This is Sarah Stewart Holland. This is Beth Silver's. You're listening to Pantsu Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Thank you so much for being here today. We have two subjects to discuss. Both of them

shed a lot of light on contemporary Republican politics in the upcoming election, but

both are about more than that, too. First we're going to talk about a witness who's

been very important to

Republicans investigations into President Biden and Hunter Biden, which has all been

very blurry. We like to take some clarity where we can find it. This week we got

some clarity in the form of a criminal indictment against the

witness that Republicans have been relying on Alexander Smyrnaub so we're going to

discuss that. Then we are going to talk about the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling on the status of frozen

embryos. This came from a wrongful death lawsuit. In light of this ruling already, we have the

University of Alabama at Birmingham announcing that it's pausing all IVF procedures, so hugely

consequential. You've probably seen a range of headlines about what this means. We want to be as precise

as we can about this specific case and then discuss how

we're processing it in the larger context of conversations about birth and pregnancy and

reproductive rights. And outside of politics we'll talk about about As we approach the discussion today, we're thinking about some fundamentals of American federalism and democracy and what it means to be a healthy republic.

If those big picture ideas are interesting to you, we would love for you to join us this year for our slow reading through Alexis de Tocqueville's classic Democracy in America.

So if you don't know what democracy in America is, it was published in 1835.

Alexis de Tocquille's French, if you couldn't figure out from his name and he traveled

around America and made many many observations that are considered you know I was a

political science major in college they They're just, they're

considered the best that he had the most important, interesting, and accurate

insight that has stayed true to American and American culture and how that plays out in American democracy.

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