The Supreme Court is Destroying Itself

TOPICS DISCUSSED

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EPISODE RESOURCES

The Overturn of Roe vs. Wade

The Supreme Court

Nightswimming (R.E.M. via YouTube)

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:00] Between the January 6th hearing and the Supreme Court, like, we're done with this norm idea that the elites will play by these rules that nobody's ever written down or can hold them accountable for. And that's what will hold the whole thing together. Like, I think we're done with that. We're too big. We're too complicated. We're too diverse. We're going to have to write some stuff down that require your ethical obligations to the court.  

[00:00:26] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:28] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:29] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Hello and welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to dedicate our episode to the Supreme Court. First, we're going to answer your questions about the chaos created by the court's decision on Friday to overturn Roe V. Wade. Then we're going to discuss how that decision, along with the court's recent decisions on gun control legislation and establishment of religion, are affecting our views of the court. And lastly, outside politics, we will be talking about my very, very, passionate views on sun protection.  

Beth [00:01:11] This was supposed to be our last week of episodes before we take our annual break during the month of July. The House Select Committee on the January 6th Capitol attack had other plans. Congress is recessed until July 12th. When they come back, Chairman Bennie Thompson has assured us that the committee has more to say. So we're going to cover that the best we can with Sarah in Europe and me here at home. And we'll try to bring you episodes on the hearings throughout July, along with episodes from our summer series, Now What, where we're talking to listeners about political conflict in their own relationships, it's just going to be a fluid situation is what we're telling you. And we thank you in advance for your patience.  

Sarah [00:02:02] As we all adapted, or at least moved numbly through the shock of the Supreme Court's decision to take back the constitutional right to an abortion on Friday. We've been taking in all your questions about the decision and what it really means now that we're in a post-Roe America.  

Beth [00:02:20] I think the hardest thing about this conversation, especially as we're asked how do I talk to people around me about this, is that it doesn't mean one thing. That is the gist of the decision. That we don't have an American policy on abortion now. So we've gotten a lot of really specific questions about ectopic pregnancy, about rape and incest, about what it means to save the life of the mother. And we can't answer those questions for the entirety of the country. It's going to depend on state law. It's going to depend on how that law is enforced. And I think we're going to have to just take a pause and watch what happens over the next weeks and months to really understand the impact of this decision.  

Sarah [00:03:03] When I posted on my personal Facebook page, I very specifically and deliberately said this is what Kentucky legislators have done today. Because we had a trigger law started immediately. And I thought, well, this is the conversation we're going to start with is the state we live in. And so I've had a conversation in the comment thread about Kentucky law. I posted the single paragraph of a three page bill that is supposed to lay out the situation in which there would be an exception for the life of the mother. Language is something like reasonable medical conclusion. Well, reasonable to whom? I feel like there's a lot of "But there's an exception for the life of the mother" that's holding a lot of water right now in a way that legislation cannot and was not designed to hold in the course of this thread. A man I knew growing up in a Southern Baptist youth group, you know, very kindly and in the spirit of compromise, said, "I'm all for eliminating uncertainty." And I said, "Friend, that's not available to us. We cannot use law to eliminate uncertainty. That's why everybody goes to law school and that's why we have judges, because there is inevitable uncertainty." We saw that with Roe. There was a lot of uncertainty. And so the idea that we're going to craft these exceptions so that nobody ever has to feel bad about a position a woman was put in due to this legislation. Oh, man, I can't dress that up or make that a softer landing for people. It's going to be a hard, hard, fall.  

Beth [00:04:49] We're hearing from a number of you that people around you are celebrating the decision in ways that you're finding really callous. And the only thing I know to do in the face of that is to try to, with more patience than I feel, create a more expansive understanding of what abortion services look like. Because it does feel that the gleeful have one particular type of abortion in mind and a very limited understanding of what that type of abortion looks like. And I just hate saying, well, I guess more people are going to have to tell their stories because it's been years of women telling their stories and people still not listening or getting it or just not wanting to. But I don't know what else to do here, especially those of us who are not survivors of sexual assault and rape, those of us who have not had to have abortion care. People like me, who had only two desired relatively easy pregnancies saying, let me tell you what I know about what women endure, because it is less painful for me than for others. But there is just a part of me that feels like you can only keep knocking on the same door so many times because people just want to feel like they've won something here. I think that's what this is about more than anything else. And we'll talk about this with the court in a minute. But almost everything coursing through the court right now and this decision is like the biggest manifestation of that. It feels to me like it is so much less about what it's about and so much more about a cultural victory and that's hard.  

Sarah [00:06:37] Over the course of this Facebook binging I was doing all weekend, which I have refrained from for a long time, but the siren song was too strong this weekend. I talked about a lot of things that have affected my views on abortion. I pointed out hard situations. And I do think that over the course of the conversation, the person I was engaged with and a lot of people who read it thought, oh, I hadn't thought of that. There's a lot on the Internet right now. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. And there's going to be a lot more because it ain't the 1970s anymore. Now, in some ways I say that, and I understand that in some parts of America it very much is. That to openly share your story of abortion is unimaginable. Doesn't mean they're not happening just like it means doesn't mean they weren't happening in the sixties and seventies. But the idea that you would say it, that you would talk about it is unfathomable. I get that.  

[00:07:33] And also, you know what else is different in the 1970s? The Internet and so the ability for people to share stories, to confront, listen, there's not a lot of kindness or nuance.  I'm still arguing for it because I think it works. At one point in this conversation I said, look, I haven't known you in decades. I knew you to be kind and thoughtful then, I believe you're probably are still kind and thoughtful now. And it kept the conversation going in a way that I thought was productive. And so I think there is the ability because the tenor of the conversation, for the most part, is so dramatically different from back that we have so much more ability to engage, to be supportive of each other. I was sitting down as we were beginning to record and I thought all these state laws trying to prevent people and  other states from doing this, trying to prevent the abortion pill. And I thought the lengths women would go to in the sixties and seventies with so little resources. And now, I mean, the ability to just get on the Internet and type in how to get this, how to do this, like, I can't.  Again, there is no awareness from the people celebrating of what they have wrought. Like, I just think that the celebration is also a type of siren song and it has blinded them to what people around them are saying.  

Beth [00:09:10] One of the questions that you all ask is, will this change the way we parent? And the question was really put more to me, I think, how will you parent girls? But I think this is a very important question for the moms of boys too, the parents of boys, all the adults who love boys and girls in the world, all people need to be answering this question. And I think in my moments of my lowest moments over the weekend, I just thought about the fact that I have an 11-year-old who could get pregnant. I have an 11-year-old whose activities right now consist of things like making a sticker for her door that says fries before guys on her cricket. You know what I mean? This is not a conversation about promiscuity or sexual morality. It is a recognition that I'm not with her every moment of every day. And I will do everything I can every day to keep her safe and to keep her protected from predators. And I try not to spend my life thinking about predators.  

[00:10:12] But when I imagine a circumstance in which I am not able to keep her safe from all predators, and the consequence of that would be that in Kentucky, I have a pregnant 11-year-old with no options is a low moment for me. It's just a low moment for me. And as much as I will and can educate her about her body and about sex and about risk. And as much as I can teach her that-- this is the thing, the conversation about abortion with people who tend to be like the most staunchly pro-life, I always feel like they refuse to acknowledge the things that are completely out of a woman's control. So that's something I'm just thinking a lot about. I already was very committed to providing really strong education about relationships and sex to my daughters. And this increases that conviction. But I also am left realizing I would love to live in a world where they were empowered to be in control of absolutely everything that happens. And this is not that world.  

Sarah [00:11:28] We picked up our kids from camp on Saturday and Griffin got in the car and we were driving up to Amos's cabin. And he said, "What happened?" And I said, "Well, some good things and some bad things." I said, "We got a once in a generation gun control legislation." And we sort of went through what it could do and closing the boyfriend loophole and these big achievements that this legislation has accomplished. And I kind of read out Chris Murphy's thread to him, and we talked about a little bit. And he goes, "And they overturned Roe V. Wade. And I said, "Yeah. They did. They did overturn Roe V. Wade." We talked about Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion and his threat, which is what I'm going to start calling it, that the court should also overturn the right to contraception and the right to gay marriage. And we talked about how disheartening that is and what can I say? It's going to be okay. That's a lie. I know what happens next. That's a lie, too. And then that evening, when I got home, when I was Facebook ninjaing, I was checking my feed and a guy I knew a long time ago, he's probably ten years younger than me, posted that the only responsible thing to do as a man right now is to get a vasectomy. That he'd gotten one, and he has never regretted it.  

[00:12:55] And in some ways, I know many of you have read Gabrielle Blair's Twitter thread about responsible ejaculation. She's got a book coming out. I'll be purchasing that for my children not to read right now, but maybe in a year or two. I think the shift to men to say there is responsibility here. Real responsibility when you're talking about there are things Jane can't control, that's because the ultimate control is always in the hands of the man. That's Gabriel Blair's argument. It's like I want them to have that, but it also makes me so sad that they could get to a point where they're like, the only responsible thing I could do is get a vasectomy. Makes me really, really, sad and really angry at people who claim to be pro-life and promoting families that a lot of young men are going to make that decision. They're going to say the only way to be a responsible male inside this country right now is to get a vasectomy.  I mean, I get the argument. So I don't even disagree with it. It just makes me sad. It makes me really sad to continue to have that conversation with my boys and to feel like to be responsible members of society, they have to foreclose this choice to themselves forever and always, I'm sure, is a conversation we're going to have.  

Beth [00:14:11] Yeah. As I was thinking about this over the weekend, it would not surprise me if the long term effect here is an even more rapidly declining population.  

Sarah [00:14:21] Absolutely.  

Beth [00:14:22] And the other thing I kept thinking about is the callousness with which we talk about our birth control choices, because there's not a path here. A vasectomy, having your tubes tied, using any kind of medication and IUD, all of it affects our bodies and it affects all of us differently. We can't predict all of the effects that it will have. You can get into a conversation with any group of women about the effect of birth control and hear stories that are just heartbreaking about what happened just trying to take a pill and be responsible the way we've been told to, you know. Were so dismissive of everything that has to do with sex and reproduction in our bodies. And that's the only call to action I know for people who are loving on kids right now is to just try so hard to take our bodies seriously and to teach them to do the same and to get as much information as we can about all of the things that we put in our bodies and the way that we interact with them. Because I think the consequences of approaching our bodies with shame and detachment are woven deeply into this decision.  

Sarah [00:15:39] So we're going to continue here at Pantsuit Politics to talk about the fallout and the chaos created by this decision. But up next, we wanted to talk about the court itself and the larger perspective of a decision right before Dobbs and the decision that came out today, right after Dobbs. So those in our premium community have heard our conversation about the gun control case that struck down a law passed by the state of New York and our intense frustration with that case. Then we got the overturning of Roe V. Wade and then today we got a decision in the case. Many of you maybe have just heard in passing that there was a coach praying after football games and they were going to hear a case about his decision. It will not surprise any of you to learn that this conservative majority has upheld his right to pray at school events and wasn't even satisfied to stop there, but has struck down another fundamental constitutional test when it comes to the establishment of religion. Beth, If I was a constitutional law professor right now, I would quit. I'd just be like, you know what? Forget it. I might have to redo this whole entire course. They're just shredding it piece by piece.  

Beth [00:17:13] Yeah, I think that's about it. When the football coach decision came out this morning, the only thing I could think is I don't want to. And I have to, be fair, felt that about the football coach case for a while. I have very little sympathy for anyone connected to the football coach praying case. This seems to me like one of those where you think can reasonable adults not come to some kind of consensus on this and not have the Supreme Court get involved? And I still feel that way.  

Sarah [00:17:44] Not when there are TV cameras. Which there were apparently at these football games.  

Beth [00:17:48] Well, there is a lot of blame to go around in how it came to be that this case reached the United States Supreme Court. But I did not want to spend 75 pages on the football coach praying. And I think it was important to. Not because I learned anything that will ever apply in any future case again and that's the problem here, right? That the court is now just telling us case after case after case. We don't do that anymore. We do what we think is correct.  

Sarah [00:18:22] They struck the test down. Did they not set up a new test?  

Beth [00:18:26] Well, what difference would it make if they did? First of all, since they just do what they want, case after case. This one, they basically told us under any standard this coach being fired violates the First Amendment. We live for another day what the standard might actually be.  

Sarah [00:18:44] Oh, perfect.  

Beth [00:18:45] Mm-hmm.  

Sarah [00:18:46] It seems like they leaned all the way into the free exercise and basically ignored the establishment of religion, which is also a concern of the First Amendment last time I checked. Last time I checked.  

Beth [00:18:56] That really came up in a case that was handed down before the gun case, where we have in Maine this situation of a lot of communities not having a secondary school. So Maine has a program to pay tuition for kids to go to school. And in front of the Supreme Court is whether those tuition dollars could be used for religious schools. And in that case, you had Justice Breyer in dissent saying there is an establishment clause in addition to a free exercise clause. And in the case that just came out about the football coach, the answer to that seemed to be, oh, would you just calm down? Basically, I'm not sure what is going to violate the establishment clause short of a public school turning into a religious school, which I'm sure someone will try in the next year or two because why not? Why wouldn't they. The invitation is open.  

Sarah [00:19:59] Yeah. My favorite part was like they leaned so-- they're like, he's quietly playing at the 50 yard line. And then Sotomayor rolls in with her two cent with receipts like three or four pictures. And she's like, "Does this look like quietly praying to you with the TV cameras and the tons and tons of people surrounding him?" Because this dude got so many chances and he just every time was like,  should I be a martry?. I think I should. I think I should be a martyr.  

Beth [00:20:25] And then the community was like, yeah, you should. And then others in the community-- I mean, Sotomayor details that the school was contacted by a satanist circle saying, well, if he can use a football field to pray, then we can use the football field to do our things. You just listen to this and you think, America, come on. Like, everybody, take a minute. Why are we doing this? So it's not even that I disagree with the result in this case. I think this case was like a lie in the telling of the story. I do not think this football coach was fired for praying. I think this football coach was fired for being a jerk about it and for basically marshaling the community and the media to come after the school. That's what I think happened here. It doesn't matter. They decided the way they decided. That's the thing with a lot of these decisions. I accepted that they were probably going to strike down New York's gun law. I don't think that was the right decision, but I figured that's what they would do. It is the fact that in doing it, they told us all we do as a court now is decide what life would have been like in the 1700s and what a person in the 1700s would have to say about this, while ignoring the fact that a person in the 1700s wouldn't recognize absolutely any piece of the context of these cases.  

Sarah [00:21:48] Yeah, there's been a lot written about Justice Roberts and what you were saying, like, let's do it, but let's chip away at it piece by piece and do it real polite-like. And you know what? I'm kind of glad they're not doing it that way because it was real frustrating to be a person who could see exactly what they're doing, but they were hiding behind the politeness and the norms. And so there is something illuminating and weirdly liberating that they're just saying, "No, this is who we are now." Because you know what? It's who they've always been and they've just got the numbers now. Like, this has been the argument from the Federalist Society forever. We're just going to do originalism, which is basically just an excuse to do what we want. And if you don't like it, we don't really care because we're going to use any means available to us to stack the court. And so there is a little bit of like, okay, well, now we're just all on the same page. That is helpful. We don't have to sound hyperbolic by saying this leads to an end of Roe. This leads to an end to individual rights that Americans have built their lives around. And you don't have to call us histrionic. And now we can all just have an open and honest debate about what the actual Supreme Court is supposed to do besides hide behind their black robes and lie to everybody's faces and pretend to be neutral arbiters.  

Beth [00:23:14] Here's where I struggle with what you're saying. I think it's reductive of many, many, judges across the country and many justices who have really tried not to do that. There are certainly people who've done it, but there are a lot of people who've issued decisions with which they strongly disagree politically, philosophically, morally, because they did not believe it was their job to just exercise raw power. And so, while I disagree with Justice Roberts concurrence in deciding that 15 weeks is an appropriate line for Mississippi's law, I do respect an attempt to say we restrain ourselves under some rubric because what are we if we don't restrain ourselves under some rubric? I appreciate that Justice Roberts said pretty plainly, my colleagues have now done what we said we weren't supposed to do, which is become a super legislature, an unaccountable super legislature. And while I acknowledge that the court has never been perfect, and certainly there have been moments where it has exceeded what those guardrails are, and certainly those guardrails have always been artificial and ambiguous. There's a lot of fiction that has to go around this. I don't know how we have a court the way this court is operating. I don't know how we have a court if what we believe is that how it always operates is just a power struggle between left and right. We got to rethink the whole system if that's what we're doing.  

Sarah [00:24:50] I mean, I appreciate the loving call out to judges like O'Connor and Kennedy, who decided  to vote for something they did not agree with when it came to abortion. And you know what else they did? They resigned deliberately under Republican presidents because at the end of the day they knew what was going on. In a way, I feel like every justice (even the liberal ones) hold some responsibility because I think most, if not all of them, were smart enough to see that the undercurrent of partisanship that was becoming more and more and more apparent. And they played by the rules a lot of the time, or they bury their heads in the sand. And decided that despite the changing landscape of America, we're just going to depend on these norms that have held us all together with duct tape since the 1700s. Instead of saying, if we have a responsibility to this institution, then maybe the responsibility of leadership is not always just trying to grip things and keep them the same as desperately as we can.  

[00:26:08] I told you over the weekend that this intense moment of transition in America just feels like between the January 6th hearing and the Supreme Court, like we're done with this this norm idea that the elites will play by these rules that nobody's ever written down or can hold them accountable for. And that's what will hold the whole thing together. Like, I think we're done with that. We're too big. We're too complicated. We're too diverse. We're going to have to write some stuff down. We're not going to all depend on the fact that maybe your spouse as a Supreme Court justice won't be trying to overthrow the government. We're going to have some rules written down that require your ethical obligations to the court. We're not all just going to say, well, this is what we're trying to do. We're going to have some rules written down. I know it gets complicated. I know it gets bureaucratic when we try to do this. And like I just said in the first segment, there is no reality in which we eliminate uncertainty.  

Beth [00:27:05] Or conflict.  

Sarah [00:27:06] Or conflict. But I prefer a process to just an idea that's floating around that everybody's just sort of leaning on, I'm ready to put some shit down on paper.  

Beth [00:27:15] So what does that mean to you?  

Sarah [00:27:17] My step one for right now as I almost start calling my senators and say I support the reforms from the Supreme Court, even though they haven't even released them yet. Maybe I'll start with Biden and saying I want to know what the committee recommends. Let's put some ideas out there. Where's the committee? Where's the recommendations? I want to hear them. Maybe I'll start with that. Maybe I'll start with Biden and say we got to have some ideas out here to start debating instead of being like, "Oh, man, looks bad over there. Yeah, let's do something about it." They're co-equal branches. It's not a temple on a hill, untouchable by any processes. It's time to get to work.  

Beth [00:27:50] I agree with that. I mean, look, I do think and I just want to say this is plainly as I can. As so many of you in the audience know me as a person who truly love Supreme Court jurisprudence, I think they've broken it. And I think that not just because of Dobbs, but because of what has come out in this term. And when you lineup Dobbs next to the New York gun case, next to the cases done on the shadow docket, next to the cases where we continue to have a court say that a person challenging their method of execution by the state should have to prove there's a better way to kill them in order to make out a cruel and unusual punishment claim, next to the cases where we have the court saying, "Well, we can only hold a police officer or a prison guard who has horribly abused a person they are charged with protecting as part of society if we had an exact case like that somewhere back in our history." If you just put all of this together, I think they have broken it. I don't know how the court recovers from this. I was talking this morning for a more to say on how to discuss this with your kids about how our government works.  

[00:29:03] And the only thing the court has is trust. And I think that trust is eradicated. Do I think that these justices can or will be impeached for lying in their confirmation hearings? I have no idea. But that feels like a more open question to me than it ever has before, because I do think there needs to be someone somewhere saying to the third branch of government, you are still branch number three of the three and you do run only on trust. And now you have abused that trust. So closely related to me with Supreme Court reform is open primary reform throughout the United States where we have some kind of rationalization of the way we send people to Congress. Because the only way the first branch of government can check the third is to have elections that we have confidence in and that are not taken hostage by people who, as I said in the first segment, are just interested in declaring cultural victory instead of actually living in the world created by that cultural battle.  

Sarah [00:30:14] I also just want to say to those people, good luck. That's not how culture works. Government is downstream from culture, friends. You don't swim upstream and change it that way. Like, it's just so deliberately or willfully ignorant of how people come to view the world and how they think about the world and what influences them. You think you're going to make a law that makes people more religious? You think you're going to find a level of enough religious freedom that church attendance is just going to soar? You think Supreme Court opinions are going to turn that tide? Get a grip. Get a grip. That's not how this works. It's not how it's ever worked. It's not how it's ever going to work.  

Beth [00:31:02] Well, and I do think that some-- especially as I tend to distrust physics in my personal life, I do think some laws apply here that like this action will have equal and opposite reactions.  

Sarah [00:31:14] Yep.  

Beth [00:31:15] And I feel myself having an equal and opposite reaction to some of the fervor out there about these decisions. I'm trying to check it. At the end of the day, when I think about who I am and what I care about in the world and what it means to live in what these decisions create, of course, I think there should be a way for the football coach to pray. Of course. Just as if a muslim coach needed to pause and pray on the field. Like, I mean, just as I want a teacher to be able to talk about their family no matter what that family looks like. Just as I want Jane to have, as she did at summer camp, a nonbinary counselor who's very open about that. Like, we are a pluralistic society and we are going to influence each other. And I am not interested in attempts to control what that influence looks like. So, again, it's not that I even disagree with everything this court is doing. It is the way they're doing it. And our long time listener, Lou, told me very plainly, you are like the only person who cares about process. And I get it. It's just that I don't know where we end up without that process. And I think that's why I ultimately agree with you, Sarah. We are going to have to write some things down. We're going to have to have some judicial ethics written. Like, I think we need to lean more into process as this culture war pulls at us, because otherwise I don't know where we land except violence.  

Sarah [00:32:46] We're going to try to work through some of this with all of you. We're going to try to think through, bring some experts on the show about these reforms, about how to get them started in your state, about how to move forward instead of just having conversations about it. That's what we do here at Pantsuit Politics, but we're going to push those conversations into more action oriented spaces, hopefully as we go through the year, because to do otherwise would be to ignore the new path this Supreme Court has set us on. Outside politics. It is summer, Beth. There is an abundance of sunshine. And the sun basically is my enemy when it comes right down to it. I'm a very pale person. The sun and I have a conflict-ridden relationship. But I do feel that people could benefit from my perspective on the sun to a certain degree.  

Beth [00:34:03]  I've not known you to have a strong conviction about anything where you didn't think people could benefit from your perspective, and the sun is no different.  

Sarah [00:34:12] My perspective is founded in science. The sun is very dangerous. I do not think people fully appreciate that.  

Beth [00:34:18] We also need it and it's important and does some good things for us.  

Sarah [00:34:22] I'm not trying to shut it down. I'm just saying. I do like to be in the sun. No, go ahead. What were you going to say?  

Beth [00:34:29] No, I was just going to say, I think that the sun is not our enemy. It is that we have to establish a relationship with the sun that appreciates the breadth of its power.  

Sarah [00:34:42] Yes. And that is my concern. I feel that people do not adequately appreciate the breadth of its power. For example, if you are over the age of-- maybe not over the age. Just if you are any age, you should wear a hat if you go outside. I am appalled by how many people especially women of my age who go outside without a hat. You guys, what are you doing? You might as well scoop that expensive skin cream and dump it right down the drain if you're going to spend a lot of time in the sun, even with sunscreen on your face, but no hat. This is my first very passionate position, is we all need to wear a hat. Beth, sometimes you don't wear a hat.  

Beth [00:35:35] I have a lot of hair and hats are difficult for me. I'm serious about sunscreen. I'm very careful about sunscreen. I enjoy wearing a hat. I am for this position just esthetically because I love wearing a hat and I love seeing people wear hats. But if I'm going to be in the pool swimming, I'm not going to have a hat on while I'm swimming in the pool. Like I have to take it off.  

Sarah [00:36:00] How do you feel about a visor. Does a visor work better with your hair?  

Beth [00:36:02] So I have been actually on the lookout for a visor that I think would work well for me. Again, I enjoy wearing a hat. I am not against the hats. It is just negotiating this very large head of hair that I'm sporting that I find challenging.  

Sarah [00:36:16] And I do feel like people it's sort of like therapists. Like they try a therapist, they didn't like them and they're like therapy is no good. They'll try a hat, they won't like it. And they're like, not trying again. Y'all they are so many hats. 

Beth [00:36:24] I have a stack of like eight hats that I have tried over summer. I do. I am on this. I care about this.  

Sarah [00:36:31] I'm just saying other people. I've noticed this pattern. They'll try a hat. They won't like it. And then there's no more hats. Okay. Now, saying all this about my passion about sun protection. So I wear hats. A couple of years on the podcast, I came forth and said that I don't wear swimsuits anymore. I wear swim leggings and rash guards. Side note, I just got the cutest. They're getting really good about the long sleeve swimsuits. Really good. I just bought a Lands' End one by Draper James. I'm obsessed with it. They're getting so much better. Like, when I started doing this, my options were limited. Now my options down to, like, Target has lots of long sleeved rash guard options. Like, they are prolific. There is literally no excuse. They have everything and all kinds at all times. So that's my other thing. Hats, sunscreen, every day. Every day. Every day. And rash guards. And also as Ashley, very eagle-eye ashley, noticed on our last Insta story at your house or our Instagram live at your house watching the lives. I just purchased my first regular swimsuit in probably 10 years. I don't even remember what the last times that I looked like. But I purchased a swimsuit. I'm feeling a lot of shame about it. I also forgot all my children's swim shirts in their camp. I sent all three of my children to camp last week without a single swim shirt. So I need to exorcize some of that shame as well.  

Beth [00:38:00] See, this is where I always diverge from your path. I'm always interested in your perspective and your information. It is where it goes to shame that I'm like, no, Sarah, I'm out now. Because I'm not going to feel shame for occasionally going outside without hat. I'm just not. I am going to swim in a regular swimsuit. If you spend a lot of time in a pool, a hat and a long sleeve, long pants kind of situation is just not going to work. We built our pool with sun in mind. We have a lot of trees. We built a pool house that is covered. We put umbrellas at both ends of the pool. You can be in my pool and be well-protected from the sun at just about all times. We thought through this. So I am just not going to put shame around every single step in the process here. You know what I'm saying?  

Sarah [00:38:48] Well, I will say this. You do have to be careful in water because of the reflection. It doesn't really matter if you're in the shade. The sun can still find you due to the reflection.  

Beth [00:38:55] So I still wear the sunscreen.  

Sarah [00:38:57] I've gotten a bad sunburn up under my hat at a beach once. I had to wear a hat all day long. I had sunscreen on, it didn't matter. The sun was like, I'mma find you with the reflection in this water. Well, I feel bad because it was my job to protect my kids and I forgot they're dang swimshirts. Because they were using them and then I forgot to pack them. Anyway, but with the swimsuit I have realized as I've swam a little bit more in friends pools, there's just sometimes, especially at the end of the day, I do not want to put on my full garb. I think pools are a little bit different. The rash guards and the leggings are really, really, helpful in an active situation. Are you at a lake? Are you at a beach? Are you at a water park where you're like out in it all day long and you're in and out of the water. There is not a sunscreen made that will protect me in like a snorkeling situation, it does not exist. They can't do it.  

[00:39:50] And let me tell you something. Just because you're tanning, it's still sun damage. You know what I mean? Like, just because I burn and you tan under the same sunscreen, it's still sun damage, right? And I think like that's where those those situations really shine. Now, my new long sleeved one, I would have one in your pool. I just didn't come in time. But it's not a full legging situation. But there is like you're swimming at night. I love a night swimming. Both the song by R.E.M. and the actual night swimming, because then I don't have to think about the sun, which is why I really fell in love with the rash guard and the swim leggings because it removed that constant, constant, stressful calculus of do I have enough sunscreen? Do I need to apply? Do I have enough sunscreen and do I need to reapply?  

Beth [00:40:27] I was out in the pool in my rash guard yesterday and I thought, I just hate this in some ways because you get cold once you get out of the pool.  

Sarah [00:40:35] No, that is true.  

Beth [00:40:36] You got this big wet thing on and you get cold. It's just unpleasant in certain situations. So I try to take a multi-layered approach and do my best. But I am not going to attach a lot of moral value to the whole calculus.  

Sarah [00:40:50] I do want to enter one more addendum. I do feel under sunscreen very strongly about the type of sunscreen. I only use mineral sunscreen. It is an actual barrier on the top of your skin and it's not a chemical that your skin absorbs and then blocks the sun. Particularly with my kids, particularly when there's a lot of water activity, I really like the sticks that are straight up white. So you can see it's like going away. Now, a lot of the mineral sunscreens are now clear. My husband found this bottle of spray mineral sunscreen. That is wild. It is like a green foam that comes out and then you spread it around. So that I would say is an addendum to my third prong of the sunscreen. I strongly prefer mineral sunscreen. So I do hats, mineral sunscreen, rash guard, swim leggings. But I did just buy my first swimsuit. Much more pleasant experience.  

[00:41:40] Just like when I rejected makeup and skin care for about 10 years because the product kind of sucked. And then I came back and I was like, hey, this got better. The swimsuit situation, way better. Got the cutest, most flattering. My booty was not hanging out. Swimsuit at Target. Who knew? Who knew? I mean, are y'all wearing swimsuits this whole time. I have no doubt that I am not the only person out in our audience with strong feelings about sun protection. I'm sure we have plenty of dermatologists who can add to our discussion. So I look forward to hearing about this on Instagram and our other social media channels. We always love hearing from all of you as we have conversations. And it was nice to talk about something light after tackling the Supreme Court today. So we hope that you guys are handling this ever changing reality as best you can. We hope that we help that wherever we can. And until we are back here again on Friday, keep it nuanced y'all.  

Beth [00:42:49] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:42:54] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:43:00] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producer (Read their own names) [00:43:04] Martha Bronitsky. Linda Daniel. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zugenalis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs.  

[00:43:22] The Kriebs. Laurie LaDow. Lilly McClure. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tawni Peterson. Tracy Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Katherine Vollmer. Amy Whited.  

Beth [00:43:40] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Ashley Thompson. Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen Morgan McHugh. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.  




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