, They worked him for years now, and they're desperately afraid to not platform and to not salute, and to not treat the fraise out of Trump's mouth as if they are uttered by a normal, sane candidate. Now, I think we all know by now that Donnie is not normal. He is not sane. He is not a candidate or a man who plays by the rules that the press seems to think he's playing by. He doesn't play by any rules, and that for his people they love that.
But for reporters and for political establishment types and for everyone else, they think, okay, well, someday he'll be under control. Why a second term can't possibly be as crazy as the first. But they keep platforming the guy in a way that doesn't treat the madness in his front and
center away as it legitimately deserves to be treated. So what we're going to do again is act like these cases are just baked in the cake, that they're normal, that the things that Trump gets away with he gets a special dispensation for, and honestly, right now people in the media that are you know people you and I both know they struggle with it, and yet at the end of the day they still write the same attenuated
deferential stories. And look, I have seen some improvement lately MSN and seeing in both this week I went at Trump's lying really well, like leading out, like Trump lied today about his position on abortion, his lie about this This is a false statement by Trump, But there's still too much of quoting the madness as a fact. Trump today reported that Biden was conspiring against him in the courts,
and the courts are run by Joe Biden. They still don't frame it legitimately as journalists and say this colossal lie by a criminal who is lying. No criminal has ever not been in court willing to say no. I'm being framed by the bad people. And that's what Trump's doing. And there's a degree to which He's getting away with it.
The problem with pundit world, the pundit industrial complex of which we are ones is part of it, is that there's like a feeling that you have to be right and you have to know so when you approach this case, you say, wow, it's not as strong a case as the documents case, which is there's not much to prove, right. He took the documents, he kicked the documents. They asked for the documents back, he said, no, thank you, I'm not going to give them back. But you know, you
have a trumpy judge. And like this is the thing about you know, we talk so much about like the guardrails, and these guardrails were really set up for politicians who were willing to sort of say, oh this is enough, you know, who were able to self regulate, which Trump cannot.
My favorite cope right now that I'm watching come out of like the National Review, guys like Dan McLaughlin and Rich Lowry, it's like the guardrails and institutions of America will Trump bounded? He's certainly not going to violate the sacred constitutional order of America?
Right, Like the.
Fuck are you talking about? Who the fuck are you talking about? You're talking about Donald J. Trump? And anyone who tells you, folks, is a really simple test. Anybody who says to you, America's institutions are so resilient that Trump would never even dream of violating the right. Have you been asleep or in a coma or drunk for the last eight years. He is always going to do what he tells you he will do. He's going to violate the law, the constitution, is.
Going to be a dictator on day one.
He's going to be a dictator. And by the way, I've defied people, like, give me an example of someone who was a dictator for only a day. The allure of power is too strong.
Well, also, first of all, I'm going to be a dictator on day one and get us drilling. We're the largest exporter. We don't need to drill anymore. In fact, we drill so much, you know, and that. But also it's bullshit. Of course he's going to be He's gonna do dinner on day one and day two and day three. I mean, there's no What I'm like irritated by is that everyone's like, well, we got to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt. No we don't.
No, no, no benefit of the doubt is required for Donald Trump. We know what he is. He is telling us what he will do. And the idea that anyone at this point in our history in this country has a doubt about what this will look like. And anyone who's giving you excuses like he's learned his lesson. You know, this is Hitler Tamed by Prison New York Times headline, nineteen thirty six. It doesn't work that way with this guy. And I know people are like, how do you compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler?
He hasn't started a camp yet.
He hasn't actually put an anybody in a box car to a death camp yet.
But it is like very annoying to me too, that, like we don't ever talk about that. Donald Trump decided to declare his presidential run because he was hoping it would prevent him from being indicted.
Yeah, he didn't want to go to prison. He doesn't want to be indicted. We really now have seen what one hundred million dollars will do to throw sand in the gears of the oh of our resilient laws and institutions and systems. Uh huh.
Yeah.
And imagine when he's president again, what happens to all of those cases that are out there? You know what happens? They go away. We're lucky Merrick Garland hasn't pulled the plug on how the federal cases already.
I'm reading this book America first. You know about this book?
Yes, I have it.
The history of the right. Yeah, I know you'll be shocked to hear this, but a lot of this stuff, you know, like, there were periods before World War Two where the right was pretty aligned with Hitler and said things like, you know, the America First Movement. The name America First came from a group that supported this Isola Wang and Charles Lindberg.
Look, the German American Bund was an incredibly broad and powerful political force that was growing in influence in this country. They were outright seditionists, and before that it was friends of the New German Order or something like that. These were people, by the way, tell me if this rings a bell, who were right leaning Americans who were deeply enamored with a strange model of an authoritarian in an overseas nation. And today those same people are the America firsters. Look,
you've got JD. Vance writing in the pages of the New York Times like, dear mister Putin, may I come and give you a foot massage? And by the way, I know the Times has had plenty of moments where it is questioned whether it should be platforming certain people.
And you know what, if they want to platform Jada Vance that's fine, but they should have people who are putting forth actual, true statements as opposed to what Jade Vance did in The Times this week, which was to lie repeatedly about Ukraine and about the American role in Ukraine, and to lie repeatedly about the consequences of giving up and allowing Vladimir Putin to roll up in the streets of Europe.
Yeah, with the New York Times, I would just say, and I know everyone's going to get mad at me for saying this, but you know, they are the biggest newspaper. They set the tone for a lot of the conversations we have, and so they sometimes people get mad at them. And they are a big enough, strong enough institution where they should be able to handle that.
You know, they should have, and unfortunately, I think that they have not learned their lesson about when you platform a Tom Cotton or a platform a JDA events. At this moment in our history, they're not honest brokers. They are people who are defending an emergent global fascist movement in our century and not in the nineteen thirties. And there were plenty of people in the nineteen thirties who
were willing to defend Hitler. In America, there were plenty of people in this moment who are willing to defend Vladimir Putin and any other authoritarian that comes down the block.
But the rights love of authoritarianism has been around for a long time. That's what I'm saying. It's not oh yeah.
And over the weekend you had this moment of utter confusion among a lot of people on the far right who are like, Okay, wait, so Russia is Iran's ally, but Iran is attacking Israel. But we don't really like the Jews that much, but we don't like the Iranians, but we love the Russian And you could hear like the gears in their heads going and the machine blowing.
Yeah, it's very hard for them, you know. I mean, it's a very simplistic view on the world.
It is a sad view, I think in a lot of ways in the world. It is a view that diminishes the sacrifices of Americans over the last eighty years since World War Two, when we fought the Long War against the Nazis and against German and authoritarianism, and then we fought the Long War against Sylviet communism, and now we've sort of unwound that with this amazing emergence of affection and love for a new strain of authoritarianism in
the world. It's bad right now, but if Trump is returned to power by some misfortune, it will be utterly catastrophic because, as we've seen the reporting in the last few days, Trump's quote unquote great plan to end the war in Ukraine is to give Russia Ukraine.
That is true, but that's to.
Cut them off and to give them Ukraine. Oh well, that's gonna work out great for everybody except you know, Ukraine. Wow, and Europe and NATO Poland.
I mean, I think Poland would like a word, you know. Yeah, to watch American conservatives love affair with Putin and earn On continue. This is not so different than they were with Hitler. So the point is now we wait.
And by the way, Maga's if you're listening and you're not happy with what we're saying about comparing Trump and Putin to Hitler, then they should be less like Hitler. Then they should be less affectionate towards Hitler.
I think that Putin certainly does kill all his enemies. Trump, it's a little bit different for now right. Well, and also, this authoritarian style of leadership is not how we do it in this country.
Well, it's not how we have done it in this country. If we re elect Donald Trump, that is how we do it. That is how we will be doing it in this country. If we reelect Donald Trump, that is what will happen in this country. They will engage in use the use of authoritarian power because they've justified it in their minds by saying, well, we're in a generational civilizational battle and unless we win now by whatever means necessary, then the white race will die out right.
Well, and that's what this is. It's the last gasp of racism and the sort of death now of I don't.
Know, Molly, I wouldn't say it's the last gasp, you know why. I think they're breathing pretty easily. I think they've got a pretty comfortable feeling right now that they have managed to mainstream a lot of things that twenty five years ago we would have said. Twenty five years ago, conservative Republicans would have said, f out of here, you're too racist.
Well, the right has moved to the right, but the left has moved to the center at least for now. Rick Wilson, thank you.
You are very welcome and I will talk to you again next time.
Spring is 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. Sarah Koenig and Danish Shivs are the co hosts of Cereal. Welcome Sarah, Hello, thank you, and welcome Dana.
Hi.
Thanks for having us.
I feel like it's the most famous podcast in the world, but I guess it's probably not right, or is it.
I mean, you're asking wrong people, obviously, No, I mean I don't know.
I don't know it not Joe Rogan.
You know that, right, right, Okay, you're right, all right, that's a good point. Joe Rogan is serial. It's important. Yes, Oh this is Cereal. I'm introducing you guys. We are going to talk about this incredible podcast that really did start. I mean, there have been movies made of it, but it is true. All of us are much poorer and less famous than Joe Rogan. I think it's important to take a moment too. Though he did eat a bug on television and he was the host of Fear Factor. Ergo,
I take all my health advice from him. So talk to me about what this season of Cereal looks like.
This season of Cereal, we devoted the whole podcast to stories about Gantanamo, and each episode food is a different story that has taken place over the course of Guantanama's
twenty two year history. But the thing we were trying to do was actually go to the individual stories, so story the people on the ground at Guantanamo who have sort of been put through that very weird system there and spat out the other side for the most part, and so sort of look at Guantanama through the lens of the individuals on the ground who have actually had to deal with the place as part of their lives.
So that includes plenty of Americans personnel, interrogators, guards, commanders, lawyers, but also a bunch of former detainees as well.
It's nine episode. We hope we're still working and it's like a weird personal history. We wanted to call it people's history in the in the first episode, but then I got embarrassed. I thought people would think we were ripping off Howard's in because we were, by the.
Way, In case you're wondering, nobody's thinking that, like you know, you're like in the sort of intelligentsia when that's your aside. So that's kind of what it is. It's kind of a human scale, I don't.
Know, a small scale history, personal personal history of what this place has been like for people who have experienced it, either from the working their side or running it and also locked up.
There is the theory here that it says a lot about America this site.
Yes, of course it does. Of course it does.
I know it's hard to start talking about.
What Guantanamo means and then it starts to get very ponderous and kind of sad. But you know, if you're asking yet. I was talking to a sort of colleague in the audio world recently and he put it so nicely, and I was like, oh, I'm going to steal that.
Which was I don't know.
He was just saying, like, we have actually a really high tolerance for abandoning our ideals and our views in America, and we.
Sort of hide that most of the time.
But Guantanamo it was like it seems like Guantamau's this place where we stored all of that.
It was like, it's like a.
Repository for our tolerance for aberration in our criminal justice system or and in the way that we prosecute war and crime.
I think about, you know, I lived in New York during nine to eleven, and so I feel like that was the sort of excuse we used to sort of betray all of these American values. It was such a long time ago, it is burned into my brain, like my experience is during nine to eleven, like the people that I knew who died, the like seeing the plane fly into the towers like it is for years when I would hear ambulances, I would think like, oh, they've
got there. It's another one, like you know, because the sounds, the smells like it did birth this shadow world, right.
Yeah, I mean, And that's the thing that you know that's been interesting in reporting. It is just having to really contemplate the different points of view and some of which you you know, I as a reporter, and maybe data too, like we don't agree with and so you can kind of walk through life for a long time being like well, that's bullshit. But you talk to these people and they really are, like, my job was to
protect the American people. We didn't know what was coming next, and like you're saying, like you sort of have this expect you're bracing for the next attack, kind of for the next crisis at that time, and that was It's easy to forget that that was real, that feeling and that fear, and that there were a bunch of people whose job it was to like run it down and make sure it doesn't happen again.
That is an impossible job.
And so they were trying to do it.
And I don't I don't excuse.
You know, some of the terrible things that happened, but you have a greater understanding, I think for that pressure and what that pressure felt like for people.
Yeah, when we were talking about it, I mean, we were all in an impossible situation, but it ended up being made so much worse. What is this status of GETMO right now? And what is because I know there, I mean, and what about this sort of like interesting legal kind of nuance of where these people went and what happened to that give me sort of the some of the sort of interesting through lines.
While you were bringing up like nine to eleven was so long ago, And in one sense, it was like, in doing this podcast, one of the things we debated a lot is like how much of this era do we have to explain, Like do we have to explain to people who the Taliban are? What's the difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda? And then in another sense, like it wasn't actually that long ago.
And I think a lot.
Of people have sort of relegated Guantanamo to history, but the fact of the matter is there are still thirty men locked up at Guantano today. The prison is still open.
It's a quarter of a century later and they're still there.
Yes, exactly, not all at one time, but seven hundred and eighty prisoners have been held there over time, so it's obviously vastly reduced from the population that.
It used to be.
But just to say, like, it's not a thing that's that is relegated to history yet, because it's it's actually still like right there, Like yeah, theoretically you could go to the prison right now and visit it.
Yeah.
For a lot of the prisoners who have been released, they really struggle because they were at Guantanamo and what people know Guantanamo to be is a prison for terrorists, right, Like that's sort of how we all sort of shorthand the place. And so it's really hard to be released from a place like that and try to go back into society and restart your life when you're coming with the sort of like taint of a place like that.
A lot of them really really struggle having left.
But also, what were no rules? Right? Some people were sent there first one reason, some were sent there for another. It wasn't you know, there was a certain like sort of constitutional pause, right that you could be sent there if you were I mean they weren't even all American citizens, right, yeah.
I mean they weren't not American citizens. And basically Guantanamo originally was meant to be, for all intents and purposes, basically a prisoner of war camp. But the Bush administration did not want to have to follow certain rules Geneva conventions, namely, and so didn't work around Basically, they worked around that by not ever calling it a prisoner of war camp,
not ever calling the prisoners prisoners of war. They were unlawful enemy combatants, which their lawyers interpreted to me, and they could treat differently than we sort of would normally
quote unquote normally. That's really like the point at which everything kind of went awry and started to go awry, and it's just you know, it's lasted now for twenty two years, and so from that sort of original aberration, now you have like just this sort of like aberrations in all the other normal systems that should have followed, and most expressly the justice system that they built there, which is sort of looks like a justice system but does not act like a normal justice system.
You know, what does it look like?
So Guantanamo is it's a bunch of things, but principally it's two things. There's this what we casually call a prison. They don't call it a prison, they call it a detention facility. But so there's this prison that operates kind of like a prison you would recognize in the United States at this point.
It didn't in the beginning, but now it does.
And then there's a court. There's a special court there that is functioning incredibly slowly in some cases. But the case that most people have heard about it, if they've heard about any of them, is the case against the men accused of planning nine to eleven, the nine eleven attacks, and that case has been There have been various versions of this court that get stood up and then declared not okay, and then they get revised and stood up again.
The current court that's functioning I think has been going since twenty twelve, and so that case of the nine to eleven defendants, I mean in other cases as well, but that's sort of the one that most people are aware of, has been in pre trial more than ten years, twelve years, something like that, and it is nowhere near going to trial, and it could get settled by a plea agreement, and that is maybe the more likely thing that would happen. That's been up in the air now
for a while. But the core issue there, and this is across a couple of the other cases as well that are being considered in the Military court, there is there are a bunch of men who are at Guantanamo now who were held in secret CIAUS Tody what we called, you know, known as the black sites for about four years, most of them, and they were tortured there and held in communicato and then in two thousand and six they were brought to Guantanamo and that's when we kind of technically,
you know, are we're trying to sort of try them based on evidence gathered from the point when they got to Guantanamo's forward.
And that is the fight, that's.
The essential fight, is a bunch of people saying, you know, on the day fence side saying you cannot, these might have been tortured. Therefore there is no evidence really that you've gathered since then, or the evidence that you've gathered since then is all tainted by the way in which they were held and tortured in CIA custody, and the government saying no, no, that's a distinct period that was over, and then moving forward, we can use the evidence that
we have gathered since then. I'm simplifying it, but that is the afferential dating is like, can we prosecute these men who we tortured in CAA custody?
And the answer is kind of like not, really, it's not working.
I mean, we shouldn't laugh because it's horrendous and it's such a miscarriage of justice, and also it's just so disturbing.
It's horrible what we did to these men. In a way, it's also so so horrible for the families of the people who died in that attack.
Yes, they haven't gone away.
They are watching and waiting and agonizing. And this has now been for them literally more than twenty years.
Right, you know, they are in this sort of suspended animation waiting for this trial that some of them may be called to testify in.
Right, Yes, but you know, lor it's you know, people are.
They want to move on, or not even move on, but they want just they want answers.
People who have like spoken out in the past.
They're just like they're old, you know, and some of them have died before they're able to kind of anyway. So it's that part is also I think doesn't get talked about that much that our treatment of those defendants has denied the families any closure.
Yeah, I don't know if.
Closure is the word I would use. I think that's sort of a personal word to you. I just mean any don't resolution, any resolution.
Yeah, So what do you think the next season is going to be And do you feel like this is such a different what's a departure from how you've done it in the past, this story, Yeah, well this season.
Not really, I don't think so.
I think all of our seasons have been in about ish the same thing, which is oh interesting, judgment and punishment of each other, and what are the systems that we have to meet that out. So I actually don't think of it as very different. I think the locus of the stories is certainly different, and it is a
different world, and Guantanamo is truly its own world. I mean, it's fascinating, and I didn't really get it till a little more recently, but then I started thinking about it, I was like, oh, this is really quite similar to season three, where we just spent a year and a half or so inside a felony courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio, just to say like, Okay, here's how your average felony courthouse works in America. Let's see what goes on inside and how our systems are working. It's not that different
this series. It's structured kind of similarly. I mean that one is that historical in the way that this one is, but the questions are sort of the same. It's like, how do regular people inside these systems? How do they make decisions? And what are the pressures on them? And how do they function inside a thing that's kind of broken?
Do you guys feel that you've learned anything about sort of criminal justice reform or any of this sort of larger law and order or stuff that you think is important or relevant from your experience doing this.
I think the main takeaway for me is like, we have a justice system and it's not perfect, but it works, and we should rely on it and not just throw it out the window when we get scared. And that's basically what happened. You know, after nine to eleven, we got scared, we threw our systems out the window. We tried to rebuild something that we thought would be more amenable to our end goals. And now here we are twenty two years later, and we're still caught in the muck of it all.
And you know, as you.
Guys were talking about a minute now, the guy who is accused of being the mastermind of nine eleven is still in pre trial hearings.
That's crazy.
And it happened because we just decided to circumvent our you know, imperfect but time testing systems.
So I think that's kind of my takeaway from it. Yeah, i'd agree with that.
I Mean what's hard for me is is that I think the criminal justice system that the like the normal one we had of that we have on the mainland is so messed up that it's hard for me to be like, yeah, that would use that one. But I will say Guantanamo really makes it look good, and so like.
That is the most terrible. Yeah.
But on the other hand, I mean there's so many there's so many technical things that I could say.
About you know, reform that I think should happen.
I think in a more philosophical way, I just wish we were all had a lot more humility about things we think are true and right.
It just I think we as a.
Culture have just a very hard time questioning ourselves. And I don't know why that is, but that's what it all needs more of. And I think disturbingly what I see happening in this country and in a lot of you know, so called democracies now is less and less of that questioning and in fact sort of being more categorical and more sure of ourselves and our opinions than we used to be.
Thank you, Sarah and Dana, Thank you for having me us. Doctor Joe Gibson is the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood Arizona. Welcome to Fast Politics, Doctor Joe Gibson.
Thank you.
Tell us what you do and what your title is.
Yeah, I My name is Til Gibson, and I am the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthead Arizona, and that means that I get to oversee all of our whole host of services, all components of sexual and reproductive healthcare we offer, but I specifically head up our abortion service line.
Where are we right now? Like, there's been so much drama, so much legislation, and so much lack of legislation. What does the country look like right now when it comes to abortion.
It is a complete mess. It is complete chaos. It is confusion, it is panic In Arizona. We have literally been on an emotional roller coaster since months before the Dobs decision, since the leak of the dab's decision, when we were recognizing that we were needing to prepare to pause and then eventually halt abortion services, restart abortion services,
halt abortion services, restart again. And then I have to say there was a period of time after we had a rightfully decided Court of Appeals decision that enabled us to safely provide abortions with still many restrictions, including a really agreeous fifteen week ban, but we felt comfortable. We
started rebuilding, we started reinvesting. We made the decision that even though there was still the threat that this case could be heard by the Arizona Supreme Court, that our community deserved it for us to continue to work towards providing them access to abortion services. And you know, in my heart of hearts, I just couldn't understand a world where a law from eighteen sixties, before Arizona was a state,
before women had the right to vote. I just couldn't understand a world where that could be applied into this modern society. And so I let that drive my operations. I let that lead me to continue to grow my abortion program even though this looming thread has existed, and so we built. We got new doctors, we brought in new nurses, we started a whole entire volunteer doula program
to support our patients as they're having their abortions. And even when the Areaona Supreme Court decided to hear this case, I still in my naivete despite having my heart broken over and over again by the government and the politicians and the legislators who think they can tell what to do with our bodies. I still didn't think it would happen, And on Tuesday morning, the same thing happened as happened on June twenty fourth of twenty twenty two, when the
dob's decision was announced. I had the wind knocked out of me, and I still showed up to the exact same health center ready to take care of patients, and I still was able to provide services luckily this Tuesday. We weren't able to provide services in the days immediately after the DB's decision. But this feels infinitely worse because in the days after the DABS decision, there was just a sense that we just needed to clear this up, that no one would expect that any sixty four men
would be enacted. But here they are, for justices in today's society telling us that we cannot provide abortions. And so this feels gut wrenching in a different way.
Like if you look at the Arizona State House, Democrats are still trying despite the fact that politically going back to an eighteen sixties law will probably help Democrats in the state, which is if you think about it like Trump. Remember Trump didn't want to pass this immigration bill because he wanted to be able to run an immigration But Democrats in the state House are trying still to get this bill repealed and Republicans won't let them.
I'll say two things. The first is that I still have hope right because I have to have hope right, like hopelessness is a luxury that we do not have when we have a need that is this acute to take care of our patients. And the second part is that this is not about politics, Like, this is real people's lives, and it is just disgusting to me to see the way politicians are now jocking and jostling for the sole goal of using this as a means to
get themselves a different position within some election. Like there are real women who I am taking care of in my clinic as early as yesterday who are telling me that they cannot be pregnant, and these lawmakers down at the Capitol with this ridiculous chaotic are these stunts that they're playing because so literally they are jeopardizing the lives of their constituents. And how this disconnect could still exist
is truly baffling to me. You know, I've sat with thousands of women and pregnant people as they have described to me why they need abortion. We never ask patients to justify their abortions, although the state does require that we ask them why they're seeking their abortions. And so I have been privileged to understand the real need for abortion.
And we know that these bands don't decrease the number of abortions to create who gets the abortions right, people who have means, people who are privileged will still be able to travel out of state and secure their abortions. And black and brown communities, rural communities, LGBTQ plus folks, These are the people who are already marginalized in our health care society. These are the folks that are at higher risk oritual mortality because of systemic racism that exists
in our healthcare system. These are the people who are going to be left behind. That's only shameful, Like, there's no other way to describe that.
I've been reading reports out of Louisiana seeing this another red states Texas too. It changes the way people are obgyns in states with bands, right, Can you talk about that?
Yeah? That is absolute true. We saw this play out in the days after the DABS decision, when our Attorney General was saying one thing, lawyers were saying something else, the governor was saying something else. We saw the real
life consequences of that. I'm trained as an obstriction gynocologist, work delivering baby for ten years, and I had a friend and colleague who told me that she had a patient who came in presented to labor and delivery, who was having what we call like a precipitous delivery of a pre term and pre viable fetus. Right, so this was a delivery that was inevitable, it was could not be stopped, and the fetus was not to survive. And the content was, you know, in agony in her labor
and her contractions. And the standard of care is that in that circumstance you expedite the delivery so that the pregnant person is not agonizing in labor. And the way you do that is you break the bag of water. It's a story, a simple procedure and when that happens,
generally the fetus will deliver shortly thereafter. And provider, who is a trusted colleague who she basically felt like she could not do this simple procedure to help this person get out of agony because her actions could have been construed as breaking the law and participating in an abortion. And I mean that's like one example. You know, I've worked in hospital systems where patients come in with their
bag of water already ruptured and they're pre viable. This fetus is not going to survive, and we're not allowed to induce her abortion until either the fetus doesn't have a heartbeat and or the mom is so sick that then there's justification. And let me tell you that usually the justification is only when the fetus doesn't have a heartbeat anymore, because who's going to determine how sick that pregnant woman has to be before I can induce her abortion.
And so absolutely we see this. We see this in the way patients are cared for in our emergency department. They when they're presenting with miscarriage, when they're present with abortions, but have you know the rear few that have complications. We see the way they're treated, and we just see a hesitancy to provide these patients with dignified care.
It's a problem that we saw this coming and it really is like the same problem that it's why they decided row in the first place, right, was because the idea that doctors would need to be dictated by Republican politicians is so insane. It seems to me also that there's like anxiety about providing like a DNC for a miscarriage. I mean, can you talk a little bit about anything else you're seeing on this front? Yeah?
I think the point that you're making care is that the ripple effect of this singular decision, like it's going to impact individual lives, it's going to impact the people who are providing this care now, right, Like, how are we going to keep our health care, our healthcare clinics open so that when the intereritahip passes and we can again have permission to not be thrown into jail for providing abortion care, that we're still in place, ready to go.
But also so many additional ripples, like just the societal and the systemic and the cultural implications. What's going to happen to these people? And also one of the points that I like to talk about is the fact that if we don't provide abortions in this state, how are we going to train future doctors to know how to safely empty a uterus for whatever reason, for metscarriage management, for a DNC, for an elective abortion for the life
of the mother. There will be no one here who knows how to do that because the residents that are training right now in family medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, although they have requirements to have abortion training, if there's not the clinical practice on the ground, they will not have the skill set necessary to save people's lives. And also,
who would come train here. I would never go train at a program where I couldn't get the full set of skills that I needed to be able to compet take care of my patients holistically and throughout all components of their reproductive life. This is essential health care and the fact that abortion has been carved out as something unique and different is mind boggling to me. One out of every four people of reproductive potential will have an
abortion at some point in their lives. This is incredibly common. This is basic medicine. And the fact that politicians and ideology have decided that they're going to interfere and try and dictate how we control our lives and how we practice medicine. You know, I went to school for a lot of years so that I can safely take care of my patients. And the fact that someone who has no basis of understanding of any of this is dictating
what I can do. Where have we gone wrong? I know how we got here, and still every day I say how did we get here? Because when I started my career and dedicated my life to taking care of pregnant people, and then my career evolved into providing solely abortion service, I never, in my heart of hearts, because I think I have an understanding, right, I have listened to my patients, and I have an understanding of why abortion exists and why it's essential and why it will
always be essential regardless of what these politicians do. And in my heart hearts, I could never go down that road because I know the ill that it's going to cause so nuts.
One of the things in Texas you see these abortion deserts, and more broadly you see oh b guyn deserts. Right, I mean there must be real time information about this happening. Can you talk about that?
Yeah? I mean so one of the things that you know, there's so much discussion now like well, how long are you going to be able to provide abortion and how many more days? And like the point is is, we weren't even meeting the need before we had a total abortion band, and if we got to provide for another sixty days and other one hundred days, it's never enough. You know, we had some choice, but we didn't actually have real access, right And that's because we don't have
enough providers. My nurse that helps me that provided abortion services yesterday, provided sedation for abortion services yesterday. She drives an hour and a half each way. We are in Phoenix, one of the largest metropolitan cities in the country. And the nurses that I find who are so incredibly good at their jobs and so compassionate and so passionate about this work that they're willing to drive three hours away from their family. You know, this is not time that
they're compensated. They drive three hours round trip to provide abortion services. And so it's absolutely true, and it's only going to get worse. Like I was talking about, those residents are not going to come train at the programs in Arizona, and then if they're not training at the programs in Arizona, they're not going to stay in Arizona. So where are the doctor's going to be who's going to be taking care of people. I want to tell
you about a couple of patients that I've been thinking about. So, the state of Arizona requires that we ask patients why they're seeking an abortion, and it's part of the whole host of information that I have to report to the state after e abortion is performed, including like really personal information about patients about how many times they've been pregnant and what the outcomes of those pregnancies were, and you know, what their ethnicity is, and what their marital status is,
and all this information that the state is compiling for what purposes We don't know. But one of the questions we have to report why they're having their abortion. And I never ever ask a patient to justify their abortion abortion as elective, but patients so often, I think, for one, because we have to pose this question field that they
need to justify their abortion. And having sat through you know, I provide at least twenty five of these physician abortion counting sessions before a patient has to wait than the twenty four hours before they can have their abortion per clinic, and so I hear these stories twenty five times a day. And you know, I had a patient last week who told me that she walked on foot from Venezuela. She
was reaped multiple times along the way. She realized as she was approaching the United States that she was pregnant, and she was literally this person was trying to make ends meet here in this country by cooking food out of a one room bedroom, impregnated as a result of her rape. Like, who's going to take care of that person? Why on earth are we sentencing that woman to have a forced pregnancy that was a result of assault as she walked on foot across literally all of Central America.
I think I want to express to you, like, the most common reason that people tell me they're having an abortion is because they're already moms, and they have families that they love and that they're caring.
For, and they can barely afford.
I had one patient tell me that she was so sick with nausea and vombing of pregnancy, she wasn't able to work, and she was so close to losing her apartment, and if she didn't have her abortion, she missed more work, she would be homeless with her family, with her children that she loves. How are we sentencing women and pregnant people to this fate when we know we know from the data from the Dovs decision what happens to them.
We know that women and pregnant people in states where abortion is banned are more than three times as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, and after delivery. We know that they're more likely to be economically unstable, that they're more likely to stay with abusive partners, that they're more likely to be unemployed. How can we have this information and acknowledge it and still be an abortion What is wrong with people? Shame on them? Like, what is wrong with them?
My mom, Erica Jong was a feminist author in the seventies and and my whole life. You know, they were just so pleased that they had made it so that women weren't going to die back alley abortions. It's not just these abortions, it's the pills. It's you know, you see Republicans so much chatter about the dangers of birth control pills. I mean, are you shocked as a doctor the whole The Supreme Court is hearing a case on methapristone, which is trying to undo the FDA approval of a
drug that's been on the market for twenty years. I mean, are you shocked at sort of the on science of this or are you not that surprised? And can you just talk about that for a MENA?
Yeah, I mean I think we saw this when Trump came into office, right, we saw that fact is no longer fact and science allegedly isn't science. And we saw it. We saw a movement I think in our society and our culture that could get behind that idea, right that whatever someone says can be fact, despite if it's if it's true or not, that the truth is not truth. I think we're living in this world now. It seems to be just irrational. It seems to be not I
can't understand it, I really can't. But I think that we saw this starting when we had, you know, a president who told lies and a president who that it was okay to not believe doctors and to not trust science. And you know, our society is founded on these principles of medicine, and the practice of medicine prides itself on doing what we know based on scientific, rigorous research. There are gold standard studies that have to be performed and they have to be peer reviewed, and they have to
be published, and they have to be repeated. We as physicians have OSTs not harm our patients, and so we follow the evidence so closely to ensure that we're doing what's right for our patients. And when someone opened a different narrative, it tore open this rip in our society that has allowed us to get to this point where no matter what people with education and training and expertise are saying, if there's a louder, more boisterous voice that people want to listen to, we're being drowned out.
Thank you, doctor Gibson, Yeah, thank you.
No, hard Rick Wilson, Yes, small, drunk fast.
What is your moment of factory?
My moment of fuckery is Mike Johnson going down to mar A Lago to Kevin McCarthy himself in front of Donald Trump. What we have seen is these guys are going to go down to Trump when they're in trouble. And McCarthy knew he was in trouble right after January sixth because he had not properly respected Donald Trump's needs, desires, and wishes, and he went down there to kiss his ass. But that was a poison pill Once you go down there,
you kick off the timer. For everything Trump touches dies, and Mike Johnson has been living on a razor's edge. He's not really gained anything from going down there. He's not really gained anything, But he went down there to do this unbelievably bogus liathon about non citizen voting. It's already illegal in all fifty states and the territories. It's already illegal in state law in every state. It doesn't happen at any detectable number, including people like Cato Institute
said Nope, non citizens aren't voting. But you know who is voting illegally. You know, if you want some voter fraud, go down to the villages in Florida, go down to Hyaliah in Miami. I can give you lists of places all over America in red states where there is voter fraud in detectable numbers. But that was what they went down there to pretend was the urgent national crisis of our time, and it was a moment of pure pathetic fuckery. I will say this, it's hard to respect you, Mike Johnson,
to begin with. It's even harder when you see somebody as absurd as Mike Johnson trying to kiss ass to Donald Trump to preserve a job that he's already a dead man walking.
I think that's a really good point. Basically, Mike Johnson needs Marjorie Taylor Green to stop saying that she's going to raise a motion to vacate and kick him out of his job. So we went down there in the hopes of Trump will tell Marjorie Taylor Green what to do, which means that Marjorie Taylor Green is basically the de facto speaker of the House.
Well, oh she is. I mean, that's no question.
And I'm going to use that as my moment of prockery too. And I'm just going to add that Kevin McCarthy had a chance on January seventeenth, had he not gone down tomorrow a lago. I mean, there were like a lot of things happened that January, But had the Republicans voted to convict or Kevin McCarthy not gone down there and the Republicans had left him alone, today the Republicans would be running Nicki Haley, and Nicki Haley, I don't agree with everything she says, but she would not
be trying to overthrow democracy. It would be much harder for Biden to run against Nicki Haley, and you know, our democracy would be in a much safer place.
She would have reset a lot of the perceptions of the Republican Party among elite media, they'd say, Okay, Trump's in the past, it's gone. Now trump Ism would still be there. It would be the easiest lift for them in the world to jump to that.
That's right. And you'll notice Nicki Haley still has an endorsed Donald and for that that is both of our moment of fuckerries.
It is indeed, it is.
Indeed, 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.