The Process Was the Legitimacy

What the Roberts memos and the reporting on Iran have in common

As Sarah and I prepared for today’s episode, we kept adding to our list: the leaked internal Supreme Court memos, the Wall Street Journal reporting on President Trump being kept out of the room during the military’s rescue of downed pilots in Iran, the zig-zag of information about the Strait of Hormuz and ceasefire negotiations over the weekend, FISA extension…

I’m struck by a throughline in all of these stories: Who’s at the wheel, and who has given up?

Outside of politics: Sarah and I accidentally took very similar trips to Western national parks during our kids’ spring break. We talk about big skies, the visual record of time passing, and what the desert does for our patriotism.

If this episode is useful to you, we’d love for you to text it to someone in your life with a note about why they might enjoy it, too. -Beth

Topics Discussed

• The Roberts Court and the Shadow Docket

• Day 53 of the War in Iran: The Commander-in-Chief Question

• Section 702 and FISA

• Outside of Politics: Big Skies and Big Silence for Spring Break

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Episode Resources

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The Roberts Court and the Shadow Docket

• Inside the Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court (The New York Times)

• It Doesn’t Have to Be You (Pantsuit Politics and Jason Kander)

• Sarah Isgur (Scotusblog)

Day 53 of the War in Iran: The Commander-in-Chief Question

• Behind Trump’s Public Bravado on the War, He Grapples With His Own Fears (The Wall Street Journal)

• Trump’s fixation on White House ballroom is increasing, Post analysis finds (The Washington Post)

• Which Iran is America dealing with? (The Economist)

• For Iran, Flexing Control Over Waterway Is New Deterrent (The New York Times)

Section 702 and FISA

• Senate extends surveillance powers until April 30 after chaotic votes in House (The Associated Press)

Outside of Politics: Big Skies and Big Silence for Spring Break

• Sarah’s Travel Itineraries (By Plane or By Page)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:29] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:31] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:32] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. We have a lot of ground to cover today. So we’re going to start in the Supreme Court where a bombshell New York Times investigation based on leaked internal memos traces the origins of the shadow docket directly to Chief Justice John Roberts. Then we’re going to talk about the war in Iran, the erratic statements coming out of the White House, and the power vacuum inside the leadership in Iran. And what all of this is costing the world. Outside of Politics, we both went out west for spring break and we have some things to say about big skies and big silences and what it can do for your spirit.

Beth [00:01:08] Before we get started, it has been a chaotic week. And if today’s episode helps you make sense of the world a little bit, we have a small request. Would you just text it to a friend? The best way to grow a show like ours for people who are going to love what we do and love the community around it is just one text at a time. Not like a vague, you should listen to Pantsuit Politics. But this episode, for this reason, it just makes a huge difference for us. And we truly appreciate your support.

Sarah [00:01:47] Next up, let’s talk about the shadow docket. Beth, you and I both started reading this report from the New York Times on Saturday morning and could get no further than the introduction for the sake of our mental health. We both just said rage is not how we want to start our Saturdays and we had to put it down.

Beth [00:02:06] No. And I had that initial reaction of rage and knew that it’s the Supreme Court. It’s complicated. I need to really think about this. This is a Monday issue, not a Saturday issue.

Sarah [00:02:18] Okay. We are recording on Monday and you have read the whole report. Do you still not feel rage? Because in disclosure, I definitely do.

Beth [00:02:28] I think I feel less about this story than I think about it. So I start with a question, where do these memos come from? And why are they out here right now?

Sarah [00:02:37] They are saying got these. We got them.

Beth [00:02:40] Yeah, why? Who gave them to you? And what’s that person want the world to know? And what exactly has Chief Justice Roberts done to that person? Because that’s what these memos do, right? I don’t think it’s accurate to say this is the birth of the shadow docket in any respect, but it certainly represents an acceleration of the shadow docket. And it very much, more than anything about procedure, tells you Chief Justice Roberts is not behind the curtain who he presents to the world. And I would just like to know why we know that right now.

Sarah [00:03:18] Okay, well let’s dive in. So yes, they talk about this in the investigation. The shadow docket traditionally was used for like death penalty cases, election cases, sometimes abortion cases, where time was very truly of the essence. If we let time pass, then it either becomes truly irrelevant or irreparable damage will be done because you’ll be dead. And so it really won’t matter if we hear your case about whether you deserve the death penalty or not. Okay. Then, in 2016, we get President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. This is towards the end of his second term. He has struggled to get any real environmental legislation through Congress, and so he puts the Clean Power Plan in motion through the EPA. Further background is that John Roberts was a little pissed at the EPA. He felt like through some mercury regulations and some statements that basically are like too bad they shut our mercury regulations down but they’ve already happened, that they were running an in-run around the court over at the EPA, okay? So, everybody’s off doing their Supreme Court summer plans, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Italy. People are out getting paid to be Supreme Court justices and living their best life.

[00:04:42] And he sends this memo that says, well, these red states have sued on behalf of the industry, saying this is going to be so expensive, this is going to be terrible, like it was a hail Mary. Even the red state attorney generals in this article say like, we thought when we sued to have them freeze this regulation immediately, that it was a pipe dream. They had never used the shadow docket in this way before. So they get before the Supreme Court and he sends this memo to his colleagues and that this was a 5-4 Supreme Court. We had to wait on Anthony Kennedy to decide anything in the good old days of 2016. And he’s like, well, they’re the using this to get around what we all know is going to happen, which is we’re going to strike this down. And it’s going to be so expensive for the oil and gas co-fired power plant industry and we just have to stop it. And there’s like a little bit of debate with the liberal justices who are like does anybody see the problem here that this is not how we operate? And Justice Roberts is, like, not really. And Scalia is like, yeah, they’re undermining our legitimacy. And I’m not. You guys, I’m prone to proximate knowledge and frivolity when summing things up, but I’m doing that here. These are like three sentence emails back and forth. And then Kennedy rolls in and is like, yeah, I’m good with it. And that’s it. That’s how we end up with this new approach to the shadow docket.

Beth [00:06:19] Well, I would like to point out that the first response to the Chief Justice’s initial memo came from Justice Breyer and he proposed a compromise path. Justice Breyer says, basically, Chief, I see what you’re saying. I see where you’re worried about. I also have done a little bit of reading and it looks like there’s a process where these companies could request an extension of time because we’re talking about something that was contemplated, the Clean Power Plan, to be a year’s long target. And Justice Breyer says, let’s tell people go seek that extension and if you’re denied, come back to us. And that’s a way for us to kind of balance all the interests at stake here. And Chief Justice Roberts then shows himself to be just totally impatient about this. I don’t want to do that. Justice Breyer also said like what’s a few months if they go through this process requesting an extension they don’t get it and then they’re back to us in a few month, that’s not going to move markets or mountains. The chief justice is just so insistent that this is a dud from the Obama administration. He thinks it’s just enormous overreach by the executive. And he wants to shut it down immediately. I think that’s what’s so telling in these memos because you often see a John Roberts in his jurisprudence who seems so reluctant, so hesitant, so reticent to have to ever issue an opinion, except in a very few cases where you can tell there’s some passion behind it. And here it’s all passion; it’s passion driving the bus. And it is political passion.

Sarah [00:08:01] He is not asserting any legal arguments. He just isn’t. He is making a political argument. When Nicholas and I were talking about this, he was like, well, how much more evidence do we need that this is a political body? Because they create the shadow docket for one reason, to slow the administration down when it’s an administration they disagree with. And what do they use the shadow docket now? To unleash the full speed of an administration they agree with. And then to worry about the legitimacy when I thought the-- first of all, hats off to Adam Liptak and Jodi Kantor. Just incredible reporting. This is why when people like, I don’t know, want to get mad at the New York Times for that bullshit Lauren Bezos article, I just want to be like, yeah, that’s annoying. But when they do shit like this, come on, like it’s hard to argue with the level of reporting and importance I think this has.

Beth [00:09:03] That annoying stuff sells newspapers so that this kind of reporting could be funded.

Sarah [00:09:09] Absolutely.

Beth [00:09:10] Play your Wordle, guys. It helps.

Sarah [00:09:15] Play your Wordle guys, it helps. That got me. Yeah, and I thought Adam Liptak did a good job of saying, like, they were worried about legitimacy, but the way they have accelerated this process and refuse to explain themselves to the American public has undermined their legitimacy. They’re sitting on bottoming out public approval rates. And so, to me, I’m just at the point where I’m like, you don’t find-- be a political institution, but you don’t get a set up there for life with absolutely no accountability except for through the New York Times? Come on.

Beth [00:09:51] Sarah Isgur, who does really good reporting around the Supreme Court, tweeted a couple of examples from 2013 and 2014 of the court using the shadow docket in this way, we just didn’t have that language at the time, to show that this isn’t the beginning of the Court operating in this way. It doesn’t help with the partisan look of it because those were instances related to abortion and marriage equality. So where does the court want to assert its power? In very political spaces and powerhouse economic spaces. I think that when you look at the arguments that are being advanced in these memos, it so clearly demonstrates that these justices don’t believe our processes are up for modern challenges. And I think that’s what we’re going to be talking about with every story today. People don’t believe that the process serves anything anymore. And so they just smash and grab and do whatever they damn well please because they think they are on the right side of the question and so the process doesn’t matter. And as I was telling Ellen, my 10-year-old daughter, this morning who said that learning about the three branches of government right now is so boring, it’s not so boring. Three branches of government means that we are constantly in a staring contest over power. There isn’t an ultimate authority. And even when you write a law, you stare at each other to say, who’s going to enforce this? Who’s going to hold me to it? And these memos show that these justices don’t think the process has a role to play in some kind of counterweight to what is just a staring contest. And that makes me incredibly sad. It’s been on display in their opinions and their lack of opinions for several years now and to see it this starkly is really something.

Sarah [00:11:45] I got in this conversation with Jamie Golden over the weekend about if we could wave a magic wand, like, what’s the one thing we’ll fix? I sent her this article, and I said, “I think this is the Holy Spirit is telling us to start with the Supreme Court.” The idea that the Supreme court is not political has always been a type of important civic fiction. They’re still human beings. And I just think it’s time to accept that. And to put procedural protections in place with the understanding that this is in part a political body and it needs accountability. Lifetime appointments have run the course. If we all need to move faster and acknowledge that the processes were built for a different time, then somebody make the case for me for lifetime appointments. I’m open, I’m here to listen, but I’m skeptical. If we can now see very clearly that whatever processes we put in place to protect against political decision-making at the Supreme Court have run their course, then it’s time to think through some new processes. A bigger court, a court that’s not based on lifetime appointments, like a rotating court of some kind? Enough!

Beth [00:13:07] I would argue that some processes don’t need to run faster, that the timing, the slowness, the deliberateness of what the Supreme Court does is really important. And what this court particularly has demonstrated over the past five years at least, probably longer than that, is that there’s a reason you go through the district court and then the court of appeals and then an oral argument and then you exchange memos like this ad infinitum to get to a place where you’ve considered the power that you’re wielding. I think that’s the reason that we would rather Congress make laws than executive orders get passed around like candy. I’m watching Survivor 50 right now and I’m really interested in the way that they articulated in the most recent episode-- this doesn’t spoil anything, it’s just like a thread running through the season-- that there’s frustration with the players in the middle. They believe the players in the middle have the most power. There are two clear alliances, line in the sand and then there are people who are obviously shuttling between those two. And the people in the two clear alliances don’t like it. They are worried that those are the folks with the best chance to win the game and I think they’re probably right. You see that thinking on display in these memos too. Justice Roberts feels very comfortable that he gets to five against the Clean Power Plan. That’s not how the Supreme Court should operate. And that was back when we still did have a floater in Justice Kennedy. We don’t have that anymore and it’s hurting the court badly. So I would say whatever kind of reforms we can initiate around the court, we need something that gives us the best chance of having floaters again.

Sarah [00:14:51] No, I totally agree. I mean, that persuadable middle is so important. And, look, that’s what introduces weakness in the other branches too. When you have gerrymandered districts where there’s no persuadable middle or no place for them to play any role, that’s where you get weak candidates, weaker representatives. There’s no accountability. And it’s like nobody wants to persuade the middle because it takes time. Everybody wants to move fast. But I think we’re seeing the repercussions of that move quickly, smash, grab approach. And it smashing. Yeah, it’s smashing up the legit of the Supreme Court.

Beth [00:15:36] I listened to the conversation you had with Jason Kander, which I really, really enjoyed. And it got me thinking because you all kept using the phrase big changes, big ideas, about what the public actually wants. And I would like to put in a vote for medium ideas. I think there are a number of things that the American people would coalesce around. Obviously, this needs to change. I think a problem in our politics-- and this is a bias that goes back to my foundational kind of Beth from the right when we began leanings-- when the Supreme Court acts, it wields a giant hammer to smash and grab. It wields really big power. When Congress does something, it’s huge. It can be the tiniest little thing. And you especially see that in environmental cases. A teeny tiny regulation buried in subsection C of clause four can completely upend how agriculture operates in the United States. These tools are so powerful that the time associated with them needs to be slower. And it’s frustrating because we do have big problems and we do want to be responsive to a world that moves a lot faster than it used to. But that pace of the world can have some counterpoint in a government that acts deliberately and with awareness of its power. And we’re so far removed from that right now. And when the court lets go of its deliberateness, it really changes the dynamic.

Sarah [00:17:13] Because, look, I’m not even loving how they’re using the hammer when they take a more deliberative process. I think it was wildly irresponsible how they just took the gates off gambling. And we’re like, yeah, let’s see, go for it and see what happens. I don’t think there’s any acknowledgement or care. Look, I can’t believe I’m about to say this because I don’t give a shit about these tariffs or the Trump administration’s problem refunding them. But even that, just to be like, no, give it back. It’s not that simple. Even with Roe v. Wade, they don’t care. I mean, there are doctors now like having their license under investigation because they didn’t intervene in the same way because they were afraid of going to jail in Texas. And it’s like I don’t know why doctors couldn’t have seen the writing on the wall. Like this is going to be paid first and foremost by women, but also the consequences of that decision are also being paid by a medical profession. And it’s like in a profession and a specialty that did not need more burden. So it’s just so irresponsible. And especially like coming from like Alito and the way he just is so confident of all his worst instincts and refuses to play out any real intellectual argument about how this could work or why this matters or if he’s right. It’s just infuriating.

Beth [00:18:39] He hit a sore spot for me 10 years later with these memos because Alito observes that, yes, the Clean Power Plan envisions a long timeline, but that means companies will have to change what they’re doing now because coal plants aren’t shuttered at the drop of a hat. And I thought, well, that’s funny because this administration sure acts like they can be switched on and off like a light. One of pet issues right now is the way the administration keeps telling coal plants that were supposed to shut down, stop, you have to stay in business. You have to spend thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to stay open when you had planned to close because we like coal. That’s how we’re covering. We don’t like this, we like this. And so we’re going to use this enormous power at our disposal to do whatever we want. All that said, it takes me right back to the question I began with in this segment. Everybody who pays attention to the Supreme Court knows that all of this is deeply wrong. These memos pin it to the individual justices, not just to it being 2026 and a brand new world. Who leaked this stuff, and what did they hope would come of it?

Sarah [00:19:53] I don’t know who leaked it, but I’m glad they did. I have been saying this about the liberal justices. Stop reading it from the bench. I don’t care. Do something. Once you hear read it from the bench about how the Supreme Court’s in trouble, do something. So somebody did something. And you know what, good for them. Beth, as this episode comes out on Tuesday, we are on day 53 of the war in Iran. We are, I guess sort of in a ceasefire.

Beth [00:20:35] That’s a really astonishing number because I’ve been hearing that we’re like two weeks from being finished.

Sarah [00:20:41] Forever.

Beth [00:20:43] For several weeks now.

Sarah [00:20:47] For several sections of two weeks. Okay, so the reason we are all a little discombobulated as to the timeline and where we are right now is because the president of the United States cannot get his facts straight. He says it is closed. The Strait is closed. No, wait. Iran has agreed to never close the straight again. But then immediately Iran’s like, no, it’s closed. Well, we’re back to the peace table. Iran says, no we’re not. We are not coming. Then we have the Wall Street Journal reporting that when an F-15 was shot down over Iran in early April, that aides kept Trump out of the room during the minute by minute rescue updates because, and this is a quote, “His impatience wouldn’t be helpful.” So, Winnie Speaks. It’s all over the map and he does not seem to be connected to the facts on the ground and perhaps that’s because they’re keeping him out of the room because when he’s there and the facts it’s still playing out, his impatience is unhelpful.

Beth [00:21:56] I had been thinking while you were talking, who is the reliable narrator around the Iran war? I guess it’s the Wall Street Journal because his impatience wouldn’t be helpful does sound like the most factual observation I’ve heard about this conflict in weeks. And then he comes out and takes credit for the rescue of those airmen. He’s not involved in the operation, it’s successful, and then he brags about how successful the operation was. I guess that’s the best case scenario with this president, though.

Sarah [00:22:27] Well, Pete Hegseth is not reliable either. He’s coming out and saying their weapons have been depleted. Trump backs them up. Oh yeah, they don’t have anything left to shoot into the air except for reports say they have 40% of their pre-war stock of drones and that they’re using this current ceasefire-- using that word loosely-- to dig out some missile launchers they’ve been hiding underground and that their missile supply could soon return to 70% of what it was pre-wars. So I don’t think that’s accurate either.

Beth [00:22:59] I feel like tracking what Hegseth and Trump say about this war is like listening to a graphic novel that’s being written in real time. You can see these points of emphasis that they want to hit hard. Like you can imagine like the boom from the page. But the story is not tracking. There are always more questions that are raised by what they say than answers offered. And I think that they both are pursuing I don’t know if it’s several timelines in a multiverse or if they just can’t decide how they want the plot to evolve here. But I can’t find anything to hook into where I am in their minds enough to understand what success looks like. And that to me seems to be the problem. If you want to have real negotiations, which you would think that our business man in chief knows rest on everyone’s trust for one another. How do you go in and take out all their leadership? They either intended to do that without thinking about what it would do to the capacity to negotiate, or they didn’t intend it, which raises its own questions about their competence.

Sarah [00:24:15] Well, I don’t think he does know trust is an important part of the negotiation. None of the negotiations he has run in his personal business life was built on trust. It was built upon bullying, maximum leverage, and then maybe just not fulfilling his end of the bargain because he didn’t want to. Sound familiar?

Beth [00:24:32] It does. I also was thinking this morning about how often we discussed in his first term that he wanted to run the economy so hot, no matter what, and it left him with no options. That sense that interest rates should always be zero means that when things fall apart, you don’t have any tools at your disposal. And that seems to be how he’s conducting this war. If I threaten the extinction of your civilization, if I go in and kill all your leaders at the very beginning, if I take out all of the targets that are reasonable targets within the country at the beginning, where do I go from here? And it feels to me like the answer to that question is that America is shedding power and leverage by the day.

Sarah [00:25:17] Absolutely. I do think one of their timeline goals, him and Hegseth, is just to like normalize war crimes. So he keeps saying it’s a blockade. Well, a blockade is a war crime. So everybody keeps coming out after and being like, no, we’re just blocking their ports, not the Strait itself, don’t worry. And this sort of we’re going to bomb civilian infrastructure, which is a work crime. It’s infrastructure day. So apparently we are still doing infrastructure day, we’re just doing it by just destroying other countries infrastructure. We’re going to bomb the water, we’re going to bomb the bridges, so that’s a war crime. And so it’s like, but I don’t think he cares. So I don’t know if the goal is to just ultimately normalize the idea of like we do what we want, we don’t care. That definitely seems to be one of Pete Hegseth’s goals. But I think you’re right. Putting together your pet project from the last section, what is happening here is the decimation of the global supply of oil. So Europe, South America, Asia in particular, are saying, okay, it’s not going to help us quickly, but we have got to get even better, even stronger, even faster when it comes to clean energy. Well, guess who stands to profit from that? China. Because they have been pouring enormous state resources into the clean energy sector while Trump is spending billions of dollars of our tax revenue to prop up the industry now that has the entire global economy by the nuts. Not to be crude.

Beth [00:27:01] So warfighter not bound by any kind of rules, goal number one. They did tell us early in the administration they wanted to weaken the dollar. They’re doing that. I guess you could say if they wanted make oil more valuable, they’re accomplishing that. At what price though and who benefits from all of that? Those are real open questions to me.

Sarah [00:27:29] I want to talk about Iran, and I want to talk about the global economy a little bit more. But before we turn from their perspective, I have to bring up this Washington Post analysis that found that his mentions of the ballroom are growing. He has publicly mentioned this project, roughly a third of all his days this year. And it just keeps getting more and more frequent. Above affordability. Above the oil and gas prices. And if he’s not talking about the ballroom, he’s saying things that don’t make sense like the Sharpie story that never happened. If you didn’t follow this, he was at a cabinet meeting and he told the story about how Sharpie made a special Sharpie for him, except they didn’t. It never happened. Beth, do we think he has dementia? We got to ask it. The question has to be asked.

Beth [00:28:26] I don’t know if he has dementia. I do know that the signs of age and strain are evident. That the erratic behavior is accelerating and I didn’t think we had room left on that. Silly me. I think you also see in Trump some of the sillier manifestations of issues that run all the way through this administration. Another pet project of mine is becoming the God Squad, which is this group of people who make environmental decisions. Will we continue to protect certain species? And they call themselves the God Squad. Now we all got very angry, understandably, about Trump posting an AI generated image of himself looking like Jesus. I’m madder about the God Squad. He is the silly cartoon version of sentiments that are circulating all around him all the time. This war fighter nonsense, the religious blasphemy, I think, that occurs daily in this group of people coupled with a sense of religious purpose, like they are all divine warriors for some version of Christianity.

Sarah [00:29:41] Wait, wait, wait. You forgot one.

Beth [00:29:44] Give it to me.

Sarah [00:29:45] Don’t forget that they’re also getting rich like insider trading on all this power and deals. You forgot that one which is also a pet project of yours.

Beth [00:29:53] Do you remember that country music song, It Matters to Me? That’s Trump. So he wants everything to be about what matters to him and the ballroom matters to him. He’s got enough money at this point and he’s printing it every day through a variety of meme coins and whatever else. But the ball room is like an undeniable testament to his power and that’s the currency that he cares about. Now the arches are the same way. So you have all these dynamics swirling. And then when you pair those with a process story like Iran shot one of our fighter jets down and we’re chasing after our pilots to try to hold them as prisoners of war and we had to leave him outside and occupy him with something else because his attention span can’t handle this kind of work; that’s when we have a problem in a story that it doesn’t matter how many psychiatrists on the socials weigh in on his capacity, members of Congress need to be holding hearings and asking questions about that.

Sarah [00:31:03] Well, and here’s the thing. With Biden I just don’t think I kind of respected the wisdom of the masses. And because it’s so easy in today’s day and age to confuse the loud 20% on social media with the masses and to get real cynical about the majority of views, those aren’t the majority of views. The anti-vaxxers who are so loud on Instagram are not the majority of people. The majority of people have very positive views about vaccines, which is why RFK had such a tough week last week before the House and Senate. And so with Biden, I think I thought this is just people saying this stuff is just the loud 20 percent getting clicks on the Internet. And I’m trying to take it more seriously when it starts to show up in the masses. And the polling on his age is making him more erratic is shifting pretty dramatically in real time where people are like, no, it’s clear. He’s getting more erratic and the age is making it worse. And he and all of the Republican party ignore that to their peril. Ask me how. I know.

Beth [00:32:20] It’s not just the wisdom of the masses either. The most sharp statements about his mental decline are coming from people who used to work for him, who used be very close to him. When you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, even Megan Kelly out there saying, something’s off here, you got to take that seriously. A number of people from the first term, people who were loyal to his administration and proud of a lot of the work they did are saying, this is a mess, he is chaotic. And all of that is being said when we were told that Susie Wiles runs this tight ship, we’re not going to have the palace intrigue this time. Even with all the structure built to contain his natural flair for drama, it can’t be contained.

Sarah [00:33:15] Yeah. Well, and maybe I have in theory, I’m developing in real time here. Maybe the insider trading coming from the White House is just a fire sale. People up close and personal going, you better get while the getting’s good. Get on your oil futures trading when you know he’s going to get on Truth Social at 3 a.m. And make sure you make a couple billion dollars while you can. But don’t worry, Beth. The White House sent a memo telling everyone to knock it off, so I’m sure that’ll fix it.

Beth [00:33:45] I’m sure it will fix it. And also how dare anyone suggest that anyone was doing it in the first place, the White House says.

Sarah [00:33:51] I know.

Beth [00:33:51] All this said, I agree with everything that you said about ignoring at your peril the signs of age and strain and the way the public is perceiving that. I think that’s all true. Sitting alongside that on the shelf for me is my incredible frustration when I hear Democrats who are elected officials talking about this or who are seeking to be elected officials. I don’t care if you think he’s crazy. I don’t care if you think he has dementia. I don’t care if you think he’s in cognitive decline. Do your job. You can subpoena cabinet officials and have them come to a hearing and talk to you about what is actually happening behind closed doors. Not his mental state. What people are doing. When they ask him a question, how he responds. What questions he’s not being asked, and who is the decision maker if he’s not the decision-maker. You have that ability. You have the ability to restrain his authority to go prosecute this war that doesn’t seem to have a real objective. Do it. I just feel like because this resonates with the public, there is an incentive for political actors to hop on the bandwagon and kind of walk around the world like what are you going to do? He’s a madman. Well, you still have a to-do list. Please get on it.

Sarah [00:35:13] Yeah. Well, I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here, but the wheels are not going back on Congress anytime soon. They could barely get that FISA extension passed for like, what, till April, 10 whole days? April 30th was the extension. Woo! And Trump and Mike Johnson both wanted this full extension and it did not get through. So, wait, maybe I’m wrong. Hold on. Maybe that’s a sign that the wheels are getting coming back on and they’re just not doing anything he tells them to do.

Beth [00:35:37] And FISA, to call back to our Supreme Court segment, is an issue that deserves deliberation and slowness and real negotiation. They’ve been trying since the last time they reauthorized FISA to negotiate some limits on this incredible power the government has to surveil people. If you don’t know what we’re talking about with FISA, that is about the ability of the United States government to listen in on conversations and intercept communications conducted outside the United State by people who are not U.S. Persons. But everybody knows, and the issue that Congress has been debating for literal years now, is that when you pick up that kind of discussion between people who are not US persons, you sweep up all kinds of conversations happening among people who are. And we have got to figure out some judicial oversight for that, some tighter controls. Trump himself, who is now demanding this clean authorization of FISA, has said that this law is terrible and it’s how they were able to spy on his campaign and we need to get rid of it. So which is it? Now that he holds the power to do this kind of surveillance, he wants all of it without any limitations. But candidate Trump sang a very different tune about this. And I’m kind of glad they kicked it for 10 days because I hope that means something real is being debated, not just central bank currency or whatever craziness they want to attach to it, but something that gets to the substance of this power and the potential for its abuse.

Sarah [00:37:17] Well, back to Iran and what comes next. JD Vance for some reason I do not understand, continues to attach his name to negotiations which are supposed to take place. The ceasefire expires tomorrow on Wednesday. Iran is saying they’re not coming. There does seem to be a true vacuum. The Supreme Leader is in critical condition and not exerting any power. The political leaders are, to my eye, in an ever decreasing influential space. And the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has increasing power in the space. There was some reporting from the economist that at the first round of negotiations, everybody was used to Iran coming with like two to three people, very tight team, knew exactly what they were doing. Well, some of those people have been killed and there’s a power vacuum. So they showed up with an 80 person faction. Where you have these Iranian Revolutionary Guard hardliners clashing. And, to me, that was what was so evident over the weekend with the Strait is open, the Strait is closed. Those were two different people talking. One was like a minister in the cabinet and one was a military official. So that’s why you got two different messages. It’s two different factions.

[00:38:40] It’s like everybody’s worst nightmare with Iran that it will collapse into this faction-driven situation. And Isaac Solover at the Tangle was saying he worries this will just become an ambient war. But to me, the ramifications on the global economy, what we’re seeing is a pricing of futures of oil. And that’s why the stock market responds on a dime because we’re talking about futures, but in Asia they have to pay for the oil now and it’s like $150 a gallon. There is not enough. And it’s not just not enough oil, it’s a not enough of all these other critical resources that make everything from like instant noodles to plastic bags, okay?

Beth [00:39:24] Fertilizer. The food.

Sarah [00:39:27] Like a real food crisis. Yeah, to me, that’s going to prevent this from becoming background noise, but they have taken an approach that has produced this quagmire. I don’t see any path. I truly don’t a see a path here. They’re not going to budge. Even if one faction decided to budge, I don’t see the hardliners and the military budging. They want $20 billion? And we’re going to be in a worse place than we were with the JCPOA? I don’t see it. I wouldn’t be signing up for this gig if I was JD Vance.

Beth [00:40:03] If I got the promise of one question to get an honest answer from the White House on in connection with this war, I think what I would ask is what were your assumptions about regime change? Because on the one hand, it feels like regime change was a baked-in assumption that the United States would start bombing, the people of Iran would take to the streets again, they would overthrow whatever’s left of the Ayatollah’s regime. And then what? Because that’s where it stops, right? It seems like there was no planning for the messy situation that always happens. I can’t point to any story where the leader is deposed and the next day the people have rallied around one person who can then come to the negotiating table with a foreign power and really get something done. The only example of that, and maybe this is the problem, is Venezuela. Because we went in and arrested Maduro, and then basically looked at Delcy Rodriguez and said, do what we want or you’re next and so she did.

Sarah [00:41:09] Well, and the people didn’t rally around her. She was just a part of the puzzle that suppressed the people to begin with so she had the keys to the jail and could keep them in there.

Beth [00:41:17] And look, that’s a difference too. They didn’t go in and take out everybody. They just took Maduro, but the rest of the structure stayed in place. If Trump wanted to do that kind of shakedown again, why’d they go in and kill everybody? Was that incompetence or strategy?

Sarah [00:41:33] Beth, is that a serious question?

Beth [00:41:35] I know. That the question that I would ask. If I could get one honest answer, that’s what I want to know about the conception of this operation.

Sarah [00:41:42] I know the answer to that. I don’t need their honesty around that. I want their honesty on what do you sincerely think is your next move here? What do you necessarily believe is the strategy moving forward? I don’t think there’s an answer, even an honest one.

Beth [00:42:00] Seems like a problem.

Sarah [00:42:01] It seems like a problem. Not just for us, for everyone, for Asia, for Europe. Things turn dark when there’s real scarcity. When there is not enough food, when people have to suppress their demand. Listen to this guy get interviewed with the New York Times where he said he stopped driving his diesel truck because the price of diesel was so high. And also he had taken up fasting. This is a Trump voter. He said he still trusts Trump. I’m like, wow, fasting? Fasting and you still trust the outcome here. That might hang for a little while. That is not a permanent solution. When people start having to change things dramatically and there’s not enough to go around, things are going to get real really fast.

Beth [00:42:50] And that has happened around a number of wars in our history, and I’m sure on Trump’s mind is the celebration of some of those wartime leaders, but those were people who were able to say here’s why we’re doing this. I am asking for your sacrifice, nation, in service of this higher ideal. Nothing about Donald Trump ever, one, foreshadowed that we’d be asked to sacrifice under his leadership. We were supposed to kick back and live large. And two, gives him the words, the focus, the communicative ability to say to us, here’s why and here’s what you’re being asked to sacrifice for, and I promise on the other side of this here’s what’s awaiting you. They just don’t have it.

Sarah [00:43:44] Next up, we’re going to take a hard turn and ground ourselves in the Mountain West. Beth, much by accident, we had very similar spring breaks.

Beth [00:44:04] By complete accident. We discussed none of this.

Sarah [00:44:06] No. We took a trip to New Mexico and Texas to see White Sands National Park, Carlsbad Cavern, Guadalupe Mountains, and Big Bend National Parks. Four national parks in one week. It was fabulous.

Beth [00:44:25] And I had to be in Santa Fe for a retreat with some of our listeners, which was wonderful at the end of that spring break week. So my family and I flew to Denver at the beginning of the week and rented a car. And we also did national parks. We went to Rocky Mountain National Park, to Arches, to Canyonlands, to Petrified Forest, to the Grand Canyon and to White Sands. We did a lot of driving.

Sarah [00:44:49] There’s just so much driving. Because people even in other national parks, people who are from that area of the country are like very rapidly doing some mileage calculations, looking at a map in their head and going, whoa, what?

Beth [00:45:02] Well, I can tell you because the rental car had four miles on it when we drove it out of the lot and we returned it over 2,600.

Sarah [00:45:08] Oh my god. That wasn’t even a full week because you got to be-- you didn’t have to be with our listeners. You’ve got to be with our listener, right?

Beth [00:45:15] That’s right. It was wonderful.

Sarah [00:45:16] In Santa Fe, like by Thursday. We did a lot of driving. We had two five-hour days because Texas is so big. But we didn’t do quite that much. Is this like y’all’s first like big national park trip?

Beth [00:45:27] Yes, it is. This is our girls first time really out West. We’ve taken them to California once, but they haven’t seen the West in any meaningful sense. And you know how we are. If we’re going to do something, we go very hard. We do not do relaxing vacations unless we are at the beach, totally tuned out. And so we thought we’re out here, let’s just do a little sampler platter. Let’s not spend a lot of time in any one place, but let’s show them a lot of what is out here.

Sarah [00:45:52] What part was your favorite and what part do you wish you’d had more time in?

Beth [00:45:56] My favorite was Petrified Forest, actually.

Sarah [00:46:00] I haven’t been there.

Beth [00:46:01] I love how you can look at rock and see the passage of time. And that the passage of time is somehow beautiful just really spoke to me. I felt it deep in my body being a petrified forest. So it was my favorite. I think everybody else in my family would say arches or white sands, but I really connected there. I probably wish that we had had more time at Grand Canyon.

Sarah [00:46:31] Yeah, it’s so big.

Beth [00:46:31] The girls didn’t love it because it felt very touristy compared to the others. You’re getting on busses to go from one section to another. There were lots and lots of people compared to everywhere else we’d been. I really loved going around on the south rim to the place where you can actually hear the Colorado River. And we were there at such a nice time of year. It’s not blazing hot yet. And I think it would have been nice to have a little bit more time to actually do like a a hike or two there and really just kind of feel it out more.

Sarah [00:47:04] Yeah, we’ve only done Grand Canyon in a very touristy way when the boys were very, very small. Like we literally just like went out to the top, looked across and we’re like, wow, look at the Grand Canyon and then went to a wedding. So I really want to go down into the canyon. I want to do the like whole situation down in the bottom. And so that’s definitely on our list to do. I can’t believe Arches isn’t on anybody’s list. I loved Arches when we did it with the Mighty Five Parks in Utah. And I liked Canyonlands too. Arches, I think you get that same sense of the passage. I didn’t understand how the formations were made, like, oh, well, it’s different rock and they were way at different passage rates or whatever. And I did feel like when I left Utah under the Mighty Five, I deserved like a geology degree. I just learned so much about that over the course of our time there.

Beth [00:47:51] Chad and the girls really loved Arches. I will disclose, one, I didn’t feel great the day we went to Arches in my body. And elevation does mess with me. So the higher we went, the worst I felt. The other thing is like you definitely do feel the passage of time. And I spent a lot of that day going, how did this happen? And Googling things and thinking about salt more than I ever thought I might. But the rock is pretty brownish orange. That’s just kind of where you are. And I loved Canyonlands and then even more in sort of the painted desert part of the Petrified Forest. The rock itself just tells the story. Like it is like looking at an infographic about the different ages Earth has been through. It’s so beautiful.

Sarah [00:48:34] Well, we loved White Sands as well. The sledding down the dunes was fun. And the sunset there was incredible. Carlsbad Cavern is fun because we live near Mammoth Cave. So like the difference between the two caves, like Mammoth Cave is mammoth. It’s a very, very big cave system, but it’s not very deep. Carlsbad Cavern, is like an L. Like you go straight down and then across into like a-- it’s not a little room, but it a little compared to Mammoth Cave. So understanding the difference between the two cave systems... It took us like an hour to get down to Carl’s Bad Cavern walking down. At Mammoth Cave you just walk down a little slant and then you’re there. But Big Bend is very special.

[00:49:12] Big Bend is a very special park. It’s one of the parks that’s so big, it has like multiple different ecosystems. There’s a basin in the middle. There’s the Rio Grande. There’s multiple different like the Chihuahuan Desert. And the desert kind of grows on me. I’m not prone to desert life because I’m so very pale. But the more you spend in the desert, I think the more you’re like, I get it. First of all, I saw so many roadrunners and they’re so cute and I love them so much and they are so fun to watch. And I really, really fell for the Rio Grande. We had such a good time down on the Rio Grand. We crossed over. Felix swam across [inaudible] and thought it was the coolest thing ever. And it was just beautiful, beautiful country down there. Look, I love Texas a little bit more every time I visit it.

Beth [00:50:00] I want to ask you about that sense of desert growing on you because something I noticed while we were out there is that in the moments when I felt sad, which I got a few text messages from people going through hard things, I felt sad in a way more intense way than I ever do at home. And I decided that it must be the trees. I think the trees at home just really take a lot of my energy and process it for me. And the starkness of the landscape, it felt like all of my emotions were just like bouncing around and echoing back at me. Not to be too woo-woo.

Sarah [00:50:33] Well, here’s the thing. What I have learned over multiple national park trips is there is something there that can carry it for you. It’s just often hidden. They were talking about in the Chihuahuan desert that there is this living crust that’s holding everything together, that’s keeping the plants alive, that like a small pool can instantaneously become full of toads and shrimp because the eggs are just waiting for water. And in the same way you feel that in the Biscayne Bay or in Arroyo even national parks that are basically water. The mangroves and what the role they play in the biology, in the ecosystem. Like I think I’ve developed like a much deeper appreciation of the complexity of every ecosystem and how they can hold what you ask them to hold. They’ll just going to hold it in a different way. And I think we can say art trees hold a lot, but until you stand at the base of a Sequoia it is a totally different vibe. And that’s why I love it so much.

[00:51:43] We recently had a conversation on another podcast where they wanted us to show up and shit all over America. And the national park system, especially in the context of our 250th anniversary and the geology, the geography, the ecology of the United States is just incredible. I’ve never even been to Alaska. It’s just insane. It’s such a gift. It’s such a powerful, incredible piece of our country. I cannot get enough of it. I love every park more. The rankings in the Holland family it’s like a stock ticker. It’s just constantly up and down, up and changing, up and up, up and changing. Now I will say, in full disclosure, Yosemite is my number one and it will be hard to beat. It has maintained its place. But they’re all so special and I’m just so grateful to live in a place where we can experience all that.

Beth [00:52:49] I will say this trip made me more patriotic too because it’s not just that we have all of this diversity in our ecosystem, but we have the opportunity to go see it. It’s pretty much available. I mean, it’s expensive to rent a car, the fuel is expensive. Compared to lots of other trips, this is a pretty cheap way to experience something really meaningful. I did a future problem solving exercise with our listeners who came to the Santa Fe retreat with me and I wrote a future scene where people had basically checked out on the federal government and were depending on their states for everything. And part of that future scene involves states negotiating with each other over tariffed products. You look around and see our opportunity to drive from one state to another without even stopping and letting the state know you’re there, to spend your money everywhere seamlessly, to show up at these national parks because you got the one pass that you need from the federal government to go to all of these different places.

[00:53:57] It’s amazing the way that we have opened up our part of the world to one another. And you can really see that that’s the source of America’s power. And that’s way bigger than anything happening at the White House. That for 250 years we’ve said, come explore this vast land. We’re not going to stop you, we’re not going to keep you out, we’re going to say, no, you’re not from Arizona, the Grand Canyon is for the Arizonans. It’s amazing that we’ve done that. And it is the source of our greatness not just because of the national parks, but because we have said we share this together. And we take pride in our individual places, but we share it all. It really touched me while I was out there.

Sarah [00:54:39] Well, and look, I was living through and watching this political story in Big Bend while I was there. It clearly works on everybody, especially the people that work there. This is West Texas. This is the border, okay? This is not San Francisco. And there were signs everywhere, stop the border wall. Do not put this border wall through Big Bend. And it worked. They’re not doing it. They backed off. Because I think that living there, experiencing these places, it is the time, it is this sense that we as a country have this incredible gift, resource. We didn’t make the Grand Canyon, but we do steward it. And I think that is perspective giving, if you allow it to. Look, it makes me sad when somebody goes, oh, we’re not national park people. It does. Because I do think even if you’re not an outdoorsy person, there’s something about visiting a national park. I think there is the sense that this country and its land is bigger than us. I think there’s a sense that you kind of have to respect it and take it seriously, that’s really powerful.

[00:56:07] You can’t just walk onto like a five mile hike in the middle of Big Bend on a whim, right? You have to take it seriously. You have to plan that we have all these incredible resources. My husband is an Eagle Scout in Enneagram 6 max prepper. Do you know the first thing he does at any national park we go to? We go right to the nature station and we talk to a ranger. So you have to interact and you hear this expertise and you see the federal government showing up in this incredibly impactful way in the everyday lives of Americans. I mean, I could truly wax poetic for hours about all these different threads that come together when you visit a national park and it changes you. It changes the way you think about our country. It changes the way you think about yourself. It changes the way you about God and life and love. It is truly something every American should find a little time and space in their life to do. I believe that.

Beth [00:57:15] The other piece that I want to call out from this time in the West that really moved me was spending some time with indigenous people and hearing about that negotiation of stewardship of the land. The struggle that dual sovereignty creates. The way that is so present and shows up in water and electricity. The hotel that we stayed in for our retreat in Santa Fe is 100% owned by Pueblo people. And one of them came to us, the very first thing we did was hear his story. Learned about the history of the hotel and the history his tribe. He talked to us about Chaco Canyon and their struggle with the federal government. And he offered us a blessing while we were there. And that combination of politics, the space for struggle, the space for all is not well, and we still love it here and we’re still happy to have you here as our guests, it was very, very moving. And I really want to spend more time in spaces like that, listening and learning and reflecting and problem solving and just trying to advance my own understanding of the people that we have taken a lot of this land from as a nation and still share it with and who still seek to live harmoniously. It’s a pretty mind blowing state of affairs that we have.

Sarah [00:58:53] Well, if you have been inspired to take on a trip, I have itineraries. If didn’t know this, my family and I basically just write up what we did. We write up our itinerary; we write up all the guides. If you’d like to hear more about the details around this trip or some other ones around the Mountain West or other national parks, we just went to two national parks in Minnesota over the summer. Those will be available. I’ll put a link in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. We hope you will take a moment and text a link to this show to a friend and say, hey, I know you love national parks, take a listen. Or, hey, are you filled with rage about the New York Times piece about the Supreme Court? Here’s a conversation just for you. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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