Political Gabfest - Tough It Out, Pregnant Ladies!
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2025
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss how Trump is using the powerful machine of government prosecution to reverse-engineer crimes supposedly committed by enemies, his diatribe against Tylenol at the disastrous press conference on autism, and the echoes of past Red Scares in today’s free speech climate with historian Beverly Gage, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the debate around Trump’s new $100,000 fee for H-1B visa workers: will it score points or be an own goal for US jobs?
In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily talks with author and Yale professor Judith Resnik about her new book, Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy. They discuss the history of the prison system’s use of punishments like whipping, how the practice came to an end, and more.
Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth
Research by Emily Ditto
You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. |
| 0:06.2 | And by the way, I think I could say that there are certain groups of people that don't take vaccines and don't take any pills that have no autism. |
| 0:14.6 | Is that a correct statement, by the way? |
| 0:17.6 | September 25th, 2025, the Tuftit Out, the Pregnant Ladies Edition. |
| 0:22.7 | I'm David Plotz of Citicast. |
| 0:25.5 | The dogs have been shushed away, shooed away from Emily Bazelon of Yale University Law School |
| 0:32.5 | in New York Times Magazine. |
| 0:33.8 | Hello, Emily. |
| 0:35.0 | Hey, David. |
| 0:36.3 | Did anyone ever tell you to tough it out when you were pregnant with the Baselon children? |
| 0:40.0 | No, no, don't start that topic too early. |
| 0:42.6 | Okay, I won't. |
| 0:43.9 | That's John Dickerson, co-anchor of the CBS Evening News, |
| 0:47.7 | an anchor of CBS Evening News Plus from New York City. |
| 0:51.2 | We will not start that topic too early. |
| 0:52.9 | On the streets, the dogs are barking. |
| 0:56.1 | What is that? What reference is that? People will get it. Carry on. This week on the Gab Fest, |
| 1:01.1 | we'll dig into the latest horrid developments in the American justice system with the president |
| 1:05.4 | now demanding, ordering prosecutions of his guilty as hell political enemies. |
| 1:18.7 | In addition to believing he is the nation's lawyer, President Trump also believes he is the nation's obstetrician and pediatrician. |
| 1:24.7 | So we will talk about the latest shocking developments about autism and vaccination that the president is orchestrating. |
| 1:28.0 | Then we're going to talk to the brilliant historian Bev Gage about what the red scare was and what it can tell us about the Trump administration's |
... |
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