Do or Die Time

They are not scientific. And I know where the big pushback against Joe Biden is. It isn't in his policy measures, it isn't in his tone. It's about his age. And yes, Joe Biden is old as fuck. Joe Biden is going to be the oldest person to run for reelection, and if elected, he will be the oldest president that we have. I do not give a fuck, and let me tell you why. Four years ago I said on this very podcast that I could care less if Joe Biden was

running for the presidency. He wasn't my first, second, third, or fifth choice to become president of the United States, and to face off against Donald Trump, However, over the course of his first term in office, being handed the shit sandwich that Donald Trump and his Sashist white supremacy administration left behind. I want you to take the time

machine with me back to his election. I want you to take the time machine back to the twenty twenty election, which you know, Republicans haven't been able to let die. So it feels like we relived the twenty twenty election every fucking day. But for those of us on Earth one, I want you to remember where we were in twenty twenty, that there were thousands of people dying every single day because of COVID, That we had a vaccine, but we

did not have vaccine distribution. We had never this country had never in its history had to administer the amount of vaccines at the rate at which the Biden administration was able to do by June. By the summer, if you remember of twenty twenty one, when they took over, right, we were steal at the very heights of COVID. Millions of Americans had lost their job. The Biden administration was able to give stimulus checks checks to people who needed them.

Not only did the Biden administration do that, they were able with a really aggressive cult, able to pass through the appointment of Katanji Brown Jackson as the Supreme Court justice, the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. They were able to lower prescription drugs, They were able to pass and infrastructure bill, and all while signaling that some semblance of normalcy was going to be returning to

our body politic. Now, I think that over the course of Joe Biden's first term, what he has realized, which is what all of us have known, is that the Senate and the government body that he once presided over as Vice President, the people that he had worked with for decades in the Senate, were no longer the same Republican party. That was signaled in the speech that he gave in Pennsylvania where he referred to Maga extremism and said that this was what we were seeing was essentially

fascism light right, and I use quotation marks. Over the course of this administration, I don't know how many times Joe Biden has had to go and speak with and talk to grieving families in the midst of mass shootings.

He's called for a ban on assault rifles. He's done what he can do through executive orders to not only protect American children and people from being shot in their places of worship, in schools and movie theaters, in grocery stores, so on and so forth, he has also gone as far as he can go in order to protect LGBTQ Americans right by signing in a bill to protect marriages both of same sex people and of interracial marriages.

Joe Biden is doing the work right. He may not be standing up in front of a podium bringing America's attention to the Republican Party their rise in fascism and white supremacy, but he is absolutely doing the work to ensure that, at a time when fascism is on the rise and authoritarianism is on the rise in this country, that he is trying to keep the American public as safe as he possibly can and as rooted in our

democratic values as he possibly can. So four years later, when it is now time for reelection, bid and people want to tell me, well, we need somebody else, and I'm going to tell you we don't got nobody else, because we do not have the fucking time or the energy for infighting within the Democratic Party when we are

facing an existential political fucking crisis. So for folks that want to tell me, oh, well, what about Warren, what about this person, what about that person, talk to me about that in twenty twenty eight, if this country makes it to twenty twenty eight, Because I want people to get it through your heads that he may not be perfect, but he is what the fuck we have. And he has been fighting for this country and fighting for our democracy up against people who he once called his friends.

Every single day since he got into office. He has made good on the promises that he made on the campaign trail. And it has been Republicans and the Trump appointees that are pushing back against the student relief that he wants to offer that has gone all the way up to the Supreme Court. Right, Joe Biden is making good on the promises to the people that put him in office, and it is the Republican Party that is standing in the way of progress. And not only are

they standing in the way of progress, folks. But they are trying to pull us all the way back to

the fucking eighteen hundreds. So if you want this country to look like the state of Florida, if you want this entire nation to look like the state of Texas, if you want this country to look like the body that is in Tennessee that had the audacity to expel to black voted elected members of their body for daring to stand with the people, then go ahead and keep complaining about who you would like to run instead, instead of putting in the energy, the fucking work, and the

fucking money in order to make sure that our democracy stands strong for another four years. Because that's what we're working with, folks. We are working with incremental fucking change. Right now, the Republicans get into office, they get the executive branch, and I tell you that will be the last fucking presidential election we have in this country. They will gut every single fucking precedent, every single fucking law. They will operationalize the military against the people of this country.

And if you do not believe me, then I tell you to go pull up Donald Trump's speech from Waco, Texas. His first presidential speech where he talks about operationalizing the military, where he talks about gutting those quote unquote unpatriotic people in our governmental agencies. If you were afraid of McCarthyism, what you learned about in the nineteen fifties, this is McCarthyism on steroids. Donald Trump said that I am your

retribution for those that have done you wrong. He is going to come back and if he is allowed inside of that Oval office again, he will destroy He will finish the fucking job and destroy this country. He will imprison his political enemies. People like me will no longer have a microphone or a voice, or safety for that matter. So when we say that every election is consequential, I want you to understand that this is due or fucking die time. So we do not have time right to

waste with our flights of fancy. Our president has announced that he is running for reelection, and I am ten fucking toes down for Joe Biden and his administration, because what I'm not about is a new apartheid in America. What I'm not about is revisiting the Holocaust. What I'm not about is a nation of political prisoners. So join me right and those that care about democracy in doing whatever the fuck it is that you can with the

power that you have. It is phone calls, it is funbraisy, it is get out the vote drives, It is doing every single thing that we can because it's going to take every single last one of us in order to fight back against what the Republican Party is dishing out. Coming up next, friends, my conversation with Andrea Miller, the president of NIRH, and we are going to be talking about the fight right against this abortion ban and the

banning of mifipristone. Folks, I'm very happy to welcome back to WOKF Daily Andrea Miller, who is the president of NIRIH, the National Institute for Reproductive Health. Andrea, we never seem to talk under good circumstances these days to talk about any of the wins that the movement is happening. So I want to get your reactions to the latest stay of the decision to ban myth of pristone in Layman's terms, the abortion pill, and the fact that the Supreme Court

has kicked the can down the road. By the time of this airing, we will know what that decision is, but can you talk to us about this decision and what effects it will have on reproductive health.

beyond the case that you are referencing. Is it's truly

mind blowing in how unprecedented it really is. What it is doing is it's attempting to give to a single federal judge, in this instance, the Federal District Court judge in Amarillo, Texas, has taken upon himself, at the urging of several very extreme anti abortion groups, to say that the FDA approval of mifipristone, which is one of the two drugs that the FDA that is part of the most common method of medication abortion in this country, saying

I'm gonna say it's that approval is done just you know, full stop, yep, I'm going to reverse that approval with an incredibly cynical, incredibly I mean, his ruling was like all of the worst anti abortion misinformation, all of the extremist tropes, you name it, it was in there. I mean, this was basically an anti abortion screen beginning to end.

And it's truly unprecedented, both because it would be so harmful in terms of access to this method of medication abortion, because it would essentially say, regardless of what your state law is, regardless of whether you're in one of the nearly twenty states that have safeguarded access to abortion care, in your state law, medication abortion, this mifipristone would be

considered not possible, would effectively be banned. If this ruling work to take effect in every state in the country, and not only that, it would call into question pretty much everything the FDA has done right right right, So it would it would eliminate mifipristone presumably for everyone in the country. It would eliminated for abortion, it would also eliminated for other use in like miscarriage management as well as potentially Cushing syndrome and other things that it's utilized for.

And it would really turn on its head. Who makes decisions in this country about the safety and efficacy of the drugs that are on the market. The FDA, it's that that's their job, and this would be saying, we're going to take that out of the hands of the FDA and allow courts to unilaterally because of political motivated you know, through political motivations and the desire to eliminate access to abortion, We're going to suddenly have everything the FDA does called into question.

just politically motivated. What do you believe? I mean, Look, we have a Supreme Court that is super stacked right with right wing judges who lied during their judiciary hearings Senate Judiciary hearings and said that precedent was precedent.

that we have not seen them prevail before. But this is so outside the bounds, it is so egregious that the hope would be that they would see maybe be able to see past their animus against those who need abortion care and could see the harm that this would do to the nation. Writ large by allowing a single judge to determine what the FDA can and can't do.

I think your point, though, I just think I want to underscore something you said, which is, you know they are chock full of the big lies, right, They have like a whole panoply of big lies. This lawsuit is predicated on a whole host of big lies. Claims about harm that mefipristone has already caused that are so overblown and off the charts, a whole bunch of anti abortion rhetoric that's just rife there. And your point about they said, oh, we want to get rid of Roe versus wait, because

we want this to go back to the states. Now, let's take a moment and say guess what. Guess what happened there? Yes, there are a bunch of states that had trigger laws, and we've got fourteen states right now that are effectively banned abortion. Well, that means that there are thirty six states that haven't yet. And by the way, since the decision came down or seeing more and more

states also pass protective laws. Colorado just did it last week, Michigan did it in the elections, and we saw conservative states where you send it back to the people, and the people are like, uh uh, we don't want this. Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, right, And so I think again, it's so important to remember and you noted this at the beginning. The good news here is that they are coming for they're not satisfied with overturning Row, in part because their ultimate goal is

to ban all abortions full stop. And their problem is that is so I mean to say it's unpopular is an understatement by magnitudes and the response by the vast vasque majority in this country. There's more support for access to abortion care than ever before in this nation's history. There's more activity to try to address the harm that these bans are causing then there's ever been before, even though we've had many, many restrictions over decades, even since

real that have caused harm. And you are seeing this become a really powerful political moment and a political issue that is salient and motivating predominantly among those who believe in reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. And so they're having to come at this trying to take advantage of this twist in where you can file a case in I'm maillo, and you know you get this judge, and this guy

was put there for this purpose. His history is he used to work for these anti abortion legal groups that are exactly the ones who brought this case. Right, So they have to go to those extremes because they keep getting blocked at every turn. Otherwise they have to use those parts of our government that they have taken over in undemocratic ways, same as the states that have banned

abortion and doing all these other things. It's about gerrymandering, it's about voter suppression, and they are trying to leverage what little bit of power they can hold onto because when this goes to people, and when it goes to governments that actually represent the people, they lose.

people with uteruses. So can you speak to that that it isn't okay I live in Texas, Texas says I can't have an abortion now Texas is saying I can't travel now, Tesics is saying that if I do travel that then I need to come back and say that I didn't travel for these So they are using these

states as a petri dish for fascism. But can you talk about how this fight has grown from no, you have states rights and we don't want abortion, to now I can control your movement and I can criminalize you thereafter.

be and how you are supposed to operate. And so, of course, if they can't, if banning abortion in a given state does and meet that objective doesn't create absolute control, they're looking for what else do we need to do to create absolute control? Right? And so like you said, it's about trying to It's all about control and punishment, punishment of those who do not follow the you know,

toe the line. And that's why they and don't fit within a certain mold and don't live their lives the way a certain extremist group believe they should be, which is why it's the same people who are trying to prevent especially black and brown folks from voting. It's the same people who are you know, who're banning abortion, are the same people who are attacking gender affirming care and trans kits. Right, it's all about control. So states' rights

was a kind of a red herring right. It was like something they can say because what it did is it took it out of anything that was really about emotion and it put it in this like legal framework. The like people like, you know, does the states have the rights or does a federal government have the rights? Right? That's not really what people get like all up in arms about right or not in arms hopefully, But you know, we can't we can't even say that.

that care, and those who provide that care. You know, there has been terrorism in this country aimed at those who provide abortion care since the beginning, and that continues, and now they're you know, they're expanding their reach into trying to terrorize and punish and create fear among those who need abortions and who are supporting those who need, whether they need to travel, whether they self managing. You know that they're trying to create a fear because fear allows for control.

largely directed at LGBTQ population, but specifically trans kids. But overall, how it is going to how the denial of sex education right is going to harm everyone absolutely.

And the fact is that they're attacking that again because they want to create fear and shame around sex and sexuality and abortion is obviously related to that right, as is gender affirming care, as is the decision to determine

your own gender identity right. All of this is a part of the same effort to deny the information, the healthcare services, the support services, and to turn this into a crime, as opposed to saying our responsibility in the society should be to make sure that every person, whatever their gender identity, whatever their sexual orientation, whatever their decision may be about having a family, starting a family with whom when whether that should be supported, it should be embraced,

and the diversity of that that we have in this country should be seen as a strength and should be something that we should be investing in. And they want to say, no, we have a very narrow vision yep, that is based on, frankly, a time that probably never really existed, but somehow they've got in their head that

there was a time. It was magical and only the people who did the things that they thought were appropriate in terms of their sexuality, in terms of their reproductive lives, in terms of you know, whether they worked or not. You think about it, this all goes back to a very patriarchal, parochial, misogynistic, racist set of assumptions, right about what's your proper role in this society and if you step out of that role, we're going to do everything

we can to shut you down. Yeah, that's what this is about.

and so we are seeing so much energy. All of our focus is at the state and local level across the country, and I can tell you that since the DABS decision, the efforts by state and local government, and by advocates and by people in communities to address this issue, to push forward, to find pathways that expand access to care, that make things more just and equitable, that address the harms that we're seeing and really mitigate that pain and

suffering and the health consequences. It's happened exponentially. In the three months after Dobbs, we had seventeen states and twenty three cities or counties move forward on affirmative policies that

expanded access to abortion care. And yes, most of those, and many of those were states and cities you would probably be able to name pretty easily, but it also meant that local government in places like Austin, Texas, in Atlanta, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio, and Saint Louis, Missouri, and Nashville, Tennessee, and the list goes on, we're saying we are going to do everything we can as city government to support people who need to travel to support to say that

we're not going to be complicit with prosecutions, to say that we're going to fund abortion care for those who

can afford it. They have been stepping up. And that's the work that we do at the National Institute for Reproductive Health is we work with advocates on the ground, with elected officials, with candidates, with other types of policymakers to say, what's a path forward that's going to expand just an equitable access, and we work with you to figure out those creative solutions because some places they're obvious

and some places they're not, but everywhere there's opportunity. And that's really what I want people to remember is, yes, they keep coming, and they're going to keep coming, and this attack on medication abortion is just one more part of They're going to keep coming, and they're going to keep coming up with things that are gonna blow our minds. We're just gonna have to keep saying we're going to find a pathway forward because that's what the vast majority

in this country believe in. It's what they need, and it's what we all deserve.