There is a lightness and an ease felt by Former Senator Claire McCaskill and former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, as Vice President Kamala Harris continues to flip the script on Trump’s most tired tactics. From demurring on setting a debate, to questioning Harris’ racial identity, the vice president’s responses have been pitch-perfect. And as we dip below the 100-day mark, access to reproductive healthcare is on the minds of many– especially for women in states with near or total abortion bans. President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Alexis McGill Johnson, joins Claire to lay out what the 2024 reproductive map looks like, where state ballot initiatives to codify Roe are happening this fall, and the real threat Trump’s Project 2025 poses to restricting care nationwide.
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And be sure to grab your tickets for Sept 7th: Join fellow fans and viewers for an in-person, interactive experience connecting you with MSNBC’s most trusted hosts and experts. Rachel Maddow, Steve Kornacki, Jen Psaki, Claire McCaskill and many more. All in one place. All live on stage. All in one day. https://stg01.ms.now/Democracy2024
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jennifer Palmieri: Hello, and welcome to “How to Win 2024.” It’s Thursday afternoon on August 1st. I’m Jennifer Palmieri, and I’m here with my co-pilot, Claire McCaskill. Hi, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: Hey, it’s so much more fun now. Isn’t it?
Jennifer Palmieri: I mean, I just feel like there’s so much lightness in my voice and I know.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, true confession, I would dread this moment in the week a few weeks ago, like, oh my God, I’ve got to talk about it and I’m so depressed. And now it’s like, man, spring in my step. We are hitting on all cylinders.
Jennifer Palmieri: I know. I know.
Claire McCaskill: I haven’t felt this good since, you know, the same time in 2008.
Jennifer Palmieri: And it feels, it’s not just, oh, you feel good for the vice president. It’s like, you’re proud of President Biden —
Claire McCaskill: Yes.
Jennifer Palmieri: — for making this possible.
Claire McCaskill: Yes.
Jennifer Palmieri: You feel good about the Democrats because our leader had a problem, and he dealt with it in like the most generous, courageous way possible. And it just all feels great, so.
Claire McCaskill: Speaking of our leader, let’s give him some props right now for —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — an amazing development that happened today that is 100% Joe Biden.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, it’s that three Americans and one permanent U.S. resident were among those freed from Russian captivity today, and one of the biggest prisoner exchanges since the Cold War. “Wall Street Journal” reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan are among the prisoners released. And it’s, yeah, it’s such great news. We send our best to them and their families, their loved ones. And Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, just briefed at the White House, and he talks about how even as Jake was briefing, President Biden was calling leaders of the countries that were part of the prisoner swap to thank them. And he said, it’s just vintage Biden just leveraging America’s allies in a way that, you know, only he can do and has really been a defining feature of his presidency. And I love even Jake got a little choked up, which he never does. So great.
Claire McCaskill: And what is really notable is we learned in the coverage of the release today that an hour before President Biden did the selfless and patriotic thing and declared himself no longer running for president, an hour before that, he was on the phone with Slovenia doing what only the president of the United States can do. And that is leveraging our strong relationship and ties with countries to move the needle when it really matters to America. So all of you folks out there think isolationism is the way forward, that all of you who are buying what J.D. Vance is selling and to some extent even Donald Trump, that somehow America doesn’t need anybody else in the world, but America, pay attention here. We need others in the world for us to be safe and for American citizens to be safe as they travel around the world. So this is a really good moment for President Joe Biden. He’s had a lot lately, but this is certainly among one of the tops he’s had this year.
Jennifer Palmieri: And before we get deep into the show today, we want to tell you about MSNBC Premium. It’s a special subscription offering on Apple Podcasts. And when you subscribe, you’ll get new episodes of How to Win 2024, yay, and all of MSNBC’s original podcasts ad free plus exclusive bonus content every month.
Claire McCaskill: You’ll also get new episodes of “Morning Joe” and the “Rachel Maddow Show” without ads. And let me say that again, without ads. This is something I want to have needle pointed on a pillow in my life. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcast right from your phone or whatever device you’re listening on right now.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay, and now on to today’s episode, the countdown is on. Oh, my God, there’s only 96 days left to the election. And the DNC virtual convention begins today with 99 percent of the delegates signing Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination petition.
Claire McCaskill: And as I referenced earlier, Kamala is making politics fun again.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: We’re going to talk about the messaging that is emerging from her campaign and contrast it with the dark, ugly underbelly of Trump’s message, which has been made quite plain in the last 24 hours. I mean, I’m like watching that thing yesterday. This is when he appeared in front of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And like every answer he gave, I was like, are you kidding me? Is this guy serious? Does he really think this helps him get votes he doesn’t have now? It was really something.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. I mean, and then he posted some crazy stuff on Truth Social today. Some crazy photo as a little follow up as well. And later in this episode, Claire will spend some time with the head of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson, for a deep dive on what reproductive freedom looks like in 2024. They’ll explain where abortion is most severely restricted, how Trump’s Project 2025 thinks about women’s basic health care decisions and what it’s like on the ground for women who need care in states with abortion bans, even in emergencies. But first to today’s strategy session, 96 days.
Claire McCaskill: And you know, this is what we usually do if I were in the room.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: And, you know, I just think it’s going to be really hard for us to do that segment this week because they’re doing everything right. I mean, what can we tell them at this point?
Jennifer Palmieri: There’s no second guessing we can do now. Oh, it’s just plenty.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, seriously. Listen, they were ready, and it shows she was ready, and it shows. I mean, it really is like stepping off the edge of a cliff when you go from the life she was leading day to day to the life she is leading now.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: As well as anybody. Jen, you have been at the side of a presidential candidate. You know what the pressure is like.
Jennifer Palmieri: Particularly when you’re running against this guy.
Claire McCaskill: Particularly running against this guy. But she’s got her pace. She seems happy and joyful and confident.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And I even have noticed, this is something when you’re a practitioner, you notice these things. I don’t think people understand how hard it is when you are in front of a raucous crowd, how your timing is off, how you pause, how you let the crowd organically rise up and lift you.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: How you wait for that to happen. How you calm them down to try to get to the substantive things you want to say. She has been working her crowds like she is a symphony conductor.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: It has really, really been good. And that is not an easy skill. Anybody who’s watched people do it badly know it feels like you’re riding in a bumper car.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: You know. Whereas this was just smooth and organic and natural. And man, it’s fun to watch.
Jennifer Palmieri: And like all good performances, she makes it look easy, but it’s all happening at the right time. And she’s doing a great job prosecuting the case against Trump and the GOP is hitting her on immigration, calling her the border czar, something she never was. Trump’s first campaign ad against her called her and calling her the border czar and blaming her for the border crisis. And then her ad back, I was like, yes, you know, it’s just there’s a lightness to this campaign. You know, it’s joyful. And the notion of not getting bogged down, not getting overwhelmed or giving too much power to the Trump MAGA side by making them scary and fearful, you know, as opposed to just weird. I feel like that has sort of taken the temperature down. And then also to just dismiss out of hand as the Harris campaign ad on immigration does. You know, it’s like there’s a solution on the border, on the table, and you’re the one who killed it. You know, just like boom, right back at them. And that’s supposed to be their big thing, right? That was supposed to be their big issue against them. And she turns it on offense, as you should do, because they are completely full of it.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, we could actually go back and pull audio from our early podcast when we were talking about how important it was for the Democrats to play offense on immigration. And this is the best defense is offense. And she is taking a page right out of the Trump marketing guide, which is go after your opponent on their perceived strengths. And that’s what he’s trying to do, but it is exactly what she should be doing with him. And she can do the same thing on energy. She can do the same thing on jobs.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: She can do the same thing on crime because the facts are on her side. And so I love this aggressive going after and every time he comes after her, she’s okay, let’s go. Let’s go.
Jennifer Palmieri: And then the National Association of Black Journalists, which, you know, she noted with in the opening was just a bizarre performance from Trump. But the thing I think in the room that goes to their strategy that I want to talk about, it’s this banger from him saying that the vice president only recently turned black.
(BEGIN VT)
Donald Trump: She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. And now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she black?
Unidentified Female: She is always identified as a black.
Donald Trump: But you know what, I respect either one. I respect either one. But she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way. And then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she became a black person.
Unidentified Female: Just to be clear, sir. Do you believe that she is?
(END VT)
Jennifer Palmieri: So I had a reporter reach out to me to say just off the record, just wanted to know saying some people thought that this move was just Trump being Trump and just, you know, spewing stuff that comes to the top of his mind or was it a deliberate act to sort of poke at her race? And I think it was a deliberate act. This is what he does. You know, Maggie Haberman noted he only has a few plays, and he does them over and over again. He was hoping, I think, to provoke a larger fight about race to cynically reaffirm for people who are uncomfortable with race or a biracial woman. And the campaign did not engage in that way. Their smart response was, this is just a little snippet of all the kind of crazy MAGA stuff you hear him say at every single rally. The vice president, she was giving a speech last night before a black sorority. She said it was more disrespect, but not presenting it as something new. And what does that fit under the frame of? We’re not going back, right? This is what he does and we’re not going back. I think they were hoping to draw out a bigger fight about race.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. My theory is, first of all, he wasn’t going to get more votes where he needs to get them by doing it. So it doesn’t help him with those swing voters in battleground states. It really wasn’t going to convince more MAGA people to be more MAGA. And so my theory is he was doing it to try to get the conversation off Kamala Harris and back on Donald Trump.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: That he was trying to do something outrageous that would get us all talking about him because he is losing it because we’ve gone for a week and nobody’s paying any attention to him. So I think this was a desperate play to try to get him back on air as somebody who says things you’re never supposed to say.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right. And that used to be his strength, right?
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. That used to be his strength. And it worked, but in a limited fashion because of the way the campaign handled it. I think her continuing to attack him on him being afraid is so smart, too. I wanted to mention that because —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — we’ve talked many times on this podcast about if I were in the room, I would be trying to get them to emphasize strength because the only thing Donald Trump really has going for him is this perception that he’s, quote unquote, “strong.” It’s wrong. It’s an illusion. He’s not strong. And clearly, she’s got the example to show it now. He’s afraid to debate her. And it kind of wrapped up everything in my mind. What I referenced earlier, how well she’s doing with her crowds, how the messaging is strong and light and joyous. When she did the whole thing, when, you know, you have something to say to me and she smiled and she waited and you saw the crowd behind her shout, say it to my face before the words ever came out of her mouth. That shows she’s in the moment culturally. She understood that most people in that audience would know this is where you stay. Say it to my face.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And it’s one of the reasons why she’s dominating online.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I was talking to Nicolle Wallace yesterday and she was telling me her 12-year-old son, they were talking in the car, and she said, well, who’s winning the internet? He goes, oh, Kamala Harris is winning the internet right now. It’s not even close. It’s fascinating to me that culturally she can be of the moment, but still be so presidential in the way she’s handled that. And say it to my face is going to be a T-shirt if it isn’t already.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, yeah. It’s not already. Yeah, right. Like it used to be four years ago, it was I’m speaking. That was her T-shirt. Now, this is, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: This is a good evolution.
Jennifer Palmieri: And then J.D. Vance, you know, he continues to have a tough time. Also, he told donors, he was in a fundraiser, I think he did not think his remarks were being recorded. But he said that the Harris change was a sucker punch for them, which is also such a weird thing to say because it was such an odds for what they were campaigning for, you know, what they had set up their campaign to be.
Claire McCaskill: And he’s trying to run from the childless cat lady stuff. But it’s now surfaced three or four different ways. We have audio of him on a podcast in November 2020. We want to share.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE: Just these basic cadences of life that I think are really powerful and really, really valuable when you have kids in your life. And the fact that so many people, especially in America’s leadership class, just don’t have that in their lives. You know, I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less mentally stable.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Claire McCaskill: So he went there. He basically called people who don’t have children, sociopaths.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And if people haven’t seen Trey Gowdy’s introduction of him on Fox News —
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, it’s so good. Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: It was so good.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, when you have Trey Gowdy, I mean, a MAGA guy, basically take him to task by pointing out that he made friends with two nuns in an airport who had spent their life giving back and that somehow J.D. Vance didn’t understand that their value to our society is just as much, in fact, in many ways more than people who have children. So it’s what he believes. It’s what he believes. So he can’t really run from it. And obviously, Trump had a hard time explaining that yesterday when he was asked about it. I bet they’re regretting the J.D. Vance pick. If I were in the room, I’d say stay on J.D.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yes. And it’s interesting to me. You know that Trump is in trouble when the Fox anchors are trying to backpedal. You know, Trey Gowdy had that big windup to show that he wasn’t agreeing with J.D. Vance. And even when one of the female anchors at Fox was interviewing Trump and he was making fun of Harris’s laugh, and she was like, well, I mean, you know, people have, you know, it’s good for people to laugh. Even she’s trying to distance herself. But also, we’re not getting cocky friends because I have been here before. This feels very much like the moment in October of 2016 after the “Access Hollywood” tape and then the dozens of women that came out and accused Trump of sexual assault. And it sure looked like America would not elect that man president and they went ahead and did it anyway. And there is a large percentage in this country who will vote for him no matter what. So it’s like all great. What the Harris campaign has accomplished in about 10 days is getting her neck and neck with Trump in these battleground polls and the tough part is yet to come.
Claire McCaskill: So we aren’t going to dig into all the polls this week. We’ll continue to watch them. But suffice it to say, they’re good. The swing is occurring. Battleground states, it’s still close. Like you said, there’s a lot of work to do.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: But she still has the convention, and she has the VP pick that could help even further those numbers. Let’s just guess. Let’s just guess. Who’s it going to be?
Jennifer Palmieri: I think Shapiro. And if it’s not, there’s some problem. I mean, that just makes the most sense to me.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I think it’s Shapiro, too. And if it’s not Shapiro, it’s one of the other governors.
Jennifer Palmieri: Well —
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I believe it’s one of the governors. So we’ll see. You know, we may look stupid next week, but we’ll know.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, heavens, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: Well, that’ll be new. Whatever will we do? Oh, my Lord. I won’t be able to sleep at night.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, Andy Beshear. I was like, what’s the other governor? Yeah, Walz. And I just came from Kentucky. Just spent two days at a very cool farm down there.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: And this will happen soon. We’ll pause here. And when we’re back, Claire sits down with the head of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson, for a detailed conversation about abortion rights and what’s at stake in this election. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this one. Back in a moment
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Claire McCaskill: Welcome back. While the news this week is largely focused on the seismic shift in the presidential campaign, there’s another battle that continues, and it is growing and metastasizing. This week, Iowa joined a growing list of states that bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy before many women. I might even argue most women even though they are pregnant. So we wanted to zero in on that continuing struggle for women to have the freedom to make their own health care decisions, to have access to health care and complete agency over their own bodies. To give us the sense of urgency of this fight, especially when it comes to winning November, Alexis McGill Johnson joins me now. She’s the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She’s been part of Planned Parenthood’s leadership for more than a decade and also co-founded and co-directed the Perception Institute. Welcome, Alexis. Great to have you.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Thanks for having me, Claire. Good to be here.
Claire McCaskill: My daughter worked for the National Office of Planned Parenthood for a number of years, and so I am always pleased to have the people who are on the front lines as part of our conversation. And by the way, I think this part of the conversation probably has more to do with the title of our podcast than maybe any other we’ve covered, and that’s “How to Win in 2024.” So especially thrilled to have you here. I know how busy you are. Let’s start with the Iowa abortion ban.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Sure.
Claire McCaskill: It went into effect on Monday. It joins a number of states, including my state, in banning most abortions. So let’s talk about what impact that’s going to have on the women of Iowa, because we talk about the ban, but we don’t many times look at it from a personal point of view. So what is different for a woman in Iowa who finds out she is pregnant today versus Monday?
Alexis McGill Johnson: I mean, it’s devastating what happened in Iowa this week. And you’re right, it joins, you know, Florida, Texas, Missouri, and a number of states that essentially have said they don’t trust women. We are now at 22 states that have restrictions or total bans on abortion, which affects about 43% of all women, right? So just like the scale of what we are talking about right now two years after Dobbs. So what’s different is that now a woman finds out she’s pregnant, she doesn’t want to be, she has to go and try to get an appointment before six weeks. As you said, she may not know she’s pregnant at that point. She will have to seek an appointment out of state and make plans, right? She may have to make plans for travel, to take time off from work, to get up the resources, to get out of state. And that’s all if she is able to, right? You know, we have seen over the last couple of years, patients who’ve come through Planned Parenthood who are unable to get out of state. They are in relationships that are violent, they are underage, they may have an immigration status where they can’t travel. There are just so many different things that can affect just one’s movement. And now we’re asking people to go out of state to get access to care. It’s horrific. And I think what we have seen over the last couple of years is obviously abortion bans haven’t stopped people from seeking access to abortion, but we have seen abortion bans make pregnancy more dangerous. We are seeing the impact on patients who are miscarrying early. Now they have to also get access out of state. It’s really cruel and chaotic and confusing, both for the patients and for the providers.
Claire McCaskill: So for the providers, let’s talk about the instance. I was traveling with my daughter, and she was 10 weeks pregnant, 11 weeks pregnant, and she suffered a miscarriage. We were in another state besides our home state, and I think about what we did and how we handled it and how she handled it and how traumatic it was, even being in a state where she was welcomed into an emergency room and got the care she needed. What is happening to women who miscarry in these states where there’s a complete ban, or where there is a limitation of, say, six weeks, like in Iowa? When they are in the process of miscarrying, are they being turned away from emergency rooms at this point? Is that what’s going on?
Alexis McGill Johnson: You know, first of all, the providers are doing everything they can to try to help patients. And I think we really do have to center the experience of the patients, but also the providers who desperately want to provide the care that they need. So oftentimes they may send a patient to a parking lot to wait until, you know, essentially sepsis sets in so that they can justify under whatever exception rule or whatever medical board inside of the hospital that they can provide the care. But imagine what that means, right? Both you are sending a patient out to a parking lot for a life-threatening condition, and then you are asking a provider to call their lawyer or call the hospital administration to essentially get approval to take care of the patient. And so that’s what’s happening. We heard about it in Idaho as the U.S. government sued Idaho to enforce the EMTALA, the emergency medicine rule that abortions need to be provided in such instances. And in Idaho, they were airlifting patients out of state who were miscarrying because the providers were so worried about their own license. It’s just unspeakable.
Claire McCaskill: It is unspeakable. And you know, I think about those hours where a child I love desperately was in agony for a whole lot of reasons. I mean, this was a pregnancy she really wanted, and she was traumatized. It was her first pregnancy. She was in pain. And I think about if we had been in the wrong state at that moment now after Dobbs, with these restrictions going in place, just the anger I feel that somebody would say to her to go sit in the parking lot.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And talk about violate the Hippocratic Oath, you’re supposed to do no harm.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Exactly.
Claire McCaskill: How does telling a woman in that situation to wait in a parking lot do no harm? Especially because it makes it feel like to the woman that somehow, she’s done something wrong.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: It is just infuriating. Where in the country now, so people know to be forewarned, where in the country now are the most draconian restrictions where a woman could really be in danger in terms of her health if she had a medical emergency around a pregnancy Well, I mean, you know, when you look at the map of abortion bans, right, what you see are essentially if you leave the northeast, you know, you stop in Virginia, that is the last entry point in the south where there is not a restriction. And you got to go all the way down and make a left to get to New Mexico before you can get access to care again, right. Think about the broad swath of the country, 22 states. We’re talking about Texas. We’re talking about Idaho. We’re talking about Oklahoma. We’re talking about Alabama. Florida now has a six-week ban. So the volume of patients that are having to travel, right, having to get on planes, travel upwards 18 hours by car just to get to a state where they can get access to care and all that has to go with it, right, all that has to go with it. Getting the appointment, spending the resources to find childcare, because most people who have abortions are already parents. So there’s a lot that they have to engage in just to get that access. I know there are resources that have grown since Dobbs to help women in these situations. Are there some easy places that you can point people to where they can learn about accessing some of the resources that people have generously donated?
Alexis McGill Johnson: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: To try to help women who are financially in a situation where travel is an impossibility for them?
Alexis McGill Johnson: Yes. So we partnered with Power to Decide on abortionfinder.org, which is a kind of one-stop destination where you can find out both the state of play, right, because some of these states are being litigated and that’s the confusion of not knowing exactly what’s available in any given moment. And then also accessing abortion funds. There is a network of abortion funds that also provides care. Planned Parenthood, we have patient navigation in our affiliated network so that patients are able to call, and someone will stay with them on their journey from a banned state into a state where they can get access and help them kind of pull together the set of resources that they need.
Claire McCaskill: I know a lot of states have taken things into their own hands. We saw it happen in Ohio. We saw it happen in Kansas, notably early in a state that no one, frankly, that was really the seismic shift that people began feeling that when Kansas voted the way it did to protect women and their health decisions. I know we have one on the ballot in Missouri. Missouri is not considered a battleground, unfortunately. But it’s still very important that people in Missouri know that we have an opportunity to take some freedom back that the Supreme Court snatched away. But where are the states where there are initiatives on the ballot that you believe can help? The down-ballot races, the presidential races, gubernatorial races, that people need to be aware of that these are initiatives that have, by and large, just been done by initiative petitions.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Women who are mad as hell, who have gone out and hit the bricks and gotten people to sign papers to say, we want to vote on this. It really is kind of cool.
Alexis McGill Johnson: It’s been amazing to watch, right? I mean, we have everywhere where reproductive freedom has been on the ballot, we have won. And, you know, there are some key states that are going to be critical this cycle. So, first of all, Florida has a ballot initiative that also has a Senate race. We know that Florida becomes a critical access point for so many patients. And so that ballot initiative is critical. Arizona also has a Senate race and is a critical battleground state and has a ballot initiative to codify Roe. Nevada, just actually got back from Nevada this weekend. We have Senate races. We have frontline races. We have a presidential race. And we have Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, also a ballot initiative to codify Roe. We have one in Montana. Again, we have another great Senate race there. And, you know, and I don’t want to lose the fact that we had ballot initiatives in Ohio and a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin and a ballot initiative in Michigan over the last three years. So the infrastructure around fighting for reproductive freedom and connecting the dots to why it is so important to come out in ‘24 in those three states that we know are going to be critically important in the presidential. You know that infrastructure still exists, and I think the momentum that we have seen around just direct democracy, as you as you named, people who are just mad as hell, who are outraged, who cannot believe that after 49 years, a fundamental right was taken away and that our children literally are growing up with less rights than we have. And they are doing something about it. And so the energy has been really, really incredible.
Claire McCaskill: Is there anything on the ballot in Texas?
Alexis McGill Johnson: There is not. You know, Texas, there’s a challenge, right? At some point, we run out of states where we can engage in direct democracy, where we can engage in ballot initiatives, because they have gerrymandered their way to stay in power. And in order to get a ballot on in Texas, it has to pass threshold of 60 percent of the legislators in the statehouse.
Claire McCaskill: Oh, wow.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Right. So, you know, they’re finding ways.
Claire McCaskill: So much for freedom.
Alexis McGill Johnson: So much for freedom. Exactly.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we’re going to talk about why the presidential race is so important to women in this country around the destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision. We’re going to do that right after a short break. We’re going to dig into the whole Project 2025 and the weirdness that is J.D. Vance and Donald Trump around this issue, and we’ll be right back in a moment.
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Claire McCaskill: Welcome back. I’ve been speaking with Alexis McGill Johnson, the head of Planned Parenthood. Alexis, before we let you go on your way with your life today, which I’m sure is very busy. I know you were trying to take care of your daughter before we got on the air. I want to get in here that you’re not one of those childless cat ladies that is our sociopathic enemy of the state, you know, because we know that’s something that we’re all worried about. I want to talk about Kamala Harris at the head of the ticket and I want to talk about Project 2025 and the stark contrast between those two realities. Kamala Harris has been out there on this issue, and I want to talk about her leadership on this issue and how strong she has been throughout. I think now everyone’s paying really close attention to Kamala Harris. But for those of us who care about this issue, she’s been out there leading the charge now for months on end.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Oh, years. Are you kidding me? She’s not new to this. She’s true to this, as the kids say. I mean, we have been with her since before Dobbs, right? Since SB8 went into effect, you know, been on the trail with her kind of learning, kind of bringing her to our communities to meet with patients, to meet with providers, to meet with state lawmakers across the country. And she has been on a reproductive freedom tour, really a tear for the last couple of years, showing up as this administration’s kind of strongest spokesperson for what is important and possible. And, you know, as you know, being with her in the Senate, we saw her grill Justice Kavanaugh. We saw her introduce mom-to-bus legislation to protect maternal health. And she speaks now very clearly about her past prosecutorial life and all the things for which people would need access to broad sexual and reproductive health care. So she’s just an authentic advocate. She comes to it in a very real, personal way. And I feel like there is a, I don’t know, a radical realignment that’s happening that’s running right through reproductive freedom. And having her at the head of the ticket in this moment has just put a lot of energy and a lot of boost into the election, but also into this issue again.
Claire McCaskill: In the contrast, we’re talking about the light. Now we’re going to talk about the dark, which I got to tell you, this is a brief story. When I was a young state representative, we were debating an abortion legislation. As you know, Missouri has been home to a number of challenges over the years, and some have made their way to the Supreme Court. And some of us were arguing for a rape and incest exception to laws that were going to clearly pass in Missouri. And one of my colleagues, a black state rep from St. Louis, got up on the floor, and I’ll never forget the speech he gave because he looked around the room and he said, you know, all of you are sanctimonious and you want to vote to deny women their rights. And that’s because the sun is shining. But I see you all at night. Oh, the night when you are with women you shouldn’t be with and when you are really worried about whether or not they get pregnant. I mean, he went there and all of the women, there were only like maybe 12 of us in the room, you know, we all our jaws just dropped and went, you go guy, you go guy. The night, oh, the night. So we’ve talked about the bright daylight, which is represented by Kamala Harris on this issue. But the night, the darkness is represented by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. And I know that Jessica Valenti does a Substack newsletter called Abortion Every Day. She’s done a deep dive on Project 2025. Let’s talk about what this document, which has been birthed by Trump associates for the purpose of informing what they want to do. It’s called 2025 for a reason. It’s not called 2032. It’s not called 2022. It’s called 2025. Talk about what’s in that document and how frightening it is to everybody who has sex in America.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Project 2025, Trump’s Project 2025, as much as he wants to distance himself from it, is one of the most frightening things that I have read. And I have looked at all 990 pages of it because the audacity of putting out a playbook, right, putting out a playbook where they felt so confident to put into print they want a national abortion ban, that they want to criminalize mifepristone, medication abortion, that they want to reverse the FDA’s approval of Mifepristone, that they want to change the name of the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Life, right, so that they can continue to drive draconian, more draconian measures from the national level. And to do it in ways, Claire, that are really, in many ways, through executive order, right, enforcing things like the Comstock Act, so that they don’t even have to engage with the Senate, right. They don’t have to engage with the House. They can actually just do these things through executive power. And, you know, when you have a former president who is perfectly fine saying, you’ll never have to vote again after four years if you just get me in, or I’ll only be dictator for one day, and the confidence with which they have put forth this playbook, it’s clear that the intent is to have a national abortion ban, to use the full power of the executive office to do that, and to ensure that he can get away with anything. Now that he has immunity, he can continue to get away with anything. That, I think, is the most frightening thing. And I think that’s also what is animating voters right now.
Claire McCaskill: And I wish everyone, I wish we could make Project 2025 mandatory reading for everyone. I have taken the time to wade through as much of it as I could stomach. I was fascinated, as somebody who was a former prosecutor myself, and who, for a long time, I was the only woman in the office in Kansas City, and so therefore, I got assigned all the sexual assault cases. So I’ve handled literally hundreds of rape cases. And this idea that they’re going to rename the morning after pill to the week after pill, and the idea that they’re going to redefine emergency contraception as an abortifacient, as opposed to a preventative thing that a woman who’s been raped would get, at her option, obviously. It’s not mandatory, but it is offered that when she is reporting a rape and is undergoing a medical examination for a rape kit, the harassment this document would allow for women in trauma is just off the charts. What do you think, and do they actually think America is going to accept this kind of going back to the past? Talk about dark alleys.
Alexis McGill Johnson: I mean, yeah, the enforcement of these laws would require women to have to report on their rapists. The level of surveillance, right? I mean, you know, J.D. Vance talking about, like, how are we going to understand that they are stopping people from crossing state lines? You know, like the amount of surveillance, right? And the amount of invasion of privacy that has to accompany these horrific bans and restrictions, I think, is also something that we haven’t played out fully for people. And I think that’s like a big question, right, for me. How do you enforce these laws? How do you enforce some of the craziest restrictions? And then what will it mean, right, for patients who need to get access, but also the providers, right? I think that there’s something really important to understand about what is happening to the provider community right now. There has been a 10% decline of OBGYN residents matching into banned states. And so what that means is now these restrictions that will come even further with Project 2025 are decimating not just abortion care, but also broad maternal health care, particularly providers who have to provide or are trained to provide in high-risk maternal care, right? So for many of us who have later-in-life pregnancies, needing advanced maternal care is critical. So you don’t trust women so much that you’re willing to actually devastate and decimate an entire profession. And our ability to make decisions of if, when, and how we decide to build a family, it’s so counterintuitive. Or, I mean, it’s just so weird.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, we’ve gotten to the point because of Dobbs that OBGYNs feel like they have to have a direct line to lawyers.
Alexis McGill Johnson: That’s right.
Claire McCaskill: And that’s just weird. It is just not good that a doctor has to somehow check themselves before giving the care that they think their patient needs. It violates everything about the standards of care in medicine. And, you know, the point you make about enforcement, I think it’s really important to emphasize this. The Democratic senators realized that in some of these states, what could occur is a blanket subpoenaing of women’s health records. In our state, we caught the Department of Health trying to track women’s periods. We actually caught them doing that.
Alexis McGill Johnson: Yes, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And so they put a bill forward to limit the ability of law enforcement, police, to be able to subpoena women’s private medical records. Now, obviously, if it was something where there was a basis for it because a crime had been committed, but just to investigate potential violations of abortion restrictions, they wanted to limit the ability of police to do that. Now, think about this. Twenty-eight United States senators voted against that bill. This was just a few months ago. Twenty-eight of them. That’s a fourth of the representation in the United States Senate voted that, no, we’ve got to give police the ability to go poking around in women’s private medical records. And guess who was one of the senators who voted with the 28? That would be none other than J.D. Vance, who also voted against protecting contraception, who also voted against protecting IVF. So there you have it, the trifecta. And they want the cops in your medical records finding out when you had a period, see if they can catch you. They want to make sure you can’t have IVF so that you can have children that you and your family desperately want. And at the end of the day, they want to make sure that you can’t prevent a pregnancy from happening in the first place, which would avoid the need for any abortion. So it is crazy what these folks are trying to do to our country.
Alexis McGill Johnson: It’s crazy and it’s creepy. I remember when the state health commissioner in Missouri was tracking, I think, Planned Parenthood patient periods.
Claire McCaskill: Yes.
Alexis McGill Johnson: In an Excel file. What kind of creep wants to be tracking women’s cycles to understand what they’re doing with their reproduction? The invasion of it and the fact that that mentality is so embedded in, as you said, a fourth of our Congress. That is just insane.
Claire McCaskill: Yup.
Alexis McGill Johnson: That’s just insane.
Claire McCaskill: Well, I want to thank, first of all, I want to thank you. And I want to thank the thousands of men and women who work with and for Planned Parenthood. I confronted a young state senator in my state who was a woman who was railing against Planned Parenthood. And I looked at her in a kind of quasi-public setting. I said, you know, Sarah, I’m just curious, where did you get the pill when you were in college? And there was a ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba (ph) because that was certainly my first encounter with Planned Parenthood, was access to the pill at a point in my life where it was very important that I wanted to make sure I didn’t get pregnant. So I just don’t think we thank you guys enough. There are thousands of volunteers. There’s thousands of people that are working across this country to make sure that there are still safe places where women can get all the health care that they richly deserve. We want to wish you the very best and tell all the troops that we’re proud of the work they’re doing and to continue the fight because we’ve got a lot to fight for.
Alexis McGill Johnson: We are on it, and we really appreciate you for being such an incredible reproductive freedom champion. You’ve always been and continue to carry the message here and we appreciate you.
Claire McCaskill: You bet. Alexis McGill Johnson is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She’s been part of Planned Parenthood’s leadership for more than a decade. Thanks for joining us for today’s installment of “How to Win 2024.” And please join me in person on September 7th for a special event. My fellow MSNBC colleagues and I will be gathering for MSNBC Live Democracy 2024 in Brooklyn, New York. This in-person interactive experience will offer inside perspectives from some of your very favorite hosts and experts as we approach really a very, very important pivotal moment in our democracy. And what’s sure to be your favorite session, I’ll be on stage with Jen Psaki and Andrea Mitchell, providing an insider look at the state of the race. You can buy your tickets at msnbc.com/democracy2024. We’ll be sure to drop a link in the show notes for you. See you there.
Jennifer Palmieri: If you have a question for us, send it to howtowinquestions@nbcuni.com or you can leave a voicemail at 646-974-4194. This show is produced by Vicki Vergolina. Janmaris Perez is our associate producer. Catherine Anderson and Bob Mallory are our audio engineers. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio. And Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Search for “How To Win 2024” wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.