Will Trump Succeed in Rigging the Midterms?

It's everywhere right now. The celebration of America is 250th and we're in the thick of it this month.

“Christian Nationalists are using this milestone not to unite but to divide.”

They're pushing the lie that America was founded to be a Christian nation, where just one religious movement gets to decide who fully belongs. Instead of the truth that America was founded as a democracy committed to liberty and justice for all. That's propaganda, not patriotism. It's a dangerous lie meant to justify censorship, discrimination, attacks on public schools, assaults on LGBTQ+ rights,

restrictions on reproductive freedom, and government favoritism toward one extremist version of Christianity. Americans united for separation of church and state is here to fight back against the dangerous and agregist misinterpretation of our founding documents. A.U. fights daily for everyone's ability to live themselves and believe as they choose, so long as they don't harm others. Novel idea in the day and age when almost every day

“we're seeing Christian nationalism weaponize faith to attack individual freedoms across the country.”

Do something patriotic this summer as you're dodging the propaganda flying at you from all angles become a member of Americans united. By supporting A.U. you're committing to stand up and protect church state separation in every area of life. Learn more about how you can support and how A.U. protects everyone's rights at AU.org/cruget. Joe, what are your main arguments against you, the ladies like this, they're going to have the last word.

She's small, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity, she said, "I ask no favor for my sex." All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet or for my next. Hello and welcome back to Strix Cruitney, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We are your host today, I'm Kate Shaw.

And I'm Lea Levin. As you can tell, we are continuing our summer of rotating responsibilities, but if you're not, you will get Melissa back next week. And before you know it, the three of us will be back in the usual swing of things. But here is what we've got in store for you today. We are going to start with the week's big legal and law adjacent news. We're then going to have a conversation about what exactly the president is trying to do

and what he is going running to the Supreme Court to ask for its blessing to do when it comes to voting and in particular voting in the fast approaching midterm elections. For that conversation, we will be joined by UCLA's Rick Hassan, friend of the show, and one of the nation's leading

experts on election law. And finally, we will bring you a conversation Kate recently had with the

legal director of the organization, if one how, about what they are seeing and working on, when it comes to the use of criminal law to target both the portion and people who experience pregnancy loss in the wake of dobs. So stay tuned for that. Okay, but before we get to the substance of the show, we have some exciting news. Lea mentioned this last week. I'm excited to talk about it too because people working on this for a while. If you are a lawyer looking for fun, new ways to

get your CLE credits, you can now get those by listening to our podcast. We just launched our first course that's eligible for CLE credit. It is our Skoda's term recap episode. It came out in the first week of July, and it is now approved in California, New York, Texas. Wow, this is more than last week. This is exciting. Yes, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington, and Oregon. And we will keep you posted as more states are added. This is an experiment. This is

something new we're trying. And if enough people sign up, we will hopefully get to maybe add some more states and definitely add more episodes in the future. So, to listen to the show for CLE credit, if you haven't had a chance to listen to it or if you did, but we talk so fast, you probably

wanted to listen to it a second time. Anyway, you can do that and get some CLE credits when you do.

So, you can go to crooked.com/strict_CLE. Again, crooked.com/strict_CLE, and you can learn more, and by the course there. Once you have purchased, you will head over to our partners at Lawline, which is an accredited CLE provider responsible for CLE administration to access it for course credit. So, happy continuing education. I love that it's now available for CLE credit in Texas. I just think,

“this is the best thing to do. It feels a little trolly. It doesn't feel like credits by listening”

just to scrutiny. But now onto the news. So, we're going to start with an important piece of good news. And there have been some bright spots recently. So, I guess this is one of them. And that piece of good news is the announcement that the Paramount Warner Brothers merger is on hold. So, this is a huge victory, although, at least right now, it may be a temporary one. And it's a victory that could have significant consequences for both news and entertainment.

And honestly, that means for democracy, which is obviously very much impacted by the information environment that we all live in. And the fact that this merger is on hold is a huge credit to

figures who really build a constituency and put pressure on states to make this move.

Federalists, and for the win, indeed. Just the background here at issue is the effort by Paramount, which is technically now paramount. Sky Dance after a 2024 merger to acquire Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers includes CNN and HBO and Warner Brothers pictures and just tons

“of other really important entities. So, back in 2025, Warner Brothers was looking for a merger.”

And initially, it looked like Netflix was going to be the lucky winner. But Paramount, which is run by the billionaire Trump by the David Ellison, ended up topping the Netflix bid. And emerging victorious. Paramount already includes CBS, Paramount Plus, tons of other properties. And this acquisition/merger would make it an absolute behemoth in the news and entertainment space. And possibly one with a very particular orientation since Ellison is a well-known supporter of Trump.

And we've all seen what's happened to CBS news, aka now free press or the Federalists, but on TV under Ellison's stewardship. Last month, the Trump DOJ not surprisingly gave its blessing to the merger, despite what struck some people as pretty serious potential problems under federal anti-trust laws, which are among other things supposed to protect against too much consolidation in any particular industry. Side note, this is part of why the loss of

“agency independence is a problem, or at least an illustration of the problem, because a formally”

independent agency, the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, also has authority over anti-trust enforcement. But now that the Supreme Court has solved the separation of powers by giving the President Control over the administrative state, except the Federal Reserve Board, the President can impress demands on the Federal Trade Commission more easily as well. Right, so this wholly controlled federal government of one Donald Trump, again, not surprisingly

blessed this merger, but a group of state attorneys general, which included California Attorney General Rob Bonta, former guests at our San Francisco live show, filed a lawsuit raising their own anti-trust concerns. They argued that allowing the deal to go forward would quote "extinguish competition" in big parts of Hollywood, and it would harm consumers, particularly movie goers and cable customers really across the United States. So they pointed out that this proposed deal

would combine two of the five legacy Hollywood studios, two of the five providers of basic cable, two of the five major film distributors, really reducing competition in all of those areas. They also noted that Paramount and Warner Brothers, right, that would be mergers, have long been competitors, and that kind of competition has actually been good for the industry

and for consumers. So they say in their complaint, basically, like, this is why the stakes are so high,

and I want to quote from it here, quote, "film and television are not commodities. They are principal means by which Americans encounter stories, ideas, and perspectives beyond their own experience. The competitive health of markets where professionally created media is produced, distributed, and exhibited determines not only price quality and output, but the breadth of voices and viewpoints that reach the public." Like we said, like genuine democracy implications.

The states asked for a TRO, a temporary restraining order to prevent the deal from closing, and in July, a California district judge granted that request for two weeks, and then last week Paramount announced that it would be pausing the deal pending the outcome of the trial that is now scheduled for next June. It's possible that as negotiations unfold, pretrial, CNN could be spun off, and that would be huge. It's also possible other changes could be made, or the deal might

fail completely, but what looked like a fate of complete is very much not, and that's because of a bunch of hardworking lawyers devising a serious legal challenge and filing it in the lower federal courts where law still happens. Once again, the lesson is, if you fight, you will sometimes win, indeed. So next piece of news we want to mention is the arrest last week of the Brothers Tate that is Andrew and Tristan. If you are fortunate enough not to know anything about these guys, these are

Manisfier figures who glorify and encourage, including broadcasts and these views to millions, tens of millions of boys and men, a violently toxic brand of masculinity and misogyny. So that's them, and these brothers found themselves arrested in Florida on charges of rape and sex trafficking in the UK. And just a quick digression. So I said, maybe you haven't heard about the Tates. I

actually had heard about them a little bit, but the first time I really encountered them was a few

years ago, when I was unfortunate enough to spend some time reading about them in conjunction with a book review that Leah and Melissa and I wrote of Josh Hawley's Manhood, if that's the title of his book, subtitle is the masculine virtues America needs. And in that review, I say for the

“Michigan Law review, which was titled, and I think, and I remember correctly, this was entirely”

creditum, absolutely. Excellent title. Absolutely. Yes. Of might and men, we refer to Hawley as an aspiring thinking man's undertate, which I think I still stand by, although he does in the book

I distinctly remember that kind of like research drawn to being my first exposure to both the

term and the place of the Manosphere. And, and that's a few years back, it has been regrettably much harder to avoid since then. Yeah, that was a formative experience, I would say. And in some ways, it's led me that I have a Manosphere adjacent slash Manosphere related project or at least a project that touches on the Manosphere that's in the works that I hope to be able to announce next month. And that is how I came across the bill, Pulti, with a swing, Deldo, and Boys End,

with Bill, Pulti, Fox clip. Be very glad you were not hosting with me that week, Kate, as I sprung that one on Melissa with zero warning. I was, I was not on that episode, but of course,

“listen to it. And I remember Melissa, like, listening and then saying something like, what the”

fuck did you just make me listen to? Yeah. Basically, speechless, I would have melted into the floor. I am not sorry that I was not hosting that episode. I'm sorry that I had to kind of listen to it. But I also really can't wait because I also know nothing about this project. I am excited for you to announce it to the world, and also to us. Yeah. So anyways, back to the dates. Yes. These vial figures are extremely well connected in Trump world. Earlier in the

administration, according to reporting by the New York Times, Megan Tuey and Isabella Kwai, lobbying by the Trump administration led to the lift of a travel ban in Romania, where the brothers were living at the time and where they were under investigation for coursing women into pornography and in one case, allegedly raping and beating a 15-year-old girl. After the travel restrictions were lifted, the dates were turned to the U.S. where they've been

in Florida and D.C. moving about freely, including in Maga circles. There have also been more

“allegations of abuse here, though. These arrests don't grow out of those allegations. Instead,”

the 38 new charges filed in the United Kingdom, bringing the total number of UK charges to 59. The dates are in federal custody in Florida. As the UK extradition process plays out, I believe as part of that process, a judge is going to have to determine they're eligible for extradition and then Britain, you know, that they have enough to actually extradite them. Now it seems that the dates won time friends in the administration,

Don Jr. Baron, Alina Haba, they're staying quiet as the dates are held in custody. Carolyn Levitt has also said from the White House podium last week that the White House would not interfere in the extradition process, but we will see if that holds. Strict scrutiny is bought to you by Wild Alaska company. We only cook fish for meat at home, but sometimes it's really hard to count on the grocery stores, at least here in Michigan,

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just head to JonesRoadBeauty.com and use code strict at checkout. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. One other piece of news we wanted to mention. Leah actually mentioned this briefly last week, but we wanted to spend another minute on the withdrawal of the subpoena, the administration issued to the New York Times over the Times's reporting on security concerns about the Kattari Jet

that is maybe a new Air Force one. I feel like now there are some doubts about that. Anyway, as Leah recounted with guest host Emily Amick, the withdrawal of the subpoenas came after a truly unbelievable hearing at which DOJ lawyers acknowledged, all kinds of things lawyers don't typically do, like omitting the fact that at issue were journalists records, that was in one request. They also mistakenly included reporters' spouses and in one case a parent in a records request

and then they just generally made a hash of procedures and protocols and the rule of law.

So, fortunately, after being basically felayed by the district judge during this hearing last week,

the government voluntarily withdrew the subpoenas. But as one of the Times lawyers noted in the hearing, these kinds of efforts can have chilling effects on vigorous reporting, whatever the ultimate legal disposition and that seems to be the point. So while we obviously, you know, celebrate the withdrawal of these subpoenas, it is an outrage that they were issued at all. And as a post-cript to the episode involving these subpoenas, the White House has now announced that Catari Force 1

will actually be offline for a stretch for some security upgrades. Carol Levitt referred to this as plain maxing. I mean, this is just the worst timeline, I know. But anyway, the point here is that that seems to fully indicate the Times is reporting about the security concerns that we're

what prompted the short-lip subpoenas in the first place. We also have some developments in the

C-shelves by the C-shore Instagram Jim Comi Post-8647 case. And yes, that is the description. So on the topic of government misconduct, there were some big developments this week in the case against former FBI director Jim Comi for his Instagram photo of some C-shelves, spelling out 8647. Comi represented by legendary Chicago lawyer and former special council Pat Fitzgerald is trying to get the case against him dismissed on the grounds of selective

prosecution and vindictive prosecution. And it's a port of that motion fist-gerald filed an affidavit on wednesday walking through a lot of the events in the case and they are wild. So just a few highlights. First, Trump is all up in this investigation, begging for details of the FBI's Comi interview from Air Force 1, obviously a presidential priority, not like anything else

is happening right now. Second, the feds allegedly tracked the location of Comi's phone,

“despite people inside the secret service saying it was "a bad idea" and legally dubious”

to do that. And to get authorization to do this, they told a judge that such surveillance "related to an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to a person, necessitating disclosure without delay of information relating to that emergency." I'm sure that representation is going to go over super well with a federal judge. Especially all from New York Times. Yes. And especially where you literally have communications

in writing, where you have members of the secret service saying that they don't legally do me exactly. Then they just go ahead and did it. Yes. And then part of what they did was surveillance that was conducted and that included a visit that Comi and his wife paid to the grave of their deceased son. I know that was one of many truly stunning details in this like 20 plus page, um, affidavit. Okay, but the maybe best part, I thought, I don't know if you read this

entire affidavit with your jaw on the floor, on my tip. The way I did, but I think I'd run it Thursday,

basically, the feds are so desperate to corroborate this notion that is obviously at the heart of their theory of the case that 8647 conveys a threat of violence that they paid a visit to one Sammy, the bull, Gravano, a former and New York mafia under boss who eventually turned cooperator and finally helped the feds bring down legendary mob boss, John Gotti of the Gambino, crime family. Um, this is an enormous event in like the history of New York City in the 1980s.

And one fun fact that I did not know about Sammy the bull, Gravano, is that so he turned state

sweetness. He really does bring Gotti down. And in the course of his really critical testimony,

he has asked how many murderers he participated in during the course of his involvement in organized crime. And the answer he gives is 19, 19 murderers. Okay, so this is the god, right witness. My government goes to do help shore up their case against former FBI director Jim

“Komi. So Gravano had been in witness protection for a while, but I think, you know, very shortly”

thereafter emerge. And it's like now just back in the general public. And I gather his now like kind of a magga guy. And so he was, I guess, happy to receive a visit for 25 minutes of conversation with some agents. And basically said to them, oh yeah, 86. That generally means to get rid of someone. And as a gangster, he was providing his expert opinion that it means to kill. Okay, this I shit you not is who is shaping up to be the star witness against Jim Komi. You truly cannot

make this up. It turns out that despite the unimputable testimony of the bull running searches of FBI records of like various mafia cases that the FBI and DOJ handled turned up 0 references to 86, which again, the theory that is being advanced here and that Gravano was seemed to be trying to corroborate is that Komi as a former mob prosecutor among other things would have to be familiar with

“this in group use of 86. And thus knew that he was conveying a threat to President Trump when”

photographing and posting the photograph of the seizures. Anyway, in addition to that episode, which again is my favorite, they're also some pretty compelling evidence of selectivity, which is that Amazon vendors sell a lot of items of various sorts that have 86.45, 86.46, 86.47. So Trump, then Biden and then Trump again. And the number I gather is if you add all of those different 86es together, like north of 200,000. And there have been zero companies, zero law enforcement

inquiries to Amazon over a single one of those products. I'm shocked. So this is the pending motion to dismiss the current prosecution against Jim Komi on the grounds that the prosecution is selective and vindictive. There's also a motion to dismiss the prosecution on the grounds that the

indictment is facially insufficient and a violation of the First Amendment protections for speech.

There's also a pending motion to unseal the grand jury transcripts. And we know those grand jury transcripts sometimes go kabooom, as we saw on the Broadview 6 case and many others. So this particular motion is on the grounds that the known irregularities in the old case against Komi out of Virginia. That was the perjury case that Lindsay Halligan bungled, including through some pretty wild misconduct before the grand jury. That included vouching, mistaken. The law, you know, fairly

normal fair for these Trump folk. And together with some of what's come out in discovery here, you know, they are asking the judge to authorize Komi to have access to the transcripts.

That may never happen because the case might be dismissed first, but I'm flagging that for now

that we are going to need to set aside a lot of time for it if we do get those transcripts because my guess is they're going to be really epic. I feel very cross-preserved here because I do think that this is a ridiculous bogus case that should be dismissed at the earliest possible juncture on the

“other hand. I think that both like the kind of periant entertainment value, but also like maybe”

the shaming value of seeing shaming the justice department officials who, yeah, whoever they were whatever they did in front of the grand jury, I just think we know that there's a lot of dodgy stuff happening in these grandjuries. I feel like there could be some real utility in see that. So I don't know what to read for. Chronology in the Broadview 6 case because there was a hearing at which the judge basically got the prosecution to agree to withdraw charges. But then I thought the transfer relief.

So that's not sure why I could say earlier. Yeah, you're totally right. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely right. So I think it could be we get why not both. Yeah, exactly. You're totally right. Okay. Some other news, I don't know if this is exactly news, but the formal announcement of it

grants to democratic leaning democratic voting states. This, of course, is another abusive government

“power. And this is just bombshell reporting that confirmed something that as I was suggesting”

had been pretty clear already, but is now beyond dispute. And that is when the administration canceled hundreds of grants last fall for clean energy projects, it targeted blue states or states that voted for Kamala Harris. The government admitted that the terminated grants with one exception, all quote, had a recipient occasion and or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2020 for election and has two

democratic caucusing senators and quote, these terminations the government noted were not quote, based on any programmatic statutory cost reduction or performance-based factor. I mean, they just did it for this is what this is what you often refer to as just energy he admitted. Yes, exactly. Nailed that, nailed that, nailed that, Kate. And this again should be a presidency ending scandal that the president is withholding, canceling federal funds, not for

any reason related to the actual substance or use of those federal funds, but just to penalize people who did not support him politically. Again, I just go back to the small scandal of Richard Nixon having, you know, what now are like mirror pennies to Jen update on political opponents and now you have Donald Trump literally canceling energy sustaining grants, two states and programmatic grants and it's just a poll thing. Yep. Yeah, um, wanted to remind everyone that one

Pam Carlin professor at Stanford Law School tried to warn us, so she testified at Donald Trump's

impeachment house right, she was testifying in the house of that amazing testimony. Exactly. And

during that testimony, she said, quote, imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that's prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding. What would you think if you live there and your governor

“asked for a meeting with a president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for?”

What would you think if that president said, I would like you to do us a favor. Now, she was talking about the possible favor of beginning an investigation into a political opponent, but the point still stands. We knew he was going to do this because he already did it. And that should have been disqualifying. It is. And it has just only exponentially increased this second time around. I'll be on the side for gone about that testimony, um, but it was great then.

Seared into my impression. Yeah. So last piece of big news, you wanted to cover was a blanch confirmation question mark update. Um, so A. G. nominee acting attorney general Todd Blanch, aka I'm his lawyer or was his lawyer? That guy is right now facing sort of one certain prospects in his quest to become the actual Senate confirmed attorney general of these United States. So we're recording this episode on Thursday afternoon. And as of now, there is a real question

whether Trump has the votes to get him confirmed. Now, there should be many, many reasons not to confirm Todd Blanch, but we don't want nor do we have time for a four hour episode. Um, so we will just focus on what seems to have the most legs, which is the appalling slush fund slash immunity

deal that purported to quote, settle the $10 billion lawsuit that Trump filed against his own IRS.

Recall that as the initial pushback to the announcement of that deal got steam, blanch went before Congress. This is an earlier testimony, not his confirmation hearing. And he assured them that the fund was not going forward. Then, jump ahead to the actual confirmation hearing, outgoing Texas Senator John Kornin seemed less than fully satisfied by just taking Todd's word that the fund wasn't happening. And made clear that he wanted something in writing to that effect.

Well, it seems the administration, or maybe just one Donald Trump does not want to provide that.

“So we may be at kind of an impasse. Now, I'm not totally sure about the math, but I think with”

Mitch McConnell out and not voting, and every Democrat presumably voting against Blanch, if you don't have Collins, who I think needs to vote against Blanch, have a chance to win her Senate seat, and Markowski, who had to seem to have some real doubts anyway, then Blanch absolutely needs both Kornin and Tillis, the two outgoing Republican senators, who are pretty clearly on defense. So I don't know, seems like a real question.

And on Wednesday night, we learned that the committee vote that had been scheduled had been delayed, and that is likely because seems to be because they're just we're not the votes. So it's not clear that Blanch is going to get a vote before August, and the ultimate fate of his nomination isn't clear. This cancellation, of course, was followed by a Trump truth post on Thursday. I am just going to quote it, quote Todd Blanch is a star, and everyone knows it. He has a potential

However, John Kornin of Texas and Tom Tillis of North Carolina, both of whom I refuse to endorse

also capitalize, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, or refusing to vote for

“this great nominee, who will remain in any event as acting. Remember both Kornin and Tillis voted”

for Merrick Garland, blah, blah, blah, blah, I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Kornin and Tillis are out of office. What that seems to suggest to me is that Donald Trump is so attached to his dead slushman that's supposed to be dead, and the promise of immunity that he's willing to throw his attorney general nominee and nomination under the bus over it. Like he would rather withdraw the

nomination and keep the prospect of this deal, and hopefully count on a different constituted Republican

controlled Senate after the midterms, because you know Kent Paxton would be down with that, and why not? So I am sorry. Yeah, it's seen, it does seem like he, you know, that blanch was literally up there saying, no, it's dead, dead, dead, in order to get confirmed,

“and Trump may just not agree with that. It may have just been entirely self-serving.”

I'm also, though, I'm so curious about Kornin and his motivations and his expectations here. So like, yeah, it was he just making a kind of pro-forma gesture of principle, and actually expected some paper to emerge that would give him the cover that he felt he needed in terms of his conception of self and standing and whatever else to vote, yes, on blanch. Or did he actually realize he was going to throw a ranch in the whole thing? I am genuinely unsure, like, but this is

incredibly revealing that this fairly straightforward ask, which is to just formalize what blanch

is always said, I don't need to formalize it. I said it in sworn testimony. That's as good as a

written document, but I actually turns out maybe it's not. Yeah, no, I agree. I'm also kind of curious what Kornin wanted and might expect, but who knows, like, maybe his vote alone might not be enough. We shall see. Yeah. And this news item, right? So that this potential nomination going down in flames over this IRS lawsuit and deal is a nice opportunity for us to note that the article that we author the two of us and Melissa titled unsettling the presidency and forthcoming in the

Northwestern University Law Review is now up on SSRN. We've mentioned it a couple times in the show. We have now finally posted it and it talks at length about the president's abuse of judicial and quasi-judicial processes of which this whole IRS episode is really just the most egregious example. Anyway, it's up there. You can read it if you'd like to. It's still in edits with Northwestern. So if you read it and you have feedback for us, please feel free to let us know.

Yes. One other update on the liquor cabinet, someone who's actually in the liquor cabinet, and that is Secretary Walejuice, Bear Caucus, raw milk, RFK Jr, is reportedly going to be hosting a cooking show. This cannot be true. Is this like an onion piece? No. No, it was recorded in the Hill. And I will try hate watching it once and that will probably be it, but I am curious. This reminds me of I once or twice took one for the team and listened to an episode of I think

“the now-defunct Ted Cruz podcast called "Cruz Control." Do you remember that podcast? You go,”

as I'm going to forget it, and I don't think he does any more, but I listen to an episode or two, anyway. And for the team, these are the things we do. So Leah, thank you very much for following this episode on YouTube, and I haven't watched it yet. Oh, there's one, there's one, actually. Oh, yeah. We don't know what he cooks to him. I don't, because I haven't watched it. I don't think it's, I don't know, like Raccoon penis or something, but I don't know.

Can't roll it out. Yeah. Anyway, well, we will revisit on a future episode. What exactly the recipes are? But in the meantime, stay tuned for our conversation with Rick Hassen about the president's effort to undermine the midterm elections. Strix scrutiny is brought to you by Renny. I'm intense. The world is what it is. This combines for a lot of stress and not a lot of outlets for the stress, which can mean some stress induced

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at UCLA. Rick, welcome to the show. It's great to be back with you. So, Rick, we want to talk to you about the application that Trump filed last week in the Supreme Court in Trump versus California. So, at issue in that application is the March executive order that would largely assert presidential control over federal elections, which just as a reminder to our listeners under the constitution are the province of the states subject to congressional but very much not presidential

override. Okay. Before we get into the details of the application that's pending before the Supreme Court, can you just remind us what this executive order reports to do? So, this is Trump's

second executive order. There was an earlier one on voting in 2025. Parts of that were put on

hold or killed by courts finding that the president didn't have authority to do certain things.

“The key parts of the second executive order relate to in one bucket non-citizen voting in”

another bucket rules for mail-in ballots. So, let me talk about the non-citizen voting piece first. So, federal law says that non-citizens can't vote. This executive order reports to direct parts of the federal government to assure that non-citizens are not voting. And it does so in three ways. First, it tells the Department of Homeland Security to create a list of citizens or at least 18 years old and provide those to states. Second, it says that the United

States Postal Service has to come up with a rule where they're going to get states to opt in to provide their own citizenship lists to the USP. As if they don't, USPS won't deliver mail ballots.

election officials who don't adequately police non-citizen voting. So, reading between the lines,

“it seems to be saying if a state doesn't match its list to the DHS list or doesn't sufficiently”

explain why someone's on their list, but not to the DHS list, they could be criminally liable. So, that's the citizenship piece. Yeah, and then there's also the implicit threat of and we won't deliver your ballots if you don't do what we want as well. But there's also a kind of a broader attack on mail-in voting in the executive order as well, right? So, yeah, so the executive order purports to require new security measures on mail-in ballots, including something called an intelligent

barcode, which allows for better ballots tracking. Some states already do this, not all states do. The 23 states and District of Columbia that are the plaintiffs in the California versus Trump case, a lot of them don't do this, and they've already purchased their envelopes for use in November. Yeah. So, at every stage, opportunities abound for huge amounts of disenfranchisement, which is probably the point. And so, unsurprisingly, a number of states whose election administration

would be impacted by the implementation of the executive order filed suit in late June. There was a decision out of a Massachusetts district court in joining parts of the executive order. What did that district court opinion say, Rick? So, what makes this case weird, procedurally,

“is that the executive order says USPS and DHS, you need to start a rule-making process,”

and your rules need to say X. Well, the rules have not come out yet. Now, we're, you know, getting into August here when states are heavily into actually getting their elections running. So, we're really running up against the clock here, but there's no rule yet from DHS or from USPS. And I believe that the USPS was supposed to have that rule out by July 29th, and it's not out. And so, what the district court said was, this is already hurting the states. They've got a

divert resources to prepare for the possibility. This rule's going to require what the executive order says should be required, and that's costing them money. It's costing them time. They have uncertainty. They've got standing no more rule-making. This can't go forward in time for the selection, but maybe we'll see what happens later on once the rule comes out as a future elections. That's a subject for a different day. Right. So, yeah, this is what's so sort

of strange about the posture of this case. And we'll talk about the application in a second. But

everything you're describing as Leah just mentioned seems like it has the potential for enormous disenfranchisement. The federal government, like this federal government, which we've just talked about, is like a clown show in all kinds of ways is supposed to produce the authoritative list of voters, which states already have on their own, and then provide that to states and states then have the burden of explaining any divergence between their list, which are probably much better,

and the federal list, which are cobbled together from federal data. But it's there. It's enormous potential for desabilization, but as you said, the rules that are directed by the EO haven't yet been promulgated. So, that is sort of the strangeness of the posture right now. Okay. So, this record says notwithstanding the fact the rules are not there. This is already burdening the states. There's a controversy here. They're standing here. We can enjoy and at least for

this election cycle, the implementation of these new rules. The appeals court declined to stay that district court order, and I was going to ask what did the administration do then, but of

course, that's a rhetorical question, because what it always does is it runs, two scotas, to ask

“scotas to bail it out, and that's what it did with the application that it filed. But as we were just”

sort of alluding to, the application actually isn't squarely about the underlying legality of the executive order, right, or about the president's authority to make these sweeping changes to federal elections, it's mostly an argument that the suit is premature. So, can you elaborate a little bit on that? Yeah, and I go even further than your question. I'd say that they don't defend the order at all, except the most general level to say that the president has an interest in assuring

that laws are followed in this election integrity, which is true as far as it goes. So, the argument is no standing. It's not right yet. You can't really sue, because we don't know what the rules are going to be. So, I say, some weird things, they say, well, the executive order only directed what should be in the proposed rule making, as opposed to what's in the final rule, and that rule making has to be according to the executive order, consistent with law. So,

maybe the postal service is not going to come up with a rule at all. So, let's let this process go forward. And as to the questions of the list that DHS is going to come up with with the non-citizens,

This doesn't direct anybody to do anything. You created a list. We created a list. There's a bunch

“of lists out there. That's all. No harm. Now, what's really, I think, interesting here is”

the injunction issued by the district court and the order that fell out to stay at the first circuit says, you know, this is only for the 23 states and D.C. So, the other states are still potentially bound by this. Nothing's stopping. These rules from coming out and they're not out yet. So, it would be nice to know what the rules are. And wondering if they're just holding those rules so that the plaintiffs in this case can't go to schools and say, look, now we see what the rules

are. Here's our concrete injury. Wow. So, Justice Jackson has ordered a response to this application.

It's due this week. I know predictions are always hazardous, Rick. But when do you think the court

might likely rule and do you have any predictions for how the court might rule? So, let me step back for a second and talk about that other case that's happening in the D.C. circuit. So, this was a case brought by political organizations and the district court, Judge Nichols said, you know, you democratic organizations, you haven't shown you're facing any harm yet. We don't know what the rule looks like yet. Unlike the election officials who have to prepare ballots, you don't have to do anything.

“And the D.C. circuit, in a panel opinion, I think it was at a Biden judge, and Obama,”

Judge, and the Trump judge, they all agreed, this is premature, but they dropped a little hint there and they said, of course, if the government comes through and they actually have a rule and it's really burdensome on the states. That would be a pretty good reason for us to act expeditiously and maybe stop that rule from going into a fair. So, you know, I could easily see the Supreme Court doing the same thing saying, hey, it's premature for states to bring this,

but come back in a week. So, that could happen. That would be kind of maybe, you know, I can imagine our Roberts Kagan compromise behind the scenes, like express real reservations about the merits, but say no stage just yet. The fact, Justice Jackson has done this before, the fact that she gave up what I would consider a more leisurely time, a full week to respond, maybe indicates that she doesn't think that this is so urgent for the federal government, or maybe she's shared

the timeline with the Justice as they agree. I mean, this is a key point. The social general asked

for an immediate administrative stay and just to explain that. He wanted to be able to keep going forward with the rule making while the Justice has continued this, and Court said no. So, that's kind of a very small thing read on which to say, maybe the Court's going to deny this. But the bottom line is, if even if the Court says, government, you can go forward and come up with your rule,

“that's just kind of punching this down the line for a week. And I think there's going to be a”

very strong case to enjoying the final rules if there's a reversal here. And that's because aside from the disenfranchisement point, it's too late. Kate, you mentioned, you know, how

good a job is the government going to do and coming up with these less. The USPS has never

had to decide which mail it gets to deliver. It's never administrative elections. We know that THS's list is full of false positives and missing people and people are naturalized and people with same names. And so it's just a, you know, I think the Latin term is a shit show. We would end up seeing if this was actually tried to be implemented for November. So even when this came out in the spring, I thought there's no way, even if courts allowed this that it could actually happen

in time. So you did say, I think Rick initially, that you wouldn't be that surprised if the court does stay the district court in junction, which would be even if not a sign that ultimately they're going to be able to implement these crazy provisions for November, that at least for now, they can move forward. And what does that mean in terms of the burden on states to begin to think about how they would come into compliance if the Supreme Court does allow the implementation of this

order before November. It seems insane to contemplate, but I think we have to. Well, I think they have to prepare as though it may come out, but there's going to be a point in time where that's can't be. So ballots need to be printed. They need to be put into envelopes. They're need to be returned envelopes printed, right? And yeah, I think maybe it was Massachusetts one of the states that spent three million dollars on envelopes. You know, it's like, it's expensive

to run an election. And there's these tremendous reliance costs. And so they would have to keep incurring those costs. But which is a reason why the court might just decide, this is too close to the election. It should not happen. But I think the standing arguments are not frivolous.

But the telling point that they kind of back away from what the orders are going to do, you know, and they don't defend on the merits what those proposed rules would do. They're even mentioned what they would do. They say, oh, the president wants certain things to be

“done and doesn't explain what even those things are. So, I mean, that really is a tell, I think,”

that they know that there's week to some merch. It reminds me of the birthright citizenship case. Yes. Where it was really all about, you know, this is the Costa case, not the, not the Barbara case. But the earlier case, where the question was, you know, can you show a universal injunction? Like a procedural thing. They went all in on procedure. And they won on procedure. And then

ultimately lost on the merits nine months later. Right. But and I had the same thought.

It does feel like they are running that playbook. Again, coming up the Supreme Court with a basically purely procedural argument that doesn't really focus on the substantive, you know, underlying substantive legality. And maybe this ends up the same way. Maybe they get a short-term procedure when they ultimately lose on the substance. But just as having this uncertainty out there with respect to the meaning of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, I think did real damage.

In even more concrete terms here, like the protracted uncertainty has real costs. And so, I just, it makes me very nervous to hear, you say? Like, yeah, the administration might not a short-term victory here. And so, you know, I think that it would be crazy for them to win

“at all. And I think it's really, I guess, important for us to underscore the two things. One,”

the court should be criticized, forcefully, if it allows even a week or two of implementation. I mean, not again, rulemaking implementation is not that the states have to do anything immediately. But they do have to engage in readiness immediately. So that that's something that we should criticize, firstly, but also understand that that does not mean ultimately that this executive order actually goes into effect. Can I add one other example to the mix? And it's not just the birthright

kind of process that this was calling to mind for me, where the administration got a short-term procedural ring that allowed them to come up with some guidance for how it would implement this

wildly illegal order that it was then never given the chance to implement, which I think, you know,

could be the same here. It was also reminding me of the challenge to the mass firings and agency reorganizations, where the Supreme Court also granted a stay application after a lower court had enjoyed an executive order. And it did so partially on the ground that that executive order asking for these mass layoffs and reorganizations had directed everything to be done in accordance with law, just like this executive order directs, you know, all rulemaking to be done in accordance

with law. And so I'm also very worried that there's going to be this two step where they give the administration this may be temporary when there are some noises about what the administration might do, that creates chaos that I don't know if it all can just be put back in the bottle, if and when the court goes ahead and blocks the order and the relevant rules later on. Totally. And one more thing, just as a former White House lawyer, can I just say that

as consistent with existing law, or that kind of thing is like, "Proform a for executive order."

They always say that. So that's not like any kind of concession that they're going to pull

back on like the full maximalist implementation of what they're trying to do, like that's just always in the orders. Okay, so Rick, can we ask you to situate this executive order and the fight against it in the larger context of this administration's efforts to interfere with slash undermine the upcoming midterm elections? This is not like a one-off. Yeah, that's true. Let me just go back for a second and respond to your earlier point.

Yeah. The kind of delay that we might see in the context of this executive order is going to be much shorter than what we saw in the birthright citizenship case, because the rules are going to have to come out within a couple of weeks. And it's even in the papers, the application, they say, by mid-August, we need to know what the rules are. So it's not going to be a very long delay. If it happens, that might meditate the Supreme Court just putting the stay in now,

because they know it's coming back to them on an even shorter fuse in a couple of weeks. The other thing I would say is that for the remaining states, the 27 remaining states,

“they're going to have to hustle, too. And I think they're not going to want to have to do this”

either to get their mail and ballots out. And so I wonder if behind the scenes, this rule is not even going to come out. So again, I just can't see how it's actually going to get implemented. So as much as I share with you, disdain for what the administration's trying to do, I'm a little bit less concerned that it's actually going to lead to these lists coming out and actual disenfranchisement. Yeah, so it has to be a bigger picture, yeah. Yeah. So I think we need

to understand the unique point we are in American history, where the greatest threat to the

one that came in and sent registrars down to Alabama to assure that a black voters could be in franchise in the 1960s and that observed elections and the federal government that has been doing cybersecurity assistance for states and localities. And that has been providing guidance on the best voting machines through the election assistance commission. All of this is being dismantled. So Trump fired the commissioners on the election assistance commission. It's a question whether

that's allowed or not. Is this a slaughter case or a cook case or something else? He's decimated CISA, which is the agency that deals with cybersecurity. So if it's actually serious about dealing with election problems, he would do something positive to try to help states have secure

“elections. He's doing the opposite. He's using his bully pulpit. This is one of the most important”

things to undermine confidence in the affairs and integrity of the process. And he's just trying it every stage to get the Senate to pass the Save America Act, which would be hugely disenfranchising. I should say voter ID laws have not all proven to be so disenfranchising. There's a lot of counter-mobilization things to take place. But documentary proof of citizenship laws, which require you to produce a birth certificate or a naturalization certificate and maybe a marriage license

in order to register to vote, those would be hugely disenfranchising. We know from experiences in Kansas and elsewhere. So he's trying the full court press. And I'm worried after the election, there are all kinds of things that he could try to do if it's a close election for control of Congress, including trying to seize ballots, including trying to lean on election officials. There was just a poll that came out from Gallup or think over a majority of Americans are worried

that there's going to be pressure on election officials to do the wrong thing. I mean, so it is just we are in a terrible state where the federal government is the greatest threat to the integrity. The good news is there are three bull works against interference. There are the courts who've done a pretty good job so far against election subversion, even as they've done a horrendous job on voting rights more generally. The states, because we have this diffused power,

Trump can't just go in and cancel elections if he wants to clear some emergency,

like some people are worried about the states and localities, wrong lectures. And then ultimately

it's the people. So if Trump is stupid enough to try and send ice agents to the polls,

“I think you're going to see people forming human chains and getting, you know, they will”

crawl over glass to vote. And I think we'll actually have the opposite effect. And I just say many of the distant franchising things that Trump is trying to do are most likely to hurt the base of Trump's support. And it's really counterproductive and I think it just shows it's not very smart political strategy. In addition to a moral abomination. Well, moral abomination. We don't know if it does, but again, it can't hurt to say it again,

but it has also maybe counterproductive for him politically. Yes.

Rekassin always great to learn from your expertise before we let you go. Can we ask you to

stick around and join us for recommendations or your favorite things of the past week? Sure. Awesome. Okay. So I will kick it off. I am finally reading the novel that's a couple of years old now Olga dies dreaming by social Gonzalez about halfway through and really really enjoying it. I want to shout out Michelle Goldberg's column from last week on the blocking of the Paramount merger, which we talked about earlier in the episode. He says a great shout out to our friend,

Norm Eisen, who's dubbed, I think it's the Attorney General of the Legal Response to Trump. Anyway, really like that. Mark Rufflow makes a cameo anyway. Very good column. Also, on a more serious note, a wonderful piece by Emily Golagowski. Can ballet help in the fight against Alzheimer's, a beautiful piece about dementia and Alzheimer's and movement and embodied kind of practice is

actually maybe a way to to stay that off. And then finally, I'm rereading Jeremy Shaw's masterful

creating the administrative constitution. And I am just getting enraged a fresh over the abomination that is the opinion in slaughter. Like this austere conception of presidential power and control that is the slaughter majority opinion just could not be less faithful to the actual reality of the standing up of the federal government and personnel within the federal government that the

“first decades of our history reflect. So if you want to get even mad or about slaughter, or just”

because it's an excellent book and you haven't read it, pick up. Jeremy Shaw is creating the administrative constitution. So my recommendations, I've got some music, Charlie XX, new album, music fashion film, Ben Describ does slacker girl rock. I like that. Also, Audrey Hobbert, who's the clown, not as new, but just gotten into it recently. And then Ben Whickler's recent book, this is the plan. And Jamal Buiz column, why do we tolerate Elon Musk's racist commentary? Great question.

He's got some important analysis. And finally, a recent Gallup survey shows that the Supreme

That's really saying something. I think Trump. I think he's around the same. Yeah, I don't know.

“Yeah. All right. Sorry, Rick, over to you. So when I'm trying to not think about Donald Trump,”

I've been watching Detective Holey on Netflix, which is kind of an Norwegian, noir serial killer type escapeous thing and lucky on Apple TV, which is a pretty good distraction. I've been writing a book for the last couple of years on American democracy from 1964 to 2024.

Working of the first draft of the last chapter on the 2024 election, I've been reading a couple

of books to explain Trump's hostlet's take over the Republican Party. One is by Seth Masket, called the Elephants in the Room. That is a great book, which includes surveys of Republican local Republican Party officials and what they think. And just, you know, how much Trump has been able to get around the traditional Republican hierarchy. The other book is by Julia Azari, who's a political scientist, as well. She's at Marquette. And she wrote a book called

backlash presidents, which is, it goes back, you know, a long time ago, back to Lincoln, and Johnson talks about, you know, when a president tries to achieve racial justice, whether that's Abraham Lincoln or Barack Obama that are often met in response with a backlash

president, whether that's Andrew Johnson or Donald Trump, and that often leads to impeachment,

and it's kind of cycle to American history. And it kind of puts the current moment into a broader historical American perspective. All right. Well, those are great recommendations. Rick, thank you so much again for joining us. We're going to take a quick break. And after the break, my conversation with Farad Diaz Teo, Senior Council and Legal Director for the Organization if, when, how? Strix scrutiny is about T. Bye. Huddle up. So one of my co-hosts, I'm not sure if

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Welcome back to Strix scrutiny. I am your lone host for this segment, Kate Shaw, and I am delighted to be joined by Farah Diaz Teo, who is the senior counsel and legal director at if-when-how, loyering for reproductive justice. She works there on strategic litigation, policy advocacy, and applied research to end reproductive criminalization, and ensure liberty, and dignity during pregnancy, and all of its outcomes. Farah, welcome to Strix scrutiny.

Hi, glad to be here. Okay, we're really happy to have you here because every summer since 2022, when the court overturned Rovers' Wade in Dobs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization, we've done deep dives on various aspects of the post Dobs landscape. We've had guests from other organizations working on various aspects of reproductive rights, and justice, so places like the Center for reproductive rights, and ACLU and Planned Parenthood and National Women's Law Center.

For folks who don't know your organization, if-when-how, can you start by just telling us a little

“bit about it, what's its background, and what sort of work did you primarily do before 2022?”

So we do direct legal services and strategic advocacy in service of reproductive justice to end state violence and people's reproductive lives. So we want to ensure that people are able to make decisions about their bodies and their families, and whether they carry pregnancy to term or not, and the ability to do so with dignity, and be able to do that without interference or violence from the state. We use all the tools of loyering to do that. We do litigation,

including criminal defense, and civil rights litigation, and we run the reprolegal help line, which serves as a direct source for people to get legal assistance and legal referrals.

We do all of this also with a network of law students, lawyers, and legal advocates across the

“country who can be mobilized in service of ensuring that people's reproductive lives are”

free from state violence. And so the organization has been around for a while now. It's over

20 years, and it's been through multiple iterations. And when when we first started out,

it was really an organization that was about organizing on law school campuses to get more classes about reproductive rights to really train lawyers in reproductive rights issues. It was lost students for choice at the beginning, and through various evolutions, it was lost students for reproductive justice, reflecting and understanding that true freedom isn't just about abortion right? It's but it was really about the full spectrum of people's ability to make decisions about

their lives and their bodies. And in 2019, I joined the organization. I was with a group called the CL Legal Team, which was the self-induced abortion legal team, which was, I guess, a sort of reprolegal startup, addressing criminalization of self-managed abortion. And we joined if one hell and brought litigation and policy advocacy to an organization that had mostly been organizing among the legal profession. And so now we do, we do all of those things together and really

try to use all of the tools at lawyers disposal to help improve people's lives in these really

critical moments where we see, unfortunately, they're increasingly facing violence by the state.

“Okay, so that's a great sort of history of the trajectory of the organization. I think I like many”

people who went to law school first became aware of it. I think maybe just after I was in or at the end of my time at law school as, you know, kind of chapters cropped up all over the country of students who are interested in abortion, reproductive justice more broadly. I mean, they're still chapters on lots of, and I don't know about all, but at least many law school campuses. Okay, but this is sort of implicitly what you said at the end, but maybe starting in 2019 and I think

increasingly in the wake of dogs, you all have pivoted to providing various kinds of legal services. And one kind of critical aspect of your work as I understand it now is actual criminal defense. And so

before dogs, there was still criminalization of various aspects of pregnancy, drug use during

pregnancy, right? So, so the criminal law did not just bring to life after 2022 when dogs removed constitutional protections for abortion, but there has certainly been much more serious efforts to criminalize because you don't have the constitutional backstop of Rovers' weight as imperfect and flawed in so many ways as it was. It did act as something of a shield against certain kinds of criminalization. And of course, in the wake of dogs, many states move to restrict or prohibit

virtually entirely or entirely abortion within their borders. So, what does kind of abortion criminal defense look like in the wake of dogs in today? Tell us about that work and maybe tell us

“about a couple of the representations that you all have handled. I think it's great. It's important”

that you mentioned that this is something that was going on before dogs. And even within the history of the organization, the CL legal team was founded in 2015, was working on these issues. We started taking on cases when I joined in 2016. This is work that I've been doing myself since 2009. And so I think that's surprising to a lot of people who really think of criminalization of abortion and of abortion seekers as something that really emerged from dogs. And certainly it's something that

has intensified since then. We have seen the nature of the types of charges that are used. Really change. We've seen prosecutors evolve what they're doing. So, what reproductive criminal defense looks like. I mean, it looks a lot like criminal defense that you see across the country in court rooms every single day. But it raises some particular issues. And this is a situation that's unique because it is one in which people are being charged with a crime for something that they did with their

own body, which is typically not something that our law allows. And in the pantheon of things that might be surprising to people about this, it might be surprising to most people to find out that ending one's own pregnancy actually isn't a crime in any statement country. But Nevada right now, Nevada is the only state that solves a crime on the books that penalizes people charges them of the felony actually for for ending a pregnancy after 24 gestational weeks. In many other states,

it is a crime to facilitate or to perform an abortion, but actually criminalizing the individual who is who seeks to end a pregnancy. That is something that you're saying is actually far more rare. It's really just the state of Nevada that at least on the books has a specific crime for doing that. Exactly, that's right. And that's something that goes back all the way to the common law. When we say abortion to crime or criminalizing abortion, we mean something that a person does

means is that prosecutors really have to contort the law and contort the facts to punish somebody

for having ended their own pregnancy. And so it's really using the legal system as a tool to enact abortion stigma and go after people using crimes, for instance, one of the crimes we see used frequently is concealing birth, which is these laws a little more than it doesn't states have such laws on the books that stemmed from laws from the 1700s and the 1800s that were intended to criminalize how to wedlock births. And this was based on a theory that somebody who had given

birth out of wedlock was more likely to kill an infant. And so essentially the state can do an end run around the necessity of proving that a person actually did homicide. That's the fundamental

“tenant of the criminal law. Right? You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person”

did the thing they're accused of doing well. A sort of neat patch for that that they thought

up back in the 1800s. It's some genius thought up back in the 1800s was, you know, to say, well, we're just going to charge you with a crime whether or not this, you know, an infant was born alive. And so these laws remain on the books, you know, a lot of times the laws, you know, they're just language there until some creative prosecutor decides that they want to dredge these laws out of antiquity and use them to punish somebody for something. There's no

other law at their disposal to do so. And then, you know, other types of crimes that we see laws that prohibit abuse of a corpse or, you know, that laws that are about really blunt, desecrating bodies. And that are intended to, you know, I'm, handfully, admittedly, rectify the harm that comes to the families of people who were deceased, the harm of the experience from

“having their loved ones body mistreated and desecrated. And instead, that's being used against”

people, you know, for instance, for experiencing a pregnancy laws and then privately disposing of their remains, like on their own property or, you know, we've seen situations where law enforcement have gone in and yanked the toilet and, you know, sort of excavated somebody's plumbing to pull fetal remains out to charge them the crime. After the experience, a pregnancy laws. And so this is one of those things that's really evolved in the aftermath of

dogs is that, you know, as, there's a, there's a paradox in policy, which is after dogs, the loss of that constitutional backstop meant that seats were racing to put in the most draconian abortion bands that they could. And many of them had this political compromise. It said, we're going to make it a crime to do an abortion. We're going to put two in prison for 99 years. It's going to be tantamount to homicide. We're going to, you know,

“really throw the book at people who do abortions, but we're going to put in their provisions”

that say that the abortion seeker can't be charged with a crime, can't be charged in the

complex, isn't in a face of liability, all of these things so that they can say, oh, no, we would never,

we would never criminalize somebody who is ended their own pregnancy. But then what you see on the ground is prosecutors using these other types of laws and saying, no, this isn't about punishing abortion, we would never. What we're doing is we're punishing somebody because they behaved incorrectly. And so that not only sweeps in people who ended their pregnancies, but people who have lost pregnancies as well. And so I mean, a case that really sticks out to me,

it breaks my heart is the woman whose case we worked on, who was imbibbling about pregnancy. Many people are for a lot of legitimate reasons. She had a lot of legitimate reasons to be imbibbling about a pregnancy. She was already living in poverty doing her best to take care of the children she already had and just could not carry this pregnancy to term. And the things that she tried to do in order to end the pregnancy are things that would not end a pregnancy. She took cinnamon,

pills, hoping that that would end the pregnancy. You know, they advise pregnant people don't lift heavy things so she was lifting heavy objects, right? And all the hoping and praying in the world is not going to end someone's pregnancy, right? Or else if it did, if you were that easy, as lifting heavy objects, we wouldn't be in the crisis that we're in today. Then she experienced a silver thread. And because of the fact that she had been imbibbling

about that pregnancy, prosecutors, well, this case was really actually driven by a police officer who had a personal vendetta. This is like very clear. This person had a personal vendetta and you know, kept approaching the prosecutors' office to get them to charge her with a crime. And you know, the way that she was caught was because she had buried the remains of her baby, whom she gave a name, buried on private property and had erected a cross and had posted

on Facebook, because she had been encouraged by people in pregnancy loss support group

the most human thing in the world is that even even when a person feels ambivalent about

pregnancy, when they lose that pregnancy, they still mourn that and grieve that and her grief was used to punish her, really robbing her, the dignity of that grief. Her story fortunately has a happy ending. You know, she played a guilty and that was set aside on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel, which is extraordinarily rare, which is how it goes to show like what a tremendous miscarriage of justice this was, you know, pun intended. And you know, eventually she received

a restitution from the state because of this wrongful incarceration. Wow, prosecution. So, okay, well that is obviously a very upsetting story and it's so you

“said Nevada is the setting. And I think that in the kind of in particular in the post dobs,”

landscape, we have this sense that there are awful things like you're describing happening, but that they're happening in Texas and Georgia and like a handful of other places is that accurate or are these prosecutor targeting using these like really old statutes of women who either have induced abortions or have just had pregnancy losses, like how broadly are we seeing this happen? Yeah. So, there are definitely clusters and I would say that the clusters online with where people

are less likely to have access to healthcare systems, where people are less likely to be able to access abortion care, where people are less likely to be able to access pregnancy related care. And seats where we hear from the most on our help line are the seats that you expect, you know, seats like Texas, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina, right, seats where people's access to care even prior to dobs was pretty abysmal and now is virtually non-existent. But I mean,

I will say like, this is something that can happen anywhere over the course of my career. You know, I've definitely worked on cases in New York, ever in cases in California.

“I think it's important to remember that a prosecutor's fidelity of their idea to a law on order”

isn't necessarily something that's dictated by politics and, you know, we've had prosecutors who say, "I'm pro-choice, my wife held a fundraiser for a plain parenthood. This is not about criminalizing abortion." And this is about somebody who did something wrong. And, you know, the seat needs to respond to that. And so, I mean, I think it really speaks to the fact that we have to be continually vigilant everywhere we are. And also just, I think that's maybe, that's one of the lessons from

dobs, too, is that like, you know, sorry, decisive, can be yanked out from under you. The opposition wishes and works hard enough. And so that means that we cannot not afford to be a sleep at the wheel in any way, right? I mean, so we can't afford to have laws like the types of laws that are used against people now to punish them in the aftermath of an abortion or a pregnancy loss. Like, there is no excuse to continue to have these laws on the books. When we know exactly how

“they're used against people, right? I think that's such a broad important point, which is, I think”

that right while Rowe was the law of the land, legislators in a lot of states, like, just didn't think they needed to repeal a lot of the laws that were, you know, possible to actually enforce under Rowe. There's obviously an argument that Congress should have codified a federal protection for abortion. But again, in the, you know, kind of world of Rowe, it didn't seem to a lot of people necessary. And I think both repealing the kind of damaging and destructive laws and codifying

either by statute or in constitutions, protections while you have political power is critical

because the judicial wins can and do change quickly. So I do think that's a really important takeaway. And it sounds like in a lot of the cases that you're seeing, the cost of just not worrying about cleaning up statute books that contain these, like, really appalling, you know, one's dormant laws is sort of being borne by the individuals that are reaching out to you guys for legal help. Okay. So two other things I wanted to ask you about one, you mentioned

the hotline, can you tell us a little bit about your hotline? And then bail is something that I know that individuals charge with different kinds of reproductive crimes have had to come up with, what is your role in bail funds? I love to talk about the hotline because I am really part of the work that my colleagues on the hotline do. So they essentially they provide legal surfaces for any variety of issues that a person might have related to their abortion, their pregnancy loss,

their birth. When the helpline first started out in 2018, was when we took our first call,

it was really created to address people's concerns about criminalization for self-managing

reprolegal helpline, you're going to get a lot of different types of reprolegal issues that people have.

“So it wasn't just people who were concerned about ending up pregnancy, whether they could”

get in trouble for ordering abortion pills. The sorts of questions people have, just the general is abortion even legal in my state. But we were hearing from people who were being denied care. People who were really struggling to figure out what even was available to them in their state. People who were being sent into the parking lot to bleed out until they could qualify for miscarriage management. So recently, we spoke to abortion every day about a case that came up where

person was pursued by the state for trying to help her daughter access abortion care and the fee state violence from the family regulations system. And the young person wasn't able to get the abortion intended because of the state's interference. So really the variety of issues that we see is not just restricted to people unable to access abortion care being criminalized for doing so. It's people who are afraid that people whose immigration status is now being

called in a question because of decisions that they've made in the reproductive lives. People who are losing their children. These are all reproductive justice issues. It's not just about abortion care. So you can handle, you take calls and you can provide people with some guidance or direction for problems or questions running kind of the gamut that you just sort of walked through. Yeah. So they're able to provide rapidly global response. They may refer

folks for criminal defense to our litigation team or they may also drop on our network of lawyers, law students and advocates to place people refer them out to cases because we have lawyers across the country. So if it's an issue that's not specifically something we work on, something that's within our capacity, we can help them find a lawyer who's going to understand the issue's underlying this, right? Because it's not all lawyers are the same. And so our team that runs our

network does a really good job of ensuring that people are going to, if we refer somebody from the reprolegal help line, they're going to be met with somebody who's going to take their case and who's going to deal with them with compassion without stigma or judgment. Yeah. And so I mean the numbers of calls really exploded after 2022. I think that since Tom's they've answered more than 12,000 calls and you know calls from from all across the country they're able to

answer people's legal questions across the country and in U.S. territories. And they've supported over 2500 colors from Texas alone. I pick on Texas because it's my home state. But yeah,

it's a the work is is really critical work. So the people know that they're not alone. I think

that that's one of the most important things is like you know fundamentally nobody should need a lawyer to get an abortion. But if people are having an issue the state, you know if they are facing state violence they should be able to have a lawyer who's going to, who's going to understand

“them, meet them where they're at and provide rapid support. And so that's what they do.”

Okay, well we will of course include a link to the reprohelp line in our show note. So people are able to access that if they meet it and they're the bail fund. So so if people are targeted for any of this conduct, find themselves actually incarcerated and needing to post bail, I gather you guys are also able to help there. Yes, absolutely. And this is something that's

really critical in these cases. So across the board, people are more likely to stay out from

behind bars if they are banking their communities while they're waiting for their case to be resolved. And you know in some of the cases that I've worked on from the time of arrest to the time that their cases resolved, I had clients who had been incarcerated for three years more, right? Like this can take a very long time, somebody's not able to afford the costs of their own freedom.

“And so that's why the reprolegal defense fund exists in 2025 alone. They paid out $2.3 million in”

bail and bond. I mean our system of cash bail is one that's really designed to extract money from people who can at least afford it. So we stand with them and provide more than just that as well because there are many other costs associated with being involved in the criminal legal system, in the family regulation system, very often, you know, people need things like money for

may have to pay for the costs of being under community supervision. So having to pay for the cost of an ankle monitor or having to pay, you know, pay fees related to drug tests or things like that. And these are these are the things that the reprolegal defense fund helps people that helps you will bear those costs so that they're more likely to be able to fight and win the case against them. Okay, what in this really difficult line of work that you do is giving you hope right now.

I feel like we all need places to look for hope because the work is essential and it's helpful.

If we can find these points of light, so what gives you hope? Yeah. One of the things that's giving me a lot of hope right now is the real groundswell of support and the outpouring of solidarity that we've seen from people in other countries being of my skin to set myself and having grown up in Texas, the cross border solidarity between activists in Texas and activists in Mexico and, you know, especially in a moment where we were facing such retrogression and

they had made so much progress in the law and sort of the, you know, the message of solidarity that's like we've, we've been where you are, we have solutions, we have support and we're not going

to let borders stop us abortion is something that has always happened since before the law had

“anything to say about it and it's unstoppable and, you know, we're there for you. I think that's”

something that's been really incredibly moving and I think, you know, that's something that wasn't, we're sure to do that. It continues to the present day and seeing, you know, the ways in which our movements have learned and evolved and really sort of reached out. I think, you know, there is nothing that is good about row being overturned. There's like, I'm not going to be one of those people who's like, well, you know, they're just sort of aligning there, but what it did

do was it forced us to look for other solutions and really look beyond American exceptionalism and see what other worlds are out there. And so, you know, the fact that we are now really contending with that in a serious way, I think that's, that's something that gives me hope, especially in the moment where, you know, I mean, the rise of fashionism, like all the, the many, the parade of

“horrible that we're seeing right now, seeing that we can envision other futures, I think is really”

getting me out. Right. I think it is true that the attacks on all the freedoms are connected on democracy, on liberty, on autonomy, and reproductive freedom, and that that's true here and that that's true elsewhere. And there are places that feel like they are on the other side of something truly horrifying, and we are on the wrong side of it, and yet like learning about how one makes a path out from sort of other traditions is incredibly helpful and important right now. So that kind of cross-border

solidarity, I think, is a lesson about kind of repro-justice and also a broader kind of lesson. Maybe the last kind of question is how can people who are hearing about the work that you all are doing help? So there are lots of ways of focusing on help. If you are interested in this, if you feel like this is the work for you and your life, please come join us. We have network that includes law school chapters. I'm sure probably you have a lot of legal nerds saying right now, I think,

you know, your constituency and ours or there's a overlap. So if there's a chapter on your law school campus, join it. If there is not, you can start it. We can help you do that. If you are a lawyer or even, and advocate, you don't have to be a lawyer, you can join our network, so that you can help, you can be one of the people who provides direct support when people need it.

And then, you know, certainly I always have to make a plug for just supporting the work of

the Repro legal defense fund. Don't need to do that. That's, you know, your dollars are extraordinarily important. The person who directs it says it costs the state nothing to ask for $2 million. It costs

“us $2 million. And so, certainly, like if you want to provide that support, that is something”

we're certainly, it, it is deeply meaningful to the people who receive that help. So, great. And on the student chapter, points shout out to the Penn student chapter. They've been doing these regulatory comments for the last year or two, and they've done like incredible comments when the administration is proposing various kinds of measures to kind of push back and help create a record for litigation, really important work. And yeah, so find your chapter or start one if

there isn't if you are a lost student or on campus at a law school. All right, well, we'll have to leave it there. Faraday, as Taio, thank you so much for the work that you do and for joining me for this conversation. It's such a pleasure. That's all for this week's stay tuned. We'll be back

strict scrutiny is a crooked media production, our show is produced by Melody Raoul and Michael Goldsmith, Kenny Muffett, Adam Lippert and Eric Shoot. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the writer's Guild of America East.