The Danger of Trump’s Supreme Court

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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

The U.S.

Supreme Court, like the rest of the judiciary, has been the focus of great

and deep concern this term.

Last year, the Roberts Court gave the President of the United States carte blanche to break the law under the auspices of executive privilege.

Technically, the court created a doctrine of immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts performed while in office.

And I say official acts with air quotes.

Now, what that means in this moment is that the unconscionable expansion of presidential power has followed the ongoing aggressive rollback of constitutional rights and democratic norms, which Tim Snyder, Kim Scheppel, and others have warned us repeatedly are the key ingredients to tyranny.

What the court says has always been crucial to the protection of or denial of civil and constitutional rights.

And with so many core freedoms under assault by this administration, the ability of the judicial branch to speak for the people is of dire importance.

Thus, today we find ourselves in the midst of a rising authoritarian regime, one that bombs other countries without notice to duly elected congressional Democrats and willfully misleads the public.

Already, questions of legality for America's actions in Iran have begun to percolate, and what will happen next is anyone's guess.

But over the next week or so, we will have some clues to the resilience of the judiciary, and that's what we're going to focus on today.

This must be understood in the context of a hyper-conservative court that has reversed decades of precedent to weaken reproductive rights, environmental regulations, and corrective actions and voting rights.

As this episode of Assembly Required airs, the Supreme Court is nearing its end of term, which typically happens at the end of June.

Major decisions remain that will determine the course of American lives lives and American democracy.

This term's decisions address a wide range of issues like preventative care for pre-existing conditions under the Affordable Care Act, standards for police use of excessive force, religious exemptions in schools, congressional redistricting, and much, much more.

Several of these key decisions have already been delivered, but the final stretch remains murky at best.

So we're going to use today's episode to understand what has already happened and prepare for what's to come.

To help us unpack how the third branch of government is doing its job, we are joined by Leah Lippman, the University of Michigan law professor, co-host of Crooked's very own strict scrutiny, and author of the New York Times best-selling book, Lawless.

From last week's ruling on gender-affirming care for minors, to the highly anticipated decision on birthright citizenship, to the fast and furious usage of the shadow docket.

We'll discuss what all of this means and what you can do about it.

Leah and I will dive into this term's implications, particularly as a window into the future of our national experiment on democracy based on the ways the court decides to weaken or defend its constitutional prerogative.

Then we'll zoom in on the real-world impact of one particular decision regarding the transgender community, speaking with journalist and founder of Translash Media, Amara Jones, who can shed light on the dangerous attacks on the queer community and the path forward.

Leah Littman, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

I'm delighted to be here.

Thank you.

So before we talk through the cases, I would love for you to explain the basics of how the Supreme Court operates.

We've got a lot of strict scrutiny listeners, but we're trying to bring some new folks into the fold.

So tell them what we're talking about.

So the Supreme Court kind of works on its own as it wants.

Unfortunately, the reality is Congress has given the Supreme Court near plenary authority to decide what kinds of cases it hears, what issues it decides in those cases, and also more generally, how to conduct its judicial decision making.

So the United States Supreme Court reviews about 10,000 petitions for certiorari, which are requests to hear a case a year.

And in in recent times, they've honestly only opted to hear between 50 or 60 cases a year, in which there's full briefing and oral argument, and then they're supposed to issue an opinion in the case before the end of June.

But you add to that the recent rise of the shadow docket, where the Supreme Court has been taking a lot of actions,

acting upon requests for emergency relief.

Basically, when the Trump administration loses in a lower federal court, they will run off to the United States Supreme Court and ask ask for an emergency stay or pause of that decision so those are really the two tracks of kinds of cases the supreme court hears

so let's talk about the emergency docket for a second because as you mentioned the trump administration has been taking extraordinary advantage and just by way of contrast between Bush and Obama over 16 years there were eight cases and since January Trump has brought 41 cases.

So can you talk a bit about how this relates to the chaos that they've been instilling, the mass layoffs, the shuttering of federal agencies, the freezing of money?

What does that mean for how the Supreme Court is currently operating?

I mean, it means they're a bunch of chaos goblins, basically.

So the Trump administration learned during the first Trump administration that the Supreme Court was willing to indulge their requests for emergency relief.

That's how the Trump administration got to implement the second version of their Muslim ban before the United States Supreme Court ultimately upheld the third version of that Muslim ban.

Now, the way it often works these days as the Trump administration is launching more and more wildly illegal policies and getting more and more decisions from the lower courts that invalidate these policies is Anytime there is a lower court decision the Trump administration doesn't like, they immediately ask for a stay, a pause of that decision.

And that creates a lot of chaos because we never know when the United States Supreme Court is going to issue an order on the shadow docket.

We never know if they are going to even explain why they are granting the Trump administration emergency relief.

And so, what that has produced is the Supreme Court all of a sudden withdrew legal protections against removal from almost 1 million people over the span of a few days without warning and without notice, all of a sudden opened up the Trump administration to actually carry out the illegal mass removals of many individuals in the federal workforce, again, without advance notice.

And it's that kind of decision-making that also leaves the lower courts in a lurch because they don't know why the Supreme Court might have disagreed with their decision.

And so they don't know what to do in the next case that might be related to it, that that I think is generating so much uncertainty in the legal system that makes it difficult to rely on courts as a meaningful check against the Trump administration.

Well, we know that when I mentioned the eight cases that were brought over 16 years,

there were four victories for the administration.

For Trump, the win-loss record is slightly better.

He's won 28 of the 41 cases.

What should we think about the cases he didn't win?

Is there any hope that we should glean from that?

Or to your point about the chaos and the lack of description of why he wins or loses, what should we understand about what's happening?

So I don't want to be overly pessimistic, but I also don't want people to feel like the Supreme Court is going to save us because I think that would be a very dangerous mindset to adopt in the current era.

I think the fact that he is winning in so many of these cases should be a real sign about where the Republican appointees' sympathies lie and a sign that they are indeed on board with a lot of what the Trump administration is doing.

The second thing I would say is some of the Trump administration's losses were almost walked back by the Supreme Court in other cases, or they were created by the Supreme Court in the first place.

So what do I mean by that?

Well, the Supreme Court initially blocked the lower court decision that had prevented the administration from carrying out these Alien Enemies Act expulsions, you know, rendering people to El Salvador without due process.

And after the U.S.

Supreme Court blocked that lower court decision, they essentially required these poor men, you know, to individually challenge all of their detentions in the many different places where they were located.

That created the potential for the government to move people around and shunt them off to a jurisdiction that wouldn't block those expulsions.

And it was that situation that precipitated one of the Supreme Court decisions that was against the Trump administration and a win for the rule of law.

But that case was only necessary because the Supreme Court had blocked the lower court decision that had halted the expulsions to begin with.

So I think the picture that emerges is of a court that is, in many respects, on board with a lot of some of the more extreme things the administration is doing, from the firing of the heads of multi-member commissions to the firing of federal workers, but isn't on board with the most extreme aspects of some of their immigration agenda, even though, again, they allowed the administration to withdraw legal protections against removal from almost 1 million people.

So that's kind of how I see the big picture unfolding.

Well, let's stick with the conversation about immigrants.

You know, in light of this relentless attack by the Trump administration and Republicans, and let's not give them separation because they are in this together, you know, one of the most critical decisions that will face the Supreme Court is the executive order to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary foreign residents.

Now, I know you're a law professor and in law school for me, I took procedure from Professor Owen Fis, who

this 10.

Oh, yeah.

So, you know, he, as you may know, randomly assigned students to be the go-to on certain laws and rules.

And my very reluctant specialty was the 14th Amendment.

So

anytime a case.

So in civil procedure, anytime a case required analysis that invoked the 14th, he called on me whether I'd read the case or not.

So I can tell you, I can tell you with traumatic authority that birthright citizenship is afforded to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

And they are citizens of the United States and of the state where they wherein reside.

I may have gotten that wrong a little bit, but you know that I now know this by heart.

However, this very plain language seems to be confusing to this administration, the Heritage Foundation, and apparently the Supreme Court.

So can you walk us through what the Trump administration is arguing here and talk to us about the different legal questions that are being considered?

So in the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court actually isn't considering whether the Trump administration's executive order that purports to withdraw birthright citizenship from the children of some migrants, they're not considering whether that order is constitutional.

That is, they're not deciding whether the administration can lawfully refuse to recognize the citizenship of some babies born in the United States.

What they are deciding is whether the lower federal courts, the trial courts in the federal system, have the power or when they have the power to block an illegal policy on a nationwide basis.

It's the issue of nationwide injunctions that people have been talking about now for almost a decade.

So that is the only issue that the United States Supreme Court is currently considering.

I say that because,

you know, in my opinion, it was entirely gratuitous and shameful for the Supreme Court to decide to take up that issue in this case.

Because if there's any case that should warrant a nationwide injunction, it is when the federal government is trying to strip and deny people of citizenship.

The Constitution requires a uniform rule of naturalization.

The 14th Amendment affords birthright citizenship to anyone born or naturalized in the United States.

So the fact that they opted to take up that issue in this case really irks me because there were a billion other cases they could have opted to decide it in.

You know, the Biden administration was subject to a bunch of nationwide injunctions in cases that certainly didn't warrant it.

And my guess is they are going to limit the use of nationwide injunctions, but not prohibit them entirely.

And then people are going to fall all over themselves about how the court ruled against the Trump administration, even though that's not exactly what they did.

And it's way more complicated than that.

So for those who have not heard this episode of Strict Scrutiny, and I think you guys did a masterful job in this conversation, can you talk just a moment about what it would mean, particularly in light of the immigrant detention that you spoke about earlier, what does it mean if there is not national effect of certain injunctions?

Yes.

So let's consider the birthright citizenship case.

So imagine that a federal judge in Maryland concludes that the executive order denying people birthright citizenship is unconstitutional.

Well, then that order wouldn't apply in Maryland.

But what does that mean for babies born in Texas?

What about if those babies travel to Maryland?

You know, what if an individual born in Maryland travels to Texas?

So there's all kinds of uncertainty that a patchwork system of relief would create in cases concerning immigration.

And that's all the more concerning because

we know how bloodthirsty the Trump administration has been when it comes to enforcing immigration laws.

They have already deported United States citizen babies and nothing, it seems, right, is going to convince them that they shouldn't deport first, consider due process later.

And given that that's their attitude, that raises real risks about whether some individuals would be wrongfully deported.

And then the second risk is when that case was before the United States Supreme Court, the lawyer for the Trump administration, the Solicitor General, refused to commit to applying a decision of a lower court to other individuals in that area.

So imagine that a

district judge in Texas said this executive order is illegal in a case brought by one U.S.

citizen baby.

What the federal government is implying is, sure, they would recognize the citizenship of that baby, but they might not recognize the citizenship of another baby in Texas who didn't challenge the executive order.

So it has the potential for a lot of problems and significant harm.

Okay.

So let's move on to another area where we thought we'd made final decisions and yet we are here again, and that's the Affordable Care Act.

You know, this law has withstood multiple challenges in the past and has been remarkably resilient.

And as folks may remember, Chief Justice John Roberts has been the vote to save it more than once.

Can you explain the current effort to undermine the law's protections for coverage of preventative care?

And what are the concerns about what happens if the plaintiff rules, if the court rules for the plaintiff.

Yes.

So I should say, you know, you shared your law school story about the 14th Amendment and Owen Fis.

I was clerking at the Supreme Court when they heard the initial constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and, you know, the one where Chief Justice Roberts joined with the then four Democratic appointees to uphold most of the law.

And that definitely colored my understanding and perception of the Supreme Court, to say the least.

But the current case that they are hearing is a challenge to the Preventive Services Task Force, which is the body of experts that decides what forms of preventive care insurance companies have to cover.

Preventative care, like mammograms, for example.

The specific case that's before the court arose out of some employers who didn't want to offer coverage for PrEP pre-exposure prophylaxis drugs, which are used to reduce the spread of HIV and AIDS.

So the challenge is this weird argument that the individuals who were on that task force weren't constitutionally appointed.

The argument is they had to be selected by the Senate, confirmed by the Senate, and therefore everything they've done is invalid.

So, if that argument is successful, that would mean there is no mechanism to identify what preventative services have to be covered by health insurance.

That would jeopardize so much insurance coverage for so many life and health-saving treatments.

And that is what the plaintiff in the case is pushing for.

I should add that the Supreme Court requested briefing on this other question as well after the argument about whether the Secretary of Health and Human Services even has the authority to appoint the individuals if they conclude no, that too could create a lot of chaos and undermine the functioning of that task force.

But yeah, I mean, that is just this bomb that could drop on the health insurance and healthcare system if the court rules for the plaintiffs.

Okay.

And then the last big one I want to ask you about before we move to a recent decision that came down is the pending decision.

on the congressional voting maps in Louisiana.

And this one, of course, matters a great deal to me because we've watched the the Supreme Court have devastating effect on voting rights.

And with very few exceptions, the trend has been towards eliminating access to voting rights.

So can you talk about the Louisiana case and contrast it with the court's 2023 decision in Allen versus Milligan, when they actually compelled the addition of a second black voting district in Alabama?

Yes, so maybe I'll start with Allen versus Milligan because I actually think that makes it easier to explain what's happening in the Louisiana case.

So Allen versus Milligan was a challenge to Alabama's redistricting in the wake of the 2020 census.

And Alabama has seven congressional seats and they drew maps in which black voters would only be able to select the representative of their choice in one out of seven of the districts, even though demographics and population suggested there should have been at least two districts in which black voters would have had the ability to select their congressional representatives.

And Alabama did that by splitting up voters in the black belt.

So that was challenged as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting laws or policies that have a disproportionately negative effect on voters of color.

And here, those policies were their districting lines.

And the issue went up to the United States Supreme Court.

And Alabama kind of argued that to the extent the Voting Rights Act required states to take into account whether voters of color were represented, to the extent the law required that, it was unconstitutional in kind of like the same way affirmative action, you know, the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional because it required consideration of race, even for the purpose of inclusivity or multiracial democracy or equity.

The Supreme Court, by a narrow five to four vote, said Alabama had indeed violated the Voting Rights Act and rejected the constitutional challenge to enforcing the Voting Rights Act against Alabama in a way that required Alabama to take into account the racial makeup of their districting maps and ensure that Black voters had the opportunity, the political opportunity to select the candidates of their choice.

You would think that would have resolved the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act.

Alas, alas, nothing is ever good enough for the right-wingers.

And so two years later, here we are.

Louisiana is one of the other states like Alabama that was found to have violated the Voting Rights Rights Act after the 2020 census because they too drew a set of maps that didn't give Black voters the kinds of political opportunities that if you were, again, just looking at demographics and population change, you would expect Black voters to have.

So a lower federal court, multiple lower federal courts concluded Louisiana had violated the Voting Rights Act.

So then the question was, what are you going to do about it?

And the federal court gave the Louisiana legislature the chance to draw a new set of maps that complied with the Voting Rights Act rather than have the federal court do so.

So that's what Louisiana did.

And they drew a set of maps that protected Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson's seat, you know, and other more MAGA, you know, Republicans rather than the more moderate ones.

That map also allowed Black voters to select the candidate of their choice in two districts.

So what happened?

Some white voters argued those maps were unconstitutional racial discrimination because Louisiana had taken race into account when it drew a set of maps that it recognized needed to ensure there were political opportunities for black voters in at least two of the districts.

So, the issue that the United States Supreme Court is deciding is the issue they ostensibly resolved two years ago, namely whether a state attempts to comply with the Voting Rights Act, whether that is unconstitutional racial discrimination.

Do you want to speculate about what the decision is going to be, or should we just wait and see?

I'll say I'm worried about this one.

There are four opinions outstanding from March, and the five justices who haven't yet written opinions, meaning the ones that are likely going to have the remaining opinions, are Alito, Barrett, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch,

and Elena Kagan.

And those odds are not working in the Voting Rights Act's favor.

All right.

Last Wednesday, SCOTUS upheld upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors, which was a tremendous setback for transgender rights.

And I will be speaking with journalist and transgender activist Amara Jones later on in this episode about the human impact of this case.

But Leah, can you walk us through this decision?

This decision is such slop and just launders the bigotry and animus that has been directed against the transgender community into legal degaledy gook.

Because first, the Chief Justice's majority opinion for all six of the Republican justices looks at this law, which is all about ensuring minors appreciate their sex and do not receive medical treatment that isn't in accordance with their sex assigned at birth.

The law mentions sex more than 10 times.

And he says, well, that's not discrimination on the basis of sex because it's about a medical procedure and minors.

Again, doesn't make any sense, right?

That doesn't mean the law isn't also sex discrimination, but that didn't seem to bother him.

And then he goes on to say the law which bans gender-affirming care for gender dysphoria isn't even discrimination against transgender individuals.

It isn't even discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

And he reached that conclusion just through a combination of gymnastics and nonsense, in which he said, well, sure, the group that's negatively affected by the law is just trans kids, but both cis kids and trans kids can access the treatments, hormones, and puberty blockers for other reasons besides treating gender dysphoria, and therefore it's not discrimination.

If you're confused by that, you should be.

It makes no sense.

And again, that just launders the discrimination and withdrawal of health care for trans individuals into something the Chief Justice said isn't discrimination.

And then more horrifyingly, Justice Alito, Thomas, Thomas, and Barrett added, heck, even if we said this law discriminated against trans kids, we'd be fine with it.

And we'd also treat that law as constitutional.

So we don't have equal protection.

We are losing access to lots of the perquisites of the 14th Amendment.

And this will always come back to where the Supreme Court stands.

But one of the reasons I wanted to have you as the guest is that while your focus is on the Supreme Court, you know that around the country, judicial elections happen regularly.

And I want to,

I don't consider you Debbie Downer.

And so this is an opportunity to lift up our audience because we like to give them a call to action.

And chief among them for me is telling people to vote for judges.

I know a lot of people don't vote for judges because they say, well, I don't know who to vote for or I didn't hear anything bad about the guy who was on the ticket.

Can you give listeners advice on how to evaluate judicial candidates and implore them to understand why voting for judges at the state and local level matters?

Oh, yes.

I love this question.

Okay.

So one is the internet is our friend.

In this era, information is actually very accessible.

You can find out who is a candidate endorsed by.

If they are endorsed by anti-abortion groups, that's a good sign, right, about what that candidate will do on the bench.

You should do a quick Google search and figure out what is that individual's professional history.

You know, what were they doing as a lawyer before they started running as a judge?

The importance of state and local judges cannot be overstated.

So I live in Michigan.

Michigan used to have one of the most conservative state Supreme Courts in the country.

Our former chief justice was a former official in the Reagan administration who authored this document, the Constitution in the year 2000, that laid out the Reagan administration's visions for taking away abortion, you know, allowing religion in public schools and whatnot.

Like that guy used to be the leader of our state Supreme Court.

We now have a six-to-one progressive Supreme Court that includes an individual, my former colleague Kim Thomas, who worked to ensure juveniles who were sentenced to life without parole would have the opportunity for release.

That's the court we have now.

And because we have that court, we were allowed, this is going to sound crazy, we were allowed to vote on whether to amend our state constitution to create protections for reproductive freedom after Dobbs because our board of election, the Republican election officials, they refused to certify the ballot initiative, the reproductive freedom for all ballot initiative, on the ground that the spacing in the petitions was jumbled up.

You know, the idea that they would use that ground to not allow democracy to happen was horrifying.

But our Supreme Court ordered them them to put that on the ballot, and we now have state constitutional protections for abortion.

And it's that kind of power that state and local courts have,

that kind of power that they can give to the people.

It is always worth educating yourself about those races.

They are so important, and you can make a huge difference because they often come down to a super small number of votes.

Like the North Carolina Supreme Court race came down to a few hundred votes, you know, between a former voting rights litigator and an individual who, after he lost, tried to throw out tens of thousands of votes and overturned the result of an election.

These races are so significant.

You can find information on the internet, and it is always worth just taking that extra minute to figure that out.

Leah Lippman, professor, author, and co-host of Strict Scrutiny, thank you so much for joining me today on Assembly Required.

Thanks for having me.

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Omara Jones, welcome to the show.

It is a thrill for me to be on, especially after I just gave the WHERE lecture at the Unitarian Universalist Association meeting, which I know that you have done as well.

So I am in a long line of amazing people.

So I'm thrilled to be on today.

Well, they got the upgrade with you, so I'm glad you were able to do it.

And, you know, we just spoke with legal expert Leah Littman about the Supreme Court's Germetti opinion and its legal implications for trans youth and for the broader trans community.

So I want to start by asking you from your perspective and the conversations you've been having on the ground since Wednesday's decision, how is the community reacting to this decision seems like such a weak word to describe what's happened?

I mean, a decision, if you can call it that, right?

I mean, they had to do so much to basically rule the way that they did, ignoring basic facts in front of them.

And I think that that is actually honestly a part of the most devastating, right?

It's not only that it's an assault on gender-affirming care.

It's not only that it includes pseudoscience that has been planted into the public consciousness and public

sort of bloodstream by an entire infrastructure.

It's not only that there are certain justices who, like Justice Thomas,

spends a good portion of his

opinion focusing on people's body parts.

It's that the decision itself seems to be so twisted just to make a point about trans people.

And I think that that's among the most devastating.

And I think what is also devastating is that, you know, this opens the door to bans on adult care.

Now, there's some dispute about whether or not they're the votes to do that, if Roberts is in that camp or not.

But I think that the logic of whether or not what they said, that this is essentially a medical decision and states can regulate

medical care

opens the door to broader limitations.

And we know that in the wake of this UK Supreme Court decision on trans people, that

these decisions can have unintended consequences of greenlighting and expanding bigotry against trans people, even when they say that they are limited to one thing.

So I think it's the implications of this, and I think

the way that this just seems to have been twisted just to go after trans people in terms of the majority opinion is really painful for people.

We know that there are a lot of people of good intention who simply feel either unfamiliar or uncomfortable with this conversation.

And in particular, what has compelled them to

list to the side of the justices is that they don't know what we're talking about.

So can you describe what gender

care for young people actually entails?

The conversation that we are having is by design.

It is not an organic conversation.

That the American Principles Project and some other right-wing think tanks actually spent years and millions of dollars road testing the weak points in the conversation around trans people in order to figure out what were the most effective and the things that would make the public most uncomfortable about trans people.

And one of the things that they landed on in addition to sports and bathrooms is gender-affirming care for kids, right?

So that's why we're having the conversation.

Gender-affirming care for kids mainly looks like the following.

Acknowledging a child's preferred name,

acknowledging their pronouns, allowing them to dress consistently with their gender, and

usually accompanied by therapy.

That's what it is for most kids.

And then as a kid moves into puberty, they may be allowed puberty blockers, but that is only with the consent of parents and medical professionals.

In some places and states, also therapists have to weigh in on that.

And so we have a case where we have an array of adults who care about the best interest of the child making individual decisions for their kids.

And to me, that sounds like what we're supposed to do in America.

That's what happens in most cases, right?

What we have here is akin to abortion, the state saying that it has a declared interest in overruling

that suite of individuals and adults in a child's life to say that they know better for the child than all of those other people.

And it should be clear that this issue is a solution in search of a problem.

That, for example, the American Medical Association guidelines do not recommend hormones for kids before the age of 16 and not surgeries as well until 18.

So we are essentially talking about something that does not happen.

And I think that we need to just be really clear that this is being distorted as a part of a larger political agenda.

And it's not about what's in the best interest of trans kids.

And one other thing about hormone blockers,

all of these

gender-affirming care techniques are used on cis kids.

This is why there was the court case in Scobeti.

The question is whether or not trans kids have access to them.

And what the Supreme Court has said, that trans kids don't and cis kids do.

And I think that that's one of the reasons why people understand that it's an unfair ruling.

I'm going to ask you a political question, and I'm not taking a position yet, but I want to see how you think about this.

As a state legislator, part of my job as minority leader was to sort of decide which bills to fight versus which bills to just let pass pass because they didn't actually do anything and the whole point was the fight.

So to your point, this has been a multi-decade intention to pick a fight.

Is there any political and therefore practical utility to simply refusing to fight against the state of Tennessee or the state of Georgia when these bills come up, given the medical reality of what actually happens?

So I think that that would work politically if the attack stopped

and if they weren't effective in what they are designed to do.

You know, this entire issue, the way that it is used politically, there's also a way in which it's used socially and also culturally, which is we can talk about maybe.

But the way that it's being used politically is, as you know, elections in America are decided by razor-thin majorities.

500, 1,000, 5,000 votes, 10,000 votes can literally make the difference.

Republicans understand that most Americans, with it now being a Christian nationalist party, do not want to live in the world that they're trying to create.

And so what they have to do is to foreground issues that make it appear as if they are on the side of people who would normally not vote for them.

And what they have found out about this issue around trans people and trans kids is that it creates conversations with an array of communities that they normally wouldn't be in conversation with.

Certain suburban moms in places like Bucks County, which is the swing county within a swing state.

It creates conversations with supposed feminists.

It creates conversations within

people who are gay and lesbian, who are skeptical about trans people.

It creates conversations amongst black churchgoers.

It creates conversations with them amongst Latino evangelicals.

And within that, just as we saw in the last election, all they're trying to do with this issue is when enough of those marginal votes within communities with whom they are not aligned in order to win, which means that if you allow the door to stay open, you are giving them the vector to win elections and absolute power.

And I think that that's what we saw.

And even though within a five-year period from 2019 until 2024,

they

half the states passed anti-trans legislation as a part of what we call in our organization as a result of our work, the anti-trans hate machine,

those attacks haven't stopped.

There are more than 800 anti-trans bills that have been proposed this year alone, breaking last year's record.

So it's not as if

allowing these bills to go unanswered, allowing the nearly quarter of a billion dollars worth of anti-trans ads that the Trump campaign bought in the last campaign, which were never answered by the Democrats or by the Harris-Waltz campaign,

or ignoring these things that are happening at the local level are stopping these attacks.

It signals to Republicans that they are able to punch Democrats in this bruise and so they keep hitting them.

So I think that the counterpolitical strategy in that is that you begin to not make these

attacks cost-free.

What does that look like?

Well, I think it looks like in part what the Democrats did in the House maybe a month ago in this spring, where nearly the entire Democratic caucus

voted no on an anti-trans sports ban.

And I asked someone in the caucus, I said, you know, my hunch is that you guys did this, not because you all agree on this issue, but because you needed to signal to the Republicans that they were going to have to scrape up the votes on this and that they were going to own everyone.

And they said, that's exactly right.

So I think that like that is a part of it.

Like you begin to place trans people within the conversation and paradigm of the fight for human rights and dignity, like very basic, supposedly, you know, democratic values, I would imagine.

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We know that according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, quote, there is strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations worldwide that evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate.

But to your point, we have allies and we have skeptics who aren't anti-I wouldn't call themselves anti-trans, who will concede or will be complicit.

How do we find them the courage to fight back and to do what you've just described, which is, you know, even the average American with no direct experience, how do we make certain that they understand this conversation and what's at stake?

I think the main thing that I do is that I really lay out for people the way in which anti-trans politics have brought us to the authoritarian movement.

Like it is an essential ingredient.

It is an affinity point for the entire coalition that is supporting an authoritarian America, including

Christian nationalist groups, including anti-trans techno-billionaires such as Elon Musk, including paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys.

Like it is their affinity point, right?

It is the thing that allows them to connect and to rally.

And they understand because of the existence of transphobia in the country, that attacking trans people is a way, is something that they can get away with.

And as I mentioned, create these larger conversations.

And because they now have political power, they are able to

advance across the board to a string of communities.

And so it's understanding that anti-trans politics aren't about trans people, right?

That anti-trans politics are actually about

shifting the cultural norms in America and even the political and administrative norms.

So, for example, in the very first Trump executive order on trans people and declaring that the government has an interest in declaring male and female, also included in that is a declaration that the government has an interest in the womb of the mother because it is the place essentially where gender is established.

And it's the very first time where the government has argued that.

You know, previously, anti-abortion arguments centered on the fetus as a human being, right?

And the life of the fetus.

They are now, as a result of anti-trans politics, you know, shifting the debate to be able to control women's bodies in very particular and astounding and unprecedented ways.

And so, if you are a person who, you know, said, well, maybe they do have a point about, you know, I don't know, you know, trans people or trans people in bathrooms, this is where that leads, right?

This is, that's the stop that it allows you to get off on.

And so I think it is just painting for people the fact that there is no way to save American democracy without standing up for trans people.

Like those two things are actually

joined at the hip.

I mean, you've been sounding this alarm since 2018 when you founded trans/lash media and even earlier.

And yet these conservative campaigns of erasure, these aggressive attacks on the trans community, as a part of just breaking down our

sort of shared cultural understanding of human rights has been extraordinarily effective.

And, like so many issues, as you pointed out, we've seen this escalate to an extreme level during this term.

But while the attention is being focused on the president and his cabinet, we know that it's being championed in Tennessee by Republican governors, in Georgia, by governors and state legislators, by congressional members who feel very emboldened to attack a member of their own body.

What laws and policies do you see coming next down the pike?

If we can't do retrograde looking, if we can't figure out what we missed before, what is coming next that we should anticipate and get prepared for so we don't further erode the humanity and the democracy that we claim in this country?

I think an array of things

are possible.

And you see experimentation already in places like Florida and Texas, which are, of course, their like petri dishes for extremism in America, Idaho as well, throw them in there.

And I think that, you know, it includes things such as banning trans people from certain jobs, as in Florida, trans people, you know, serving as teachers, for example.

It means the possibility of transness being allowed in custody cases.

So to separate

a loving parent

of a child in a divorce and transfer that custody to

another parent who is not supportive of that person's gender identity.

It means family-child separation, as what happens in Texas now, where

if a set of parents love their trans kid, that is justification on the part of the state to remove that child and to put them into foster care.

It means the banning of gender-affirming care for

trans people.

It means maybe even upping

certain drugs like estrogen, which is used by a broad range of people, you know, a heightened level of drug classification, which would make it more difficult for people to prescribe it and for everyone to get access to it.

Like, the thing about anti-trans politics is because they have made it such a sweeping issue across a range of areas, that it allows them to basically be able to assert that in a range of ways.

You also have it in some of the laws that exist right now, for example,

that around whether or not trans kids can

participate in a sport that corresponds to their gender, the allowance by the state of a designated stranger, whatever school, whoever the school, local school board designates, to inspect the body of any child suspected of being trans.

And of course, that has led to cis girls being inspected by strangers.

So I think that the thing that we have to think about is that

This is an excuse to figure out how they can regulate and control the bodies and the public participation of anyone.

And once they get that cocktail right, they're going to expand it.

They're not just going to limit it.

And so it is how you essentially remove the protections of citizenship from Americans.

And testing it out on 1% of the Americans is a great way to do it without people really noticing andor caring, which means that by the time it gets expanded to other groups, it'll be too late.

Well, part of what you've just pointed out is the political and policy implications and the very real attacks.

But we also know that there are immediate concerns about mental health.

Just last week, the Trump administration shut down its LGBTQ plus youth suicide hotline.

And the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, otherwise known as SAMHSA, claimed it would, and I'm going to use a direct quote, no longer silo LGBT plus youth services,

choosing instead to serve, quote, all help seekers, which to me feels like an all-lives matter response to the Black Lives Matter moment, language that redirects attention away from a vulnerable targeted group as a way to erase legitimate concerns.

But it also is important to note that they deliberately left off the T.

They ignored transgender children in this conversation and even in their quote.

Can you talk about the framing that they're using?

So to expand on what you've said, what does this mean when we're talking about the mental health of children who have expressed suicidal ideation?

What does it say about a country that says that this is not a community we want to serve?

Yeah, you're clearly telegraphing that certain lives don't matter and that the lives of trans people don't matter because there's just something off about them anyway and kind of strange and we don't really get it.

And I think that, you know, to your your point, what's interesting to me is that I actually had a state legislator, Gary Smith in South Carolina, who told me that they knew that the very conversation around these issues can cause harm, but that that was the point.

And what we know is that even in states where anti-trans legislation is discussed, not where it's passed, but where it's discussed, that calls to suicide hotlines shoot through the roof.

And so does suicidal ideation.

Just the conversation, right?

Just talking about it in a way that is dehumanizing, inhumane, et cetera.

It also ups anti-trans attacks against kids in schools, right?

So the language is violent, right?

The language is toxic.

This is just not a casual conversation that doesn't have any

implications.

And I think that

the point here is that the dehumanization that is

telegraphed by saying, if you are on the verge of taking your own life as a result of living in a society which is hostile to your very existence,

there's no one that you can call.

I mean,

what does that say?

I mean, that...

that telegraphs everything.

And also in this, the cruelty is the point where at where, you know, we, we, from their perspective, want to make it as difficult as possible, as painful as possible for trans people to find any space in society, right?

That's how we're going to essentially close society to trans people is to not give any acceptable place for there to be expression or help.

So here at Assembly Required, we believe that it is insufficient to just diagnose the problem, which I think you have done extraordinarily well, but you've also led the way on finding solutions.

So let's start with how can people listening today actively support the fight for transgender rights?

I think that there are a lot of ways.

I think the biggest

thing that they're counting on is

people not caring.

It's the thing that they rely on.

You know, they know that most people, when you hear the word trans, you kind of feel uncomfortable or you roll your eyes and you're not going to really listen to that much, which comes after it.

And so they're counting on that apathy as the green light for them to do whatever they want, which means that things that people may not necessarily dial into as making a big difference, make a big difference, such as

if there's anti-trans legislation being discussed at your local school board, go to the meeting.

As you know, Stacey, you know, state legislators never get called about anything.

And so if they get a call or two about a piece of legislation, that as a multiple is so much more impactful than calling your member of Congress, who people call all the time about an an array of things.

So, making your voice heard locally is huge.

Find local trans organizations that need support.

And there's so many ways that you can support in terms of volunteering, helping to keep events safe, of course, giving money, going to rallies and demonstrations that they may have in a local level.

And it means that when there are conversations that come up around your dinner table or elsewhere that are anti-trans, that you engage those conversations.

You don't allow those assertions to go unchallenged because those conversations are the result of a deliberate campaign to frame them in a certain type of way.

So I think that like there is actually the good news here is that there's lots of things that people can do, but it's the essential point here is to disrupt apathy and to disrupt apathy around trans issues.

Because again, if people begin to understand in power that there's actually a price to be paid from a political standpoint and all the rest of it on issues.

It usually changes the way that they talk about or think about those issues.

I mean, we've even seen that on abortion in a terrible way where after Dobbs, as, you know, the political price that they paid for that has slowed, not eliminated, but definitely slowed the march to more extreme anti-abortion legislation, which is still their goal.

But there is a recalculation.

And I think that that recalculation is the thing that is needed needed in the political system to rebalance the conversation around trans rights and trans issues.

And what can people do to help LGBTQ plus youth in particular, especially as resources that support their mental health are under attack?

You can support various LGBT youth groups and services.

I know the Trevor Project, you know, needs support around their hotline and their ability to be able to connect with trans kids.

There's Trans Lifeline.

There's also GLISSIN, which I'm on the board of, which supports trans youth.

There are local organizations and local gathering places for trans kids and trans youth.

I mean, they literally are everywhere.

I'd find out where those are and I would contribute to those.

Like the good news is that there are lots of ways to figure out how to make your voice heard if this is something that you care about.

It just is literally paying attention.

Well, Amara, I thank you so much.

I'm going to take a moment of editorial privilege and just remind folks who are listening, if you watched how Moms for Liberty swept through school boards and forced a conversation about book bans based on conjecture, invective, and just conspiracy theory.

Imagine what people of good intention could do in this moment.

And so for anyone who's listening thinking, well, we aren't powerful enough.

We don't have the money they have.

They don't just have money.

They believe in their hate.

We have to believe that disrupting apathy matters.

And so I just want everyone to pay very close attention to the resources, but also remember our power to fight back.

And I want to say thank you to you for all that you've been doing for so many years to not just warn us, but to help guide us.

So thank you so much, Amara.

Thank you so much.

And there are so many groups, like you said, who've countered Moms for Liberty successfully without any money locally, just by five or 10 people meeting in a living room and figuring out how to stop them.

And they've done so in Sarasota, which is the birthplace for Monster Liberty.

And they've done so in places like Bucks County.

And so it could be done.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much.

In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.

Wade, a cruel decision that decimated abortion access for millions of women across the country.

As predicted, women have been denied access to emergency abortions for life-threatening pregnancies, in some cases being forced to bleed out or become septic at home or in hospital parking lots before being eligible for basic health care.

Judges and law enforcement have claimed ignorance about what they can do to protect women, and lawmakers have abdicated their responsibility or worse, tried to ratchet up the horror for women.

Studies have shown that states with abortion bans have higher maternal mortality rates, a fact that Republican legislators are trying to hide by hindering the work of maternal mortality review committees.

Not only have women lost the fundamental, absolute right to choose what happens to their bodies, some have lost the ability to have children in the future, and too many have lost their lives.

Here in my home state of Georgia, we have a six-week abortion ban championed by Governor Brian Kemp and defended by State Attorney General Chris Carr.

And this terrifying law already has a body count.

Two young women, Amber Thurman and Candy Miller, died as a direct result of our state's draconian abortion ban.

When our state's maternal mortality committee ruled that a lack of adequate abortion care was the cause, they were all dismissed by state officials.

Then last week, the story of yet another young pregnant woman finally came to a tragic end.

Adriana Smith was a devoted young mother and a nurse who went to the hospital while suffering from a headache.

In our woefully underfunded health care system, again, courtesy of Kemp and his colleague, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, she received inadequate treatment and was discharged.

Soon thereafter, Adriana was rushed back to the hospital where she was declared brain dead.

But because she was nine weeks pregnant in a state with a six-week ban on medical care for expected mothers, the hospital could not legally give her family the option of removing her from life support.

Instead, this grieving, devastated family was forced to watch her serve as an incubator without their or Adriana's consent for four arduous months.

Last week, Adriana was finally taken off life support after her forced birth was delivered via C-section.

Proponents of this law will argue that good was done, but at what cost?

Adriana was denied her dignity and human rights.

Her mother will be forced to bury her own child.

These are not the decisions to be accorded to politicians and bureaucrats.

These are the choices to be made by families who have the freedom to act according to their beliefs, not as dictated by laws that strip bodily autonomy and substitute rigid right-wing ideology for wisdom and mercy in end-of-life decisions.

The Supreme Court made this terrible truth possible, and the issues of abortion access and health care access for pregnant women remain urgent concerns.

Congresswoman Kat Kamick recently faced complications in Florida.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Florida Republican needed needed a shot of methotrexate to help expel her ectopic pregnancy, in which there was no way for the embryo to survive.

Her state's six-week abortion ban had just taken effect.

She said doctors and nurses who saw her said they were worried about losing their licenses or going to jail if they gave her drugs to end her pregnancy.

Representative Kamek eventually got the help she needed.

Others are not so fortunate.

And while Adriana's family continues to mourn, we cannot be allowed to ignore her story or forget those who stole her family's right to choose.

As Georgia, Florida, Missouri, and other states continue to eviscerate abortion rights and put lives at risk, inaction is unacceptable.

We must fight on.

And how we're going to do this is this.

We're going to be curious.

In addition to the advice from Leah and Amara, I want us to use this toolkit today to renew our attention to the ever-present issue of abortion rights.

There are so many excellent resources for keeping up on abortion-related news.

Jessica Valenti's Substack, Abortion Every Day, rigorously covers attacks on reproductive rights across the country.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has a useful guide outlining abortion laws by state so you can better understand your rights.

Next, solving problems.

According to the Mayo Clinic, half of all U.S.

states have laws on the books that invalidate a pregnant woman's wishes about her medical care if she becomes incapacitated.

And a majority of states don't disclose these restrictions in their advanced directive forms.

Your state legislators are the first line of defense against laws like these and any laws that threaten abortion access.

Call your state legislators and ask them to take action.

Next, let's do some good.

Donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds and Planned Parenthood.

Abortion funds directly finance abortion care for those in need, and Planned Parenthood has remained a lifeline for people seeking the full spectrum of reproductive health care access.

You can also research local opportunities to support doulas who provide physical, emotional, and logistical support to women during the abortion process.

Depending on where you live, there are training opportunities that may also be available.

And beyond the scope of abortion care, I want to remind us to share opportunities to support members of the trans community, especially in light of recent attacks.

As I discussed with Amara, the Trump administration shut down its LGBTQ suicide prevention hotline.

Please visit the Trevor Project, an organization that focuses on suicide suicide prevention for LGBTQ young people, and donate and find out more about how you can get involved.

And make sure to research opportunities to get involved with local LGBTQ plus organizations.

You can also check out the Transgender Family Handbook by New York Magazine's The Cut, an excellent resource for parents and others who want to support young trans loved ones.

Here at Assembly Required, we are always reaching out to a broader audience that wants to dive a bit deeper into the headlines and to find ways to make a difference.

But we need your help to reach them.

If you like what you hear, be sure to share this episode and subscribe on all your favorite platforms.

And to meet the demands of the algorithms, please rate the show and leave a comment.

You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you go to listen and learn.

Speaking of which, we're preparing an entire episode of listener questions.

So if you have a question for me, send it in.

You can start with an email to assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail.

And you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

This wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

Be careful out there and I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts, and our associate producer is Farah Safari.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglin, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hethcote, and Priyanka Muntha for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams.

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