621: Outrage Fatigue Edition

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Warning, the following podcast contains offensiveness distilled down to its purest form.

Also, naughty words.

This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by HelloFresh and by a whole lot of people not taking God did it for an answer.

And now, The Scathing Atheist.

This is Matthew.

I work as a senior software engineer for NASA.

2024 was a big year.

First, the agency adopted Scaled Agile Framework, which accomplishes exactly the opposite of all of its stated goals.

Second, we had a $1 billion IT contract restructuring to reduce the number of contracts, only to have the new company subcontract with dozens of others, effectively recreating the initial problem.

Then, an unprecedented round of cost-saving layoffs, where contractors working more than eight hours per day, were laid off instead of many civil servants who work only two.

I can confidently say that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy, incompetent, monkey people.

It's Thursday.

It's January 23rd.

And it's Clashing Clothes Day.

Okay, so question, what clashes with a punk shirt?

A baby funeral.

I'm No Illusions.

That's true.

I'm Eli Bosni.

I'm Ethe Fenrright.

And from Stevens, Spielbergs, New Jersey, Ann Arvur, Michigan, and Wake Ross, Georgia, this is the Skating Ages.

Of this week's episode, Donald Trump orders trans people to stop existing.

A Tennessee local ordinance demands the correct version of dumb plastic crap on your lawn.

And American Atheist's Legal Director Jeffrey Blackwell will be here to tell us exactly how fucked we are.

But first, the diatribe.

You remember the first time around where we convinced ourselves that most of his voters stumbled in there accidentally?

We told ourselves that most people didn't know what we knew about the guy.

And as soon as they learned who he really was, they'd abandon him in droves.

And for some people, that was the case.

Like my mom cut loose after the child separation policy showed her what an inhuman ghoul he really was, but

most of them carried on.

And our idiot asses kept thinking that there would be some breaking point, right?

Shit would happen where we would say, certainly this,

certainly calling dead American soldiers suckers, certainly getting caught on tape trying to bribe a foreign official, certainly his handling of COVID.

Certainly there's some level of incompetence and bigotry and criminality where my fellow Americans will stand up and say in one voice, enough.

But now we know that isn't true.

We enter the sequel knowing there is no limit to the horrible shit he can get away with, and all the more terrifying, he knows that too.

He's already taken advantage of that, trying to drown us in a thousand outrages, certain that we'll yell ourselves hoarse before he can run out of new cruelties.

He's betting that our national appetite for bad exceeds our national appetite for good, and I'm afraid that he's right.

I mean, just look at the inauguration, or what little of it you could see.

He moved it indoors so as not to embarrass himself with the feeble spattering of a crowd he could have mustered.

But what did we do in response?

We did nothing.

Virtually nothing.

Last time around his inauguration was the starting gun for the largest worldwide protest marches in the history of walking.

The women's march set records in D.C.

and then echoed through cities, large and small, all over the fucking country and the world.

But what do we get this time?

I mean, granted, it's awfully cold, what with hell freezing over and all, but it wasn't exactly warm in 2017.

This time around, though, we couldn't muster the energy.

We couldn't rouse ourselves to be as angry, even though we knew that it was going to be worse this time.

And some of that is fatigue from nine straight years of this bullshit with at least four more on the horizon.

But some of it, too, is just the frustration of knowing the country you're outraged on behalf of of doesn't seem to give a fuck.

That, in fact, the incompetent bigotry seems to be what it wants.

We had to watch the very groups most in Trump's crosshairs empower him, overlook his rhetoric, and put him back in office.

So here we are in this fatigued and frustrated funk, unable to even open our news apps or judging by our download numbers over the last few months, listen to our current events podcasts.

But think about how harshly history will judge our excuses.

I mean, in case Elon's salute wasn't enough to seal the deal on this for you, Trump's actions over his first few days in office scream fascism.

He's usurping the power of the legislature.

He's purging the government of disloyal employees.

He's trying to strip disfavored minorities of citizenship.

He's taking revenge against his political enemies.

He's undermining the authority of state and municipal governments.

This is textbook fascist takeover shit.

And we're all so numb to it that your first thought upon hearing that list is, of course it is.

It's exactly what we just spent years screaming that it would be to anybody who would listen and a whole lot of motherfuckers who wouldn't.

And look, I get it.

Hell, I was at the point this week where I was like, do I really want to do another dire drive about the active fascist takeover of the American government?

I'm as burned out as anybody on this shit.

We were on a meeting with our accountant the day after the inauguration, and the subject of politics comes up and he goes, just, just, ugh.

And I said, yeah, man, our job is to put that sound into words.

I was reading a fucking book about botany that made me think some interesting shit about the dangers of pseudoscience.

And I was like, oh, you know, hey, maybe I could just do a dry tribe about that, huh?

About plants, huh?

About you guys want to hurt, you want to talk about ferns and shit, maybe?

But no, history needs our focus.

I know it's easy to say, fuck America.

It's not worth saving.

And maybe you're right.

Yeah, it did, after all, lead us here.

We're talking about a system that created the conditions for Donald goddamn Trump to rise to the top twice.

So we've clearly got some fundamental flaws that run deep through our fucking union.

But we can't say fuck America without also saying fuck Americans.

And while our institutions and our flag and our way of life, whatever the fuck that means, might not be worth saving, we are,

you are,

inside of fuck America is fuck immigrants and their children.

Fuck gay and trans people in this country.

Fuck minorities who are relying on DEI programs to overcome white people's inherent biases.

Fuck the victims of the hate crimes that are going to skyrocket under him this time, just like they did last time.

Fuck the global economy that will have to deal with his 17th century attitudes to tariffs.

Fuck the atheists who are going to see Christianity gain even more legal privilege and favor at their expense.

We don't owe our outrage or our allegiance to America, but we damn sure owe it to one another.

Our future depends on our ability to stay angry.

And I can't promise you a hell of a lot over the next four years, but I'll damn sure do my part on that front.

They're talking about your Jesus.

We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news moment.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the truth and justice to my American way, Heath Edright and Eli Bosnick.

Fellas, are you ready to fight?

Like never before.

Seriously?

Not a violent person.

I've been walking around being like, I will, I've never been so close to being like ready to punch somebody in the face.

One Republican word.

I wish somebody would say that.

Someone says, bless you when you sneeze.

You're like, from hoops?

Yeah.

All right.

Well, quick before things get up, up, and away from us, we're going to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, HelloFresh.

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You know, me and Mojo Tojo are about to have an absolutely bussin four years.

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Tyler, what are you doing here?

I'm here to tell you that Elon did that thing you dared him to do.

Wow.

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All right, folks, let's go to work.

So, by the way, did anyone catch the Elon thing?

Oh, literally everyone caught it.

Yes.

Thanks.

And now, back to the headlines.

In our lead story tonight, the American experiment died with a whimper on Monday when Donald Trump was sworn back into office despite 2017, 2018, 2019, and most notably 2020 and all the other years.

And in a fatiguing reminder of what our jobs were like back when that asshole was in charge, he opened his second term with a flurry of legally dubious executive orders on every subject from asylum to xenophobia.

Sorry, same subject for him.

And the obvious goal here, as I mentioned in the diatribe, is to overwhelm us with too much shit to be outraged about.

So I want to focus in on just one of his royal proclamations.

That would be the one where he declares trans people to be non-existent.

Okay, listen, trans listeners, according to Audioboom, you make up like 18% of our audience.

It is now your solemn duty to convince Donald Trump he's being haunted.

Start waving forks.

Start waving forks.

You know what I'm saying?

You'll fall for it.

Like John Cena in the bear as the fact brother.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Haunt it.

So, yeah.

So

this order is bombastically and inevitably called defending defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.

Or that, yeah.

And in it, Trump redefines gender to mean whether you started with a dick and nothing else.

I'm sorry, he tries to do that.

But because everyone in his administration is a fucking idiot, they fail.

In the definition section, section two clauses D and E, I checked it.

It says, quote, female means a person belonging at conception to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

Male means a person belonging at conception to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

End quote.

Yeah.

As you may recall from Jurassic Park, all embryos are female.

at conception.

So he accidentally just made ladies out of all of us.

Right.

Okay, but fellas, if you get a really big sperm going, like bigger than the egg, your daughter fetus is technically a son fetus now, legally?

Yeah.

There you go.

Look, the funniest part about the next four years isn't the horrifying slip into theocracy.

No.

It's that his cronies just are going to have to keep checking his spelling while they do it.

What he meant was.

All right.

But setting aside the idiocy baked into the wording of this thing, the intent is fucking terrifying.

It includes a bunch of shit, but the goal is clearly to erase the entire category of trans women from existing.

It completely ignores trans men, of course.

But in so doing, it threatens to do shit like rehouse trans women in federal penitentiaries, fire trans women who work for the federal government if they use the bathroom that lines up with their gender, invalidate the IDs of people with non-binary gender markers, or, and this is a big one, they actually kind of allude to this in the order, charge trans women with the correct gender identity on their federal IDs with fraud.

This is straight up terrifying stuff.

Truly evil.

Yeah.

Also, and keep in mind, this is the fulfillment of a campaign promise.

This isn't some side effect that people were willing to bear to lower the price of eggs.

He literally made a commercial about this promise.

Yep.

And now he's fulfilling it.

People voted for this.

And not to be redundant here, but the whole point is to give us outrage fatigue.

That was Trump's MO last time around, and he's got a head start this time because we're starting off all the way over his bullshit.

But your trans friends, family, and fellow citizens genuinely cannot afford for us to tap out.

Shit's about to get bad for a fuck ton of people, and we have to find it in ourselves to be pissed off every time, like the first time.

Yeah, I've heard lots of talk about picking our battles for the next four years, and like,

no, no, no, I'm going to be mad about everything that makes me mad.

And definitely this topic makes me mad.

It's not crying wolf when there's a giant bigot wolf.

Yes.

And he's doing a gish gallop of hate crimes and kleptocracy on day one.

Yeah.

No, look, at a certain point, picking your battles is another term for overlooking his crimes.

I battle you.

You won't battle.

Pick your battles.

I battle you.

Let's have an extra battle right now.

And in to the repugnant news.

As we reviewed the movie One Nation Under God on last week's episode of God Awful Movies, Movies, available wherever you get your podcasts, we couldn't help but ask ourselves, who was that movie for?

What mind is so demented, so out of touch with reality, that it can imagine that whether or not One Nation Under God is in the pledge is worthy of anything but our embarrassing ire?

Well, this week we got our answer as the new law proposed in North Dakota would force students to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

So there you have it.

Practicing.

So good.

You know, because I'm always thinking to myself, like, which

rectangle holds my allegiance and fealty.

Oh, no, no, no, no, it's an American flag.

It's the American flag.

Yeah, right, no.

And that's because I had good schooling.

Oh, God.

I remember turning to a kid in eighth grade and going, it's weird that we're pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth, right?

And he said, you got a problem with the flag.

And I should have known then that Trump would get re-elected.

You know, I should have said then.

Can I be excused to be a podcaster in 30 years?

I'd like to be a podcaster in 30 years.

I used to sing the song that they made us sing in a big operatic voice and I got in trouble for it.

And then my parents were like, you can't

get in trouble for his big loud singing during the Nazi.

Ironically singing your Nazi ritual song.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

It was like an angel.

Right.

So first off, big thanks to Hemet Mehta over at the Friendly Atheist blog for bringing this to our attention.

His newsletter goes to scathingnews at gmail.com, where you can send atheist news you think we should talk about.

So if you think about it, Hemet is basically returning my love letters.

He's returning them redlined, if anything.

That's true.

Yeah, no, the teacher in him cannot abide.

So, the law in question, House Bill 1-222, which is sponsored by 11 Republicans, seeks to change the law, which currently reads as follows: A school board may authorize the voluntary recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by a teacher or one or more students at the beginning of each school day.

A student may not be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, stand during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, or salute the American flag, end quote.

And before we get to what they're going to change it to, which is obviously crazier, it's worth pointing out that that's already fucking bat shit.

Like, we have a special little pledge to our best friend Jesus that the school board can announce, but you don't technically have to play along if you don't want to, is already so bizarre.

Yeah, right.

If Eli shits in the elevator right next to you, you don't technically have to shit shit along with him, but that's nothing.

That's not helpful.

Right.

No, like if you want that weird redneck kid I turned to in the eighth grade, whose nickname was literally biscuit, hell yeah, to think of you when he hears the word traitor, you're allowed to just sit it out.

Hell yeah.

Hey, Biscuit's dead, huh?

The Ivermectin got him.

Yeah.

There's no fucking shot you had a heart attack and Biscuit did not.

All things considered, he's not a yoga instructor somewhere.

Okay.

But as I said, that I just read you, that craziness is all way too liberal for Republican North Dakotans.

So the new proposed language would read as follows.

And I am quoting from the bill here.

A student of public school shall recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each school day.

A student must be informed by written notice published in the student handbook or similar publication that the student may be excused from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance upon written request by the student's parents or legal guardian.

They're going to use that to send it to one student because it said a student must be in.

They're just going to tell one person that they can excuse.

During the Pledge of Allegiance, any unexcused student shall show full respect to the flag by standing at attention with the right hand over the heart and for males, removing any headdress except when the headdress is worn for religious purposes end quote of a law.

Girls in their headdresses, am I right?

Girls.

Not waiting into that can of worms, right, women.

Wow.

But yes, the magical jingoist ritual is lost.

All right.

I don't think anything in there says that you can't river dance during it, though, right?

If you have your hand over your heart.

And can I say, if I'm a North Dakotan girl, I'm wearing the fucking Easter bonnet of all Easter bonnets during the pledge.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, hey, Eli, that sounds super fucking illegal and they're going to get sued, right?

And yes, it is.

And yes, they will.

But don't worry, Republicans thought of that.

They did a crisscross applesauce cootie shot.

And in a section titled Immunity from Liability, they say, quote, the superintendent of public instruction, school districts, schools, school boards, and individual school board members, governing boards and individual governing board members, administrators, principals, teachers, and any other school district employed personnel are immune from any liability for damages resulting resulting from a school's decision to display the 10 commandments or require the recitation of the pledge of allegiance end quote no you're not so you know curses spoiled again

we're on base wait is that is that legally binding whereas we're on base snail bits that's a lie

so yeah look this creeping theocracy is obviously awful but it's also exactly what everyone involved expects, right?

The lawmakers who wrote this bill, they know they're going to lose in court, even though they have their cootie shot.

And they know they're going to cost their states and their schools hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting this fight.

They're going to use it to claim that they're fighting against the atheist liberals who want to stop people from saying the pledge.

And then the idiots who voted for them will believe them.

What I'm saying is, in this new era of Trumpian horrors, it's just nice that some evil we can still see coming from a mile away.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Sure.

Yeah.

And finally tonight, in reason for the tennis season news.

Fucking phenomenal.

Memphis area resident Alexis Luttrell enjoys putting decorations in her yard for holidays like Halloween and Christmas.

For Halloween last year, that included a skeleton of a human holding a skeleton of a dog on a leash.

Then for Election Day, In a way that was accidentally far too apt in retrospect, she had the skeletons holding campaign flags for Kamala Harris.

And then for the Christmas season, she gave the skeletons a red and green skirt and a hat resembling a Christmas tree.

And that's why she's being taken to court by the local government of Germantown, Tennessee.

What?

Because the decorations weren't, you know, scientifically consistent with the...

magical Arctic man who delivers toys to 2.4 billion Christian people in the world using flying deer during one night.

Yeah, I imagine the trial has been delayed a number of times by people who have had to say, like, are you fucking serious?

Yeah, right.

You don't have time for the motion to, are you fucking serious?

Yeah.

Right.

For over a decade, we have cataloged these assholes pretending that somebody was trying to keep them from putting Christmas decorations on their own fucking houses.

They've made whole movies about the evil government trying to tell people they can't put up Christmas decorations that they want.

And then here we find them using the government to tell people they can't put up the Christmas decorations they want.

Irony is dead in Trump's America, people.

Sure is.

And a big thanks to Michael for sending the link to scathingnews at gmail.com.

Michael can send Eli one large holiday decoration, and Eli has to display it for at least 45 days.

I mean, honestly, Michael, do your worst.

If people can see it under what my wife has going, then you have outdone yourself, sir.

Good stuff out there.

Yeah.

So the legal conflict started in early December when Germantown sent a taxpayer-funded compliance officer to Ms.

Luttrell's house.

And that person delivered an official document formally demanding the removal of the skeletons for violating a city ordinance about what counts as Christmassy stuff or something like that.

And you're just like, read a Tim Burton, like Nightmare Before Christmas, that fits.

Absolutely.

Well, apparently Luttrell didn't correct that very serious crime against humanity promptly enough.

The Yule rule.

Yeah, so

that was followed by a citation from the city and a court date for February.

And just for the record, the skeletons were next to a big Santa Claus for the entire Christmas season.

But that Santa happens to have darker than white skin, much like Luttrell's preferred presidential candidate.

So I have a funny feeling there might be, I don't know, a bigot or two in this Tennessean local government.

Oh, man, Donald James Parker is going to beat Black Santa at Pickleball in X next movie, isn't he?

No, Eli, because his next movie is for us.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, context in the Patreon bonus stuff.

All right.

So the story got picked up by a local CBS affiliate last week, and Ms.

Lutrell received an outpouring of support because the whole thing is fucking stupid.

And several other Germantown residents reported getting the same type of citation and attempted prosecution for that.

But unfortunately for Germantown, they're dealing with Alexis motherfucking Luttrell.

And that prosecution is going to be tough.

Yeah.

Squin in a nail indeed.

Lutrell has a law degree and she works in healthcare compliance.

So this court is going to learn all about the wrong forms they filled out and it's going to take a while.

Also, the city ordinance does not have any language that limits the skeletonic nature of Christmas decorations.

Huh.

And even if it did have that language, she could like tape some flesh to the bones until the skeletons become legally close enough to Santa and reindeer.

I don't know, she's definitely fighting the citation.

And the legal argument from the city boils down to,

come on,

this is Santa, whatever.

Do Santa, bunch of guys marching into the courtroom with bags of bones to pour on the judge's desks.

Is this anything?

It worked in the movie when we

did this.

So, good news, though, the skeletons have not come down.

Resistance and Lutrell actually has big plans plans for them.

They're going to be like leprechaun skeletons for St.

Patty's Day, something else for Easter, maybe like a resurrected rabbit and a handler, and something fabulous and, of course, terrifying to the local government for Pride Month.

And with Valentine's Day coming up, she told reporters, I can't wait for them to see my Love is Love theme.

Oh, those skeletons are going to be fucking.

So boning, if you will.

Fantastic.

It sounds like she's working with very sincerely held beliefs about LGBTQ skeletons.

And that means there's no laws and Germantown can go fuck itself.

Great work, Alexis.

And we are very happy to help if you're interested.

We'll make a scene on that lawn if you need any help with it.

Fucking.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, it looks like Heath might have finally found a legal use for Eli's warehouse full of pornographic skeleton models.

So we're going to close the headlines there.

Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

Chumaji.

Redundant.

It's the first time it's illegal.

And when we come back, Jeffrey Blackwell will be here to sound very sophisticated and lawyer.

Try a basket?

Dude, I don't have a basket.

Like a laundry basket?

You don't have a laundry?

Oh, okay.

Yeah, good idea.

Hey, podcast listener.

As you can tell, we here at Puzzle and a Thunderstorm are hard at work turning these multitudinous horrors into hilarious japes for you.

Basket's too small.

Grab two.

Grab a second one.

But the truth is, we couldn't do any of this without the folks who support our shows over at patreon.com/slash scathing atheist.

What about a laundry bag?

A lot of these horrors are wet, man.

You can ruin the bag.

Sure, I could tell you about the ad-free unless you want them RSS feeds of our shows that you can use on any podcast player, the behind-the-scenes bonus content and extra filled-up versions of every single episode that you get.

Or the books.

Or you could get signed or digital versions of our books.

That's right.

But mostly folks just toss us a buck or two because they they want to support the work that we do.

The heavy,

heavy work that we do.

Heath, where do I put dead kids stuff?

Put it in the pile of dead stuff.

We have a pile.

No, I put the funny deaths.

Don't there?

There's funny deaths in there.

It's deaths.

Come on.

Patreon.com/slash scathingatheost because these horrors aren't going to pitchfork themselves.

Little help, so many.

It's been a tough week for Americans who give a shit about things like civil rights, the rule of law, and competence.

The rights of the non-religious and non-Christians in general haven't been under more threat in this country in my lifetime or yours.

Doesn't matter how old you are, I guess.

Which means that secular watchdog groups have never been more important.

So, for a quick check-in to see what they're up to today, I'm excited to welcome to the show the recently anointed legal director for American Atheists, Jeffrey Blackwell.

Jeff, thanks for joining me.

Thank you for inviting me on, Noah.

I really appreciate it.

I'm excited to talk, but it's kind of like I'm happy to see you, but we're at a funeral, you know?

Yeah.

So, now, of course, our regular listeners already know you as a lawyer for American Atheists, though if they're basing their knowledge on Heath and Eli, they might believe it to be a far more thigh-based job than it actually was.

So tell us, before the big promotion, what exactly did you do there?

So I was litigation counsel at American Atheists from September of 2016 through the end of 2024.

And in that capacity, I managed our litigation around the country and submitted amicus briefs to courts in cases that were relevant to our work, whether at the Supreme Court or the various federal appellate courts.

And that was really my focus.

Yeah,

of course, you and I have been friends for a little while here.

And it's always kind of cool because when you get in touch with Jeff, sometimes he'll be like, Yeah, I'm actually writing an amicus brief for the Supreme Court.

And you'll be like, you are, though.

You're not just showing off.

You actually are, though.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, I have two that are due in the first full week of March.

Oh, wow.

All right.

So, yeah.

So we'll keep it quick then.

All right.

All right.

But now, of course, the job has gotten a lot bigger for you.

So what will you be doing now?

What's entailed in the role of legal director?

So I'll still be overseeing our litigation and amicus briefs and whatnot, but adding into that monitoring federal policy and administrative rules and regulations, doing more outreach to the legal community generally, whether that's through interacting with state and local bar associations or writing articles in legal magazines or even some law review articles that I'm working on to

work to frame our issues and move the Overton window back in a positive direction at the like most basic level in the legal community.

Gotcha.

And I should mention we've made a few other staffing changes over the last couple of months so that we can prepare for what's coming in the next four years and be as well positioned as possible to tackle these new challenges.

Yeah, because that anticipates my next question, which is obviously

if you're doing what you were doing and then some, you know, and it's not like this job got smaller recently.

So glad to hear that they're getting you some help.

Now, what would, you know, obviously a a person with your education, you could be doing an awful lot.

What drew you specifically to American atheists?

Well, on a fundamental level, if I was doing something else, I would be frustrated that I'm not doing what I'm currently doing.

But overall, I've been an atheist since I was like 11 years old.

I can actually remember clearly the moment when I learned there was a term for not believing in a deity.

And then when I went to law school, I studied human rights and religious discrimination and sort of fell into my dream job after just a couple of years out of law school.

I had immediately after graduating and while I was doing bar prep started a podcast called All Too Common Law that was sort of the low-budget version of opening arguments.

Okay.

Opening arguments didn't exist at the moment.

And

I was trying to find ways to make studying for the bar interesting.

So I would.

talk about the news and the law going on behind it to give me a reason to dive into like contract contract law and torts and all that kind of stuff.

Gotcha.

And for a time, my co-host was Amanda Keneef, now a board member of American Atheist, but at the time she had my job.

And then eventually she let me know that American Atheists was hiring an additional attorney and I applied and here I am.

Awesome.

All right.

So I want to dig into the specifics a little bit about, you know, what you guys are monitoring, what you're doing, but I want to start off pretty broad because I feel like all the other questions are pointless until we talk about this one.

After witnessing this past election, after watching Donald Trump sworn back into office, but also after watching the courts fail in four years' time to hold him accountable for any of his crimes, and after watching the Supreme Court just make shit up that was contradicted by photographic evidence in the dissenting opinion to justify their theocratic bullshit,

I feel like a lot of people have just lost faith in institutions altogether.

So what do you say to people who have lost faith in your chosen battlefield and don't think pursuing things in the courts is even a worthwhile goal anymore?

Sure.

So I want to distinguish first, people should not have just faith in our institutions.

Institutions have to earn our trust.

I should have known better than to dangle the word faith in front of the legal director for American Atheists.

Withdrawn.

Sure.

I'll lament it and say that part of the problem here is that our institutions have

those in charge of our institutions have pretty deliberately eroded the trust that we used to have in them to the extent that we did.

I mean, obviously there's plenty to talk about in terms of, you know, certain communities within the United States had less trust in some of our institutions than other communities.

Fair.

But, you know, the proliferation of whether it was the hateful policies of the Trump administration and the first Trump administration.

Sorry.

I hate that I have to make that distinction.

Yeah.

Disinformation campaigns in numerous segments of our media, and sometimes just the open corruption of, for example, Supreme Court justices, have really eroded the trust that the public once had in these institutions.

And maintaining and rebuilding that trust is going to take a lot of work, a lot of time, and we all have a role to play in that.

We have to remember that what we're seeing right now is the end result of

over half a century of planning and work by Christian nationalists in response to cases like Roe versus Wade, Brown v.

Board of Education that desegregated the schools.

And we need to be prepared for this to be

a comparably long battle in reversing the harm that's been done.

Yeah.

We can't, there is no silver bullet.

You're not going to go into court right now and fix the establishment clause in one case or even a dozen cases.

It's going to take a long time.

And it's about more than just the courts.

Particularly right now, we have to think very carefully about what cases we bring because

we don't want to tee up a question for this Supreme Court that will

undo.

decades of established precedent.

Governor Landry in Louisiana practically invited litigation challenging the Ten Commandments in schools statute that they put in place in the hopes of undoing a case called Stone v.

Graham that's stood since 1980 that said you can't mandate the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

So

I want to just dial back just a little bit because you're talking about rebuilding the trust in these institutions and everything.

And I agree with you that there's sort of been a deliberate effort to erode that trust by, you know, by putting people in charge of institutions that think those institutions shouldn't exist, right?

Sure.

But the job of destroying is much easier than the job of of building, right?

Always.

If your argument is government doesn't work, put me in charge and I'll show you, right?

Right.

Which is what the Republicans have been doing for 50, 60, 80 years, whatever.

That's a much easier thing to do than, you know, the government does work, put me in charge and I'll show you.

Right.

Like, so, right.

So do you think it's right to say that these are comparable struggles?

Or it feels like we're going to be fighting an uphill battle in a way that they never were.

That's fair.

My point is that this is not going to be a short fight.

This is not something that we're going to turn back.

This tide is not going to be turned back immediately.

It's going to take a lot of work.

And we have to keep that in mind, that our fighting back against this is going to be incremental and

as a result of

the speed at which Congress or the courts or state governments work is glacial.

in nature when it comes to doing positive work, crafting a policy that adequately addresses whatever issue the government is needing to address takes far more care, like you said, than tearing down existing policies

and leaving leaving nothing behind.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of, in a lot of ways, we're seeing with the second Trump administration, one of the downfalls of people having that sort of myopic view or that like, oh, well, shit, we had two years, three years to fix this and we didn't fix it.

So let's throw it all out the window.

And yeah.

Yeah.

So, okay.

So obviously, you know, even eyes as vigilant as yours can't be everywhere.

So where are they now?

Sort of, what is the focus, legally speaking, at American atheists today?

Sure.

Our primary focus right now is at the state level because at the federal level, it's going to take a while for whatever executive orders or new statutes that the new Congress passes, it's going to take a while for those to be turned into regulations by the federal agencies responsible for enforcing them.

And I mean, that takes years, really.

We had our lawsuit against the Department of Education that started in the first Trump administration was on pause while the Department of Education worked through the entire Biden administration to rescind the policy that Trump put in place.

And ultimately, that was, they were not able to do it before Trump.

resumed office.

So on the federal level, we're keeping an eye on things.

We are pushing back on them, but our focus is really at the state level because a lot of the policies that whether it's Trump or a lot of the people at the state level who ascribe to Project 2025, these have to be implemented at either the state or local level.

And so we're keeping a close watch on bills introduced across the country in state legislatures.

We're already, we're only

like two weeks into this legislative, I guess three weeks into this legislative session, and we're tracking several hundred bills at this point.

Some positive, most harmful.

And sort of that is the main focus.

At the same time, we're also working to build, like I mentioned, building legal community, recruiting lawyers locally in jurisdictions where I'm not admitted to practice law.

We need local attorneys to assist us if we're going to pursue litigation.

or just to help us with like reviewing FOIA and public records requests.

Sure.

Because a lot of our work is going to be functioning as a watchdog right now.

And they can provide a lot of assistance in reviewing what is going to be reams of documents that we're looking at.

We're also trying to expose the history and tradition test that the court has put in place instead of the lemon test.

That I don't know how deep in the weeds I want to get into describing what the lemon test is.

I'm hoping that scathing atheist listeners will have some familiarity with the term.

I think it sort of just in the broad broad sort of umbrella sense, but I don't know if we all would have

as much familiarity with the history and tradition test.

This is the, we've always done it this way, so it must be okay sort of thing that they're using.

Essentially,

yes, that if it's a long practice and consistent practice and pretty much widely accepted practice, let's say, part of the problem is it's very ill-defined by the courts themselves.

But if it fits that sort of rubric, then the presumption is that it's constitutional.

And that's so clever because that creates a category of rights for Christianity specifically that don't carry over to any other religious or faith tradition.

So that's interesting.

Right.

It grandfathers in a bunch of stuff dating back to like the burned over district and the revival era of the early 1800s and really puts anybody else at a disadvantage.

Yeah.

But it's also just intellectually inconsistent and not an honest way of addressing things.

And in terms of our the litigation that we are still pursuing, we're focusing very much on situations where there is government coercion into religious activity of some sort or private discrimination.

For example, like if you're renting an apartment and your landlord refuses to renew you or refuses to accept your application because you're an atheist.

Sure.

Or a business refusing to serve you because you're an atheist, that kind of thing.

All right.

So I get the feeling along those lines that some of our rights might be nearing their expiration date.

Are there any that you would recommend we go out and enjoy a quick while we still can?

Like, what rights are we losing next?

What's most under threat?

So, that's a complicated question.

And I'll say, first, with regard to the work that's most germane to American Atheist Mission, the freedom of speech is really in peril right now because of this idea of speech plus, where the government has to give deference to speech that is coupled with religion over just general political speech or speech of any kind and that is something very new and something that runs directly counter to what's at the core of the free speech clause which is that the government sure cannot discriminate based on your viewpoint viewpoint discrimination is the most egregious form of essentially censorship that the government can engage in.

And that's not me saying that.

That's the Supreme Court of decades ago saying that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, but Elon Musk loves free speech, though, Jeff.

Are you sure that that?

Sure, he does.

Yeah.

Free speech for him, not for anyone else.

Obviously, the Establishment Clause is also under threat.

It still has some force, but recent Supreme Court decisions have really whittled it down to that sort of core of government coercion into religious activity.

And it's going to take a lot of work to rebuild a positive theory of the Establishment Clause that actually does what it's intended to do.

There's also plenty of rights that aren't directly about religion themselves, but that are motivated by the religious beliefs of those in power, whether it's chipping away or take a sledgehammer to LGBTQ plus equality, birthright citizenship, which we just saw

attacked in an executive order yesterday, and reproductive rights.

I mean,

you know, we've done away with Roe.

I have a feeling that there will be restrictions on access to contraceptions in the very near future.

There's a lot to be worried about.

Yeah, man, it seems from my perspective that you have the biggest job in America right now.

So

it's funny that you put it that way because it is weird that, I mean, there are plenty of people who do incredibly important work, and I'm not going to even, you know, put myself at their level, but it is weird the way that religion intersects with almost everything.

Yeah.

And like there was a day, this was pre-COVID.

There was a day when I came into work and ended up spending the entire day doing a deep dive into New York City parking regulations.

I would never have expected that that was how I was going to spend.

any time, let alone what turned into like a week of looking at whether or not we needed to sue over something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's when I started this job,

I thought to myself, like, you know, when I started doing this podcast, I never could have possibly dreamed all the weird shit that I would have to learn about in order to follow these stories.

But yeah, parking regulation is a great example because it's just one of the bazillion rights that Christians expect to have a little more of than everybody else, right?

No, no, no, we're parking for the church.

So it doesn't matter.

Yeah, it doesn't count.

Okay, so speaking of which, as a person who lives in South Georgia, this is becoming increasingly important to me.

Beyond just moving to a better state, is there anything that those of us who are living in the more theocratic parts of the country can be doing now to protect ourselves?

Absolutely.

Both to protect yourselves and others.

I would say for those who are in a position to do so, be open and vocal about being an atheist.

Build atheist communities where you live if they don't already exist, because providing that space lets other people who may not be in a position to be as open about their non-belief.

It lets them know that they're not alone and can really be helpful to them in just, you know, going about their day-to-day lives.

But also those who are able to be open about it can build these communities and respond to things like state bills.

We have secular advocacy teams in several states that are local people in the community monitoring their state legislature, submitting testimony to legislative committees regarding positive or negative bills that are being advanced.

And in addition to that, vote in your local elections.

Those are so important.

You know, there's very little more important right now than

strong law-abiding school boards.

Yeah.

Because

the damage that could be done to future generations is incalculable.

And run for office if you're able.

It's becoming more and more acceptable to the public to vote for atheist candidates.

We had on a call last week a state legislator from Oklahoma who's an atheist.

Oh, wow.

So, you know, this is not some.

pie in the sky dream.

It's it's a thing anybody can do if they are comfortable doing it and have the capacity.

You know, campaigning even for a school board or something like that takes time and effort and money, but it's something that has to be done.

It's the kind of thing that the Christian right was doing in the wake of Roe v.

Wade and Brown v.

Board and all of those cases in the 50s and 60s that really established people's civil rights as they understand them these days.

Right.

Right.

All right.

So for those, because, you know, obviously there's been a lot of talk in this interview about how we're sort of in it for the long haul.

This is not going to be an easy fight.

And that's what everybody needs to hear, but not necessarily what everybody wants to hear.

So I'm hoping we can kind of pump them up a little bit.

Is there a recent victory that you could point us to that American atheist has had that sort of reminds us why we're doing this?

Yeah,

there are a few in the last year or two.

First, we had a nice quick victory in a case in West Virginia where an incarcerated person was being denied parole.

He was essentially, he was precluded from getting parole because he refused to participate in the 12-step program mandated by his prison or the several prisons that he was transferred back and forth between.

He was advocating the entire time for, let me do smart recovery, let me do SOS, Life Ring, any of these alternative programs that are not religious in nature.

And despite the fact that the program he was in was

heavily funded by the Department of Justice, they refused to change their policy to have it not be free from,

either be free from religion or have an alternative that was free of religion.

And we succeeded in A, getting him paroled and getting the department to change its policies.

And I was very pleased by, you know, a federal judge in West Virginia, he was really forceful in his opinion in siding with us.

And I was very pleased to see that.

And West Virginia's misuse of those funds has led to us conducting a sort of nationwide survey of these programs.

They're called Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Programs, or RSAT, to find out how other states are...

managing or mismanaging, as the case may be, these federal funds that cannot be used to promote religion.

Right.

On the legislative side, I mentioned our secular advocacy teams.

We have advanced bills in several states.

I'm thinking Colorado, we advanced a medical transparency bill that requires hospitals to let patients know, either through their website or a form that they submit to the government, what procedures they do not perform.

Oh, interesting.

For religious reasons, you have the Catholic hospitals that are not.

Well, for any reason, not just

if they have religious justifications.

But if there is a, you know, if there, if there are procedures that they're not going to treat, we think patients have the right to know that going in.

Otherwise, what is

informed consent if you aren't told there is something that could be done, but we're not going to do it for you.

And we also had related to the substance abuse issue, a bill advanced through the New York legislature that would have required judges to inform defendants who are are being sentenced to substance abuse treatment in some way or another.

They have to be informed that they have the right to a secular option to 12-step programs.

Unfortunately, although that passed the New York legislature twice, Governor Hochul vetoed it both times, saying essentially, it would be too burdensome on judges to inform people of this right.

If we, you know, if we inform them of this right, where does it end?

Do we inform them of all their rights when they're being sentenced?

Which my answer would be, yes.

Sure.

Yes.

But also, she basically said, I don't see that this is a problem in New York.

So I don't think we need this statute.

Yeah, we talked about that a little on this show.

And I think you and I basically shared an opinion on her decision there.

All right.

So penultimate question to you.

So guys, I do have one more in the cam after this, but to sort of close off this portion of the interview, I have to ask, what can the average scathing atheist listener listening to this interview do to help American atheists in their mission?

Oh, there's a lot.

By all means, please visit our website, atheists.org, A-T-H-E-I-S-T-S dot O-R-G.

Become a member.

We, you know, all of my work and the work of our entire team, even beyond the legal realm, we depend on donor funds.

You can sign up for email updates.

And that way you will get action alerts to let you know, for example, if there is a bill that we are opposing or supporting in your state, or if your senator is on a federal congressional committee that's considering a bill.

Gives you an easy way of letting them know exactly what your position on those bills is

and is a nice way to ensure that your voice is heard.

You can volunteer.

Like I mentioned, we have our secular advocacy teams.

By all means, reach out to us if you're interested in helping us in that work on the legislative side of things.

Start a local group.

Become an affiliate.

And like I said, build that community if there isn't one already in your in your town or

region.

Yeah, and I do want to cut in here to say check first.

There's a big problem in atheist organizations where everybody starts a local group without finding out first if there's already a local group.

So yeah, yeah.

Make sure there's not one around you first.

But yeah, yeah.

Join the local group, checkmeetup.com and, and see if one already exists in your area.

We on our website have a list of our affiliate organizations and a map of the country showing where they are located.

So see if there's something already in your community.

If not, you should feel free to create one.

And we have a lot of things we can do to support and help people build local.

affiliates, particularly when it comes to like,

what should bylaws look like for

an organization?

You know, these sort of basic governance things that some groups are better at than others.

And lastly, separate from volunteering, well, I don't want to say separate from volunteering.

In addition to that kind of volunteering, if you have special skills or specialized knowledge that you think could be useful to us in our work, by all means, let us know.

I mentioned, you know, building up a community of lawyers to help with our work in a number of different capacities.

If you're a teacher, a medical provider, any number of different things that could provide us with knowledge of, for example, how substance abuse treatment works in your state, what social services are available to people that are not religious in nature, because far too often state governments end up relying on like churches or religious organizations to run their foster care programs and things like that.

Sure.

That kind of specialized and localized knowledge can really help us in our work.

And

people should feel free to get in touch and let us know that they're interested in being of use in this fight.

Yeah.

And be sure to check the show notes.

I'm going to have a few of those things linked there, including the map that Jeff was talking about.

And one last thing before I let you go.

In addition to being the legal director for American Atheist, you are also a colleague of mine in the podcasting space.

So while I have you here, can you tell us a little bit about your show, The Not So Grand Jury?

Sure.

I am a white man in my 40s, so I have a podcast that is a requirement.

The not-so-grand jury is totally separate from my work with American Atheists.

Me and a couple of friends of mine put together this podcast where each episode we

use

either a TV show or movie to talk about the law.

It's kind of like lot awful movies, but not in a legally actionable way.

We don't do the sort of gam thing where we go through the plot point by point and and we treat them more as what we call issue spotting in law school when you're taking your exams what very often happens is you're given a narrative and asked to identify all the different claims that all the people might have against each other and whether they would succeed, what they would need to prove, that kind of thing.

And we kind of do the same.

So for example, we just did a takedown of how to get away with murder.

One of the most painful viewing experiences I have had

just in how much they get wrong about how the law works.

And I know that it should not fall on the shoulder of like creatives.

I hate that term, but it's what applies.

Yeah, that's the term though.

Yeah.

To educate the public about how the legal system works.

But by flagrantly disregarding how the system actually works, they are fundamentally harming our society when they do that.

They're anti-educating.

Yeah.

Right.

So we don't just do law movies in quotes.

Our second episode was a discussion of Jaws.

Oh, interesting.

And we dived into like, what authority does the Coast Guard have in this kind of situation?

What's Mrs.

Kittner, whose child is killed by the shark after

they reopened the beaches?

Yeah, it seems like she's got a claim.

Does she have a claim?

Yes.

Interesting.

Well, hey, any excuse to watch Jaws again, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Yes.

So that's the kind of thing that we cover.

And we're about 10 episodes in, and it's going really well.

I'm enjoying it.

Awesome.

Awesome.

I'll have that linked on the show notes as well.

All right.

Well, Jeff, thanks so much for all you do.

And thanks again for your time this afternoon.

Thank you for the invitation, Noah.

I really enjoyed the talk.

Before we downship tonight, I want to let you know that if you need more me in your life, you can find some if you check out the most recent episode of the Where There's Woke podcast, in which I hop on with Thomas and Lydia Smith to talk about what a fake-ass gamer Elon Musk is.

Check the show notes for a link.

Anyway, that's all the blessed me we've got for you tonight.

We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more.

If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister's show, The Skeptic, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday.

Hope we can find something to talk about.

An even newer episode of our Sister Soul's Hot Friend Got Off of Movies, debating at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and and an even newer episode of our Half Sister So Citation Needed Day being at Noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, this episode can't stand proudly with its ancestors if I neglect to thank Heath Enright for doing the right thing, Eli Bosnik for doing the SNCC thing, and Lucinda Lusions for doing the Juns thing, I guess.

I also want to thank Jeffrey Blackwell one more time for helping us clarify the battle lines.

I also want to thank Matthew for providing this week's Farnsworth quote.

Normally, we try to keep those under 20 seconds.

But when you're dishing hot goss on NASA, we'll make an exception, bro.

But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, Justin, Bryn, Frankie, Brittany, T.

Biscuit, Jonas, Nick, Sean, Wolfstar76, and Amy.

Justin, Bryn, and Frankie, who are so badass nunchucks, brag about being good at them, Brittany, Nick, and Jonas, who are not early 2000s pop icons, despite how it sounds, and Sean, Wolfstar, and Amy, whose IQs have more digits than most people's have points.

Together, these nine delightful disbelievers deign to deliver a dollop a donation to our distrusted deistic douche baggery this week by giving us money.

Not everybody has the money it takes to have less of it on purpose, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing atheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended and free version of every episode.

Or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com.

And if you'd like to help, but not in a money way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-shot review, telling a friend about the show, and following us on social media.

And speaking of social media, Tim Robinson handles that for us.

And our audio engineer is Martin Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission.

If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact Tim on the contact page at scathingadheist.com.

Ah, nope.

Sip of coffee.

Cracked voice right away.

And Eli's writing something.

Give him a second.

And

the preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle in the Thunderstorm LLC, Copyright 2025.

All rights reserved.

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