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Loose group of white nationalist activists, provocateurs, and internet trolls

Political party

Groypers, sometimes called the Groyper Army, are a group of white nationalist and far-right activists, provocateurs, and internet trolls who are notable for their attempts to introduce far-right politics into mainstream conservatism in the United States, their participation in the 2021 United States Capitol attack and the protests leading up to that, and their extremist views. They are known for targeting other conservative groups and individuals whose agendas they view as too moderate and insufficiently nationalist.[3][4] The Groyper movement has been described as white nationalist, homophobic, nativist, fascist, sexist, antisemitic, and an attempt to rebrand the alt-right movement.[2][5][6][7]

While Groypers are a loosely defined group with no formal leadership structure, they are generally considered to be followers of Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist, far-right political commentator and podcaster.[8][2] Michelle Malkin, a conservative blogger and political commentator, has referred to herself as the "mommy" of the Groyper movement.[9][10]

In February 2021, the Groyper movement splintered between Nick Fuentes and Patrick Casey over fears of infiltration by federal informants and doxing at the 2021 America First Political Action Conference, held by Fuentes. Jaden McNeil of America First Students joined in support of Fuentes' conference and accused Casey of disloyalty to Fuentes.[11][12]

Groypers are extremely conservative and critical of more mainstream conservative organizations, which they believe to be insufficiently nationalist and pro-white. Groypers and their leaders have tried to position the group's ideology as being based around "Christian conservatism", "traditional values", and "American nationalism". Some Groypers downplay the extremism of their positions, and instruct others on how to engage in entryism and radicalization tactics such as slowly introducing their targets to increasingly extreme ideas. Despite attempts to brand themselves more moderately, the group is widely recognized as white nationalist, antisemitic, and homophobic.[1][15]

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Groypers blame the mainstream conservative movement as well as the political left for what they view as "destroying white America". They oppose immigration and globalism. Groypers support "traditional" values and Christianity and oppose feminism and LGBTQ rights.[1]

Describing the relationship between Groypers and the Republican Party, Nick Fuentes has stated, "We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party." He summarized his political ambitions by stating, "We have got to be on the right, dragging [moderate Republicans] kicking and screaming into the future. Into a truly reactionary party."[16]

Groypers are named after a cartoon amphibian named "Groyper", which is a variant of the Internet meme Pepe the Frog. Groyper is depicted as a rotund, green, frog-like creature, often in a sitting position with its chin resting on interlocked fingers.[17][18] There is some disagreement around the specifics of Groyper: it is alternatively said to be a depiction of the Pepe character,[5] a different character from Pepe but of the same species,[19] or a toad.[17] The Groyper meme was used as early as 2015, and became popular in 2017.[20]

In 2018, a group of computer scientists studying hateful speech on Twitter observed the Groyper image being used frequently in account avatars among the accounts identified as "hateful" in their dataset. The researchers observed that the profiles tended to be anonymous and collectively tweeted primarily about politics, race, and religion. Similarly, they detected that the users were not "lone wolves" and the individuals could be identified as a community with a high network centrality.[21] The same year, Right Wing Watch reported that Massachusetts congressional hopeful Shiva Ayyadurai had created a campaign pin featuring a variation of the Groyper image, which RWW described as an attempt to appeal to the far-right activists on 4chan, Gab, and Twitter who had adopted the meme.[22]

Followers of Nick Fuentes began to be known as Groypers beginning in 2019. Fuentes' followers are also sometimes called "Nickers".[2][23] In September 2019, Ashley St. Clair, a "brand ambassador" for the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was photographed at an event featuring several allegedly white nationalist and alt-right figures, including Fuentes, Jacob Wohl, and Anthime Gionet, better known as "Baked Alaska". After Right Wing Watch brought the photographs to Turning Point USA's attention, the organization issued a statement declaring that it had severed ties with St. Clair, and condemning white nationalism as "abhorrent and un-American".[24][25] At the 2019 Politicon convention, Fuentes tried to access several of the Turning Point USA events featuring its founder Charlie Kirk, including a line to take photos with Kirk and Kirk's debate with Kyle Kulinski of The Young Turks. Security repeatedly barred him from being allowed anywhere near Kirk, with Fuentes accusing Kirk of deliberately suppressing him in order to avoid a confrontation, as Fuentes had grown critical of Kirk's positions, which he believes are too weak.[18]

In the fall of 2019, Kirk launched a college speaking tour with Turning Point USA titled "Culture War," featuring himself alongside such guests as Senator Rand Paul, Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, Lara Trump, and Congressman Dan Crenshaw.[1] In retaliation for the firing of St. Clair and the Politicon incident, Fuentes subsequently began organizing a social media campaign asking his followers to go to Kirk's events and ask provocative and controversial leading questions regarding his stances on immigration, Israel, and LGBT rights during the question-and-answer sessions, for the purpose of exposing Kirk as a "fake conservative". At a Culture War event hosted by Ohio State University on October 29, eleven out of fourteen questions during the Q&A section were asked by Groypers.[26] Groypers asked questions including, "Can you prove that our white European ideals will be maintained if the country is no longer made up of white European descendants?" and "How does anal sex help us win the culture war?"[27] Fuentes' social media campaign against Kirk became known as the "Groyper Wars".[5][17] Kirk and others at Turning Point USA, including Benny Johnson and spokesman Rob Smitha gay black veteran of the Iraq War, and Kirk's co-host at the Ohio State speaking eventbegan labeling the questioners as white supremacists and anti-Semites.[18][28]

Another Turning Point USA event targeted by the Groypers was a promotional event for Donald Trump Jr.'s book Triggered, featuring Trump, Kirk, and Guilfoyle at the University of California, Los Angeles in November 2019. Anticipating further questions from Fuentes' followers, it was announced that the originally planned Q&A portion of the event would be canceled, which led to heckling and boos from the mostly pro-Trump audience.[29] The disruptions eventually forced them to cut the event short after 30 minutes, when it was originally scheduled to last for two hours.[30][31][8]

Groypers' targets for heckling quickly expanded beyond Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA.[17] Groypers began targeting other mainstream conservative groups and individuals, which they sometimes collectively call "Conservative Inc.", including events hosted by Young America's Foundation and their student outreach branch Young Americans for Freedom, which included such speakers as Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, and Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch.[3] Questions posed to their opponents often focus on topics including United StatesIsrael relations, immigration policy, affirmative action, and LGTBQ conservatives.[4][5] They regularly use anti-Semitic dogwhistles in their confrontations with other conservatives, including numerous questions about the USS Liberty incident, and references to the "dancing Israelis" conspiracy theory alleging Israeli involvement in the September 11 attacks.[35][1]

In December 2019, Fuentes announced and held the Groyper Leadership Summit in Florida. A small group attended the event in person, and attendees also joined via livestream. The event was held at the same time and in the same city as Turning Point USA's Student Action Summit (SAS); Groypers argued with SAS attendees outside of their venue, and Fuentes, Patrick Casey, and some Groypers were removed from the SAS venue after attempting to enter. At the Groyper Leadership Summit, Fuentes, Casey, and former InfoWars contributor Jake Lloyd spoke about the Groypers' strategy and ideology. While outside the venue where Turning Point's event was being held, Fuentes eventually crossed paths with Ben Shapiro, who was on his way to the event with his pregnant wife and two children. Fuentes confronted Shapiro over his Stanford speech, while Shapiro refused to acknowledge him.[37] Fuentes faced widespread condemnation from politicians and various punditsincluding Nikki Haley, Meghan McCain, Sebastian Gorka, Megyn Kelly, and Michael Avenattifor confronting Shapiro while he was with his family.[38]

In January 2020, Groyper and former leader of Kansas State University's Turning Point USA chapter Jaden McNeil formed the Kansas State University organization America First Students. The group, which shares a name with Fuentes' America First podcast, was conceived at the Groyper Leadership Summit, and Groyper leaders have helped promote the group. The America First Students organization, which states it was formed "in defense of Christian values, strong families, closed borders, and the American worker," is considered to push the Groyper movement.[6][7]

In February 2020, Fuentes spoke at several events that were held as rival events to the Conservative Political Action Conference. One such event, hosted by the online publication National File, featured Fuentes, Alex Jones of InfoWars, and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.[39][40] Fuentes hosted the first annual America First Political Action Conference, which included such speakers as Patrick Casey, former Daily Caller author Scott Greer, and Malkin.[41]

Groypers are very active online, particularly on Twitter, and have engaged in targeted harassment against opponents.[26] Financial Times reported that many Groypers use "deceptively anodyne" Twitter biographies, describing themselves in terms that downplay their extremism, like "Christian conservative".[42] In April 2020, The Daily Dot reported that Fuentes and other Groypers had begun to move to the video sharing platform TikTok, where they streamed live and used the "duet" feature to respond to Trump supporters. Groypers particularly targeted one left-wing teenage girl for harassment, which began on TikTok but spread across platforms.[42][43] Fuentes and some other Groyper accounts were banned from TikTok shortly after the Daily Dot article was published.[44]

The Groyper Wars earned widespread media attention after the UCLA incident with Donald Trump Jr. Chadwick Moore of Spectator USA commented that the ordeal revealed deep divisions within the American right among young voters, particularly with regards to the political beliefs of Generation Z, or "Zoomers". This divide, Moore claims, is due to the Groypers viewing Charlie Kirk and others in the mainstream conservative movement as "snatching the baton and appointing themselves the guardians of 2016's spoils", despite holding beliefs that Fuentes and his followers believe to be in conflict with then-President Trump's "Make America Great Again" agenda.[45] Another Spectator author, Ben Sixsmith, claimed that Turning Point's unwillingness to respond to controversial questions, and subsequent use of insults to dismiss their critics, revealed the organization's hypocrisy after having "promoted themselves as the debate guys".[46]

Several mainstream conservative commentators also weighed in on the matter. Addressing the increase in attention towards the far-right due to the aggressive questioning of Kirk, Ben Shapiro gave a speech at Stanford University in which he attacked Fuentes (without naming him) and his followers as essentially being a rebranded version of the alt-right.[47][48][49] Representative Dan Crenshaw similarly referred to the questioners as "alt-right 2.0" while American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp said that "there is no place in our conservative movement for those interested in fomenting hate, mob violence, or racist propaganda."[50] Conversely, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin wrote an article for American Greatness attacking Kirk for his immigration policies, and particularly his stance that green cards should be awarded to immigrants who graduate from American universities.[51] After defending Fuentes and his followers, Malkin was fired as a speaker for Young America's Foundation, a rival organization to Turning Point whose events had also been targeted by Groypers.[52] Malkin later would refer to herself as a mother figure among and a leader of the Groypers.[53]

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Groypers - Wikipedia

'Jackass Forever'

Jackass Forever is the first full piece of Jackass media I have consumed. I have no objections to the MTV show or the four movies (counting Bad Grandpa) which it spawned, but it was never at the top of my catch-up list. I checked out Jackass Forever last night partiallybecause my middle son (age ten) had an interest and I thought it would be valuable to see it through his eyes. Well, he cackled like a hyena for a good 90 minutes (that the terrific prologue satirizes his favorite sub-genre, the kaiju flick, was a bonus), andI didnt feel terribly guilty for taking him. I cant speak to the earliest Jackass shows or movies, but this implicit legacy sequel has running through it a strain of sincerity and a skewed wholesome sensibility.

Yes, this is an R-rated movie, complete with R-rated profanity (although not as much as I might have expected), some unapologetic gross-out gags and quite a bit of male nudity. But its also presented as a kind of a kind of old friends reuniting to relish each others company comedy, a warm, upbeat and guys supporting guys passing-the-baton saga. Maybe its because these merry pranksters have reached middle age and are generally sober, maybe its because the world outside has devolved into our current hellscape, with many of the earlier generations moral scolds now arguably leading the charge toward fascism. Whatever the reason, the self-mutilating antics that once stood for a nadir of kids these days junk food culture now plays like an almost healthy and non-toxic form of male bonding. They are only hurting each other.

The film again stars Johnny Knoxville (now greying and looking every bit his still-very-handsome 50 years of age) and Steve-O (now 13-years sober). Ryan Dunn died in a car accident in 2011, while Bam Margera was fired/disinvited due to personal issues. There are five newbies this time, including Eric Manaka, Davon Wilson and Rachel Wolfson. The film makes no grand statements about this, but they are the first not a white guy members. The picture gently acknowledges newfound cultural sensitivities without shaming fans of their earlier exploits.I chuckled as Wolfson screams Consent... Consent!! as Chris Pontius refuse to remove a creature from her breast without her permission. Im not sure why Jasper Dolphin's father, an ex-con, does his big stunt while dressed in what looks like an orange prison jumpsuit, but I digress.

Yes, we do see quite a bit of physical pain and arguable psychological torture in this latest go-around. Considering how often our diabolical ringmaster (Johnny Knoxville, mostly on the sidelines gleefully setting up the carnage this time) lies, deceives or misleads his friends for the sake of a gag, youd think that anyone on set would be walking around in a perpetual state of quivering anxiety. There are a few moments where I wondered how a major studio allowed them to stage a given scene or take a certain risk, as there were set pieces that could have absolutely gone wrong in a ghoulish fashion. No spoilers, but theres an unexpected injury so severe near the end that I wondered to myself if we were about to get a Kylo kills Han legacy sequel beat.

I preferred the stunt work and pratfalls a bit more than the extended endurance tests. And there is also some repetition, as even I recognized a few repeated gags and the films closing credits highlight some then and now comparisons. We do get some guest stars in the form of Eric Andre, Tyler the Creator and Machine Gun Kelly, all of whom remark that theyve gone from watching Jackass as kids to cameoing in this film as adults. That goes likewise for the younger, newer cast members, even if the film only subtly treats itselfas a possible series finale or new beginning installment. Whats impressive is how returning to this sandbox after 11 years (Jackass 3-D opened in October 2010) doesnt feel like a defeat, but rather just a reaffirmation of the groundbreaking franchises cultural relevance.

Its no secret that the do it yourself pranks and self-injuries that turned Jackass into a sensation paved the way for an entire genre of goofy folks doing silly things for our amusement online videos. The entire YouTube-specific epic fail genre, specially where the participants set out to hurt themselves or flame out in spectacular fashion (which makes this different from the more accidental likes of Americas Funniest Home Videos or the sports blooper industry), can be traced back to Knoxville and his merry pranksters. I cannot say whether Jackass Forever, arriving almost 22 years after the first televised episode of the show, accurately represents the franchise. But it is charming, funny and clever enough, with a live-and-let-live masculinity looking outright enlightened compared to the online troll/alt-right/incel industrial complex, tomake me want to find out.

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Review: 'Jackass Forever' Is R-Rated Fun For The Whole Family - Forbes

Until last week, Spotify-using fans of Neil Young could access a vast 54-year catalogue of songs, which attracted more than 6 million listeners a month. Now all that remains are appearances on compilations and, for some reason, a 1989 live album. Enraged by what he saw as the promotion of life-threatening Covid misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the Canadian singer-songwriter issued an ultimatum: They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.

As Young surely knew, Spotifys choice was a foregone conclusion. Rogans show, which the streaming service acquired for $100m in 2020, is its most popular podcast, with an average listenership of 11 million per episode. In its first month, it accounted for 4.5% of all podcast listening on Spotify worldwide. For Spotify, which is banking on podcasts to drive subscriptions, he is a star of the magnitude of Adele.

He has also become explosively controversial. Youngs walkout, followed later in the week by Joni Mitchells exit in solidarity, was prompted by an open letter calling on Spotify to counter Covid misinformation after Rogan recorded an interview with Dr Robert Malone, a virologist who has become a rightwing media star for his opposition to vaccines. The director general of the WHO tweeted in support of Youngs boycott: We all have a role to play to end this pandemic and infodemic.

Young, the most ornery of all boomer rock legends, is the perfect antagonist. He is an obsessive audiophile who temporarily removed his music from all streaming services in 2015 and a purist whose 1988 single This Notes for You decried licensing songs to commercials. As a survivor of childhood polio, he might also have particularly strong opinions about vaccines. Whats more, he can afford to take the considerable financial hit. He has a loyal fanbase that will pay for top-dollar boxsets and subscriptions to his website archive. Last year, he sold 50% of the rights to his song catalogue to the investment fund Hipgnosis for a reported $150m. For less comfortable artists, Spotify could be too big to quit.

In the opposite corner is Rogan, a former comedian and martial artist who has recorded close to 1,800 episodes since launching his podcast in 2009. His guests have included Kanye West, Elon Musk, Quentin Tarantino and Bernie Sanders. But he has also entertained figures from the alt-right such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the Proud Boys co-founder Gavin McInnes and the provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Rogans politics are broadly contrarian with a rightward skew. He is a bullish libertarian who initially backed Sanders in the 2020 election but ended up preferring Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Last April, Rogan said that if you are young, fit and healthy, then you do not need a vaccine, attracting criticism from Bidens chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci. Im not an anti-vax person, Rogan responded. I believe theyre safe and encourage many people to take them. Yet he has still booked anti-vaccine guests.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Spotify has never claimed to have an ideological commitment to free speech. In 2017, following a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, it began removing music by hate bands. The following year, it introduced a somewhat incoherent hate and hateful conduct policy, designed to promote openness, diversity, tolerance and respect. Spotify may be deeply inconsistent but it has established a precedent that it takes responsibility for the material it serves up. Last week, a spokesperson boasted that Spotify had removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid since the start of the pandemic, a startling number.

Not Rogans though. Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, has framed his hands-off approach as an anti-censorship issue, telling US news website Axios last year that Rogan was no different to a big-name rapper: And we dont dictate what theyre putting in their songs either.

Musicians have had an ambivalent relationship with Spotify since its US launch in 2011. Some are grateful to it for saving the music industry after a decade of digital piracy and plummeting sales while others claim its measly royalty rates favour only the megastar elite. The pandemic has re-energised its critics. Abruptly deprived of concert income, many artists looked again at their royalty statements and demanded a fairer deal.

The Young-Rogan contretemps is a PR headache of a different order, one that exposes the tensions inherent in Spotifys aggressive move into podcasting and decision to make music a subset of audio. Now artists and subscribers are effectively funding politically inflammatory content in the middle of a global health crisis. The rappers mentioned by Ek havent embraced Covid misinformation and would not reach 11 million listeners if they did. For a company proud of its progressive record, doubling down on Rogan on the pretext of a sudden dedication to free speech appears disingenuous, cynical and greedy.

While still the largest streaming service by far, Spotify has been slowly losing market share to its rivals. Podcasts were meant to reverse that slide but they could make things worse by thrusting Spotify on to the culture-war frontline. While the company has presumably calculated that the financial benefit of sticking with Rogan outweighs the reputational cost, many users have cancelled their premium subscriptions. The companys bullshit is just too much to bear now, tweeted the popular YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano.

The backlash is calling into question what exactly Spotify has become, or was all along. The US musician Damon Krukowski tweeted that Spotify are not in the music business, they are a tech platform, and however they can get people to spend more time on the platform, thats where they will go Spotify is not interested in the future of music.

Not for the first time in his maverick career, Neil Young has opened a can of worms. This one might be the biggest of them all.

Dorian Lynskey is the author of The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwells 1984

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Podcasts were meant to revive Spotify. Now its on the culture war frontline - The Guardian

This weekends March for Life rally, the large anti-choice demonstration held annually in Washington DC to mark the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, has the exuberant quality of a victory lap. This, the 49th anniversary of Roe, is likely to be its last. The US supreme court is poised to overturn Roe in Dobbs v Jackson Womens Health, which is set to be decided this spring. For women in Texas, Roe has already been nullified: the court went out of its way to allow what Justice Sonia Sotomayor called a flagrantly unconstitutional abortion ban to go into effect there, depriving abortion rights to the one in 10 American women of reproductive age who live in the nations second largest state.

These victories have made visible a growing cohort within the anti-choice movement: the militias and explicitly white supremacist groups of the organized far right. Like last year, this years March for Life featured an appearance by Patriot Front, a white nationalist group that wears a uniform of balaclavas and khakis. The group, which also marched at a Chicago March for Life demonstration earlier this month, silently handed out cards to members of the press who tried to ask them questions. America belongs to its fathers, and it is owed to its sons, the cards read. The restoration of American sovereignty must follow the restoration of the American Family.

Explicit white nationalism, and an emphasis on conscripting white women into reproduction, is not a fringe element of the anti-choice movement. Associations between white supremacist groups and anti-abortion forces are robust and longstanding. In addition to Patriot Front, groups like the white nationalist Aryan Nations and the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker party have also lent support to the anti-abortion movement. These groups see stopping abortion as part of a broader project to ensure white hegemony in addition to womens subordination. Tim Bishop, of the Aryan Nations, noted that Lots of our people join [anti-choice organizations] Its part of our Holy War for the pure Aryan race. That the growing white nationalist movement would be focused on attacking womens rights is maybe to be expected: research has long established that recruitment to the alt-right happens largely among men with grievances against feminism, and that misogyny is usually the first form of rightwing radicalization.

But the affinity goes both ways: just as the alt-right loves the anti-choice movement, the anti-choice movement loves the alt-right. In 2019, Kristen Hatten, a vice-president at the anti-choice group New Wave Feminists, shared racist content online and publicly identified herself as an ethnonationalist. In addition to sharing personnel, the groups share tactics. In 1985, the KKK began circulating Wanted posters featuring the photos and personal information of abortion providers. The posters were picked up by the anti-choice terrorist group Operation Rescue in the early 90s. Now, sharing names, photos and addresses of abortion providers and clinic staff is standard practice in the mainline anti-choice movement, and the stalking and doxing of providers has become routine. More recently, anti-abortion activists have escalated their violence, returning to the murderous extremism that characterized the movement in the 1990s: in Knoxville, a fire that burned down a planned parenthood clinic on New Years Eve was ruled an arson. Maybe the anti-choice crowd is taking tips from their friends in the alt-right.

Its not that the anti-abortion movements embrace of white nationalism is totally uncomplicated. When the Traditionalist Worker party showed up at a Tennessee Right to Life march in 2018, the organizers shooed them off, and later issued a statement saying they condemned violence both from the right, and from leftwing groups like antifa. Hatten was fired from her anti-choice job after a public outcry. The anti-choice movement has even started trying to appropriate the language of social justice. They posit equality between embryos and women, try to brand abortion bans as feminist, incessantly compare abortion to the Holocaust, and claim that abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation, in the words of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. Anti-choice groups are eager to claim the moral authority of historical struggles against oppression, even as they work to further the oppression of women.

But the link between the anti-choice movement and white supremacy is much older and more fundamental than this recent, superficial social justice branding effort. Before an influx of southern and eastern European immigrants to the United States in the latter half of the 19th century, abortion and contraception had only been partially and sporadically criminalized. This changed in the early 20th century, when an additional surge of migrants from Asia and Latin America calcified white American racial anxieties and led to white elites decrying the falling white birth rate as race suicide.

Abortion bans were quickly introduced nationwide. As the historian Leslie Raegan put it, White male patriotism demanded that maternity be enforced among white Protestant women. The emerging popular eugenics movement supported this campaign of forced birth for fit mothers, while at the same time implementing a widespread campaign of involuntary sterilization among the poor, particularly Black women and incarcerated women. Meanwhile, white women who sought out voluntary sterilization were discouraged or outright denied the procedure, a practice that is still mainstream in the medical field today.

In the current anti-choice and white supremacist alliance, the language of race suicide has been supplanted by a similar fear: the so-called Great Replacement, a racist conspiracy theory that posits that white Americans are being replaced by people of color. (Some antisemitic variations posit that this replacement is somehow being orchestrated by Jewish people.)

The way to combat this, the right says, is to force childbearing among white people, to severely restrict immigration, and to punish, via criminalization and enforced poverty, women of color. These anxieties have always animated the anti-choice movement, and they have only become more fervent among the March for Lifes rank and file as conservatives become increasingly fixated on the demographic changes that will make America a minority-white country sometime in the coming decades. The white supremacist and anti-choice movements have always been closely linked. But more and more, they are becoming difficult to tell apart.

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White nationalists are flocking to the US anti-abortion movement - The Guardian

Transcript

Gideon Resnick: Its Friday, January 28th. Im Gideon Resnick.

Priyanka Aribindi: And Im Priyanka Aribindi, and this is What A Day, where were pleased to announce that our boomer allies have finally found out about Wordle.

Gideon Resnick: I think they will find it much harder to fall down alt-right rabbit holes on the cute word puzzle than in the Facebook hellmouth.

Priyanka Aribindi: Yeah. A five-letter word for insurrection? Trick question, there isnt one?

Gideon Resnick: Ideas show workers at an Amazon facility raise concerns about a mailbox again ahead of another union vote. Plus athletes are told to use burner phones at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Priyanka Aribindi: But first, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer formally announced his retirement yesterday and delivered a brief remarks at a White House ceremony, including this one on the American experiment:

[clip of Justice Stephen Breyer] I say I want you to pick just this up. Its an experiment thats still going on. And Ill tell you something, you know who will see whether that experiment works? Its you, my friend. Its you, Mr. High School student. Its you, Mr. College student, its you, Mr. Law School students. Its us, but its you. Its that next generation and the one after that, my grandchildren and their childrentheyll determine whether the experiment still works. And of course, I am an optimist, and Im pretty sure it will. Does it surprise you that thats the thought that comes into my mind today? I dont know. But thank you.

Gideon Resnick: Wow.

Priyanka Aribindi: Wow, that is right. I know he is not threatening us. It just felt a little, a little threatening to me. Its fine. President Biden reaffirmed his commitment to nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court and said that he would announce his choice by the end of February.

[clip of President Biden] I will select a nominee worthy of Justice Breyers legacy of excellence and decency. While Ive been studying candidates backgrounds and writings, Ive made no decision except one: the person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

Priyanka Aribindi: So now that all of this has been formalized, lets talk about some of the responses that weve heard so far.

Gideon Resnick: Yeah, this is really only the beginning, but theres a lot. Here is just a brief overview. Some civil rights organizations are already gearing up to support the eventual nominee and really to counter any likely campaigns against her from conservatives. And already, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement that Biden should not be influenced by the quote unquote radical left in making his decision. All right. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said again that the confirmation process is going to move quickly. Senator Kyrsten Sinema said that she looks forward to quote, thoughtfully examining the nomineeand this ones interestingSenator Joe Manchin said that he wouldnt mind if the nominee is more liberal than he is, noting that from his perspective, Priyanka, it is not hard to be more liberal than he is.

Priyanka Aribindi: And on that, he is correct.

Gideon Resnick: He is correct right there. Manchin and Sinema has voted to confirm all of Bidens nominees to the lower courts so far, which is an encouraging sign for how they might end up voting here. So all that being said, on yesterdays show, we went over Breyer, the replacement process, and the general future of the court. And today we want to dive in on all the potential political ramifications this could have in the near and long term.

Priyanka Aribindi: Yes. And for more on that, I spoke with the one and only Dan Pfeiffer, former White House Communications Director during the Obama administration and one of the hosts of Pod Save America. I started by asking him about the impact that this could potentially have politically for Democrats as we head into midterm election season.

Dan Pfeiffer: Well, I think it will have a galvanized effect for Democrats. We need a win. Its been a rough few months for Democrats. Getting to appoint a qualified history-making nominee with the first Black woman ever, I think, will be a boost to Democrats political fortune. I think it will give us something to rally around. One of the reasons why Bidens approval numbers have taken a hit is hes lost ground with Democrats, and I think hell be able to get some of that back by delivering on a core campaign promise.

Priyanka Aribindi: Do you think its too far out from the midterms to have an effect? Or do you think that this type of thing kind of carries on into, you know . . . ?

Dan Pfeiffer: I dont I dont think its a game changer per se, but I think we need to build some momentum towards the midterms. And so having some success over the next couple of months to get this confirmation in I think is pushing us in the right direction. So I dont think this is going to be like necessarily the Kavanaugh fight was for Republicans or the Amy Coney Barrett one was happening like minutes before the election, but it will certainly be helpful to Democrats, presuming everything goes the way we want it to go.

Priyanka Aribindi: OK. Also in the news this week: yesterday, we got some promising new numbers. The economy grew 1.7% in the last quarter, bringing the total growth in 2021 up to 5.7%. I believe thats the largest figure since the mid 80s. So good numbers there. Based on polling on the other hand, the public has not been too happy with Joe Biden in recent months. But how do good job numbers affect the president, the party in power, and how do those kind of square with the economic realities that most people are facing right now?

Dan Pfeiffer: This is probably the most narratively complicated economy in modern political history. You have 2021 was the year with the greatest private sector job growth in history, you have these growth numbersall the macroeconomic factors look incredibly strong. And particularly when you put it in the context of what President Biden was able to get us out of so quickly of what he inherited from President Trump. Yet people are pissed about the economy. Theyre incredibly angry. In every poll, people are more frustrated, angry about the economy than the pandemic. They believe that Democrats are not focused enough on the economy, and it is one very specific thing, it is inflation. And people are feeling inflation in their pocketbook and their wages are not going as far as they were before, they are paying more, particularly last year, at the gas station, grocery prices are upand that is clouding out all the other economic good news. People dont care about any of the other stuff because their dollar, their hard-earned dollars, are not going as far as they would like them to go.

Priyanka Aribindi: Right. Lets switch gears a little bit and talk a little more broadly about the midterms, which, like it or not, theyre coming later this year. Always a crazy realization for me every time I think about it. Traditionally, midterm elections have, um, shit turnout. Theyre known to be really tough for the party in power. Turnout was actually pretty high during the Trump years midterm, but it still wasnt great for him, obviously, in terms of outcome. Can you set the stage a little bit for us? What are Democrats and the president kind of walking into the midterms with? Whats it looking like?

Dan Pfeiffer: If you look at all the various factorsand I promise this will get a little bit better, but its going to start really hardall the various factors, Democrats are in a terrible position. This is the first midterm of a president, which is almost in every single case other than George W. Bush 2002, devastating for that president. Its happening in a redistricting year where Republicans control more of the maps than Democrats. Now there is some good news in this. One, with two thirds of the redistricting process done, I wouldnt say its been favorable to Democrats, but its been a lot less bad than we thought. And Democrats have opportunities to pick up a lot of seats in states like New York and Illinois that have been very aggressive in the redistricting process. The Senate map, to our great fortune, is very favorable to Democrats this year. We can not only keep the majority, but also expand it by a couple of seats, by only winning states that Joe Biden won in 2020that is Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Thats six states. The Senate map generally is very bad for Democrats, and so it is a great fortune that we end up this year with a good map. That only happens every decade. We also have a very legitimate chance to hold on to key governors races in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and pick one up in Georgia, where in Arizona, where we have great candidates running with Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Katie Hobbs, among others, in Arizona.

Priyanka Aribindi: Got it. OK. Actually, Im very glad were talking because Im feeling a little bit better than I was 10 minutes ago. In the House and the Senate, democrats have very slim majorities at the moment. What is kind of the worst-case scenario? Obviously, well talk about the good stuff, dont worry, but what happens if they lose these majorities or the House majority?

Dan Pfeiffer: So if we lose the House, theres two things that we have to be very clear about. One, Joe Biden will not pass another bill of substance in his first term. And I think it is highly likely the House will begin impeachment proceedings against Biden for some trumped up, made up, thing.

Priyanka Aribindi: Right.

Dan Pfeiffer: And there will be endless investigations that would make Fox primetime blush in terms of its absurdity, will all happen in the House. If we were to lose the Senate, it is likely that Joe Biden would not confirm another judge of consequence in his first term. The Republicans are definitely favored in the House, and I think the Senate is a coin flip, but thats because the map benefits us, and what will really determine what happens in the Senate is what happens in the Republican primaries. You know, they are more electable Republican candidates facing off against some pretty Trump-y Republican candidates, and who wins those primaries could help determine how we do there.

Priyanka Aribindi: Got it. OK, so lets talk about the flip side. What if they win? And obviously Im not a hater, but its been a tough few months watching a lot of the priorities that Joe Biden ran on get shot to the ground by members of, you know, his own party. So whats the case the Democrats are trying to make to keep their jobs and, you know, expand their majorities? What happens for us in the best-case scenario?

Dan Pfeiffer: Well, the best-case scenario in the Senate is that we get up to 52 senators, which is very mathematically possible because we have pickup opportunities in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Ron Johnson is running for reelection in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania is quite a Republican primary. Dr. Oz, the head of one of the worlds largest hedge funds, whose remade himself into a MAGA candidatetheres a whole bunch of crazy stuff happening there. But if you get the 52 senators, we never have to say the words Manchin and Sinema again. In both the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Senate primary, the major candidates have said they would be for getting rid of the filibuster. So you can see a world where we get to 52 and could eliminate the filibuster. And if we still have the House to pass legislation, could deal with voting rights on day one.

Priyanka Aribindi: Got it! OK, you dont have to tell me twice. Good to know. OK, but thanks to Republicans and a couple Democratic senators, we do not have federal voting rights legislation as we head into this election. You wrote about this in your last issue of Message Box, your newsletter. But in the face of all these voting rights restrictions that are going on around the country, how do Democrats win elections now? Is there something specifically that we should be focused on? How is this possible?

Dan Pfeiffer: Well, were going to have to win in an environment of voter suppression. That is the world were going to live in. There will continue to be some measure of court cases to try to push back on some of those efforts, but we have to recognize that the environment that Joe Biden won Georgia in, in 2020, is going to be tougher for Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock because of voter suppression. And its going to require hard work and organizing and getting people on the ground as soon as they can and educating voters about these new rules. And its going to be a ton of work. And its completely unfair and its probably unconstitutional and its wrong, but were going to have to live in that environment. But we also have to think not just about voter suppression, but about election sabotage, because we know that Republicans are running these 2022 elections to put themselves in a position to ensure that no matter what happens in the Electoral College or the popular vote in 2024, they will have the opportunity to install Donald Trump or whoever the Republican nominee is in the White House despite losing the election. Parts of the Freedom to Vote Act would have dealt with that. The best way to fight that is at the local level by electing governors, secretary of state candidates, and even in some states like in Arizona county recorders of deeds are the local election officials. And so Run For Something, a group that we have worked with the Crooked Media at lot, has been recruiting and training candidates to run in those races to try tobecause Republicans have been doing this. Theyre recruiting believers in the Big Lie to run up and down the ballot everywhere.

Priyanka Aribindi: Yikes.

Dan Pfeiffer: They are pouring money and resources into this because they know thats where political power is, and we have to do the same thing on our side.

Gideon Resnick: Youll be hearing more about all of this very soon. We are quite sure of that, but that is the latest for now. Its Friday WAD squad, and for todays temp check, we are back on our favorite beat, which is Sarah Palins battle with the New York Times by way of her battle with the novel coronavirus. So as we know, Palins defamation trial against the Times was postponed this Monday after it was revealed that she had tested positive for COVID. She had not gotten the vaccine, probably under the impression that she could outrun COVID aerosols on a snowboard. The story got even more interesting after the postponement, as it became clear that Palin had eaten inside the pricey Italian restaurant Elios in Manhattan on Saturdaythis is a place I was not familiar with quite honestly until this story

Priyanka Aribindi: Me either.

Gideon Resnick: Now I am deeply familiar with itleading many to question how she had managed to get around New York Citys COVID vaccine mandate.

Priyanka Aribindi: Yeah, it is not known if Palin had tested positive before or after her Saturday Elios trip. But since her diagnosis, she has continued to sample New Yorks finest restaurants, eating at a different fancy Italian place on Tuesday, though this time she was outside, and returning to Elios eat outside on Wednesday. Back to the original scene of the crime.

Gideon Resnick: What!? OK.

Priyanka Aribindi: So as we go to record, she is surely working through a tray of hot lasagna on a Manhattan sidewalk somewhere. Her new status as the Typhoid Mary of pasta places is so undeniable that even the mayors office has had to address it, with a spokesman for Eric Adams saying quote, We encourage any New Yorker who came into contact with Sarah Palin to get tested.

Gideon Resnick: Dear Lord.

Priyanka Aribindi: I mean, she comes with a warning. Now Gideon, you and I are not public health experts, so weve been reluctant to offer too much pandemic guidance in the past, but this seems like one topic where we are uniquely qualified to weigh in. So my question is how would you advise someone who is seated next to a COVID-positive Sarah Palin at a restaurant?

Gideon Resnick: Well, I would say its unfortunate that you are in this position, but I hope that you have a syringe on you, because if you put a syringe on the edge of the table in eyesight of Sarah Palin, she could be led to think that it may be a vaccine and she may not want to be near said vaccine and may very well leave. And that gives you the opportunity to finish your lovely Italian dinner. Priyanka, what do you think about all of this?

Priyanka Aribindi: Yeah, OK, if you find yourself in this scenario, you are seated next to COVID-positive Sarah Palin, one, get the fuck out of there. Two, question everything that has ever happened in your entire life to lead you to this point. What are you doing dining at the same place as her? Youre messing up somewhere.

Gideon Resnick: Its true.

Priyanka Aribindi: I hate to break it to you.

Gideon Resnick: Just like that, we have checked our temps. They are at a normal temperature because we dont have fevers from contracting the novel coronavirus near Sarah Palin at this time.

Priyanka Aribindi: Havent been in contact with Sarah Palin, so were all good.

Gideon Resnick: We can affirm that, and well be back after some ads.

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Supreme Courting The Voters with Dan Pfeiffer - Crooked