Special Session with Bryan Schott

>> Mike Lee: Foreign.

>> Bryan Schott: Hey there. Welcome to Special Session. I'm Bryan Schott.

This is the show where a surly longtime

Utah journalist, that's me, breaks down the

important political news of the last week. Helping you

understand the story, we put it in context

and what it all means.

And I think the best place to start this week is with

Utah Senator Mike Lee. There's a

remarkable piece of reporting that came out on Friday

morning from Samuel Benson. It's in Politico

magazine and it talks about

how Lee's activity on social media, his

trolling, his shit posting, is really

causing some hand wringing with the

higher ups at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day

Stains. It starts off talking about how Lee's

insensitive tweets about the assassination

attempt of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota set

off a number of discussions in the headquarters

of LDS Church. Because

these tweets, these jokes he was trying

to make about two people who were murdered and the

attempted assassination of two others

reflected poorly on the faith. But

this wasn't a one off. Lee posts almost

constantly online. There have been

analyses about how much he is

posting on social media and it can be hundreds

of times a day. There's a lot of people who

think that on his personal Twitter account, his base Mike

Lee account, somebody else

posting, because the things that he says are

really extreme, as we saw in the

Minnesota case. But according to some

advisors who were interviewed for this piece,

this is not a new Persona. One person said,

this is Senator Mike Lee,

unfiltered. Now, Lee's online Persona,

that's causing a big problem for the LDS

Church. These bomb throwing, these grenades that he's

throwing all the time. It's causing a big problem for the LDS Church

because they are urging members to be

peacefully, they're trying to be politically neutral,

and Lee is extremely partisan and

he's clearly not a, uh,

peacemaker. There was another telling quote from a

higher up at the church who was offered anonymity. They

said Mike Lee is far right. The church

is not far right. After those

Minnesota tweets, Lee eventually took them

down after a few days because people were

shaming him and he was being condemned for them. But

he still has not apologized. And there was actually

a deseret new editorial

that called on him to apologize for those posts and

he still hasn't. The article talks about how the incident during

the 2020 campaign when Lee was

campaigning for Trump in Arizona and he took the

microphone and compared Donald Trump

to Captain Moroni. That was deeply embarrassing to

top church leaders and extremely

unpopular among members of the faith here

in Utah, as the article points out.

And this is something that's been talked about in political circles here in the

state for years that uh, Lee really brist

about being in Mitt Romney's shadow.

Lee was in the Senate for eight years when Romney

first got elected. He's the senior senator

of Utah's delegation but

very few people know who he is outside of

Washington, or at least that used to be the case. And then Romney

gets elected and he's probably the most

recognizable member of the LDS church

alive. Lee as the senior senator

that was just in name only. Article talks about how

Romney tried to reach out to Lee, tried to

get them them on the same page. But a breaking point came

in 2022 when Romney would not

endorse Lee in his reelection bid against

Evan McMullen. When Romney was asked, he said that he

considered both men friends and he was going to

stay out of the race. Then Lee goes on

the Tucker Carlson show.

Carlson asks Lee about that and Lee

essentially begs Romney for his endorsement. But

Lee apparently was still holding a grudge over

the 2022 race with

Romney. It's a really remark remarkable piece of reporting.

You should check it out. I'll put a link to it in the show

notes. What this article feels like

to me is that the church is

trying to reach out to Lee to ask him to

stop. And this is about as public

as they're going to get with that. You do not get

senior members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

to talk to a reporter, even off the

record on a subject like this unless they are trying to send

a message. And that's what this feels like to me. Is

it going to make a difference? I really

don't know. Probably not. Lee has

become such a ubiquitous figure

on Twitter x

He's got over 600,000 followers. He's

got a big audience. And people think that

at least the people who are on that platform think that he is

cool. They like him, they respond to what he

says and he is soaking up that attention.

After years of toiling and pretty much

anonymity, he doesn't have a lot of power power

in the Senate. He doesn't get a lot of things

passed. He's most famously known as

finding a way to vote no on pretty much

anything that comes his way. He's

human. We all like attention. We all like it when people

listen to what we have to say. And

Lee is no different. And that's why I think this

probably isn't going to have much of an effect.

He's become Internet famous. At least he's famous

on a platform that has a lot of

far right trolls and Nazis and

white supremacists.

So that's the first story we had this week about

Senator Mike Lee. The second story was

related to Lee and his posting on

Twitter, slash X. And it was him

using that platform to try and deflect from

the big problem that has popped up for the Trump

administration this week, which is the Epstein

files. Earlier this week, the Magna Cogna

Seti erupted when the Department of Justice and

the FBI issued a memo that said

there was no long fabled

Epstein client list and that all the evidence

they have is that Epstein, Jeffrey

Epstein, the disgraced financier

and accused human trafficker and

pedophile, he was not murdered. He killed

himself. That's the official position. And this comes after

years of the MAGA base, the

far right, being consumed with the

idea that there's a client list, a list of

people who rode on Jeffrey Epstein's

airplane to his island where they

committed unspeakable acts. And when the

Trump administration took power, they said, we're going to release this

information. In fact, at one point, Attorney General

Pam Bondi said she had the files on her

desk. And after all this buildup this

week, the Trump administration says, ah, forget about

that. We don't have it at all. And that is a huge

anti climax, especially after they spent years

stoking this hatred, this suspicion, this

anger about Jeffrey Epstein and the

things he's rumored to have done to all of a sudd.

Have the people who were stoking this fire say,

nah, forget about it. That's really

jarring. In fact, Lee was part of the chorus who

was focused on the Epstein files, the

Epstein client list. He tweeted about it on and off.

Most recently back in February, after

Attorney General Bondi said she was going to release the

files, he tweeted this information about

Epstein, the Las Vegas shooter, the JFK

assassination, et cetera. It belongs to the

American people. It's about time they be given

access to it. So Lee was in on this.

Lee was at least complicit or was one of

the people who was ramping up this fervor

about this information. And then after the

FBI memo comes out that says, never mind, forget

about it, Lee abruptly changes his tune

and he comes up with a new idea. And it's

a weird one that somehow

Epstein was a, uh, government

asset of some sort of. This is what he said on

the Guy Benson show on Fox. News radio.

>> Mike Lee: I think one of the problems that we confront here

is that expectations were high,

uh, toward the beginning of the administration. And

months ago, you had Department of Justice officials announcing,

hey, we're going to do a big document drop.

Uh, we will. You have all your questions

answered, uh, about Jeffrey Epstein, about his

client list, about those who traveled with them, and so forth.

And then what they released at the time didn't at

all live, uh, up to the hype. It seems almost to be

an about face, almost a, uh, complete,

um, reversal from where they had been in the past. I

don't know how to explain this. I don't know what's going on.

Uh, one question that I have had and that many

people have speculated about. Is this the sort of thing that

happens when somebody, uh, has

been running corporate operations for the government? Uh,

I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question either. I'm just

stabbing in the dark, looking for any plausible explanation for

why there would be this much hype followed by this little action.

>> Bryan Schott: Well, you seem to suspect it at least a little bit, right? I mean, you tweeted last

night, was Epstein a government asset?

>> Mike Lee: Yes, I asked that

publicly. And a lot of my

colleagues who I, uh, talked to about these things

have wondered the same thing, and at this point, consider

it a fairly likely possibility.

>> Bryan Schott: Lee's theory, it just doesn't make any sense.

If Epstein was a government asset, then that

means he was allegedly pimping out

young girls as part of government cover or

government program. To what end? I

mean, what is the goal of this particular program?

This is just rewarming the old deep state

theory. You know, the government. The deep state. And the government

is behind this. And we need to get to the truth, but we'll

never be able to get to the truth because the deep state is all

powerful. Lee is using that online trick

where he's just floating absolutely

crazy things, but in a way that you really can't hold

him responsible for. He's just asking questions.

This is information that is

concerning if true, but least throwing it out there without

knowing that it's true. What does this do? It

gets him attention, and that's the thing that he likes. And

that attention takes us back to the hand wringing

at LDS Church headquarters. Lee's not going to stop

doing this because that attention is intoxicating.

He likes it. And this is who

he is. That's what his advisors say. This is

who he is, which is someone

who throws out baseless conspiracy theories, no matter

the consequences.

So now we get to the third Mike Lee story of the week,

which is some new reporting from ProPublica

about the sale of public lands. Now, as we know,

Lee tried to shove a provision

selling off millions of acres of public lands into

the massive tax cut and

spending bill passed by Congress and

signed into law by President Donald

Trump. He said he wanted to do that to help alleviate

the housing crunch. This new article

says that in practice, wind

places where they've tried that, it really doesn't work.

Congress passed a law in 1998 that

allowed cities in Nevada to buy

Bureau of Land management land for

$100 an acre if they were going to

use it for affordable housing. Since

that time, just 850

affordable housing units have been buil

on 30 acres of land. About 900 acres of

land have been set aside for affordable housing, but

they've only used about 30 of those. That

same law also allows for the sale of public

lands in the Las Vegas Valley at

market rate. And in that timeframe,

they've sold 17,000 acres of land

at an average cost of $200,000

per acre. And this points out the

problem with Lee's idea. The Las Vegas

Valley is the most desirable part of

state, and if you're buying land at

$200,000 an acre,

you're not going to build affordable housing on it. Developers

have no incentive to do that.

They're going to try to recoup their costs with more

high end housing because that's just

basic capitalism. Meanwhile,

there's a lot of opportunity to buy BLM

land at deeply discounted rates, but it's not in

desirable areas right now. So developers

aren't going there because they're not going to make that much money. And

as I said before, Lee tried to shoehorn

this idea into the big reconciliation

bill because he knows it's not going to go anywhere through

the regular process. This push and pull between

capitalism and pragmatism also shows

another problem with what Lee was trying to do. He is trying

to impose an ideological

solution onto a problem

that is not ideological. He

has been a long opponent of the federal government

owning any public land. He does not like

the idea that something that he aligns with the

Heritage Foundation. Lee is very close to the Heritage

Foundation. A lot of his staffers come from the Heritage Foundation.

So this is something that he and the Heritage foundation are in

accord on. That's the ideological part

of this. In order to reach that ideological

goal to get the federal government out

of owning these lands, he is

pushing for this very large progress. But what the article

goes on to say is that a more

targeted approach seems to be

gaining some traction. The article talks about some programs in

Nevada that seem to be gaining steam

to provide more affordable housing. The housing crunch is a

major problem, but it is not an ideological problem.

And that's why Lee's solution

is not going to work, because he's trying to impose an

ideological solution. He's trying to get to an ideological

goal which is the federal government should not

own public lands by using,

using the housing crunch as the mechanism

to get there. And the housing crunch is not an ideological

problem. And that's why this is not working. And so

Lee tried to shove this idea into the big

reconciliation bill because he would have only needed to

get 50 votes in the Senate to make it happen, not the

60 vote to regular process. And he knows he's not going

to get this through the regular process. That's not going to happen. So

he tried an end around and it didn't work.

At the end of the article, they speak with Steve Waldrop, Utah's

housing czar, and he says

the hypercharge conversation that we've had around

public lands and selling off public lands

really hasn't helped because that's

again, looking at an

ideological, a, uh, political

solution to a non political

problem. There is no one size fits

all solution. But that's what Lee is trying to do

in pursuit of his ideological goal.

Until we find a way to get politics out of this,

we're going to keep running into the same brick wall. Because

make no mistake, this is a myst massive

problem. People need housing. We need to find a

way to provide affordable housing

in a lot of western states. But this one

size fits all. This massive public land sell off,

it's just too partisan, too

ideological to be of any use.

This is definitely worth your attention

and it's a good indication of just who

has the ear of the people who

are running the state.

On Monday morning, Utah House Speaker Mike

Schultz showed up at a press conference in downtown Salt Lake

City that was in support of Dr.

Michael Kirk Moore. Moore is a

plastic surgeon who is facing felony

federal charges after

prosecutors alleged that he destroyed

over $28,000 worth of COVID

vaccines during the pandemic by

squirting the syringes, the drain. And

he also, he and his associates allegedly

handed out more than 1900 fake

vaccine cards during the pandemic. It was

a very elaborate scheme. According to prosecutors.

If you wanted one of these fake vaccine cards, fake

vaccine passports, you had to know somebody or

be referred to them. He is on trial this

week for those charges.

Schultz showed up at this presser on Monday

morning, which was on the steps of the federal courthouse in

downtown Salt Lake City, to show support

for Dr. Moore right before his trial

started. He even gave him a very warm hug

as Dr. Moore walked up the steps for

the first day of his trial. Now, in his

remarks, it's clear that Schultz

wants to keep fighting the battle over

Covid. And he's not ready to let go of the

restrictions that were imposed by the federal

government and the state government during that time.

>> Speaker C: The way those of us, us that stood up and

pushed back were treated was wrong. We were

treated like second class citizens. If we didn't get the

shot, we didn't get the vaccine.

Think about it for just a minute. You had to have a

vaccine passport to walk

down the streets and go into a shop,

to go to a jazz game, to go to a

restaurant. That was

unbelievable. It was wrong.

And I'm grateful, I'm super grateful for

those of you that stood up and came out and pushed

back and said, enough's enough. We're not going to let the government

take away our freedom.

>> Bryan Schott: Now, it wasn't just Schultz. There were two other

Republican lawmakers there, and I'm sure

that you can guess that one of them was Representative Trevor

Lee. And yes, it was him. And then there was also

Representative Carrie Ann Lisenby, who

until last month month was the House Majority

Whip, the number three ranking Republican in the House

of Representatives. Now, while this is concerning that,

you've got the speaker of the House

showing support, unabashed support, he hugged the

guy for someone who is facing felony

charges from the federal government. But

Schultz has thoroughly embraced this Make

America Healthy Again movement pioneered

by Health and Human Services Secretary

RFK Jr. And this anti

vaccine rhetoric is, is part of that.

We've talked before about Representative

Christian Chevrier, who is quickly becoming

the face of this Make America Healthy Again

movement in Utah. Even though she has absolutely no

medical credentials, no training at all,

she is a longtime anti vaxxer. She

started an anti vaccine group before

COVID She's been on this for a

number of years, talking about people who are injured by

vaccine and vaccines causing autism,

in which, you know, there's no evidence that that

happens. It's not just that Schultz was there to show

solidarity with someone facing felony federal

charges. One of the people who organized this event

is Jason Preston, and if you're unfamiliar with

him, he is a former Republican congressional candidate.

He ran in the third congressional district for the Republican

nomination in 2022. He didn't make it

out of convention, but Preston has ties to

far right organizations, most notably

the. The violent militia group the

Proud Boys. You know, the guys who stormed the Capitol on

January 6th. In fact, I was the person

who reported and discovered that

Preston had hired members of the Proud

Boy, actual members of the Proud Boys, to run

his campaign in 2022. He also

hired Roger Stone, who

has deep ties to the Proud Boys. They serve as his

security when he's out and about. Preston hired

Stone to be a strategic advisor for his campaign

pain. Preston is a far right conspiracy theorist.

If you watch any of his

YouTube videos, and I don't recommend that you do,

because they'll melt your brain. They're just full of this

conspiratorial far right slop

that you find in the weirdest places

on social media. And it's also

colored with this Christian

nationalist veneer. It's all really kind of

scary. This is one of the people who apparently

has the ear of the speaker of the House, House of

Representatives. You Remember, back in 2024,

Schultz spoke at an event

ostensibly about the Constitution, but it was organized

by Christian nationalists. These are the waters in which

he swims right now. And this is a person who

is one of the most powerful members

of the Utah state government. He's the speaker of the House

of Representatives. You could argue that he's just

as powerful as the governor, maybe more so,

given how conciliatory Governor Spencer Cox is to

the legislature right now. And this is who

Schultz listens to. And this,

this event, this press conference, Schultz showing up at this press

conference, Representative Lisbon B. Representative Lee

showing up. It's just emblematic of who has

the ear of your legislative leaders, who

they listen to. Here's a perfect example of this

on a recent episode of the Utah

House Republican Caucuses Podcast. Yes,

they have a podcast. I don't know if very many people outside

of me listen to it, but they have a podcast in which

that's. It's essentially just propaganda where

they don't face any tough questions and they just talk about what they want to talk

about. It's just one of their communication arms. Fine. But on

a recent episode, Schultz was interviewing

Representative Chevalier, the anti vaxxer,

and Representative Stephanie Grishas, who was

behind the bill that got rid of fluoride

in drinking water in the state. They've taken great

pains to say that this idea, this bill,

was brought to her by a constituent,

while ignoring the fact that gracious does not

represent an area impacted at all by water

fluoridation. And neither was her

constituent. They were also not in an area that

would have been impacted by the fluoridation

measure. But anyway, she said this issue was brought to her

by a constituent. And at one point, Schultz

jumps in and says, the one thing that people really don't understand

about the legislature is that most of the bills they

run up there are brought to the them by their

constituents. But when you take that one step

further, when you ask, who are these

constituents, you get Jason

Preston, you get Gail Razika, you get

anti vaxxers, you get far right militia members, you

get doctors who are on federal trial for providing

fake vaccine cards, you get conspiracy

theorists. Legislators passed a chemtrails bill this year.

You know, when planes fly high up in the

atmosphere and you see the, the contrails coming out of it,

There are people who believe that that's the government spra

chemicals into the atmosphere for

mind control purposes. They passed a bill to

ban that because that's who your

lawmakers are listening to. These are the people

who have their ear. This is who they take

seriously. This is who they respond

to. And I think it's important to keep

pointing that out.

On Monday of this week, the Planned Parenthood association of

Utah joined forces with the National Planned Parenthood

organization and the Planned Parenthood League of

Massachusetts in a lawsuit challenging a provision in

the massive tax cut and spending bill that would

effectively defund Planned Parenthood. The

lawsuit says a provision in the bill that

blocks healthcare providers that offer abortions

from receiving Medicaid funding for any

other services for one year is

unconstitutional. Here to talk about that is

Sherene Gorbani. She is the interim president

of Planned Parenthood of Utah.

Shereen, thank you so much for, for Jo joining me

talk about why Utah decided to get involved in

this suit.

>> Shereen Gorbani: Utah decided to get involved in this suit because we

believe that this is a blatant attack on

Planned Parenthood and on our patients.

Um, while, uh, Medicaid patients do

not make up a large portion of our

patient population here in Utah, we know that this is a

devastating impact nationwide for

Medicaid, um, individuals who use Medicaid as their insurance.

And we absolutely believe, believe that individuals

should have the freedom to use their

insurance in the places where they choose to use them.

Right. So, um, there is no good reason why

Medicaid, um, patients shouldn't be able to continue to see us. Uh,

we provide high quality. In fact, frankly, we're the

experts in sexual and reproductive health care. So when

we're talking about access to wellness exams, to

uh, birth control, to STI testing and

treatment, to cancer, uh, screens. All of this

basic healthcare that we have Provided proudly for 55

years in Utah and even longer nationwide.

We are here to fight for patients rights.

>> Bryan Schott: I think one of the disconnects that a lot of people have is that

opponents of abortion have been

so effective at branding Planned Parenthood

as just a place that does nothing but

abortions. But as you mentioned, it's so much more than that. And

a lot of people who really don't have access to

healthcare in a lot of, um, uh, instances

have to use Medicaid. And there's not money.

According to the Hyde Amendment. There's no federal money that goes

directly, directly to Planned Parenthood

for abortion care. There's other reproductive

care that is covered in Medicaid, but you're not paid

directly. You build Medicaid. How hard is it to push

back against that sort of branding

which for years the organization has been

demonized by people on the right.

>> Shereen Gorbani: Yeah, so this is a really important point. I want

to kind of back it up a little bit because the first, um,

way in which, uh, Planned Parenthood in Utah, and

frankly what I mean when I say that is patience,

um, of Planned Parenthood and the first way that they have suffered in

this administration was with the cut to

Title 10 funding. That is similar,

a little bit different, but title 10 is the only domestically

funded family planning program in this country.

We are now one of a handful of states that has absolutely no

Title 10 funding. And what that was was a

reimbursement to provide low or no

cost care to individuals and as you have

outlined here, not, um, accessing abortion

care. So these are individuals that fall into

the 95% of what we do as

a healthcare organization, which is access to

birth control, to STI testing and treatment,

to cancer screening and in some cases cancer treatment.

We have the, uh, ability to treat some cervical

cancer. We are also doing basic

wellness exams, so basic health screenings to help people understand

if they may need, um, more intensive

care or internal interventions. Um, if people know anything

about me, what they know is that, uh, kind of

the reason that I might be on their radar is I am fundamentally

and deeply committed to people getting

access to the healthcare that they need. And I am so

proud to be here at Planned Parenthood, where

every day people walk through our doors from all walks

of life, from all sorts of different backgrounds to

seek information, education, um, and

care. And we provide that. So something that I think is

important about our opponents is they do not provide healthcare.

We are a healthcare provider. They are

extremist activists or political activist groups

that want to scream about

abortion access all day long. They're welcome to do that. They have a First

Amendment right to do that. But what we think, uh,

differentiates us is that we actually provide

care. We provide health care, and they do not.

So we understand that the attacks that are coming from this

administration mean that people will

have cancers that go undetected, they will have

STIs that go untreated. They will not be

able to plan their families and their futures

in the ways that they want because they will have a harder time

accessing birth control.

>> Bryan Schott: I think at the heart of it, and I guess one of the things

that really has painted this entire

debate is trying to separate

the politics from the actual human

beings involved in this. I mean, I mean, sure,

abortion is part of it, and that's the easiest thing to

connect, as we talked about in the branding part of this.

But, uh, there are real people who are going to be

impacted by the cutoff of these

funds, the inability to use Medicaid

as their preferred insurance to

get these services that, as you said, are so

much more than abortion. Talk

about just how big of an impact this is going to have

on the patient base here in the state.

Because, I mean, it's not an

insignificant chance change.

>> Shereen Gorbani: No, it's not an insignificant change. And again,

I think the thing that's kind, uh, of

underlying all of this is that

the Trump administration and their backers

in Congress, which include every single one of

our federal representatives here in Utah, were

happy to throw Planned Parenthood patients under the bus

immediately. In what is

a larger picture around the

dismantling of access to public

infrastructure around health care in this country,

we know that with the budget reconciliation bill

that we're going to see upwards. Estimates are upwards of 100,

and I've seen as high as 188,000

Utahns are likely to lose Medicaid access.

We're talking about increased premiums on, uh,

the ACA plans, so marketplace plans. We

believe that the cuts to title 10 already

are showing detrimental impacts to utilization.

Happy to give an example of that if you'd like. But what we

know is that this is the tip of the iceberg for the

unraveling and undoing of important

high quality points of care that have been safety

nets throughout our entire community. We can talk about funding that's been

cut to research, funding that's been cut to community health

centers, ways in which county health departments,

uh, have Fewer and fewer dollars to stretch around

tracking and treating STIs. This

is a crisis and it is already

on our doorstep because we are already seeing increased

rates of STIs in this state. And

I just struggle with the

lack of attention to uh, what this really

means to a population. When people do not have the

ability to control their sexual or reproductive lives. We know

that people get sick, they pass that on to others. We

know that people are unable to plant or space their families

in the ways that they see fit. That has

outlying um, impacts on our housing, on

our workforce, on our communities very broadly.

So the impacts of attacking sexual and reproductive

health care spill out in all sorts of ways.

>> Bryan Schott: But if you listen to people like Representative

Mike Kennedy, who is quick to point out that

he's a doctor, that these changes that are

coming to Medicaid and eventually Medicare, because

that's going to be part of the automatic uh, cuts

because of the size of this uh,

budget bill, if you listen to people like him, they're just addressing

fraud and abuse. But

that's really not the case. There's study after study after study

showing that this is not going to, this,

there's not that much fraud and abuse. There aren't that many

undocumented immigrants who are accessing this

care. This is, this is

medical care of what is in effect for a lot of people,

uh, their last resort.

>> Shereen Gorbani: Bryan, you couldn't be more correct on all of that.

And I think one of the things that people need to understand is if you

are not on Medicaid, if you don't currently

seek care at Planned Parenthood, then we hope you do. We accept

all major forms of insurance. We have self pay options.

We have six health centers that continue to be open across

the state. Four in the Valley Valley, Salt, uh, Lake Valley in

Ogden and in um, Orem. And we provide

many forms of points of care through

telehealth. So you could Visit us@ppau.org

and get scheduled for care. But let's say you aren't on

Medicaid, let's say you aren't relying on public

health infrastructure for your care, let's say you don't come to

Planned Parenthood. The spill out effects of what this

administration is doing and their backers in Congress

again, including every single one of our representatives in

Congress, is going to create further strain on a

health care system that is already strained. Frankly, we're

lucky to have as much healthcare infrastructure as we do

in Utah. But it's already difficult

to get in for a colonoscopy it's

already difficult to get in to see an ob

gyn. If you are looking to have an IUD

removed because you're ready to start a family, that wait can be

very long for individuals. We're happy to help with that.

But the thing that I think people need to understand is when we

push more people into systems,

there are spell out effects to

genuinely anyone trying to seek health care in this state.

>> Bryan Schott: Talk a little bit about the court case. And I understand that as we were

speaking it's been enjoined by a judge. Senator

Mike Lee started screaming about judicial abuse

the moment that it happened. This is not exactly

the most hospitable environment

for lawsuits like this. The Supreme Court earlier

this year made a ruling that Planned Parenthood

could be defunded, that they could remove Planned

Parenthood as an option for the state

run Medicaid program. This is not the most

hospitable environment. Talk about I, uh,

guess your optimism that the courts are gonna see it your way.

Because I think the thing that we're seeing right now is a lot of the lower

courts will stop this sort of thing. But then it goes up to the

supreme uh, court and they rule exactly the opposite.

>> Shereen Gorbani: So again I think you have a correct assessment of what is

happening in our legal landscape across

this nation. But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to

protect our patients whenever we have that opportunity.

When we can fight for patients access to care in

places they want to receive it, in ways that they need to receive it,

we're going to do that. So that is why we are moving

forward with this lawsuit. And I think one of the kind of other

backdrops here on the broader

legal landscape is the chilling effect that this

administration has. But we have not backed

down from a fight in our own state. We are not going to back down now.

We believe that individuals in this state and across this

country deserve and access to high quality,

they deserve uh, access to experts in sexual and

reproductive health care. And that is what Planned Parenthood has

offered in some states for 100 years, here

for 55 years. And we're going to keep fighting to make sure that we

can provide that care for patients who we know need us.

>> Bryan Schott: Are these cuts at the congressional level, are they an

existential threat to Planned Parenthood in the state?

>> Shereen Gorbani: I think the cuts that we're seeing at the federal

level are an existential threat to an

already broken healthcare system in this entire country.

We, I'm sure you've seen the list. I think there are three or four

Rural hospitals that are slated to be likely

to close with the cuts that were, um,

put forward, the Medicaid, um, cuts that are, that are being

put forward. When we think about, um,

the different ways that Planned Parenthoods look in different

places, Medicaid makes up a much greater part

of their, um, patient population than it does here

for us. So the landscape is going to be different

depending on the state, depending on the patient population.

But I'll just say we believe even if we had

one Medicaid patient that um,

was being denied access to the care that they wanted

because of a political attack, um,

we would fight for them. And that is,

you can just count on us to continue to show up and

fight for patients access to care.

>> Bryan Schott: Take me through the next steps. I mean, it's um, obviously been

m, uh, joined in federal court.

Do you expect that that's going to take a while to get through

the process, or do you think it's probably going to just be rushed up to

the Supreme Court on the shadow docket?

>> Shereen Gorbani: Yeah, it's a good question. So this, I think it could go that

way. Um, right now our understanding

is that, uh, a temporary restraining order is

only allowed to be in place for 14 days.

So within the next 14 days, we anticipate that

there will be another hearing on a

preliminary injunction. At that stage, we'll

have kind of more information about what the federal government's position

is, um, and we will go from there.

In short, this is a dynamic and

rapidly changing environment and for people to

understand, uh, what's happening, the best place to go for

information, we're trying to post as quickly as we can

to ppau.org to let you know what's happening right

here in Utah.

>> Bryan Schott: This can't be cheap for you either to do these challenges. I mean,

you're obviously not a wealthy organization. You don't have

billionaire billionaires backers who are funding this sort of thing.

This has got to be another strain on already

limited resources. I know you're partnering with

Massachusetts and the national organization, but still,

this can't be a cheap endeavor.

>> Shereen Gorbani: No, it never is. Um, but I will say if

there are billionaire, ah, backers who are listening, who are interested

in supporting Planned Parenthood association of Utah. We would

love to speak with you because what is happening here is a

fundamental attack tag on rights. And here in

Utah, honestly we're used to it. We're used to politicians trying to

strip away our rights for political gain. But we have

a long history. Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood

association of Utah of fighting back. And that is

exactly what we're doing.

>> Bryan Schott: We'll check in with you as this progresses through

the court. Shereen Ghorvani, thank you so much for your time.

>> Shereen Gorbani: Good to see you.

>> Bryan Schott: Well, I've done enough for this week. That's it for

the show. Before we go, do me a favor, leave a comment

or send me an email with your questions

or if there's a story you want me to talk about on the show.

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My thanks again to Shereen Ghorbani of

Planned Parenthood Utah for joining me on the show today

and thank you so much for listening.

We'll be back soon with another episode. Have a

good week.

>> Speaker C: It.