Texas Puts a Bounty on Abortion

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Nikki Zellner: And I'm from a marketing background. So I knew you had to make it easy for people to understand what the problem was. And for me, you even had to make public servants understand what the problem was. The problem is it's not our job to fund the protection. It's our job to say, this is unsafe and this is what will make it safe.

And that's how I became an activist.

[00:00:32] Sarah: This is Sarah 

Beth: and Beth. 

Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. 

[00:00:36] Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.

Hello, and thank you so much for joining us for another new episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we are going to talk about abortion because of Texas. Then we are going to continue thinking about ways that we can make a difference in our communities. Today we're going to share a mom's successful efforts to change a law after a carbon monoxide leak at her child's daycare.

And this story is a really great way for us to think about what happens when we tackle the issues in front of us. And we will end as we always do by talking about what's on our minds outside of politics. But before we get started, we have a couple of housekeeping items. We usually publish new episodes of Pantsuit Politics on Tuesdays and Fridays.

We have noticed that occasionally a federal holiday complicates our schedule and we really want to be respectful of the people who work on Pantsuit Politics other than just the two of us. And so we are going to start on weeks where there is a Monday federal holiday releasing our regular episode Wednesday.

That means that this coming week. We'll celebrate Labor Day. We'll record our show on Tuesday. You will hear it on Wednesday. So you'll have a fresh, timely episode waiting for you on Wednesday. And we will only do this when there is a federal holiday. So thank you for your patience and understanding about that.

[00:02:13] Sarah: And a friendly reminder coming up on that Tuesday after Labor Day, we're doing a pantsuit politics Peloton ride. I've had a couple of questions from people that were asking if we had Cody doing a live ride with us, or if we were joining one of Cody's live rides. Listen, I think that's a good goal for this group is to have a live ride where they were so excited and so popular that Peloton is scheduling rides for us.

But for now, we're going to do a ride that's already happened. That's why you need to click the link because it will add it to your schedule and that way you can ride that particular ride with all the pantsuit politics community. I'm so sorry I scheduled this ride on Rosh Hashanah. I was so focused on getting the right weekday. I didn't even look at the date but don't worry. We're going to do these more often. I'm hoping to do them monthly. So I can't wait to see everybody on Tuesday. 

[00:03:01] Beth: So you can find that link in our show notes, which will always be at Pantsuit Politics show.com. And we hope to see, well, Sarah hopes to see you there, I will not be there.

I do not do the Peloton thing, but Sarah have a great ride.

There is a lot going on in Texas with, well, that could stop right there. There a lot going on in Texas, there is a lot going on with Texas is new restrictions on abortion and judicial review. So we're going to try to break this down for you today. 

[00:03:41] Sarah: So what is in the law? The law that everyone is talking about regarding an abortion, because they, they held a special session.

And in the midst of the pandemic, that's rocking their state. They decided to vote, focus on restricting voting rights. Permitless carry bill and basically banning abortion in the state of Texas. So the law prohibits abortions if physicians can detect cardiac activity in an embryo or fail to perform a test to detect that activity.

And I think that I appreciate that the language has shifted to cardiac activity because it's not a heartbeat because the embryo is not big enough to have a heart get. It is literally a little. Activity. And I just think that's an important distinction. That's about six weeks. They tell you not to take a pregnancy test until one to two weeks after you miss your period.

So that's five or six weeks we're talking about, right? When a pregnancy test is just barely capable of detecting that you're pregnant. So you would need to be at a clinic before that point, going through all the waiting periods and the hurdles and have the money and have the accessibility all before they tell you pregnancy tests are actually accurate.

That's why I'm calling it an abortion ban. So that's the first part, like there's lots of these bills across the United States that. The legal prohibition to that cardiac activity. What makes Texas different is that Texas knew that this is unconstitutional, that this is a restriction on the constitutional right to an abortion.

And so they are trying something new. I mean, we always talk about states as laboratories and innovation. This isn't exactly what I had in mind. So what they are doing that instead of the state enforcing this restriction, Texas is asking private citizens to enforce it through a civil lawsuit and the new law.

Any private citizen to Sue a person who provides an abortion and people who aid and abet that abortion aid and abet is broad and could encompass everything paying for an Uber, driving the person to the abortion clinic, acting as clergy for the person who is receiving an abortion. 

[00:06:02] Beth: Now experts think, we got a question about this and I want to make sure to address it, that the risk of you being found liable for aiding and abetting an abortion in Texas.

If you have driven someone to another state is. That doesn't mean someone won't try to see you, but, and we don't have precedent about this yet. We don't know, but it seems unlikely that you can aid in a bet activity that is legal in the state where the activity happens. But again, we are in pretty uncharted waters here.

Not only does this law authorize a flood of neighbor versus neighbor litigation, it encourages it, it stacks the deck in these lines. First, because it tells a judge that if the judge finds liability under the law, the judge must enjoin people from engaging in any future activity that would violate the law.

So if a physician is found liable, the physician is not only going to get fired. For the abortion performed, but enjoined from performing future, I worship. And then secondly, it authorizes a minimum award of $10,000 in damages. Awarded to the person who brought this lawsuit. We're going to talk about the Supreme Court in just a second, but Justice Sotomayor writing about this law said that it is a bounty.

It says two people go out and hunt your neighbors so that you can collect at least $10,000 in the process. So this law puts abortion care providers in the position of constantly waiting for almost anyone to Sue them. And it also creates an umbrella of uncertainty because aid and abet does not require intention under this law.

So it is possible that you drive a person to a clinic. Let's say your Uber, Lyft, whatever, not knowing what kind of care the person is going to receive there. If they receive an abortion, you can still be sued under this. 

[00:08:07] Sarah: I mean, what does that encourage us to do? Encourage people to start questioning where are you going?

What do they do here? I mean, can you just imagine the scenarios that this creates, where people are really investigating their fellow citizens, harassing their fellow citizens? My husband and I were talking about this and I said, you know, it's easy to feel overwhelmed that everyone who's ever voted Republican will be out there hunting down their fellow citizens.

Now, the reality is. Many many women have received abortions, including people from all kinds of political and religious backgrounds. And so there's more families than we think that have been touched by abortion. And he said, yeah, but the ones who are ready to go out and hunt their citizens, they might not be small, but they are devoted.

Right. It's the people that, so to my aura talks about in her a descent that happened at clinics in Texas that night where people were in the drive-through line waiting because there was basically a run on services because people were so panicked about what this law meant. And you had protestors shining flashlights into their cars, trying to determine who was in there and to intimidate them like listen, intimidation and abortion clinics is not new, but this just takes it and pours gasoline all across that fire. 

[00:09:33] Beth: Yeah. And I think that it is that ultimate chilling effect because if you are a rideshare driver, for example, You are best protected by not taking anyone to a clinic and those clinics offer care other than abortion care. And so I just think the domino effect of the ways in which this will damage public health in Texas is enormous.

So how, how did this happen? Of course. Reproductive care providers filed a lawsuit to try to prevent this law from going into effect. And a district court was hearing that case. They did what you always do when a new law goes into effect. They sued people who might be in a position to enforce it. And that's complicated in this case because Texas has said, well, it's not the state enforcing it.

The citizenry and it's hypothetical, maybe no one will ever try to enforce this law. Right? So a district court was tackling that and without any explanation, the fifth circuit appellate court. Abruptly stayed those proceedings before the district court and vacated a hearing that was supposed to start on Monday.

We don't know why they just did. And so the abortion care provider who brought the lawsuit, went to the Supreme Court and said help. This law is about to go into effect and the Supreme Court just didn't do anything before the deadline for the law to go into effect. So it did. And then. The next day, we get a vote on the shadow docket, where we have five Supreme Court Justices, Justices Alito, Thomas Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett who say, listen, this is a brief unsigned opinion.

Okay. Because no, one's had time to fully consider the issues. Yeah. These are what's been happening a lot. That's been happening a lot. So these five justices say. We don't think that we can decide the constitutionality of this law in this case, because we have before us hypothetical parties, and that's not what we do here.

Only private citizens in Texas can enforce this law. As a court. When we are asked to block a new law from taking effect, we aren't passing on the law itself. We are passing on who can enforce the law. So if this were a law that the state of Texas were going to try to enforce, we could tell the officials in Texas, like the Texas attorney general, no, you may not enforce this law, but here we don't have the enforcers of the law before us because the enforcers could consist of any private citizen in Texas.

And they say this is just a complicated scenario. We don't know if we could have all of the state judges in Texas before us and tell them you can't hear these cases. There's a lack of clarity. It's really complicated. We are not saying that this law is constitutional. We are just saying we can't decide that right now.

And then we have dissents from Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Breyer, Justice Kagan, and Justice Sotomayor, and they are appalled. 

[00:12:52] Sarah: As they should be. 

[00:12:53] Beth: So Chief Justice Roberts recognizes that the procedural issues are complicated, but that is exactly the reason that we should pump the brakes here. And we should let the district court work through those issues, but we should not change the status quo.

We should not let this unprecedented law go into effect without the district court being able to work through that Justice Sotomayor again says you have deputized citizens as bounty hunters against each other. You've offered them cash prizes for prosecuting their neighbor's medical procedures, Justice Briar.

So. You know, the state does not have the authority. To restrict the constitutional right to an abortion. So the state can certainly not delegate that power to its citizens. And that's what you have here. The state is saying, well, we can't do it. So you all try it. And that's not how it works. And then we have Justice Kagan who is always playing a long game.

And so she signs on to the opinions of her colleagues who dissented and she adds that. This is a patently unconstitutional law that the court has escaped passing on through the shadow docket. And it's doing this all the time. And she says, this is basically where the dirty work is happening. And every day that becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend.

[00:14:18] Sarah: Yup. Yup. Because this is what they're doing. Oh, it makes me so mad Kavanaugh and Barrett and Gorsuch in particular, I want to, I'm going to be as snarky and ugly as I want to be right now, because that's how I feel. They want people to like them. They want people to think that they're good, fair Supreme Court Justices.

So when it, when they have to sign their name on something, they're out there doing. You know, the work of keeping precedent and seeming more moderate, and then they're doing the stuff they really want to do that Alito and Thomas will wholeheartedly back themselves up, back them up on because they don't really care what people think about them on the shadow docket.

It's just when I read stuff like this, I'm like, it's all a freaking ruse. All this other stuff you're doing is just a ruse. You just want to get in there and do what you think is right. And do what you think is politically right or legally, right. Or constitutionally. Right. And you don't care, but you don't have the courage to do it to our faces because you want people to like us and your confirmation hearings were hard.

It just makes me so fearful. 

[00:15:28] Beth: So what happens next? Someone will try to enforce this law against someone else in Texas. And that case will make it back up to the Supreme Court at some point. I really think at that point, the log goes down because I don't know how this court, even if you take this out of the reproductive freedom realm and just into the standing realm, the idea that anybody has standing when they have not been injured, there's no injury here to the people who would Sue to enforce this law.

I think there are a hundred ways that this could get. That this will not pass constitutional muster, but in the meantime, a lot of people are going to get hurt. And this is part of a tide. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 97 abortion restrictions have been enacted since January of this year, the Supreme Court is set to hear a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, this term.

And I am fearful. I am fearful that in the midst of the pandemic and the climate that we find ourselves in, where I think the most gracious thing you could say is, it seems like everyone's lost their minds. I am really concerned about any actions that further turn us against one another. And this does that in the most direct way I can think of. I'm concerned about how many people.

Whatever the Genesis of their beliefs about abortion are, I am concerned about how many people are willing to rip the threads of this country apart over this topic. And I just can't think of a more direct way to do that than this law. 

[00:17:19] Sarah: Yeah. When you said what happens next? I thought, yeah. Well, that's, what's, that's what happens next.

Legally. What happens next in the lives of people in Texas is there is going to be an enormous amount of suffering. It feels like this abortion is both a warning that has been in our face for so long and is going to be the accelerant that makes it so we can no longer. Void the fact that this narrative, we tell ourselves that we have a body and a mind, and we use our mind to make logical decisions about our body, especially when life and death are on the line is, is what we're all doing.

And it's just not, it's not, it never has been. There is no separation between this logical mind and the body we take care of. And there is this. Web of interconnectedness where our medical decisions are politicized. They always have been they're emotional. They always have been, they're insanely complicated.

They always have been. We tell ourselves that when we get in there and we're making decisions about life and death, including with abortion, that it's really simple. It's about life and death. And when we get in there and we decide when we're going to wear a mask or we're going to get a vaccine, it's about life and death, but it's never that simple when human beings are involved.

Pro-life people who tell themselves that this is about life and death are going to see in real women's lives, that it is always insanely complicated. The idea that you're just going to stop people from having abortions. And those people are women who know and just are don't, they're just unwanted pregnancies.

And it's just not, that's the simple narrative that we tell ourselves when it's about abortion, about. Explode all over the state of Texas, because it is women with wanted pregnancies whose lives might not be on the line, but who would be under enormous suffering. If they continue to carry pregnancies, it's about doctors making really difficult calculations including when someone gets COVID or gets cancer or a mother gets all kinds of things.

A pregnant mother. Yeah. Making the really complicated calculus about harm and risk and never just Ooh, easy life and death. And I just think this particular law, this ban on abortion is going to show that to us and it, to me. Well, the sooner we can just move on from this idea of we're all out there, viewing medical decisions through this really simple calculus of life and death, the better.

And I think the way we have sort of told ourselves this lie particularly around abortion, but I think COVID shows it too, is just that it's just a narrative and I want us all to abandon that narrative and acknowledge that this is hard. These medical decisions that providers are helping patients make are hard and inserting the legislator was ridiculous enough, but inserting your neighbor or the neighbor is probably too nice of a word. The person shines a flashlight in your car, in the lobby as if they know you as if they understand what you're going through or the calculus you're making is so, so. Awful. And it's, you're exactly right. It will not only increase individual suffering. It will just push us further and further away from each other. 

[00:21:03] Beth: And we know from history, what happens here. You said this yesterday, when we were talking about this, if a person does not want to have a baby, they will not, they will not. And so we know from history, there will be unsafe attempts to handle this within families.

There will be. Death by suicide, there will be domestic violence. This is going to have public health ramifications. And if you know, your concern is for life, that has to be part of your calculus. I know we have people listening who are in a deep place of religious conviction or ethical conviction about what, about what should happen when a pregnancy is not wanted.

But when you're in a deep place of religious or ethical conviction, then all of those ramifications need to be part of your calculus and this law strips away. Anything other than the bear, we win this issue and you lose this issue and that's the wrong way to approach something. That's this complex. 

[00:22:03] Sarah: Yeah, I think all the time about the late-term abortion provider in the Netflix documentary, After Tiller. And she says, every woman is an expert in her own story. And, to empower perfect strangers, to be the expert in someone else's story is so dangerous. It is so dangerous. That is at the core of so many of our conflicts in America is because we think we know what someone else's life is like. We think we know better than they do.

And it just breaks my heart. There's going to be so much suffering. There's going to be so much suffering because of this law until the Supreme Court decides that it's reached such a fevered pitch, that they can intercede and actually address the clear unconstitutionality of this law. 

[00:23:03] Beth: And on a much less philosophical.

No. This is legally bananas. Yes. How do you prove this case? If you're in, if you are a citizen. Is it, this person told me about the abortion, is it, I watched the person go into the clinic and leave the clinic. And then how do you know which provider it is? Or is it the entirety of the clinic? Like, I don't know how you prove a case like this because our entire- The civil system is built on the idea that you only walk into it. If you have personally been in Harvard, right? And that way you personally have information that helps you prove your case. Now you gather it from other sources, but this seems to me to make a mockery of everything that allows our civil system to work right now.

And so again, in service of what, this is what I keep asking myself about what every time I'm drawn into a conversation about abortion, I think. Is there anything you aren't willing to sacrifice on this altar?

[00:24:06] Sarah: I haven't found it yet. And they're not because the, again, as we've always talked about, there are people who would absolutely we're strict freedom of speech, freedom of movement, the underpinning of our civil system.

It's not, they're not looking to respect our constitution, our legal system in the pursuit of their goals on abortion. The only goal that matters. Is stopping abortion, which again is a fool's errand. It is a fool's errand. Abortion has existed since the beginning of time and it will exist as long as there are human beings getting pregnant.

I'm sorry if you don't like that reality, but it is what it is.

[00:24:48] Beth: No one likes that reality, right? I mean, in an ideal world, I think everyone would agree. That pregnancies only happen when they're wanted. 

[00:24:57] Sarah: But that's that narrative, right? That abortion only happens when it's an unwanted pregnancy and abortion is a medical procedure that often happens in wanted pregnancies.

And I think that that's what. No one wants to accept. 

[00:25:08] Beth: But I just, I want to get out of this sense that like there's, there are people that are just like gleeful about this happening, that these decisions are made casually, that there is no ethical calculus on the side of a person who seeks out an abortion.

Well, this is a lot at a time when we did not need a lot, anywhere in the country, no one needed a lot. And our hearts are with people in Texas who are suffering because of this and the families that this is going to impact in real and devastating ways. And that includes fathers, PS. I think this is another area where we get this language.

Wrong in a variety of really harmful ways. So we're going to take a hard turn and re-engage with the idea of how do we do our work in our communities in ways that are sustainable and impactful.

So we're picking up now in our conversation that we began with Ryan Salzman about placemaking on Tuesday's episode, just knowing that we are in this half a decade or so of news overwhelm. Do we want to continue thinking about how can we, in our places personally, make a difference? And today we're going to share a really direct example of meeting the needs in front of you.

My name is Nikki James Zellner. I'm a military spouse based out of Virginia Beach, Virginia. And I have two young boys who are now six and four. Named Ronin and Owen. 

[00:27:02] Sarah: Nikki's story isn't about placemaking per se, the way Ryan discussed it, but it's another example of what it looks like to get intentional about community.

[00:27:12] Beth: And this happened. In a very unplanned way in February of 2020 Nikki's son's daycare called to say that there was a gas leak and she needed to come to pick up her son. But when she got there, it wasn't a gas leak. It was carbon monoxide. The school did not have a carbon monoxide detector. Well into the afternoon before anyone at the school realized what was going on and that the levels had accumulated to a neurologically damaging level for people inside the building, the teachers started getting headaches, and then they noticed that students were having some response as well.

And one of the teachers just happened to have taken a first aid training class and recognized that this could be carbon monoxide. And that's when they started getting people out. 

[00:28:00] Sarah: So we talk about it all the time. Well, how do you find an issue that's important to you? Well, sometimes the issue finds you and that's what happened with Nikki.

The issue came and presented itself to her. She had no idea that there was no carbon monoxide detector, that there was no legal requirement to have a carbon monoxide detector in daycares or schools. And so this problem that she had probably never thought of before. Presented itself in her life. And so let's say you've now identified the issue or the issue as identified you and it's time to get practical.

So what do you do, what does engaging in that work mean for Nikki? It meant returning to her professional background as a journey. 

[00:28:37] Beth: So she started asking questions beyond just her daycare center and looking at state law. And she went right to the governor's office to get connected with the building code authorities.

And she learned that schools in Virginia built prior to 2015 were not required to have these detectors. They told her we can't change the code without changing the actual law. 

[00:29:00] Nikki Zellner: And so I said, okay, how do I change the law then? And that's how I became an activist. I know that community journalism plays a large role in accountability.

So for me, the first step was getting the. With a major news outlet locally. And so I laid out my fats. I gave them the sources for who they could contact. I gave them the politician names that I had already spoken to and pretty much I made it easy for them to do a story. And that ended up on the front page.

[00:29:33] Sarah: Look, we know those sentences alone may sound daunting to you. So we asked Nikki to get really granular, really detailed about what reaching out to media meant for her. 

[00:29:42] Nikki Zellner: The first step I did is I reached out to the local contact that covers education, beat reporting locally, and got her contact information.

Did a quick phone call. No one answered, but I sent them an email immediately. And in that email was, this has just happened. This is where it happened. This is the data of who it happened to. How many people were on-site, et cetera? Here's access to them. Fire report, you know that the dispatcher, Scott and I've talked to the following people.

So I bulleted it out. I talked to Kelly Convirs-Fowler, a delegate in Virginia Beach. I talked to governor Northern's office who was a Pediatric Neurosurgeon by trade. So I feel like he cares a little bit about kids and understands medical issues. I've talked to the building code office and this is the name of the guy that I spoke to.

So I lined up their sources for them. I think this is such a smart way that Nikki got started. Especially because she reached out to the media, knowing that that media attention would help get the attention of legislators. She was very clear-eyed from the beginning that no one was sitting around thinking.

Like, here's my evil plan. Let's not have carbon monoxide detectors in buildings. That it's just a thing that no one had paid attention to or thought through the impact of. And there are always so many things like that. And so Nikki got very concrete about how do I put this on the radar? And that's where her journalism experience really helped her know how to do that in a smart way, but you don't have to be a journalist to hear Nikki's story and take something from it that could be actionable.

If another issue like this finds you obviously. A very well-known newspaper calls, a legislator and a government to the mat in their editorial section and does an op-ed and says, you know, this is ridiculous. Why isn't this change? That obviously brings a little bit of pressure to those who are reading that in, you know, your political pubs.

But what I also did is I created a website and I did a change.org petition and the change.org petition got over 5,000 signatures. And it was specifically calling to the map, the state of Virginia, asking them to make this change. So I wanted to get the public involved in this. I wanted there to be public parental pressure.

I wanted there to be pressure from teachers. Who probably didn't even realize they were walking into schools and knew it wasn't on the VA's legislative agenda and I'm from a marketing background. So I knew you had to make it easy for people to understand what the problem was. And for me, you even had to make public servants understand what the problem was.

The problem is it's not our job to fund the protection. It's our job to say, this is unsafe. And this is what will make it safe.

[00:32:41] Sarah: Well, what I love about how she approached this too, is not just understanding that it might not be on their radar, but that their radar is crowded. And that if you're in local media or if you're a legislator, you have limited resources, you have limited time, you have limited energy.

Seeing somebody who has a problem throwing it in somebody's lap and be like, okay, you do it. But now when you meet the resistance, not resistance because they want people to get poisoned by carbon monoxide, but resistance because they're busy and there's a lot on their plates and there's a lot of a finite amount of time and energy to knowing how to deal with that instead of being, you know, discouraged or deflated by that.

[00:33:22] Nikki Zellner: So I heard the rebuttals right off the bat, which was, it's not mandated. We don't have the sources of CO that you think that we do.

[00:33:31] Beth: Hearing opposing views can sometimes be the push to the next level of advocacy, where you have to start exploring why you are involved and what that leads you to do next.

[00:33:43] Nikki Zellner: I wanted somebody to go deep and understand why it happened. How did we let it get to this point that this event could have even occurred in the first place? And I was also willing and I, and I will say this to anybody listening. You have to be right willing to do some of the work. You can't just pass it off and expect them to take your cause and run with it.

You have to be willing to say, this is what I'm willing to put up. And this is the steps I'm willing to take to work with you to make sure. That you have the information that you need. And as I started doing that was really when this became much better. It's not just related to fuel-fired appliances, which I think is where a lot of misconceptions happen.

 So I'm thankful that my data was able to show these carbon monoxide incidents in schools, in particular, are coming from things like idling buses, too close to the class. They're coming from things like propane-powered cleaning equipment and construction equipment. That's happening on-site during school hours and allowing carbon monoxide to accumulate in classrooms that students and teachers are in because of the use of power tools being plugged into the backup generator that are also sharing the same air circulation. And so these are injuries. These aren't like little, oops. These are people being sent to the hospital and being on forced oxygen because of these things. So this isn't just evacuations, this is medical injury. So it's, it's a big deal. It's a lot of language that a lot of people don't understand, but now I understand it deeply.

And I'm ready to see change and conversation around that. 

[00:35:20] Beth: So for me, Sarah, the lessons to pull out of Nikki's story are to remember that a lot of the problems in our communities, again, are not culture wars. They're not bad intentions. It's just that there are competing priorities and not everything gets the attention that it deserves.

And that feels empowering to me. They had culture wars feel very disempowering, but remembering that people out there focused on things that no one else has focused on are doing tremendous. Good. Kind of lights a fire in me. There's not going to be a national story about how many lives will be saved or serious health problems avoided because of Nikki's advocacy and all the people who've joined her in thinking about carbon monoxide, but that has absolutely mattered in a really big way.

And so that helps me remember that doing your part. Matters in a really big way. And we just can't take in all the information about that. 

[00:36:17] Sarah: Well, and it won't be a national story because we might not ever know. We might not ever know. Sometimes when we do work the best. Prevented that's the hard part. Right?

And I think it's not just that the work goes out and changes your community. It's that the work gives purpose to something hard that happened in your life, right? That's why the work matters. It's this energy flow is a two-way street going out and doing things. When something hard happens to you or you see a problem in your community is just as much about what it creates in yourself.

The skills you learn and the connections you make and the people you meet. And again, putting some purpose behind something that could have felt disempowering. It's just as important as the change it affects. And the people around you. 

[00:37:04] Beth: That two-way energy flow gives me words for something that I'm always trying to figure out how to say, which is that you can care about everything, but you can't act on everything.

Because there is a finite amount of energy because you don't have the skills and talents needed to address every issue because you don't have the perspective to address every issue because we aren't made that way for every single person to work on every single thing. And I think that that's helpful to remember when we're flooded.

With all of these things that we want to do, something about that, that sometimes our want to do something about everything keeps us from doing the thing that we really can do and have an impact doing. Yeah. So thank you so much to Nikki for sharing your story. We hope that hearing from Nikki motivates you to keep looking for your own work and reminds you that the work you're doing matters.

Sarah, what's on your mind outside of politics? 

[00:38:11] Sarah: Well, I'm still thinking about the documentary we watched last night. We watched the Hulu documentary about WeWork. And Adam Newman, the former CEO of WeWork. And it all happened because I showed you the LulaRoe documentary trailer. And you were like, well, I want to watch this now.

And I was like, I have such bad news. It doesn't come out until September 10th. So you were like, well, we need to watch something adjacent. And this was very adjacent, right? It was like, it was people. Getting too big for their britches or leggings. I made that joke on the Nightly Nuance. Now I'm making it again. Cause it was so good. Sorry. 

[00:38:45] Beth: This one was so bananas to me. It's not like Theranos at all. I remember when we watched the Theranos documentary and talked about it. 

[00:38:52] Sarah: Which is about Elizabeth Holmes who's currently on trial for fraud. Theranos was a blood-testing technology that everybody fell in love with and valued at a kabillion dollars and it just never worked.

[00:39:02] Beth: And WeWork had a thing that worked well. It wasn't an innovative idea about office space. I think what happened with WeWork that is so fascinating to me is the inability to be contented. You know, he, Adam Newman didn't want to just do workspaces. He wanted to do change the whole world. This actually ties in very nicely unexpectedly with the conversation we just had with about Nikki.

If he had just said, oh, I'm doing a really good thing here. And providing different office spaces that encourage people to work together that foster small businesses. That make a lot of money for a lot of people. And if you'd stopped there, that would have been fantastic. It was when he went off into like how we live and how we educate people and how can I conquer the entire globe with this model that it got way off the track?

[00:39:53] Sarah: Well, and I think the real pivotal moment was when the investor from SoftBank came in and offered him billions of dollars. And it was like dream bigger. That was the last, last thing Adam Newman needed to hear. I spent a lot of, listen, I've spent a lot of time. With Elizabeth Holmes. I spent a lot of time with Billy McFarland and the Fyre Festival, which is the same team that produced this.

Now spend a lot of time with Adam Newman and WeWork and they are different in many ways, but the uniting theme among those three people is they were dilettantes. Like they just, they were young and they didn't want to work. They wanted the success. They wanted the fame. They wanted that I'm changing the world because think about what they were seeing.

I mean, all three of those people's ages are like this, like peak Steve Jobs down to like Elizabeth Holmes wore the turtleneck, right? Like, but Steve Jobs spent a lot of time- working and figuring out what he was good at and founding Mac, he didn't roll in on the first day and make the iPhone or even the iPod.

Right? Like I think that what you see the common theme through all three of those when I really look at their stories is there was this narcissism, there was this. It's just because it's not that I bring anything, I bring skills or perspective. It's just all charisma and marketing and that's really what will change the world.

And some, in some ways, like, again, that's what they saw. That's what they saw in the news. The stories of the success is the success. And not a lot of the journey and the building of the skills and the failing. And we've gotten better at sharing those more complicated stories. But those three people.

Wanted to skip to the end. And what I think you see really is like, it was never good enough, especially with Adam Newman. Like it was just bigger, more, more impactful, more global, bigger, bigger, better because again, it wasn't, it was never like the work for the work's sake. It was always this vision of what the end product would be.

[00:42:05] Beth: I think something that you and I are doing well to just pat ourselves on the back for a second, we are on a work retreat. Is that right? We, and that's the thing like we're in the right framing to think about this. We really aren't dreaming bigger. I think we're dreaming deeper. And I spent a lot of time thinking about this when I was in HR, because a lot of the way that you motivate people at work is premised on.

Them acquiring more money, more responsibility, a fancier title like upward mobility is mostly how we understand human motivation. And I worked with a lot of people who had been doing the same job for decades and intended to retire from that. There wasn't a next step for them. And so how do you talk about growth and development and motivation when that upward mobility is removed?

And the answer that I kept coming back to is these people have a deeper connection to their work over time. Yes. You're preparing the same report every Monday or. Processing the same type of issues or interacting with the same people and attending the same meetings. But over time you have a deeper understanding of how your work connects to the work everybody else is doing.

You have a deeper understanding of how to do that work well, you have a deeper understanding of when to prioritize efficiency and when not to. And I think that framework would have helped somebody like Adam Newman and so many entrepreneurs in so many ways. I remember when I was at this Kentucky governor scholar program that you do in high school.

On the board in the room that I went in for most of my classes, there was a quote from Edward Abbey that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. And I have never forgotten it. And I just wish that someone could have had that chat with Adam Newman started a really good thing.

[00:44:05] Sarah: Yeah. I'm reading Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen. It's coming out, I think, in the next month or so. But they spent a lot of time talking about corporate culture and how it's created and how managers and management is such a problem because we just decide like, well, you're good at your job, so you should manage, right?

Like you have a good idea. That definitely means you're good at managing people. Well, no, those are different skills. 

[00:44:29] Beth: You make a lot of money. So you should definitely manage people. 

[00:44:32] Sarah: Yes, exactly. Like you're charismatic. I mean, that to me, it's like in as much the same way we spend a lot of time re-examining our stereotypes about leadership in the presidency. Like these three people are an invitation, particularly in Silicon Valley and the tech industry to re-examine our ideas about what a good CEO looks like and what that means, just because you are a, you know, Great conversationalist with venture capitalist investors does not mean, you know how to run a company.

Like just because you can sell the idea doesn't mean you have any sort of skills when it comes to management or strategy or anything. Honestly, it just means that you're a good marketer. And I think like we've lost our way in so many ways. I think it's like, that was the shift at first we decided, well, if you have any good ideas, you're a good middle manager.

And now that we have less than middle managers and Silicon Valley has upended our organization. We've just decided, well, if you have any good ideas, if you're a good marketer, you're good at everything. And that's just not true. And watching these fallouts and that just the speed at which they fall from grace.

And they go from 47 billion to almost bankrupt. It's just, it's just a reminder. Like it's just a house of cards it's built on nothing. 

[00:45:46] Beth: And that again is just it circles back to the, do your work theme. Because if you are an amazing marketer, the right next step for you isn't to then become an amazing manager it's to keep building on that strength that you have the whole StrengthsFinder theory be amazing at what you have a natural inclination to. Don't work on going from not good at something to okay at it, by focusing on that black. 

[00:46:14] Sarah: Well, and that's my, one of my favorite, I think it's a Ted Talk Cal Newport did where he said the problem with Steve Jobs' you know, graduation speech, that's so famous where he's like, what would you do? And you'll never work a day in your life. I don't know if he said that. Exactly. But it was like, it was find your passion. His was like very much find your passion. He's like Steve Jobs and find his passion. He found a skill.

He kept building a skill. He didn't, again, he didn't pop out of college with the idea for an iPod. He had to go and build computers and work on software and think about user experience. He was building a skill and not building a passion. He didn't have a passion for the iPad when he was 18. But that, that you can see that narrative and Elizabeth Holmes was an Adam Newman and all these people like they just thought like the passion, the charisma, that's all you need.

And it's just not. 

[00:46:57] Beth: You need other people, you just can't do it alone, which is another big, I think learning because you could see with Adam Newman and, and his wife, I guess they were a good partnership, a partnership that led each other astray. But he pushed other people out. 

[00:47:11] Sarah: And that's, what's so sad at the end of the documentary, they're like, all these people worked so hard, they poured themselves into it. And the whole story is this dude and his ego, the size of the globe. 

[00:47:21] Beth: Well, thank you so much much for listening and being part of this conversation. One place that you can continue this conversation with us is in our newsletter.

It comes out every Friday. In our newsletter, we share recommendations and listener messages and announcements about fun things that we have planned. Just as an example, today's newsletter includes some of the many, many, many recommendations that y'all have for Sarah about her mattress situation.

You don't want to miss it. You can subscribe by going to our website and scrolling about halfway down to the purple bar. We will be back here with you next Wednesday, have the best weekend and Labor Day available to you.

[00:48:09] Beth: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.

[00:48:15] Sarah: Megan Hart is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.

[00:48:21] Beth: Our show is listener supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

[00:48:25] Executive Producers (Read their own names):  Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.

The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, David McWilliams, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, Danny Ozment, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Karin True, Amy Whited, Emily Holladay, Katy Stigers.

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