This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves.

Welcome to the waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism and the Supreme Court.

Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can't get off our minds.

And today you've got me, Mark Joseph Stern, a staff writer for Slate covering

courts in the law. And me, DioLithwick, I am a senior editor at Slate and I cover the courts.

Today we're talking about Amy Coney Barrett's first term, which just wrapped up this month.

Justice Barrett notoriously replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court,

solidifying a six to three conservative majority. And today we'll be talking about what impact

her votes had on the cases that the court decided. And also the cases that the court chose not to

decide. You know, I'm sitting with two things and it's sort of interesting to me.

One, last October, November, you and I were running around houses on fire, houses on fire.

She's going to do all these dreadful things. And two, now we're sitting in the midst of a raft

of mainstream media views that Barrett turned out to be really moderate, intemperate, and centrist.

And maybe not all that different from RBG after all. So maybe just in terms of table setting,

were we wrong then or are we wrong now? I don't think we're wrong at all.

Let's recall at Justice Barrett then Judge Barrett's confirmation hearings,

the Senate Democrats chose to make it about the Affordable Care Act. And so what we saw,

right, was days and days and days of Senate Democrats holding up huge posters of children who

were going to be thrown off their health insurance because of Justice Barrett. And that didn't

materialize for reasons we're going to talk about in a minute. The Affordable Care Act was not

struck down. But I do think there is this problem with hindsight and foresight. In other words,

the choice to say we're going to litigate Amy Coney Barrett's possible impact on the court

...