DeSantis vs. Disney

TOPICS DISCUSSED

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TITLE 42 IMMIGRATION RULE

DESANTIS VS. DISNEY

TRANSCRIPT

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Heather [00:00:00] So I live in Orlando, Orange County, Florida, which would take the brunt of the tax hike due to the unincorporation of Disney property. Will Disney lawyers probably win out? I hope so. They've told their board it's no big deal. They'll get it back. But it's interesting how DeSantis is willing to give the majority of the burden to Orlando, which typically glows blue in elections. It will not affect the Republican Party at all, which is super frustrating. They don't need us in Orlando to do anything. With Florida prices skyrocketing, the house we bought a year and a half ago, we can't afford now. And that was before the Fed raised interest rates. I cannot imagine what a 20% plus property tax raise over two years will do to this area. What is true is Disney definitely has so much sway in Florida, but also locally in Orlando. Disney money is everywhere. So I'll be curious how the politics shift as the money shifts in retaliation. Basically, we're just emotionally spilling everywhere down here, somewhere between the happiest place on earth and hell.  

Sarah [00:01:13] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:01:14] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:01:16] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to do what we do best and engage in some political therapy around two of the most controversial issues in America right now, the end of Title 42 at the border and Florida's war on Disney. Outside of politics, we're going to talk about May or as I like to call it, December 2.0. Now, before we get started, Beth, you might sound a little different today. You want to tell why?  

Beth [00:01:55] Yes. Our 16-year-old roof is being replaced as we speak. This was the only day in all of May because, again, December 2.0 that we could get it scheduled. And it's loud. And so, my dear friends you just bought a house down the street from us, allowed me to come in to their empty, not yet moved into your house and I've set up a pillow fort in their half bath. It is not how I anticipated spending my first hours in their new home, but I'm really grateful for the quiet space today.  

Sarah [00:02:24] Speaking of gratitude, we are still so incredibly thankful for all of your support for our new book Now What? that launched last week. We love that you are all sharing your reviews on Amazon and good reads. Our goal is to get to 100. That's a really important number in the first few weeks of a book's launch. So if you haven't posted your review, we would love to see it. And also the audio book will be available on May 17th. And if you're looking for just one more way to show your support, you can request that your local library get a copy of Now What? Seriously, you guys, it's so incredible to watch your reviews pour in on Instagram and Facebook and Amazon, of course. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And up next, we're going to talk about Title 42.  

[00:03:26]  Title 42. What is it? Well, former President Trump activated Title 42, which is part of the Public Health Service Act of 1944, which was aimed at preventing the spread of communicable diseases around the United States. Now, the law started empowering the surgeon general, but they shifted that authority to the CDC. So if the CDC determines that there is a communicable disease in another country, health officials have the authority within this law and the approval of the president to prohibit "The introduction of persons and property from such countries or places" for as long as the health officials deem necessary. Biden has continued this policy that allows the DHS to turn away migrants at the border including -- and this part's important -- those seeking asylum on the basis of public health concerns surrounding COVID 19. However, the Biden administration recently announced that they're going to let Title 42 end on May 23rd, and this has sparked a heated debate about this policy, about the end of this policy and, of course, the politics surrounding this policy.  

Beth [00:04:37] And just to be clear, they're not changing the law. They're just repealing the invocation of Title 42. That they will resume normal immigration enforcement. Sarah, I think it is helpful to talk about how this law was invoked, because as we discussed when the pandemic began, there are public health reasons to occasionally close borders. But if you're going to do it, you have to do it fast and completely. You have to make it a really draconian measure in order for it to actually reduce transmission. And that reality is why Title 42 has not been used often in our history, because we are not often willing to do it in such a draconian way. President Trump's senior adviser, Stephen Miller, who's kind of reason for being is to curb immigration into the United States. Started researching Title 42 very early in the Trump presidency, before anyone had heard of the novel coronavirus. And he wanted to think about how could this be used during measles outbreaks or how could other communicable diseases be used to invoke Title 42? And they never got it done because it's just really hard to make the case that using it makes a difference.  

[00:05:53] So Covid 19 was really an opportunity for them to do something that they had wanted to do anyway. I'm not sure that we ever used Title 42 in a public health manner that actually reduced the transmission of Covid. Maybe we did. It's hard to know. But the through line of how this came to be isn't very connected to a public health outcome. So the Biden administration wanting to end it is, one, an acknowledgment that we are no longer in a Covid emergency. Even as we are seeing higher caseloads in parts of the country, the emergency has ended. Our hospitals know how to deal with this. We are not over flooded in hospitals right now. We are not requiring masks and people to stay at home, businesses to close down that kind of thing. So the public health rationale, if it ever made sense, is over for the invocation of Title 42. The controversy, though, is people are saying, hey, normal immigration enforcement doesn't work in the spring ever. And we don't trust you to do normal immigration enforcement in a way that will prevent a real crisis. Because as the weather gets warmer this time of year, we know we will see an uptick in the number of people trying to cross into the United States from the southern border.  

Sarah [00:07:10] Well, and what I think the Trump administration understood is that short of their unaccompanied minor disaster, although they included unaccompanied minor in their in vacation of Title 42, the Biden administration had instructed agents to exempt unaccompanied minors, and they were being placed in federal shelters or state run facilities until they were reunited with a family member. But I think for the most part, the Trump administration understood that enforcing draconian immigration regulations created inherent problems for any opponents looking to repeal said draconian immigration regulations, which is like the second you want to take something away, you're being accused of being lax on immigration, right? And so putting them in place is a lot harder than taking them away. It's really interesting when you look at the pragmatic reality of Title 42 at the border. I read both Sheriff on the Borders editorial about this and some reporting about Acting Assistant Secretary Nunez Neto, who appeared before Congress and was questioned by US Senator Josh Hawley. And both of them made the argument that Title 42 had really increased recidivism because there were no consequences for trying to cross. You just got turned away.  

[00:08:36]  People were just coming back and coming back and coming back and coming back. And so both of them were arguing like it's just inflating the numbers. You see these statistics that 1.8 million times, that's how often Title 42 was used to expel immigrants. And you see these these high numbers. But their argument is, yeah, but it's the people coming more than once that's great increase so tremendously under Title 42. And there's a little bit of cross talk about what's going to happen when it's repealed. You know, some people think because it's spring that it can open the floodgates. But then you hear officials at the border, you definitely hear DHS saying, "We understand what time of year it is. We have been preparing since September for spring and for the end of Title 42. We are not anticipating a dramatic increase beyond what we usually see around this time of year. But I think you're right. I mean, there was some polling that just came out that the majority of Americans just don't trust that. Like, a majority of Americans right now are saying, don't end Title 42 because they don't trust DHS to be able to handle the influx. And I think that's a very difficult place to be in for the Biden administration.  

[00:09:51]  I was listening to Ezra Klein show. And he interviewed former writer for The National Review, a conservative pundit who's now written this history of the right. And it's so many points in the history of the right. But really, I think you could argue the history of the country that immigration is the hot point. Immigration is the thing that people have so much fear and scarcity wrapped up into. And so any time we touch on this issue, I feel like immigration is sort of the new third wheel of American politics. That you can't touch it. You can't be seen as soft on immigration. You can't be seen as even wanting to fix it, because that's interpreted as being soft on immigration. And I feel like Title 42 is just one more manifestation of that reality.  

Beth [00:10:42] If you listen to past episodes, you'll know I'm a person who really values immigration. I will say I think that I have greater compassion around this debate than I've previously had about immigration, because you see us doing this not just about people from other countries, but about each other in the United States right now. I have a lot of feelings about all the new construction that's happening in my area. I can feel myself getting into a real scarcity place. Can our infrastructure support this? How many new roads are we going to need? Traffic congestion is way up where I live. And while I think more people generally means good outcomes, I think that the collapse of a lot of things we always thought were solid around the pandemic are working on us in ways that it's hard to totally unravel. And so I can get in that scarcity place myself. When we were in Texas, we saw so many signs about not wanting people from California in Texas.  

[00:11:44] And I know throughout the country there's been a ton of discussion, especially about wealthy people relocating from the coasts to middle America and how people feel about that. So sometimes when we talk about immigration, I worry that what we are having is really a discussion about the changing complexion of America, that we have people with different skin colors, different languages, different cultures, different traditions. I think right now we still have that, but we have mixed in to it just a huge dose of nothing feels very solid to me right now. And so the fear of more change is really strong. Now, that doesn't say anything about whether Title 42 was ever properly invoked here and whether revoking it is the correct thing to do under the law. But the bigger discussion, I think, has some new layers because of the pandemic.  

Sarah [00:12:38] So we do have 22 states suing to stop the government from lifting 42. Texas has filed a separate lawsuit asking for the same thing. Now, these are very like bureaucratic arguments. It's basically that the Biden administration violated administrative procedural law. So it's that discussion was it properly invoked? Is it properly being revoked? And so there's a real legal discussion here. But I think you're right. I think the deeper issue is our feelings of scarcity surrounding so many things in this country. I think what's frustrating is that immigration could be the solution to so much of that scarcity we're experiencing after the pandemic. That the labor issues, that the supply chain issues that are driven by labor issues, immigration could be a real solution to that. But that seems to be consistently a hard lift for Americans to understand and appreciate and engage with.  

[00:13:44]  I was talking with some family members last night and a conservative family member said, "I was hearing people talk about jobs and all the unfilled jobs." And I said, "I know we don't like to talk about it, but immigration can be a real solution to that." And that's sort of the most helpful I felt around on this. I'm like, okay, well, if people in their everyday conversations are bringing this up and saying we need workers, which means we need immigration, instead of just deciding that what we're going to shame people who we think aren't working hard enough or doing jobs that we think they should do, I mean, how's that working for us? Like, if you think that's the issue, that's fine. But is the solution going to be we're going to shame these people into it? We're just going to make them so poor they want to do these crappy jobs?  

[00:14:24] And that's really the most hopeful I've felt recently. Like, if everyday people are are engaging with the complexity and the difficulties of our labor market and how immigration fits within that, because that's the one place there should really not be scarcity. I think there's a lot of scarcity around housing and infrastructure. But, dang, we have two jobs for every unemployed American. There should not be any scarcity around labor. And hopefully people can can see that and understand immigration as a solution to that. But I don't know.  

Beth [00:14:59] I hope that's true, too. I hope that there's new dimensions to the conversation. Also open up new possibilities in our discussions of it, because I think that we absolutely need more people here in terms of making the economy start to not just work on the numbers, but work in the feeling of it to kind of feel more normal again. And I also hope that when we say maybe we don't trust the administration to handle it, that we less mean we don't trust a Democratic president to manage the border and more that we recognize that the laws that we have in place, what DHS has to work with, what the president has to work with, do not meet this moment because our current immigration laws result in really inhumane and uneven and unreliable enforcement. And so, we've been talking for decades about how Congress needs to do better on this issue. And I hope that these conflicting pressures might result in some positive momentum.  

Sarah [00:16:06] Up next, we're going to talk about Florida and how conflicting pressures are leading to really negative momentum in a lot of areas. So after the break, we're going to talk about DeSantis and Disney. As everyone knows by now, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has been engaged in a political battle with the Disney Corporation. I see this as a battle on many fronts. But let's start at the beginning. I mean, maybe not the real beginning, but the most recent beginning which is Florida's passage of what they call a parental rights and education bill and what critics call the "Don't say gay" bill. Now, this bill prohibits classroom discussion or instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity. It is very vague, doesn't do a lot of defining of classroom discussion or classroom instruction. And critics say that it could prohibit a teacher answering a basic question about their partners or similar questions about a student's family. This bill caused an enormous amount of controversy. Disney, as a huge political player in the state of Florida, experienced a lot of pressure from outside forces and from their own employees to get involved.  

[00:17:36] So Disney posed political contributions in Florida and said it would support organizations that oppose the "Don't say gay" bill. DeSantis jumped all over this fight and said that Disney is a California corporation and they're not going to tell Florida what to do. And so in a, I think, very clear tit for tat, in a span of about 48 hours, the legislature passed and Ron DeSantis signed about two page long bill that ends Disney's Special Tax District in June of 2023. Now, I think we could go down a road about the governance side of this, about what that means to end the Special Tax District. I know a lot of us have read sort of the implications for taxpayers, the implications for emergency personnel, because what that tax district does is let Disney basically govern itself. So if they can't do that anymore and that governance is pushed on these two counties that cover this almost 40 square miles, what does that mean? But, Beth, I'm going to make a proposition, which is I don't think this is about governance for DeSantis. I also don't think that this legislation is likely to survive a legal fight. And so I don't want to get too much in the weeds of that. What do you think?  

Beth [00:18:56] I think it's tough because in some ways I think there's a really meaningful conversation to have about what local governance means when you have something the size of Disney that needs so much from counties. And counties are already strapped in their budgets, around emergency services, around water quality,  around roads that they can't really afford to take this on. We ask people on Instagram, especially people in Florida, what they thought about this. And there was some like, well, Disney really ought to be paying taxes the way that everyone else pays taxes. Well, it's hard to imagine what this district is if not just a customized tax for Disney, because it is paying for all of those services. And it's also contracting with lots of local government agencies and people. There are many, many, layers to this. And if we don't want to do the governance side here, maybe I'll do it in More to Say about that because I think it's really interesting. But I agree with you that that's not what it's about for DeSantis. I would like to hover for a second on the suspension of political contributions as the provocative act here. Disney spends a ton of money on campaigns for Florida representatives and senators, for parties in Florida all over the country, but especially in Florida. And I think it is so transparent that DeSantis responded to what he views as a provocation and what he's trying to sell to Floridians as an attack on Florida's parents. When what Disney really did that hurt was suspend political contributions.  

Sarah [00:20:37] I think the suspension of political contributions is why, to me, this is not about governance, because this flies in the face of all the political rules. You don't mess with the big, powerful corporate players in your political realm. And I think what people are speaking about the tax, should Disney be taxed like everybody else, speaks a little bit to what DeSantis has touched here, which is they're getting unfair treatment. And I think people understand they get special treatment. And maybe have questions about this. But he did the calculus maybe quickly and maybe wrongly, that the politics of this will outweigh the governance of this, maybe because he knows it won't survive a legal challenge. Maybe because he is running for president and all politics is national. And so it's such a hot button national issue, both touching on conversations surrounding gender and sexuality and conversations about free speech and corporate power. But he made the calculus this is such a winning national political issue, it really doesn't matter what the costs are locally.  

Beth [00:21:56] Well, I read a piece from Sarah Rumph, who knows Florida politics very well, and she also points out that in pursuit of the presidential nomination, Ron DeSantis now has an organization around him that gets small dollar donations from across the country. And so he can afford to take this fight on with Disney. But that's not really true of like rank and file Florida legislators whose names aren't known, maybe even in their own districts, but especially nationwide. Those folks are going to need corporate donations to continue conducting their political activity the way that they do. So in some ways, DeSantis is really throwing them under the bus here, and he can afford to do that because he's running for president. He also might be making the calculation that if a lot of these folks lose and he gets a Democratic legislature to spar with for a couple of years, it increases his national profile and increases his opportunity to win the nomination.  

Sarah [00:22:55] Well, and I think that he has exhibited several times and has adopted the Trump sort of loyalty at all costs. It doesn't matter how you feel. You do what he says. Doesn't matter the political cost for you. You are loyal to him or you will have consequences way worse than any political consequences of following him. I think he's made that approach abundantly clear. So in pursuit of a deeper understanding of this particular cultural war, I listen to Ben Shapiro -- God save me -- on this issue. And it is like a hall of mirrors. Up is down, down is up. He spends a lot of time quoting Barack Obama and speeches from his presidency as if that is the new regulation coming from the federal government. It's very weird. But even he acknowledges the hypocrisy of this move coming from the right. That the party of empowering corporate speech, empowering corporations, the party behind Citizens United is now saying if you criticize the government, you will experience repercussions from the government. And it's wild to hear the justification. The justification is basically, it's good enough for Democrats so we're going to do it, too.  

[00:24:24] If you don't stay out of politics as a corporation, then we will just do it twice as hard as the Democrats do it to you. Because they are furious that corporations have sort of responded to liberal political desires. That Disney criticize this bill. But way before that, that professional sports teams will pull out of states, championships will be pulled out of states. You see this long line. And this is what they list to say like, well the Democrats are being hypocritical for criticizing DeSantis for going after Disney. You guys do this all the time. You didn't want Chick-Fil-A in your towns. Is what Ben Shapiro... He listed all these cities mayors who said, "I don't want you Chick-Fil-A to come to town." And I think there is something interesting to say I think it's just the fight. It's really not about governance. It's really not even about policy. It's about the fight. You want to fight us in this territory. We'll come back. The Libs want to fight us by going after corporations and making them prop up their belief systems. We'll go harder. We'll do it 10 times harder. We'll fight harder for what you really want and not let them win every sort of corporate fight.  

Beth [00:25:45] Well, I don't buy that any of that is about corporations. I think you're right. It is just the fight. I don't think that this is about what role the private sector plays in public matters. I think it is just who's with us and who's against us. And if you're against us, we're going to use every tool that we have, public and private, to make your life hard. And if you're with us, we're going to use every tool that we have to make your life at least feel like you have a leg up on the people who are making life hard for us. At least feel like you have a leg up on the people who disagree with you. A lot of people when we announced that we were going to talk about this issue, wanted us to talk about the hypocrisy of people like Ben Shapiro was saying stay out of politics when Citizens United has welcomed corporations into politics as people. And I think that's true. And I also think pointing out hypocrisy has not gotten us anywhere in our politics because we really aren't talking about ideas anymore. We are just talking about who's with us and who's against us.  

Sarah [00:26:49] I think this is a good place to pivot because I don't think we're talking about ideas anymore in politics, but I do think we're talking about fears. Fears. Concerns. Even back to our conversation earlier about immigration. I was listening to David Frum on The Bulwark. I did a little tour. I did Pod Save America, The Bulwark, and then Ben Shapiro.  

Beth [00:27:18] What a day.  

Sarah [00:27:19] I took a tour across the spectrum on what people had to say about DeSantis.  David Frum's argument was DeSantis hates this fight because he wants to be the guy, the common sense guy who kept schools open during Covid. That's the position that is most beneficial to him. And I think that could be true in the general, but he has to win in the primary. And the right wing of the Republican Party, the far right wing of the Republican Party loves a fight. And the two issues that have really, I think, crystallized that position is the critical race theory and now this fight about "Corporate Grooming" and LGBTQ issues. And they're both of them being driven by Christopher Rufo, this right wing activist who basically created critical race theory, who lives his life on Fox News. He's on there all the time. And look, he is good at this. He has figured out what people are worried about and how to articulate those fears in a way that empowers Republicans and punishes Democrats. Am I overstating that, do you think?  

Beth [00:28:41] I think that's correct. I think he would say that's correct. I don't think that's controversial.  

Sarah [00:28:45] Right. I Think that he has understood that the only way to buffett attacks of values from liberals and progressives -- and what I mean as to buffett attacks that you are racist, that you are sexist, that you are homophobic on adults, is to tell the other adult that they not only do they not care about children, but they are actively harming children. So you call me racist. I say you're telling little kindergartners they're racist. You tell me I'm sexist, you're you're degendering children. You tell me I'm homophobic, you're training kids that there is no gender and that sexuality is a spectrum and all these things. So he used a lot of the Disney Diversity & Inclusion videos. That's what kicked off this don't say gay thing. He throw up these videos. I had members of my own family send them to me. There's one with the diversity inclusion manager at Disney saying that they have eliminated all mentions of ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls, and now they're using inclusive things like, "Hello, everyone." They had one where they were going to cover gender reassignment surgery. And not only employees, but employees children. That's the one that my relatives sent me. They had ones about where a content creator, sort of a creative on Disney staff talked about her hesitancy to join Disney and then felt like they were very accepting of her creative vision. And she jokingly says, "My not at all secret gay agenda." Like as sort of a little quip.  

[00:30:19] They've turned that into sort of this fear mongering. And by they, I mean Christopher Rufo with the support of Fox News. And they want to upend everything. They want to do it to your kids. Corporate America is helping them. And we are the only one stopping them. And I think you see that theme over and over and over again. That's what to me it's like, how do we answer that? I mean, I think some people have figured out. That is why a Mallory McMorrow speech went viral, is because her forcefully standing up and saying, "How dare you accuse me? A Christian, suburban mother of grooming children." Sort of that answer of turning that identity back on them. I think that's why everybody loved that so much. That's why it was so well received, is because there hasn't been a lot of answer to these fears coming from the Democratic left, the sort of progressive wing. I don't think anybody has really articulated the answer or the calming or the de-escalation to that Christopher Rufo approach which we have seen in school boards, which we have seen in Florida, which we have seen in Texas, which we just see over and over and over again.  

Beth [00:31:43] I feel a little bit about this conversation like I feel about the Supreme Court opinion in Roe versus Wade, which is that I cannot continue to discuss these issues on the terms created and recycled and disseminated by people like Christopher Rufo and major media corporations. And that is for both the progressive side and the conservative side. I am not saying they are equal. I am not trying to do false comparisons here. But what I do want to say is I need to have a freshness and a locality of these discussions. Because when you talk with people in the abstract about no longer saying, ladies and gentlemen, it just becomes slamming your head against walls. And when you talk in the specific about our community and these kids and where are they coming to school with or where are they coming to this amusement park with, then you can have a more reasonable discussion. And I think the same is true about critical race theory, and I think the same is true about the "Don't say gay" bill. I think the same is true about Chick-Fil-A. I just think that I need personally to cope with this moment in American politics by walking away from the language that we are all absorbing from folks who have clear agendas around how the language is used.  

Sarah [00:33:19] I listened to The Argument on Friday. It was Jane Coaston and Michelle Goldberg and Ross Douthat, and they were talking about about "Don't say gay." And I thought it was one of the best conversations I've heard about that undercurrent and how, exactly what you said, how it's being defined by the right wing. But also acknowledging that there are real cultural -- I don't know if it's concerns because I don't want it to become this sort of moral panic, which I think in many ways it already is.  

Beth [00:34:00] Can we use uncertainty. Is that a fair word to use here?  

Sarah [00:34:01] Yeah, I think cultural uncertainty in the face of change. Did you get a chance to listen to it?  

Beth [00:34:07] I did, yeah. I was listening at the exact moment you texted me and told me.  

Sarah [00:34:13] I thought the best moment was when Ross Douthat said, "Ten years ago or 15 years ago, as a social conservative, if I had said in the face of arguments around marriage equality, "Well, in 15 years from now, people can name themself and you'll tell me sexuality is a spectrum and everybody can choose at any moment in their life what they want to do, and people will be choosing their genders." You would have called me an alarmist and you would have said, How dare you try to argue against something? People are born this way. They don't choose it. And it's just as finite percent of the population that we need to allow to marry who they love and how dare you accelerate it and scare people that way?" And I thought, he's right. He's right. That's exactly what would have happened. I had this conversation with my 12 year old. I said, "You weren't alive then, Griffin. The argument was people don't choose, their like this. They just want to marry who they love. And that'll be it." Let me say definitively, I don't care if people choose. I don't care if people go back and forth. I actually do believe sexuality is a spectrum.  

[00:35:24] But that was not the way it was being argued at the time. And I think there is this undercurrent of uncertainty because people feel like, wait, I thought we were talking about marriage equality. And now people can choose at any given moment and then change their mind at any given moment what gender they want to be. I'm articulating in broad strokes what I think that cultural uncertainty is. Not that I agree or disagree with it, not I think it's realistic, but I think that's there.  I think they have tapped it, but I don't think they necessarily invented it. And I think that's what's really, really, difficult. And I think there's a way to speak to uncertainty without condoning the fears. I think there is a way to speak to uncertainty with guidance and love and values and support that really wrap our arms around the most oppressed, vulnerable members of our society that are personally touched by these issues. Because I think the alternative is in an effort to protect them, we put them on the pyre as the fuel. I don't want trans kids to fuel these damn conversations any more.  

Sarah [00:36:46] It's so Toxic. It's so unfair. And it's like we keep trying to say, "Well, you hate them and you want to punish them and we're not." And it's just intensifying the fight. It's like we need jui-jitsu. Like, we need to say, "Okay. We all care about kids here. How can we drop the ground out from under this fight and present it in a fresh way." Or confirm the concerns in a way that stop putting this community at the center of this fight and turning into, you had kids. You want to groom kids. You want to kill kids. If Disney can't find their way out, we really need help.  

Beth [00:37:36] I saw a therapist for about six years. He was a really wonderful teacher to me. And I've spoken about this before, but one of the things that he taught me was this phrase The Spell of Solidity. I have this really irrational distrust of basic physics, and I believe that my kitchen cabinets are going to fall from the weight of plates all the time. And it is a physical sensation that I experience. And my husband thinks it is hilarious. And it is hilarious. And it's also terrible to live that way. And and he said to me, "But this is the spell of solidity having broken for you." Because humans developmentally need to believe that some things are settled. Some things just are and they are unchangeable. And we need that. And it messes with us when something comes along and disrupts what we believe is just settled. And I think that we are all overloaded with the breakage of the spell of solidity right now in so many places.  

[00:38:37] I agree with you that that was a really wonderful moment in that episode of the argument when Ross Douthat said that about what we would have thought 10, 15 years ago. I would submit that ten, 15 years ago I also never would have believed that a Republican governor would use the law to punish a corporation for expressing a viewpoint on a piece of legislation. I would not have believed that Roe versus Wade would be overturned and that immediately people would start talking about whether birth control ought to be banned, whether IVF ought to be legal. I never would have believed these things were possible. So the spell of solidity has been completely shattered and developmentally, that is hard on us. And that doesn't mean that I think every viewpoint is totally understandable or that the way people are behaving especially is acceptable. It is also why I have got to find some smaller spaces for these discussions.  

[00:39:33] And when you talk to people in Florida about what's going on with Disney, you get a really complex set of considerations, considerations that do reach the trash collection and the firefighters and the response time of ambulances. Considerations that do talk about municipal bonds and taxation and what is the balance of economic development, which always has benefits and always has burdens. And it is really hard to get that calculus of benefits and burdens of economic development right. And so I think that's a really good framework to think about the larger discussion about what it means to have transgender and non-binary people as a focal point in art and culture and social media. And for us to be rethinking some of our language because we have people who have always existed but who are now being cared for and who are being fought for. And I think we are really struggling to figure out where something is advocacy that needs to push hard on an issue and forcefully and fight, and where just people trying to deal with this cultural uncertainty begin.  

[00:40:54] And I just keep looking for ways to keep my feet firmly in the people looking for ways to handle cultural uncertainty category instead of the fight-fight category. I know we need people to fight -fight on multiple sides of different issues. I also know that that's not what I'm here to do. And it's easy to believe because of all that language, because of those refined messages that make their way to us in such a deliberate fashion, it's easy to get confused about your place in the scope of that discussion.  

Sarah [00:41:27] Now, it's so interesting listening to Ben Shapiro because, obviously, his posture is very fight, fight, fight, but it's always the left. There's no acknowledgment. There's no mention of polling. There's no mention of where most Americans are. There's never any conversation about what some of this push came from within the Disney Corporation came from, with like employees that were pushing for this activism as it often happens in corporate America. Under his view of the world, it is the left, the left wing media complex and Barack Obama, I guess, who's still steering all this so far. You know, he goes on this whole thing about how Barack Obama lied for eight years all the time. And I thought, where am I? What is happening?  I mean, that's his formulation of the world, right? It's a concerted effort. That this isn't a sort of generational shift or generational conversation, which I absolutely think it is, but that it is a concerted effort from the left. Maybe the left is composed of young people primarily and he's okay with that? I don't know.  

[00:42:38] But when I heard him talking about this, it was very defined by the fight. And so I want to believe desperately that when it touches real issues of governance and real complexity in people's lives and impact on people's lives, that that will lessen that that urge to fight, lessen that fear and that scarcity. But I think what we've learned from Republican politics over the last five years is that that is not the case. It doesn't matter if the childhood tax credit positively impacts your bottom line. It doesn't matter if you have one of the best job markets out there. It doesn't matter if your roads are falling apart. It doesn't matter if in Kansas they have to shut the school down one day a week because they can't afford budgetary to run this. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that there is a minority view. And I think the understanding that it's a minority view and that it's cancelation really mean that I'll call you a pedophile in pursuit of my political ambition.  

[00:43:47] Like, it's just power. It's not governance. It's just power. And I think a lot of it's cultural power. And I'm talking about the people with honest concerns, I'm talking about Republican Party leadership, but also Republican Party activists and that far right wing of the party that nothing anybody says or does is going to upend their desire for a fight. And so to me, if that's the political reality, if the political reality is January 6th was just some nice tourists and the real enemy here is the left that Barack Obama is a secret socialist trying to destroy America, then I feel this is a desperate need, just like you said, just upend it. Like, well, stop giving them a fight. Just stop giving them a fight. Like, just stop. I don't even know what that means. I don't even know how you stop engage in a culture war on this level. I really don't even know what that would look like. I felt trapped so much in this cycle for most of my adult life. And it just keeps escalating and escalating. Your worse, your worst, your worse, your worse.  

[00:45:03]  I think this Disney situation, because it flies so in the face of the traditional political roles, particularly around state politics -- I mean, can you talk about going back in time one year ago? Oh, well, they're going to go after Disney. What? Like, it just flies in the face of political logic. And so I'm having to think, well, then the political logic is different. What am I missing? What am I not seeing, to our detriment, to everybody's detriment? And I think that is just exhausting.  

Beth [00:45:34] I think trapped in a cycle is a great way to put it because it does feel like nothing matters. I was reading Charlie Sykes newsletter for The Bulwark this morning, as we talk about venturing into the territory of conservatism. And The Bulwark is a never Trump explicitly outlet that I think does really excellent commentary in particular. And Charlie Sykes was talking about the protests that broke out over the weekend in the wake of the Supreme Court leak, and particularly about the folks who showed up around Brett Kavanaugh's house. And he was saying, "Look, there is nothing that spends the Republican media machine more than protests. Nothing. And especially protest at someone's house like this will be days and days of content for that Republican media machine." And I think that it just has us all believing that every pro-life person I know must relish the thought of forced birth and cutting off access to birth control. And every left wing person I know must want to police every sentence I've ever stated and ensure that corporations abide by a list of rules or else they go bankrupt. And that is just not where the people I know are.  

[00:47:02] I know people who will say some banana things now, but I think that's because bananas things have so permeated our discourse. I think what Ben Shapiro said about Barack Obama lying all the time is necessitated by books like This Will Not Pass. The new book from Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns of The New York Times. I'm reading it. It is so well-sourced and so full of details that I did not know before. It's also drenched with disdain for Donald Trump as a human. And I read it and I think this is such important information and I wish everyone knew. And if you have any sense of "I thought Donald Trump could have been a good president. I voted for him once. Maybe I voted for him twice," You'll just put it down a page or two in. And I'm not criticizing them because I've really tried to interrogate myself. Like, what do you expect when you're sitting in the middle of all this information and you're trying to not do a journalist thing and have the left come at you for being too fair, then this is what is going to get produced.  

[00:48:07] And I'm not criticizing the left for that either. I'm just saying, I think to your point about being stuck in a cycle, that we all feel that sense of being trapped. I'm either not a good enough ally or I'm not fighting for real values. I've gotten a couple of emails in the past few weeks where like, I don't fight you enough on this podcast. I'm not interested in fighting anywhere. I'm interested in thinking and growing and listening and learning and trying to find some openings in our politics. And I worry that we are well past being able to find openings because we've all been taught that all political action looks like fighting. And I'm also kind of hopeful because I do think DeSantis has way overplayed his hand here. Legally, I think this is a joke. I think there's no way the special tax district goes down. Politically, I think that it is so transparent. That it could fracture a little bit of at least his constituency. And I don't know what happens after that, but I'll take it. 

Sarah [00:49:18] Yeah. I think those openings are what I'm looking for. I've decided for myself and my own conversations with people, I have to stop denying people's fears because when people feel that their fears are silenced that fuels the fight. And it cost me nothing to say, I hear you. It is a confusing time surrounding gender. It is. I don't feel like that's a lie. It is. It's confusing and it's hard. And we are transitioning, some of us literally. The cultural, figuratively. We are in it with that right now. And if I was planning this out, I'm not sure post-pandemic was the best time to do that. But it is what it is. And so I just want to give people space to say, this feels hard. This feels like some people want to change everything including ladies and gentlemen. And I just want to give people space to be able to say that, because keeping it in their own heads or keeping it only in the rage fueled environment that is Fox News is hurting everyone, particularly the people that so many of us feel are most vulnerable, like trans people.   

Sarah [00:50:47] So I just want to do something different. I don't want to be fighting about Ron DeSantis and Disney and whatever the equivalent is at the expense of actual governance, at the expense of actual ideas, at the expense of our actual values. Because everything has been subsumed to just, they're the enemy. We are going to pivot a little bit to what we're thinking about outside politics. Up next. Beth, I said we're going to pivot just a little bit because I do think what we're going to talk about now is relevant, which is May as in the month we are currently in. And the exhaustion that accompanies it and how that plays out in lots of ways. Why have we put every, I would argue, gendered appreciation holiday in the month of May? Why is it Nurses Day and Teacher Appreciation Day and Mother's Day all at the beginning of May? Who did this? Who planned this? I would like to talk to them.  

Beth [00:52:11] I don't know. I loved for years the the meme of It's Gonna be May. And then this year, I saw several people posting Britney Spears with Just So Typically May. And I prefer that hard. And it has helped me a lot because every time I sit down with my calendar and see just not a square filled with white space, I think, just so typically may. That's just what this is.  

Sarah [00:52:34] Yeah. When I heard it probably years ago, I don't even know. I wish I could credit where I heard it originally, but I don't. The first person who said it's December 2.0. I thought, yes, that's it. Like, it's a transition of season. It's an incredibly sort of emotionally intense time of year. Like, we're wrapping up something. We're ending the school year. We're having all these sort of important holidays. Just even economically, we've had so many people like advertisers and some of the companies we work with say that Mother's Day is the second busiest time of year after Christmas for purchasing and gift giving and all that. And it's like, I don't know why we keep doing this to ourselves. I also think it's particularly intense this year because it feels like we're all trying to get back to sort of the normal schedule after the pandemic, even though I don't think the pandemic is completely over, obviously, there is still Covid out there.  

[00:53:32] But like scheduling things that got rescheduled. Even us, we had so many people who were like, "Why do you have an event schedule the same night as the Popcast? And we're like, "Well, because we were both rescheduling things that we had had to postpone." And so there's the normal things that we're like, "Oh, we can do this again this year." And then we have all this backlog stuff that got postponed that we're trying to do this year. And it feels very, very, much to me like that moment after giving birth when you're like, "I feel good, I'm going to go do something." And then you do something seemingly normal that you should be capable of doing, and you do it, and then every cell in your body was like, girl, it was too soon. I wanted you to know it was too soon, but you weren't listening to me. But it was too soon.  

Beth [00:54:13] There's also a terrible mismatch of expectations and reality for most of May, because that change of season makes me feel like, Ooh, I should be outside all the time. I should be lounging under the sun. I should be swimming. I should be biking. I should be taking long walks with the people I love. But actually what you're doing is like running to the store to get the gift that you forgot to buy and calling someone to say, "Hey, can you please drop them off for this thing because we've got this over here." Graduation is supposed to feel amazing. And graduation feels like a damn slog most of the time. I just think that there are so many pieces. We heard from many, many, people on Instagram about how Mother's Day is so disappointing. And it is, right?  

[00:54:54] That hurts your feelings. But the truth is, nobody's up for any of this. I don't think anybody's ever up for all the things that May has this time of year, but especially this year. Because while all this normal Mayness is going on and the return to normal Mayness is going on, we're also getting that terrible déja vu of like, [Inaudible] an awful lot of Covid cases right now. If we hadn't changed the way we did the map, the map would be red right now. What do we think about that. You know what I mean? And so it's all over the place. I saw Doctor Strange over the weekend. I'm really excited to talk with you about it when you see it. But I've just been really thinking about how much wisdom there is in the multiverse, because I do feel like we're in the multiverse right now.  

Sarah [00:55:37] So much of our weekend was spent managing Felix's diabetes, which is what we do. That's our  full time job now. We stopped to do all the other things on top of that. And a big part of diabetes management is what's called basal insulin, which is long acting insulin. So it's like this base level and then you bolus, which is insulin you bolus for every meal, right? And it feels like our basal insulin level is not right in America. We do not have the right base level of adjustment, you know what I'm saying? Like our base level of exhaustion, our base level of energy, our base sort of emotional capacity, our base mental health, it's just not right. So we're we're peaking. We're falling. We're Peaking. We're falling.  And as we were sort of in that mindset, I thought, oh yeah,  this feels like what's going on with America. Our basal is just not quite right.  

Beth [00:56:39] I think that's right. And I don't really know how to adjust it, except to gently suggest in every place where someone cares what I think, maybe we could do less.  Maybe we could not do this thing that we typically do. Or maybe we could do it like in a much easier version. I had high hopes for throwing a rock in last day of school pool party. and I think what I'm going to do is say, if you'd like to come swim, you're welcome to and if you'd like to bring a dish, please do. That's about the best I've got right now. I was at church this weekend. We're having a really hard time getting enough people to fill all the roles. And I said, they're thinking, do we need to do this every Sunday? Like, is there an adjustment that can be made here to walk some of the pressure back? I don't know, but I'm looking for it everywhere I can find it. I'm looking for somebody to say, "What if we did less?"  

Sarah [00:57:29] I think that's a great question. I love those moments where we can ask, what can we do differently? What can we do less? Where could we find a different opening in this conversation? It's my favorite part of what we do here at Pantsuit Politics. I hope what we have done here today around immigration and Disney and God Bless May has been helpful to all of you. Thank you for joining us every week. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

Beth [00:58:12] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:58:17] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:58:23] Our show is listener-supported special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:58:27] Martha Bronitsky. Linda Daniel. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliot. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zugenalis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs.  

[00:58:44] The Kriebs. Lauri LaDow. Lilly McClure. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tawni Peterson. Tracy Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Katherine Vollmer. Amy Whited.  

Beth [00:59:04] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Ashley Thompson. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Morgan McHughes. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller. 

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