
‘The Kylee Cast’ feat. Mollie Hemingway and Chris Bray, Ep. 35: LIVE From The Federalist ForumOn this episode of “The Kylee Cast,” Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway and Writer Chris Bray join Managing Editor Kylee Griswold for a live taping...
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Kylie Griswold
hi everybody and welcome to the Kylie Cast. I'm Kylie Griswold, Managing Editor at the Federalist. Please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a five star review. It's one of the easiest and best ways you can help out the show. And even better yet, if you're just listening, go check out the full video version on my personal YouTube channel or the Federalist channel on Rumble. And then of course, like and subscribe there too. And you're definitely going to want to do that today because we have a very special episode for you that was recorded live at our Federalist Forum in Phoenix, Arizona with our Editor in Chief at the Federalist, Molly Hemingway, as well as one of my newer colleagues, writer Chris Bray. Molly, Chris and I dive into some of the biggest news of the day and you're not going to want to miss it. Without further ado, please welcome to the show Molly and Chris live at the Federalist Forum.
Welcome everyone to a very, very special edition of the Kylie Cast. I am Kylie Griswold, managing editor at the Federalist. If we had not had the pleasure of meeting, I hope I get to meet you this afternoon or this evening. And usually I record this weekly podcast for my sad little studio all alone with a virtual guest. But today I have the pleasure of doing it live and in person and in color with my colleagues, Molly Hemingway, who you've seen a lot of this weekend, and also Chris Bray, who is a writer at the Federalist. He might be a newer face to some of you, he's a newer face to me, although I have emailed with him quite a lot. So I would like to kick this off with an introduction about Chris Bray for those of you who do not know him yet, but I will just say there are very few people that I read every single day. There are a lot of people who I follow and look to for good news, but there are very few that are a daily must read. And long before Chris joined us at the Federalist in an official capacity, he was one of the few must reads that I had. Anytime I got his substack newsletter in my inbox, it was an automatic click. And then, of course, we published him a lot at the Federalist even before he was on staff. And I was constantly, meekly coming to him in my cute little email saying, hi, Chris, could we please republish this one again because it's great. And that was me every week with Chris. So we so excited to have him on board. But Chris is a Californian. So, Chris, why don't you tell us a little bit about that journey and how you came to join our crazy team at the Federalist.
Chris Bray
It's rare to say Chris is California and not hear someone say out loud, I'm sorry. I've said to people several times this week, I'm from California, I live in Los Angeles. And they say, oh, is anyone else here from California? Where? San Beno. Okay.
Molly Hemingway
Del Mar.
Kylie Griswold
The People's Republic.
Chris Bray
They're all the People's Republic. Okay. I live in the People's Republic of South Pasadena, where our town of 27,000 people has a climate action plan and a climate administrator. So if you're ever wondering who's in charge of the. The climate of planet Earth, it's me. My town runs that. If you ever find yourself in South Pasadena and someone is beating you up or robbing you or breaking into your car, you'll find that the police, who are actually really great police, I love our police department who come racing up a few seconds later, show up in Teslas because they are not degrading the plane and changing the climate by responding to crime. So we have an all Tesla, all electric police fleet, and we're very, very proud of that. And for some reason we can't ever figure out, this is the California story, why our city government keeps running out of money. Who is Chris Bray? I'm such a dull person, and I'm so sorry for that. I was writing. I'm really grateful to the Federalists for this, for what I'm about to say. I was writing 20, 25 years ago. I started writing for small local newspapers in California. And I think this is really, really, really missing in journalism now. There are. Michael Barbaro started writing for the New York Times when He was like 24, and he came out of a prep school and then Yale and then started writing, like covering the White House. There was a moment when you couldn't build up in a career to working for the Washington Post or working for the New York Times without starting covering your local water board. And going to fires and going. There was a moment in Claremont, California, I was working for the Claremont Courier. I once said to Tucker Carlson, I worked at all of the least prestigious journalistic organizations in the country. And he said, well, I worked at cnn and I think I have you beat. There was a moment I was working in Claremont and I heard sirens and I ran outside and someone had tried to kill a cop and they had him in a van, and he ran into the back of his van and they thought he had a gun. And they called the SWAT team and we had a standoff in the street. And I went running down the street and threw myself down behind a wall where the police were. And the Claremont police officers who all knew me looked at me and said, just keep your head down. And I think that experience of covering local news and being part of a community and covering what happens in a community, and if you get stuff wrong in a small town, people tear your head off. If you get things right in a small town, people frequently tear your head off. But coming from journalism in a small place is sorely, sorely missing and something we've really badly lost and we need to get back to it. And then I started writing for other people and I wrote for Reason magazine for a while. Everyone at the Federalist makes fun of Reason magazine. If you saw Reason magazine in the last election making an argument for the Libertarian choice for president, each member of the Reason editorial staff, each writer, each editor got a paragraph to say who they were voting for. So they all had a chance to explain why, as libertarians, they were voting for Kamala Harris. I wrote for Reason magazine for a while. I stopped fitting in. I just maybe hinted why. I wrote for American Conservative for a while, and I saw 20ish years ago, my career slide away quietly and just kind of disappear. And I suddenly wasn't writing for anyone. And nobody ever told me, you're not going to write for. Well, Reason kind of did. You're not going to write for us anymore. But I just. It all went away. So I went and got a Ph.D. and I said, academia will be a refuge for free thought where I can say whatever I want. And that was also not true. I spent some time in the army where I actually, I think the army had. You think of the army as a place where you just have to obey and do what you're told. And I thought that the army was much more, much more comfortable place for people speaking and disagreeing. We used to have, like, staff sergeant argument over politics. I thought it was a Much freer organization than like ucla, where I went to grad school and I had a long period in the wilderness where I left the Army, I left journalism, I left academia. And I said, I have no current identity. I'm a former soldier, a former journalist, and a former academic. Maybe one day I'll be something else again. And then I started writing for Substack because I saw that there were people who were writing for Substack and getting an audience. And then I began to talk to the that fact. And I'm so grateful that there's a place where I can speak and I can say what I see. And I don't get editors saying, that's not something we really want to say. One of my very last conversations with an editor 20 years ago, ish, maybe 15 years ago, was we want a piece from you about how Rand Paul doesn't believe in science. And I said, rand Paul, the surgeon. And that was the last time I ever wrote for that organization. So I'm so glad to be here.
Molly Hemingway
I just want to add on that we are so happy to have Chris with us, and his writing is just incredible and you should definitely be reading him. But he had a piece. I don't remember exactly what it was, but he was worried that it was maybe a little too mean. And I said, I am so thrilled that I get to tell you one of our favorite edits that we give to writers. Not mean enough.
Kylie Griswold
Yes, Chris embodies this, but make it meaner, which is a very frequent edit. So, Chris, you live in California. That is as you made clear. But a lot of us now feel like we are living in California because California has exported so many of its policies to the rest of the country in numerous ways, partly through the californication of America, as we like to call, of just things getting more and more progressive and out of control, partly through the mass exodus that in many ways was enhanced by Covid and Gavin Newsom's tyranny of people moving from California, but then not realizing that the policies that they were fleeing from were the same ones that they were carrying with them and then still voting for in places like Texas and elsewhere. And now, of course, through Gavin Newsom, the man, the myth, the legend, who has very clear presidential aspirations and is on the media circuit constantly promoting his ideas. He is no longer California's governor. He is America's governor, everyone. So you get to see his face everywhere. In fact, I don't know if you saw him comparing himself this past week, I believe, to Patrick Bateman. American Psycho because he said, people have long said that he looks like him. And it was supposed to be Gavin Newsom's Trumpian gag where he thinks he's being cute and adorable and that he can replicate the Trump effect by being brash. It never lands, though. And so Trump used to say, people compare me to Elvis Presley. Do you guys see it? And so Gavin Newsom did that, except with American Psycho, which is just a little bit different than the King. So anyway, Chris, what do you think about Gavin Newsom's prospects as a viable candidate for national office? And Molly, you as well.
Chris Bray
I for years have had readers calling me an idiot because I only say, I only in stories about California say that California Governor Patrick Bateman spoke this week. And people say to me like, you need to do better job of fact checking. Patrick Bateman isn't the governor of California. But I've been, I had, I was thrilled to death. People emailed me and said Gavin Newsom noticed that he's Patrick Bateman. I've been comparing Gavin Newsom to Patrick bateman for maybe 10 years at this point. And I don't mean by that what he said when he said that is people say I look like Patrick Bateman. People say I'm handsome like Christian Bale. No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying you're a dangerous, harmful, destructive psychopath like Patrick Babe. And we, we don't mean it as a compliment. And, and so of course he took it and said people are saying most
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Chris Bray
I'm very handsome and I admit to it at some point. Look up the name Izzy Garden. G A R D O N. That's the governor's professionally snarky has assembled an entire staff of communications, people who are very proud of how nasty and bitter and mean and snarky they can be. And if you, if you look up Izzy Garden, who does all of Gavin Newsom's tough talking, you'll see why that's comical. So Izzy Garden, I always respond to Gavin Newsom's Twitter posts or X posts. Now, by saying, good job, Izzy, Izzy Garden is positioning Gavin Newsom to be the anti Donald Trump and to be the person who tells us how to really govern with kindness and decency and strength and to put a stop to all of Donald Trump's chaos and stabilize America. And. And it's such absolute madness. Any portion of that is such absolute madness. One of the things that I've been doing for years in Los Angeles, and my mother always calls me and yells at me as I go walk around skid row or walk around MacArthur park and watch people pointing guns at each other and dying of drug overdoses. And my mother says, what a great way of life you've chosen for yourself. There is so much chaos and destruction and ruin and pain. Deep, deep pain in California. There are so many people who are hurting in California. And for the scumbag, idiot psychopath who governs the state to present himself as the model that will stabilize America and return us to decency kind of fills me with rage. I try not to live that way. I try not to wake up choking with anger, but I'm so angry about it that I can barely sit still. And I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think. I don't think Iowa and New Hampshire are going to say, oh, Gavin Newsom, we need that. I think he's going to fail, but pray that he fails, because you do not want him to succeed. You did not want President Kamala Harris. You didn't want Secretary of Health and Human Services Becerra. I'm sorry. You didn't want Vice President Harris, and you definitely, definitely, definitely don't want President Gavin Newsom. And I'll say one last thing about this. When Gavin Newsom became the governor of California, the California budget was about $140 billion a year. Gavin Newsom did not become governor of California that long ago. $140 billion dollars a year. The budget in California is now almost $350 billion a year. We've radically increased government spending. While infrastructure declines, cities get dirtier, police response times decline, wildfires get bigger, and we're not doing prescribed burns to protect against them. While the state is falling apart, government is spending twice, government is spending double. And I think you desperately, desperately want to fight against that as a model for the country.
Kylie Griswold
We also have what will seem like an eternity between now and the 2028 election, and, of course, a big election between now and then. But, you know, it seems that the heir apparents, as of now, again, huge caveat for the parties is Gavin Newsom, or at least he wants to be, and J.D. vance. And it is so funny to even look at who they are as people and where they came from. I recently read Hillbilly Elegy and it was just, I was way late to that game. But it was so awesome to just understand more of J.D. vance, the man and where he comes from and the way that he so embodies the MAGA ethos and has become so like Trump. But Trump plays the part and he, he gives voice to Americans and you can tell that he really feels their pain. But JD Vance feels their pain. He knows it, he's lived it. He is an Appalachian, you know, he gets it. And Gavin Newsom, on the other hand, was like lab created in a petri dish to be a leftist, smarmy elitist politician. And you just could not have two more different candidates.
Chris Bray
I want to say one more. You've just triggered something at me. Gavin Newsom's communications staff, clearly I talked about recently at the Federalist looking at processes and mistaking them for effects. Gavin Newsom's communication staff looked at Donald Trump and said, he's rude and he's mean and he speaks without self control and voters like him. So what we need to do is. And if you read Gavin Newsom's social media accounts, he, his communication staff, they're vicious, they're insulting, they're condescending, they demean people who criticize them. They make gay jokes a lot. They constantly, if somebody says, like, I think Gavin Newsom's wrong about people, his communication staff says like, oh, I don't even remember exactly how they put it. But their darkest, most condescending responses is that you must be gay if you're criticizing Gavin Newsom. And it's just bizarre. And clearly what they've done is they think that being mean is what voters like because Donald Trump is mean and voters voted for Donald Trump. So let's be mean. And then voters will like, like us. And they have no capacity at all to see that people like when Donald Trump is aggressive and angry and nasty to people who people think deserve it and that there's some merit to it and that there's some reason that Donald Trump would insult Jim Acosta. So they've mistaken all the, they've mistaken all the people like Donald Trump because he insults people who deserve to be insulted and they instead just think people like Donald Trump because he's insulting. Oh, that must be where the culture is. So Gavin Newsom if he wants to be president, should insult people a lot. And if you go look at Governor Gavin newsom@x.com, you will see him being insulting and demeaning and condescending and nasty, horrible and vicious all the time. Because it's a clever communication strategy.
Molly Hemingway
If I can just add to that. You see a lot of Republicans go after the left wing media because it's just fertile ground to go after them. Recently, Gavin Newsom or his communications team, as Chris Bray points out, viciously attacked an award winning reporter who covers a lot about California and has covered a lot about the Secret Service and just said horrible things about her. And it doesn't work for a left wing person to attack the media because everybody knows the media are by and large their closest friends. So it just, it does speak to their inability to understand the situation. But I do want to, I do want to push back on a couple things. One, I actually think the Democrat Party is very hateful right now. And hate kind of can be a good strategy and it could be modified for winning the Democrat nomination and it could be modified in a better way. And maybe he's like going to learn better how to capitalize on this just really negative fervor in the Democrat Party. And there's winning the Democrat nomination and then there's winning the general. And those really are two different things. And they are somewhat at odds in that the main Democrat strategy for presidential nominees seems to be who's the person who is simultaneously left wing and presents as a moderate. So you might remember that even like when Barack Obama was running, he didn't say, I'm going to undermine the country in these ways. He said, you know, there's red America and blue or no. What was his, like, bigger hope? No, but he was always talking about hope and moving past progress, partisanship. Once he was elected, things changed dramatically. But he kind of presented as more moderate. Joe Biden, who was barely there, let every left wing policy go through under his watch. But he actually spoke to people, to people in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and presented as a moderate. So that's where I actually think Gavin Newsom would have bigger trouble, almost would be in the general because he struggles there with again, another caveat. Did you happen to watch the debate he did with Ron DeSantis? And a lot of people said, oh, Ron DeSantis won. And they said that because Ron DeSantis on the facts blew him away. Like on the actual arguments blew him away. But in another way, if you watched, he won because he was willing to do Whatever it took to kind of like get a win on a particular question. You saw this even recently with the Charlie Kirk thing, when he sat down with Charlie Kirk and he praised Charlie Kirk and said that his son watched Charlie Kirk. But then when he went on cnn, he was like, my son never watched Charlie Kirk. I have never seen a politician willing to as brazenly lie. And they all lie. I mean, not all of them. Most of them lie as Gavin Newsom.
Kylie Griswold
So I want to go back to some of the things Chris said. So specifically gay and vicious insults, because that gets into my next topic, which is the Pete Buttigieg fication of the Democrat Party. This is a topic that is near and dear to us at the Federalists because we don't just cover politics, but also religion. And so you have written about this, Chris, in the form of James Talarico. But it's also something. I know that Molly, as a Christian is something that we cover a lot. And the Democrat Party clearly has major cognitive dissonance on this issue. And we saw this back during the rise of Trump because they couldn't get their story straight. Trump is simultaneously a serial rapist, a racist, the most vile and disgusting creature that has ever walked the planet. And he was an existential threat to democracy and decency itself. But at the same time, he, he was going to usher in an era of Christian nationalism and theocracy. Square that circle.
Chris Bray
I feel like David French is with us in spirit.
Kylie Griswold
Yes, he who shall not be named David French. And so those things do not square. And now, well, and then we saw Pete Buttigieg as sort of the original James Talarico. And now we have James Tallarico. And you have people like David Ford French writing about how he just, he embodies all that is good and decent and wonderful about Christianity. You know, these nasty, disgusting maga Christians are so awful and hateful. But James Talarico, man, that kid's got it, you know, and meanwhile, James Talarico is saying ridiculous things about the number of genders there are and that God is non binary and laughing at sexual innuendos about the divine. I mean, just crazy, crazy things. And of course, we already knew this, but it really just exposes that Christian nationalism is just a slur to bully faithful Christians out of living out their faith in the public square. Too fast, Trevor. Too fast.
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Chris Bray
I know what I'm doing, Mom.
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Chris Bray
Shh.
Kylie Griswold
They're here.
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Kylie Griswold
But what are the dangers here of a James Talarico figure? Does he have a future in the Democrat Party, or is this just a shtick that's gonna fizzle out like it kind of did with Pete Buttigieg? I mean, what's the play here?
Molly Hemingway
Just to make sure everybody understands, James Talarico won the Democrat nomination in Texas
Kylie Griswold
and against phony Jasmine Crockett.
Molly Hemingway
Who is against Jasmine Crockett? The Democrat Party. The Democrat Party worked really hard to make sure Jasmine Crockett would not be the nominee because they believe James Talarico would have better odds against whoever wins the Republican nomination. And for the Republican nomination that's still ongoing because of the runoff that they have in Texas. John Cornyn should have easily won 80% of the vote as the incumbent, and he spent untold money to make sure that he got 80% of the vote. And instead he got like, 37% of the vote. But it was enough that he's in a runoff with Ken Paxton. And so. And Ken Paxton, I think, is. It'll be. You know, it's a race, but I think that a lot of people who vote in primaries support. And so that's like James. It'll be James Talarico potentially against Ken Paxton. And they are now. The media are now saying James Talarico is the best Christian who ever walked the Earth. I mean, I think that was like New York Times was treatment of this. This guy is great. And this is a guy who, when he was in the state legislature, said that there were six genders. I believe he's proudest of his role as how much he has pushed to trans children. He says that not only is abortion good, but God wants you to do it. I mean, this guy, in my view, would have trouble getting elected in San Francisco. Well, maybe not, given who's elected in San Francisco, but the idea that this is going to be the guy who turns Texas blue is really hard for me to stomach.
Chris Bray
Let's link a bunch of themes because, by the way, it's really hard. When I said I was coming here this weekend, my daughter said. My daughter is a teenager, as will become immediately apparent. I said, I'm going to a conservative conference. We're going to talk about politics. She said, oh, that'll be very exciting for you to talk about politics all weekend. So it's very hard for me to sit in the back of the room and watch all the other panels speak. I wanted to speak the topic of information ops. One of the things I suggest you go look at, Google has a page called Google Trends. And when you see something, when you feel like there's something that you've never heard about before and suddenly everybody's talking about it. I went looking for examples sitting in the back corner today, and one of the examples I found was illegal orders. Donald Trump is an illegitimate commander in chief. The orders he gives the military are illegitimate and illegal and the military shouldn't obey him. If you look for Trump illegal orders, there's suddenly a day, if you search the last six months where no one has ever talked about it ever once, and suddenly it spikes to tens of millions of searches a day. You see things that nobody's talking about, that suddenly, in a coordinated way the whole country is obsessed with and they switch on and they run for a week and then they die. You can watch things like someone is poll testing these things and seeing how is this going and then they suddenly switch off. When you see something that you've never seen spoken about, go look on Google Trends and you can see it switch on. James Talarico, a very few years ago, started saying, you don't want to trans your sons, you don't want to castrate your sons and call them your daughters. How deeply unfortunate. What if I told you that God wants you to castrate your sons and call them your daughters? What if I told you I'm a seminarian? In his 30s, by the way, he signed up for the seminary. He had never actually shown any interest in religion. And suddenly as he's running for Senate, he's a seminarian, although he's currently. I find this fascinating. On leave from the seminary, he's pretending to be a religious scholar and he suddenly started saying a few years ago, like, well, actually, Jesus never spoke about abortion because the Bible doesn't impose abortion. Trans stuff, abortion stuff. God imposes no judgment on homosexuality, but God judges Ken Paxton for cheating on his wife. If you look at James Talarico's campaign speeches. James Talarico at YouTube has archived all his campaign speeches in 2017 and 2018 and 2019. He was speaking constantly, never using any religious language at all. He never mentioned being a Christian. He never mentioned this is my faith. He never said, God is telling you to abort your children. There was clearly suddenly a moment where he said, what if we tried the God thing? What if we tried to sell this with some Jesus stuff on it? And he started doing that tactically. And the sudden emergence. Go look at Google trends. The sudden arrival of a moment where literally everyone. The Wall Street Journal had a headline that said, you know, Texas enthused by religious scholar James Talarico. The sudden moment when everyone switched on James Tallarico as a Bible scholar is absolutely a coordinated information op. And it's totally ridiculous. And you can go look at video of James Talarico speaking just a few years ago. Never mentioned any of it.
Kylie Griswold
One of the interesting James Talarico comments that he made that I forgot about till this moment was on Joe Rogan. And this is one of the older ones when he first started doing his media circuit and his take on the incarnation of Christ was that it's actually pro abortion because the angel appears to Mary and asks, you know what they say?
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Kylie Griswold
For her consent before she conceives the Messiah. Just a crazy, crazy take. But another clip of James Talarico that, that I would like to discuss, which also gets into some more of your coverage, Chris. And just our broader coverage at the Federalist is that he was recently asked who he loves besides his family, who does he love most? And his answer was that he loves the trans children, those that is who he loves the most in the, in the whole world.
Molly Hemingway
And he shows that love by supporting their permanent sterilization and cutting off of healthy Body parts.
Kylie Griswold
Yes. Yes. But as James Talarico is pushing this direction, the rest of the country, or at least 80%, is pushing the other direction, including many, many people who formerly identified as transgender and have since blown the whistle on the destructive, demonic lie that that is and have desisted from their transgender identity to an identity that is in line with who they were created to be, that actually enhances their human flourishing and whatnot. And, Chris, you wrote a piece about the rates of this desistance from transgender ideology. Can you just speak to the momentum behind this and kind of what's happening within the transgender movement at large?
Chris Bray
I keep saying all of these questions are really about five or six themes at the same time, and this one is too. And if you're looking at California and thinking everyone in California is insane, there is a parent in California named Erin Friday whose daughter came to her when she was, like, 13 years old and said, I was born in the wrong body. I'm actually boy. And Erin Friday said, no, you're not. You're a girl. And then they argued about it for years while her daughter was a teenager. And then her daughter turned 18 and said, yeah, I'm a girl. And there is a growing body of research that says if you just leave trans kids alone, in a few years, they just stop. What's the rule? Consider doing nothing. Consider doing nothing. Actually, I was born in the wrong body. I'm actually a boy. You're not going to do anything about that. You're not going to take hormones, we're not going to do surgery. Just wait a few years. If you just do that, it stops. And there have been a bunch of studies about that. Somewhere between 75 and 90% of children just stop. If you're hopeless about California, and you probably mostly should be, but if you're hopeless about California, we had a legislative hearing. The California legislature said still, every single year bangs through a bunch of bills about how wonderful it is for children to transition. And they have a bunch of trans kids bills this year. And all of the people who spoke up in opposition, who showed up at this legislative hearing to speak in opposition were young men and women who had formerly identified as trans children, who talked about how much pain they are in and how much they're suffering. And why did you let one of them use the term barbarian? Why did you let these barbarians do this to my body? Why did you cut my body when I was 13 years old and I told you I was born in the wrong body? Why didn't you tell me no you weren't. And California has this very strange legislative process. The California legislature is a full time legislature that typically passes between 1000 and 1200 bills every year. If you think about that, like how does anyone even comply with 1200 new laws every year? So they have this legislative process where they allow up to four minutes of testimony on each bill in committee hearings, up to four minutes. And then they have what are called me toos where they allow groups to come up and say a name, an organization name and a position. John Smith, Coalition for the Family opposed. And when they had the legislative hearing on all the trans kids bill, the long line of me toos were Jessica Harris, black lesbians of Los Angeles strongly opposed. The LGB alliance of Oakland strongly opposed. All of the opponents for probably 40 or 50 people marching up to the microphone and saying, stop doing this to children, were leftists from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and most. Do you know what a TERF is? If I say TERFs, T, R, F, Trans exclusionary, radical feminists. The people in California who are opposing the lunatic, crazy, psychopathic, how many more adjectives can I add? Legislature's insane trans agenda are mostly on the left, mostly from Los Angeles and San Francisco, and mostly gay, mostly lesbians. There is a strong, strong, strong opposition to trans madness growing. The LGB is breaking with the T. And I actually think it's one of the ways that California might show us ways forward where we can find things, where there are people we mostly don't agree with who we could talk to, and 95 times out of 100 we would disagree with them. But there are people who are radically, radically opposed to most of what you believe. Who, if you say to them, should we be cutting healthy body parts off 13 year olds to affirm their gender, will link arms with you and fight against that with all their heart and go look at the community that is arising of left wing. They're all Democrats of left wing parent activists in California who are saying to the California government, you have to stop this.
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Molly Hemingway
You know, I think it's worth pointing out, speaking of information ops, how much this issue was in many ways an information op where many years ago, some people started saying that you had to affirm delusional identities. And I remember when the BLM riots started, the people in my neighborhood, which is extremely Democrat, they wanted to join with blm, and so they were talking about ways to do it on the neighborhood listserv. So I looked up the BLM website, and on the BLM website, they listed what their goals were. And one of them was to defund the police, but the other ones actually had nothing to do with that. It was like, to support Palestinians in their liberation movement against Israel. Another was to destroy the nuclear family. And another was to help out trans people, particularly people of color. Well, what happens after the riots? The riots occur. The media join in. Corporations joined in. Corporations transferred 100 billion with a B dollars to the BLM movement and its approved causes. And one of those, one of the main recipients of that hundred billion dollar transfer of wealth was for trans activists. So when you think, like, we all know men are men and women are women, and men shouldn't play in women's play. We all know it, right? Like, how does society adopt something so delusional? And partly it's through highly funded, orchestrated, coordinated campaigns. I just want to make a mention here that after Trump won, a lot of corporations who had participated in all of the Democrat activism were asking to meet with Sean and me for various things. So they would come in and they'd say, we just want you to know we're not doing that anymore. And the Claremont Institute had put out a database showing precisely which companies gave which money. So whoever you're meeting with, Facebook, YouTube, Meta, whatever, you know, you just look them up and you see, oh, okay, well, you gave. Oh, you gave $110 million to the left. Which groups on the right are going to get that funding? And they're like, oh, no, no, no, we're not, we're not. We're not giving money. We're just not gonna give any more money to the left. It's like so you don't really, you didn't actually, you know, nothing here matters but the corporate control of some of these left wing movements and institutions and funding is serious.
Kylie Griswold
Yes, well, and through. Yes, of course.
Chris Bray
You've just reminded me, this will be really quick. You've just reminded me of the demands, the utla, the United Teachers of the Los Angeles, the teachers union in the LA Unified School District, the demands they issued when the school board said we should go back to in person school during the pandemic. Has anyone read those? They're still online. You can find them. They're glorious. They said we will return to the classroom when there are no more police in America, when everyone has a home provided by the government, when we have single payer health care. It went on and on and on and on. The way that organizations hijack. We're here to represent the interests of our students. For example, we want no more police department and socialized medicine.
Kylie Griswold
Well, aside from blm, another huge player in that was the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equity Index where basically they would bully corporations into supporting trans, trans ideology by giving them a low score or a high score, depending on how equitable are you going to be? And this year or over the past year, we've seen so many corporations jump ship and they're no longer worried about their corporate Equity index score, which is a good sign also of where things are moving. You mentioned the media as well. The media just playing a huge role in this through language manipulation, which is another reason why our language accuracy is so, so important. But when all of your coverage of this issue uses terms like gender affirming care unironically, you know, in addition to pronouns and such, or referring to transgender medical interventions as treatment, or you know, just these, these euphemisms for, for bodily destruction and castration of children. And now you're seeing the tide turn where you have major establishment medical organization like the American Medical association and others that have really backtracked now where, I mean, they haven't gone far enough because this hasn't been completely abolished and exposed as the evil that it is. But to say we no longer recommend a surgical mutilation of minors. So I mean, it's not enough, but the tide is clearly turning in that direction. And in your piece, Chris, I think you mentioned, was it 70% of the people who have identified as transgender within a certain age group, it was teenage girls, I think desisted within five years. So if you just let. You just let children go through natural puberty, they will more likely than not, far more likely than not, live in a way that corresponds with their natural sex.
Chris Bray
The ma just. Is anybody a doctor or a nurse? I think the struggle that's happening inside medicine about transgender medicine is becoming really interesting and really important, and I'm trying to watch it as closely as I can. Last month, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons released a guidance document that said there is no evidence to support the gender affirmation of children. There's no evidence to say that this is a good idea, and we recommend that plastic surgeons stop participating in these procedures. And the ama, just like this week, released a statement saying, oh, we don't have anything to do with that. So there is. I think there are doctors who've gone along with it. If I say the name Eitan Haim, does that mean anything to anyone? Aytan Haim was a doctor in Texas, a surgical resident at Texas Children's Hospital, who gave a bunch of documents with patient names redacted to Christopher Ruffo. Texas Children's Hospital said, oh, we're not doing these procedures anymore. We've stopped. And Eitan Haim gave Christopher Rufo a bunch of documents showing that they had not stopped, that they were implanting, surgically implanting hormone devices in children, and he was prosecuted by the Biden administration.
Molly Hemingway
And speaking of prosecution, I think it's great that so many people are turning away from the trans insanity and radical gender ideology. That's a wonderful thing. It is also true that there are monsters out there who permanently harmed children. And until those people are truly. I mean, I mean this, they should be put in prison for what they did. And so changing the tide on this is not sufficient. There need to be repercussions for these people who ever thought that what they were doing was in any way okay, and anyone who supported them. So, more.
Kylie Griswold
Yes, more. More accountability. One thing I think that has helped, and that will continue to help, hopefully with accountability as well, is conservatives have gotten a lot better at telling the stories of people who have been harmed by this. You know, Molly talked earlier about the glossy spreads of and all the human interest stories that just give such lovely color to these Democrat activists. They always have a story queued up that will tug on your heartstrings and help push their cause forward. And we have the facts, because we know XX and XY chromosomes and we know that men and women are women. But we have so many more stories now that illustrate the very real human harms. It's one thing to know biological facts. It's another thing to stare death and destruction in the face and see what has actually happened as a result of. Of this. And we've done a really good job at the Federalists, too, of promoting these stories. We had Chloe Cole on the Kylie cast a few weeks ago, which was awesome. And she got to share her story, not only of how she was preyed upon by the medical establishment and ushered into horrible, horrible trans interventions that ruined many parts of her life, but then also how she became a Christian and was pulled out of that. I mean, just a gloriously redemptive story. And Walt Heyer has been publishing pieces at the Federalist and ringing the alarm bells on this, I mean, long before it became the craze that it is today. And so we just. We've done a great job of showing the human harm story.
Molly Hemingway
I'm really glad that we have shown those stories, those human interest stories. And it's also important, I think, for people to understand that the modern conception of men and women is just wrong in every way. And so helping people see how feminism has kind of incepted so many different parts of our lives in ways that are very damaging for both men and women, is another thing that I'm really pleased that we've been able to do and explain. We joke sometimes. Gosh, there's like a publication that says its motto is standing athwart history, subtly suggesting that you slow down or something like that. And we joke that ours is standing athwart history, saying, men and women are different. Men and women are different. And that's a good thing. So much of what you get in modern media is pitting men against women, making them enemies of each other, teaching them to be victims, teaching them to be, you know, just to be. Just to hate each other. And instead, we try to really highlight how males and females are beautiful and complementary and should work together in great ways and, you know, primarily through marriage, but also in many other ways as well.
Chris Bray
All right, link. Taking a bunch of themes and linking them together yet again.
Molly Hemingway
We'll name that. We'll name your next podcast that James Talarico.
Chris Bray
I think he was doing the Joe Rogan. No, no, he was talking to the Borg. He was talking to that idiot Tim Miller.
Molly Hemingway
The Bulwark. I thought you said the Borg. And I'm now thinking I might always call. Called the Bulwark the board.
Chris Bray
And they started talking about the bill that Talarico spoke on the floor of the House. And he said that God wants you to stop bullying trans kids. God wants you to transition your children and cut off their healthy body parts. And he said people are very upset by that speech. But I gave that speech because I was standing on the floor of the Texas House and standing up to the extremists. That bill passed, the bill he opposed passed by a substantial majority. So when James Talarico says extremist, he means mainstream. He means the majority of the society, the majority of the legislature, the majority of parents, the majority of the population. When he talks about the respect, respectable mainstream, the decent people, he's talking about like 20% of the country. Rasmussen did a poll in California. We have an ongoing battle in California over parental notification policies that if a child at A K through 12 school goes to a teacher and says, I'm not going to use my boy name anymore, I'm going to use a girl name, I was born in the wrong body and I want you to address me by my girl name and change my pronouns. But I'm not out to my parents as transgender. So I don't want you to to tell them. The state's policy course was to protect was to. They called it the prevention of forced outing. They wanted to prevent the forced outing of children by keeping secrets from parents and having teachers and school administrators and school counselors have secret sexually themed discussions with their 12 year olds on campus without telling parents because that's decent and kind and affirming and gentle and loving. Hiding things from parents is very kind. And 80%, 80 plus percent of the population in California thinks that's insane. 80 plus percent of the population in California that has voted for a super majority in both houses of the state legislature thinks that parental notification policies are absolutely necessary and that the state's policy course, the state government they elected is completely insane.
Kylie Griswold
There's a word for what you described, Chris, and it rhymes with dooming. And we can't use it because we have been censored for using it. At the Federalist before. There's a word for conditioning children to keep sexual secrets from their parents and to only go to a different trusted adult. And now that's just happening every day in our government funded schools. Taxpayer funded schools. So we've talked a bit this weekend already about Kermit Gosnell and his death. But one thing I would like to sort of draw out from that because Molly, you mentioned just the differences between the sexes and that is something that we have. So we cover it so much and so well. And I think one thing that we're seeing now, you know, you can look at the Kermit Gosnell case, his many sins and crimes, and see how gruesome and horrible and harmful they were for both women and children and just humanity at large. And I forget who referred to it as the house of horrors, but I
Molly Hemingway
know that the grand jury, their report was called that.
Kylie Griswold
Okay. And I think our modern day house of horrors is in many ways the big fertility industry that I think even so many people who identify as part of the right have sort of bought into this because it's easy to kid yourself into thinking that being pro life and pro family means being pro commodifying children and creating life at all costs, no matter what the drawbacks are. And our colleague Jordan Boyd, who is not here now, but she has done such an excellent, excellent job being at the forefront of pointing out all of the many ways that big fertility and artificial reproductive technologies have been a catastrophe for women and children and families. So, Molly, can you just speak to some of our coverage of that and how it's like the Kermit Gosnell House of horrors?
Molly Hemingway
Well, I think this is some of the most difficult stuff that we've had to do is talk about this, because everybody understands the pain. Like, let's say you want to have children and you're unable to have children. That is a deep, grievous pain borne by men and women. And so people want to solve that. And so they love to learn that there are all these things you can do so that you can procure children, even if your body is limited in some way. Well, there are all sorts of ethical issues in play. There are all sorts of things that people should also be considering. At the same time, the technology has way outpaced our ethical discussions of these things. And so getting people to think about. Okay, so for instance, you know, one of our senior contributors, Katie Faust, who has a group called Them Before Us, which encourages people to think about children more than the adults who are trying to prepare cure children. And one of the things we talked about recently was someone, I can't remember who on staff was talking about this, but learning from someone who places children for adoption, that someone really wanted to help this couple get a baby. And the director of the adoption clinic reminded her, our job is to help find healthy homes for the children that we're placing. It's the children who we're serving. Just because you want something doesn't mean you can do whatever it takes to obtain that thing. And so let's say you decide that you're going to use a surrogate. So normally the way that that happens is you pay a woman in another country $30,000 or something to gestate a baby who has been artificially inseminated with unknown biological content, and that woman gestates the baby, and then you take the baby from the mother immediately, and then you bring that baby into your home. Does that not raise already some issues? You should be thinking about this. Is this proper to use this woman's body for payment in this way? Is that really proper or when. I don't know. There are all sorts of things that we have published that I'm proud of, including the children who are the property product of some assisted reproductive technology. It affects children in ways that I don't think people always think about not knowing who the parent, who one or both of your parents are. Knowing that your parents were willing to pay money to get you actually kind of changes the relationship between parents and children. And so we understand these are difficult issues, and we certainly, you know, but we want to have a conversation about it because they're not getting that conversation elsewhere.
Kylie Griswold
Yes. And I think one of the difficult things is that public opinion on this issue, people have not thought through these issues much, if at all, and certainly not well. And so a lot of the messaging that you're getting from it, even on the right, is from baby good.
Molly Hemingway
So therefore, whatever you do to get that baby is good.
Kylie Griswold
Correct.
Molly Hemingway
Correct.
Kylie Griswold
So, you know, it's not feasible politically or otherwise, to ban surrogacy or to ban IVF broadly in America. But how do we help the administration understand what's at stake with this issue? How do we move the ball forward on this? And it's a chicken or the egg thing because we want the law to be this, but it can't be this because not enough people believe it. And yet at the same time, the law is what helps condition people's consciences to understand what is wrong with this issue. So is there more that we can be doing at the Federalist and how can we really help people understand this issue better?
Molly Hemingway
Yeah, so I think absolutely, it's educating the public about some of the things they should be thinking about when they use different technologies is first and foremost, you need to do that. We also publicly apply pressure to the Trump administration to think about these things as well. The thing I'm thinking about more than anything right now is that most abortions actually take place place through. I always get the pronunciation wrong. Mefepristone, these like telemedicine, like, you can go take medicine, quote, unquote, medicine. You can go take a pill to abort your child. It has horrific consequences for a lot of the women involved. And there's no medical supervision of it of any kind. And the Trump administration is kind of doing a couple things about it, but not really. And they're very slow walking. So we put a lot of pressure on it. I actually ran into a high level person at HHS at the White House, same meeting earlier this week. We had a lovely conversation and I was commiserating with them about some of the problems that they're dealing with there at hhs. And then I was like, and we are watching you on the mefepristone, like, we know, we know you're not wanting to do what you should be doing. And I think that's important too.
Kylie Griswold
Yeah, it definitely feels like a three steps forward, two steps back type of issue. And I know the Ethics and Public Policy center came out with an excellent and rigorous report this year about these adverse effects, because the drug label on mifepristone will say, oh, fewer than 0.5% of women had these adverse effects or whatever the number is. And this Ethics and Public Policy center study, which is the most rigorous study that's been done on this, showed that more than 1 in 10 women who take abortion pills suffer an adverse event within 45 days of taking these pills, which is serious things like sepsis, hemorrhaging, you know, very, very serious things. And that, that's 22 times higher than what the drugs label says. And you talked about not having restrictions on these. That was thanks to the Biden administration, which under cover of COVID dramatically reduced the in person requirements for these things. So if a woman has an ectopic pregnancy and doesn't know it because she doesn't see a provider in person, which is the only way to diagnose whether you have that or not. She may bleed out if she takes abortion drugs. And they are just dispensing them. Even to pro life states that have outlawed abortion through the mail. It's really a catastrophic issue. And I don't even think people understand the scale that this is happening. And it's also enabling abusive partners and such, too. I mean, we've seen multiple instances of men ordering abortion pills unbeknownst to the woman carrying their child and then them essentially poisoning her to abort the unborn child. It's really crazy. Molly, what were you going to say?
Molly Hemingway
No, I wanted to say something happy because this is all so sad. I noticed you look different. Kylie, is there anything you wanted to tell us?
Kylie Griswold
I have put on a little bit of weight. Yes. I've also added a Y chromosome. It's so funny because I'm expecting a child, my first child, which is very exciting. Yes. And you used to have to wait a long time to find out the sex of the child, if that was something that you wanted to do. Well, now through blood work, you can find out very early and it's detected by whether or not the mother has a Y chromosome present in her blood because the blood kind of mixes up with the mother's blood or whatever. I don't know. I'm not a scientist, but. So I am anti trans, but I do. I am a woman with a Y chromosome in my body right now who am having a little boy. So.
The Zebra Ad Voice
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Chris Bray
You used to have to wait until your child was old enough to announce pronouns.
Kylie Griswold
Yes, yes.
Chris Bray
To find out that. Let me just say one thing about that, which is that I think what's really striking to me is how much politics doesn't work as a way of debating things that are important in society. I was deeply concerned about the war in Iran. I thought there was a debate that needed to be had and a discussion that needed to be had about why are we going to war with Iran? How is it going to work? So the Senate had a debate and I watched like eight hours of it. And at the end of eight hours of the Senate debating the war, I thought, like, it would really have been great to have a debate about, about the war at some point. I think the headline that we ended up with, compliments of Joy Pullman, was Old Men Yell at Clouds. And I think over and over and over again, when you try to talk about very difficult things like surrogacy, if you try to manage that through, like congressmen talking to each other, you're doomed and you're not going to get anywhere if you try to manage that through fair and open debate. In the New York Times, like I watch the trans. The trans kids at the legislative hearing in California talk about how much pain they're in and how much their bodies have been hurt. And then if you read the news coverage of it, it's like, far right transphobes take over legislative hearing. We increasingly, the more difficult and the more important a topic is, the more we just literally can't talk about it in politics or in media. And I think the place where these problems are going to be solved, where it's going to matter, because there's no way we're going to solve them in politics is in homes and communities and families and in culture long before we ever get to politics. Because if you get to politics to debate what is a child and what is the value of a child's life, if you have the discussion first in Congress, you're already doomed.
Kylie Griswold
Yes. Yes. And I want to take that one step further, because I had a couple of awesome conversations with some of you, and even this morning, one of you leaned over to me at breakfast and said, how are you all so positive? How are you all so optimistic? And, you know, because we have been talking about lots of horrible things that have happened in this country. And I sat there for a second and immediately knew the answer is that because most of us on staff are Christians. And so our hope is not actually in politics. It's actually not here. And that's another thing that we try to do at the Kylie cast is really, really pull religion into the conversation, because there are many things that can marginally help. And we fight the good fight. And we're gonna call out the New York Times and we're gonna say what's true, and we're gonna, you know, do what we are called to do, which is to be courageous and to fight lies with truth and whatnot. But at the end of the day, our hope is not here. And I think that's why we can be so optimistic. So it certainly doesn't start in Congress. It does start in the family, and it also starts in knowing where your hope is, and it is not in politicians.
Molly Hemingway
I love that you said that, Kylie. It's why we don't despair. But it's also why we understand that our vocations right now are to try to make the world a better place, to try to save the country. And we do what we can, and we wake up every day and do it, and we are pretty joyful about it. I like that we have a good, positive attitude as we fight these fights, because if we didn't have hope, if we didn't have the hope that we're talking about that we have in Jesus, it would be really depressing. I mean, it would be really sad. So I'm glad that many of us have. I mean, not everyone, but glad that many of us have.
Kylie Griswold
Yes. I was talking to Carlene this morning, too, and I said that the Lord is working even when Congress isn't. So that is a great hope to us. Yes. So we are almost out of time, so I just. I want to get to a couple more things before we wrap here. One is the Supreme Court. Molly, you brought up the birthright citizenship case that is being heard. I would love to know what other cases you're watching, what you think is most important this term. And then I want to talk about your new book.
Molly Hemingway
Well, I really just want to talk about the new book. I do want to say on the birthright citizenship case. I'm super excited about this one, because this is an issue that I don't think people really thought about at all. They just assumed if you're born in this country, you're a citizen, case closed. And there's never really been any hearing about this before the Supreme Court. And there's never been any originalist discussion of the meaning of the 14th Amendment, of that part of the 14th Amendment that deals with birthright citizenship. So for the first time in history, on Wednesday, we are going to hear, we're going to hear arguments about whether, because you were born here, you are, even if your parents are allegiant to a foreign country, whether that makes you a citizen. And I think that's a big one. There are so many cases hitting the court this year. They normally hear about 80 cases a year. It's actually been a little bit less than that annually. And so much of it is about emergency petitions because these lower courts are trying to the main strategy of Democrats for the second Trump term is through lawfare. And you have a, they can, they can shop for which judge they want to hear a case, and that judge can issue a nationwide injunction. Now, there was the ruling last year that handed down from the court that that actually was not appropriate, but it had loopholes you could kind of drive a truck through. I will point out that Justice Alito had made that point, that the loopholes were large. We're seeing that this year. The loopholes are large. You're continuing to see these nationwide injunctions, and you will continue to see those coming down. There are a lot of interesting cases dealing with the Voting Rights Act. And, you know, we've already had some interesting stuff on hiding things from parents, you know, that, that have gone well. The court is interesting. It's not, you know, I know people get frustrated with the court, but the rulings, by and large are so much better than they were 40 years ago. And with the Alito book, I had written a book with Kerry Severino on Justice Kavanaugh. And while I was writing that book, everyone in everyone, like I respected who I was talking to, they would say, you know, Alito is the best one. And it's funny because you never hear about Alito. You always heard about Scott. You definitely hear about Thomas. We know Kavanaugh from the hearings. We know Amy Coney Barrett, she's recent. We even know Justice Gorsuch. Although he's, of the three Trump appointees, he's probably the least well known. You know Chief Justice John Roberts, you know Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena King.
Kylie Griswold
I'm having trouble understanding.
Molly Hemingway
I get that joke. But you don't hear much from Alito because he, he is so shy, so introverted. He does not seek celebrity at all. But he's this giant on the court. He wrote, for example, the Hobby Lobby decision, which was about whether religious family corporations have the right to have religious rights. He, of course, famously did the hard work of the conservative legal movement's 50 year goal of overturning Roe v. Wade. That was a big goal of pro lifers, but it was also a big goal of just the conservative legal movement because Roe v. Wade, even as one pro abortion scholar put it, it's not constitutional law. It doesn't even pretend to be. It was a horrible decision. It was like a policy document that had, you know, just had done so much harm to the country and done so much harm to Supreme Court jurisprudence, prudence, because everything they did, they had to protect Roe v. Wade. And so he did the hard work of overturning that. And I had wanted to write a book about Alito since the moment we did the Kavanaugh book. I just thought he was fascinating. I loved the way the other justices talked about him. They'd say he's the smartest one, he's the best questioner, but you'd never heard anything. So I put out feelers to his people right away and got a firm no. And then I just kept asking and asking and finally was able to do this and interviewed more than a hundred people. And so it's partially just his story, which is a really interesting story. Growing up in New Jersey, son of an immigrant and going to Princeton, going to Yale, but not getting co opted by those institutions, just being a solid conservative his whole life. When he was nominated, he was known to be a conservative. He continued to be a conservative conservative. And he has also a. So it's partly just about him and his interesting family. You might have heard about his wife, Martha Ann, who really enjoys flying flags. And then it's partially about his jurisprudence and how it differs from other people. He is an originalist, but he's known as a practical originalist, which means he thinks more about how that law will be implemented at lower levels. He was a former prosecutor. He was on the third Circuit for many years. And so he thinks, like, when we make this decision, how will the lower courts handle this? How does this affect prosecutors? How does this affect police? And so. And then it also tells the story of Dobbs. I get into the leak and information known about that. There are some explosive details which I can't talk about right now until it comes out. And it's just, I'm really glad I got to write it and I'm really glad he's finally getting his due. There's another book out about Alito also. Right. It'll be coming out next month, but from a left wing journalist. In fact, it's the editor who edited the story about the leak. So he's on the left and I'm on the right. And then Justice Alito himself will have his first book out in the fall, which will be a collection of his book speeches. So year of alito. It's his 20th year on the court and he seems to be going strong.
Kylie Griswold
Can you pre order your book now?
Molly Hemingway
You can pre order the book right now.
Kylie Griswold
Where can people pre order it now if they don't want to support Amazon?
Molly Hemingway
Oh, Barnes and Noble is probably the best way to do it, but Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all that. And it's called Alito, so at least that part's easy to remember.
Kylie Griswold
And it officially comes out April 20.
Molly Hemingway
I think it's April 21.
Kylie Griswold
Okay. Okay. So everybody should go pre order Molly's book. It's going to be great. Can't wait to read it. We are going to wrap here because I do want to leave a few minutes for questions. Would love to hear from you. What's on your mind? So do we have a microphone we can pass around while Sarah's grabbing the mic? I will just say that we have three Federalist podcasts. We have the Federalist Radio Hour that is hosted by Matt Kim Kiddle multiple times a week. He has wonderful guests on that show. Then every Wednesday you can listen to you're Wrong with Molly Hemingway and David Harsani. It's an excellent podcast and if you are not yet subscribed, please subscribe to the Kylie Cast, which comes out every Thursday. You can hear it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Subscribe there. Or if you want, you can watch it because it's also a video podcast, so you can watch it on YouTube, my personal YouTube channel, or the Federalists Channel on Rumble. So please go and subscribe to that. And this episode will be going live probably next week. But you all got to hear it here first.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Kylie Cast. Please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We have a channel specifically designated for the Kylie cast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. So if you are only subscribed to the Federalist Radio Hour or you're wrong with Molly Hemingway and David Harsanyi, two of our other great Federalist podcasts, subscribe to the Kylie Cast as well, so you never miss an episode. Leave us a five star review. It is one of the easiest and best ways you can help out the show. As always, I will be back next week with more. So until then, just remember the truth hurts, but it won't kill you.
Molly Hemingway
It.
Federalist Radio Hour
‘The Kylee Cast’ feat. Mollie Hemingway and Chris Bray, Ep. 35: LIVE From The Federalist Forum
Date: April 2, 2026
Host: Kylie Griswold (Managing Editor, The Federalist)
Guests: Mollie Hemingway (Editor-in-Chief, The Federalist), Chris Bray (Writer, The Federalist)
A lively, in-person edition of “The Kylee Cast” recorded live at the Federalist Forum in Phoenix, Arizona, with Kylie Griswold joined by Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway and columnist Chris Bray. The discussion explores the Californication of American politics, the personal journeys of the panelists, the rise of provocative Democratic figures, cultural and ideological battles over gender and identity, corporate activism, modern legal challenges, and the hope that animates committed conservatives. The conversation is rich with both pointed critique and humor, emphasizing cultural context, media strategy, and the value of principled resistance.
[03:03-09:11]
"If you get stuff wrong in a small town, people tear your head off. If you get things right in a small town, people frequently tear your head off. But coming from journalism in a small place is sorely, sorely missing and something we've really badly lost" – Chris Bray, [04:29]
"One of my very last conversations with an editor 20 years ago...we want a piece from you about how Rand Paul doesn't believe in science. And I said, Rand Paul, the surgeon? And that was the last time I ever wrote for that organization." – Chris Bray, [08:32]
[09:35-19:36]
California Influence:
"We're saying you're a dangerous, harmful, destructive psychopath like Patrick Bateman. And we don't mean it as a compliment." – Chris Bray, [11:53]
Newsom’s Media Strategy:
"They have no capacity at all to see that people like when Donald Trump is aggressive and angry and nasty to people who people think deserve it...They just think people like Donald Trump because he insults." – Chris Bray, [17:22]
Newsom’s Record:
"While the state is falling apart, government is spending double. And I think you desperately, desperately want to fight against that as a model for the country." – Chris Bray, [15:46]
Shifting Political Strategies:
[22:37-34:22]
Talarico as a Case Study:
"He suddenly started saying a few years ago, 'well, actually, Jesus never spoke about abortion...' There was clearly suddenly a moment where he said, what if we tried the God thing? What if we tried to sell this with some Jesus stuff on it?...Absolutely a coordinated information op." – Chris Bray, [29:21]
Cognitive Dissonance in Leftist Religious Claims:
Notable Quote:
“James Talarico is saying ridiculous things…that God is non-binary and laughing at sexual innuendos about the divine. I mean, just crazy, crazy things.” – Kylie Griswold, [23:42]
[34:22-47:22]
Desistance & Pushback:
"There is a strong, strong, strong opposition to trans madness growing. The LGB is breaking with the T." – Chris Bray, [38:26]
Corporate and Media Influence:
"The American Society of Plastic Surgeons...said there is no evidence to support the gender affirmation of children…plastic surgeons [should] stop participating in these procedures." – Chris Bray, [45:45]
Demand for Accountability:
"There are monsters out there who permanently harmed children. And until those people are truly...they should be put in prison for what they did." – Molly Hemingway, [47:22]
[47:57-50:40]
[53:24-66:17]
Parental Rights & School Policies:
Big Fertility & Ethical Dilemmas:
"The technology has way outpaced our ethical discussions…Just because you want something doesn't mean you can do whatever it takes to obtain that thing." – Mollie Hemingway, [55:31]
Abortion Pills & Regulatory Lapses:
[62:43-66:17]
"Most of us on staff are Christians. And so our hope is not actually in politics…It's actually not here." – Kylie Griswold, [64:42]
[66:17-73:00]
Cases to Watch:
Justice Samuel Alito:
"He has also...done the hard work of the conservative legal movement's 50 year goal of overturning Roe v. Wade." – Mollie Hemingway, [70:02]
Book Details:
| MM:SS | Topic/Quote | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:03-09:11 | Chris Bray’s career journey | | 09:35-16:14 | Californians and the spread of progressive policies | | 11:22-12:51 | Gavin Newsom’s Patrick Bateman comparison, Democrat strategy | | 17:22-19:36 | How Newsom’s staff mimic Trump’s communication style—and fundamentally miss the mark | | 22:37-31:32 | The “Christianizing” of progressive messaging—Buttigieg, Talarico, and information ops | | 34:22-39:14 | Rising rates of transgender desistance, LGB opposition to T activism in California | | 40:20-43:02 | Corporate, media, and activist coordination behind identity politics; BLM’s stated goals | | 53:24-55:26 | Parental rights and school policies | | 55:26-60:12 | Ethical issues in surrogacy, IVF, and "big fertility" | | 62:43-66:17 | Optimism rooted in Christian faith, civil society as battleground | | 66:17-73:00 | The Supreme Court, lawfare strategy, and the Alito biography |
This episode spotlights the ongoing cultural and political battles around gender, media narratives, ethics in reproductive technology, and the nature of hope in turbulent times. With pointed wit and serious engagement, the panel challenges the media’s favored themes and emphasizes the central importance of community, faith, and truth-telling in reclaiming both policy and culture. The episode ends with optimism rooted in Christian faith rather than ephemeral political victories.
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