Rebecca, Liz, and Alison speak with Rachel Levinson-Waldman from the Brennan Center for Justice about the Trump administration and current Congress weaponizing the government to attack nonprofits and punish speech and viewpoints they don't like. They explore how executive orders and anti-terrorism statutes are being abused to investigate, defund, and intimidate civil society, and how this strategy is essential to the broader project to transform America from a democracy to an autocracy.

Show Notes

• Rachel Levinson-Waldman's Bio

• Brennan Center for Justice

Trump Administration Documents

• Presidential Memo - "Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence"

• Bondi Memo - "Implementing National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism"

• "2026 Counterterrorism Strategy"

• 2027 FBI Budget Request to Congress

• Executive Order Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization

• Department of Justice - "The Biden Administration's Weaponization of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act"

• Executive Order - "Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans"

Articles and Reactions

• NPR - "'We're not afraid': George Soros' foundation on being Trump's next target" (Open Society Foundation)

• Lawfare - "The Politically Motivated Indictment of Southern Poverty Law Center"

• Civil Society Rights & Resiliency Resources - Charity & Security Network

• "What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism"

• Cato at Liberty Blog - "Politically Motivated Violence Is Rare in the United States" (right-wing extremists account for 11% of politically motivated killings, while left-wing extremists account for 2%)

• Brennan Center for Justice - "Trump's Orders Targeting Anti-Fascism Aim to Criminalize Opposition"

• ACLU - "How NSPM-7 Seeks to Use "Domestic Terrorism" to Target Nonprofits and Activists"

• Just Security - "How Designating Antifa as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Could Threaten Civil Liberties"

• Lawfare - "The Bondi Memo's Quiet Rewriting of Domestic Terrorism Rules"

• Lawfare - "You Can't Designate 'Antifa.' Banks and Platforms Will Act Like You Did Anyway"

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

Alison, Liz, and Rebecca welcome AU Public Policy Counsel Rachael Stryer to review what came out of the state legislative sessions this year. They survey the laws state legislatures passed to force religion into public schools, use religion to discriminate against LGBTQ people, and divert public money to private religious schools.

Show Notes

• Rachael Stryer's AU Bio

• Organized Power in Numbers

• American Atheists - State of the Secular States

• Legislative trackers

• AU

• ACLU

• Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures

• Congressional Scorecards

• See your state ACLU for regional legislative tracking

• Action Alerts

• FFRF AF

• AU

• National Women's Law Center

• ACLU

Bills and Cases Discussed

• Ten Commandments Displays in Schools

• Alabama (SB 99)

• Tennessee (HB 47)

• Ongoing Lawsuits

• FFRF

• AU

• Prayer in Schools

• Alabama (HB 511): Requiring public schools to allow student-led prayer and requiring the pledge of allegiance

• Idaho (HB 623): Requiring a 60 second moment of silence for prayer or meditation at the beginning of the school day

• Chaplains

• Alabama (HB 8): Permitting school boards to adopt policies allowing volunteer school chaplains into schools

• Release Time

• Info on LifeWise

• AU: "Release time is a problem for church-state separation"

• FFRF Action Fund: "State Issue: LifeWise Academy/Release Time"

• Classroom Instruction and Curriculum Policies

• Tennessee (SB 1828): Requires public school history curriculums to teach about the positive impact of religion on American history and the influence of Judeo-Christian values

• Idaho (S 1336) and Utah (HB 312 and SB 268): Requiring curricula to teach the influence of Christianity in American history

• Vouchers

• Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020)

• Carson v. Makin (2022)

• Columbus City School District v. State of Ohio

• Wisconsin PTA et al vs. Wisconsin State Assembly et al

• Healthcare Refusal

• Utah (SB 174) and Iowa (HF 571): Gives healthcare providers and religious healthcare institutions the right to refuse to provide services that violate religious beliefs.

• Foster Care and Adoption

• Indiana (HB 1389): Allows government-funded child placement agencies to use religion as a justification for refusing to work with families, youth in care, and prospective parents. And to allow adoptive or foster parents the right to "raise a child in a manner consistent with [their] sincerely held religious beliefs."

• Elizabeth Rutan-Ram et al. v. Tennessee Department of Children's Services et al (AU)

• Anti-Sharia law

• Tennessee (HB 2279), Florida (HB 1471), Iowa (HF 2695), and Idaho (H 602)

• Arkansas (SR 21)

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

Alison, Liz, and Rebecca take on the far-right pronatalism movement with guest Emily Martin, NWLC's Chief Program Officer. They explain the movement's history of racism, sexism, and eugenics, the alarming support it has in the Trump administration, and what truly pro-family policy would look like.

Background

• Emily Martin's Bio

• National Women's Law Center

• Sign up for alerts here

• National Women's Law Center - "Baby Bonuses and Motherhood Medals: Why We Shouldn't Trust the Pronatalist Movement"

• Heritage Foundation - Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years

• New York Times - "The Heritage Foundation Wants to Send American Women Back Half a Century"

• Ms. Magazine - "Trump's Pronatalist Agenda Weaponizes Motherhood to Push Women Out of Public Life"

• CNN Politics - "Hegseth invited pastor who calls for Christian theocracy to lead Pentagon prayer service"

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

We Dissent welcomes guest Shiwali Patel, Senior Director of Education Justice at National Women's Law Center, who walks us through the anti-trans sports ban cases currently before the Supreme Court, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. We discuss the history of Title IX and why the attack on trans sports participation is really an attack on the basis of this critical nondiscrimination law.

Background

• Shiwali Patel's bio

• National Women's Law Center

• Previous trans rights episodes

• Episode 16 – Sex on the Brain: the Assault on Trans People with Sasha Buchert

• Episode 38 – Skrmetti v. U.S.

• NWLC Amicus

• SCOTUSblog - "The justices and gender pronouns"

• SCOTUSblog - "Supreme Court appears likely to uphold transgender athlete bans"

Cases

• Little v. Hecox

• SCOTUSblog

• Oral argument transcript

• West Virginia v. B.P.J.

• SCOTUSblog

• Oral argument transcript

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

We Dissent welcomes back Alison Gill as co-host! Alison shares what she's been up to since leaving the pod, and then walks Rebecca and Liz through the state of our federal bench. We discuss federal judicial nominations from the recent presidential administrations and what it has meant or means for religious liberty and other civil rights.

Show Notes

• National Women's Law Center

• Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy: Per Curiam - "Not Enough Respect For The Judiciary—or Too Much? Arrogance And The Myth Of Judicial Supremacy"

• New York Times - "Trump's 'Superstar' Appellate Judges Have Voted 133 to 12 in His Favor"

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

There's no new episode this month, instead we have a special message for our listeners. We're excited to announce that Alison Gill is returning to the podcast starting in February! Additionally, the National Women's Law Center is going to be a co-sponsor of We Dissent moving forward. We have a lot of great episodes planned for 2026 and can't wait to share them with you.

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

Rebecca and Liz explain Landor v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court case that will decide whether a Rastafarian inmate who'd grown his dreadlocks for 20 years can sue the Louisiana prison officials who handcuffed him to a chair, held him down, and forcibly shaved him in violation of the law. They dive deep on the statute at issue in the case, the legal history leading up to this litigation, and what the oral arguments signaled. They also highlight some Supreme Court docket news!

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Case updates

• Cambridge Christian School v. Florida High School Athletic Association

• Davis v. Ermold

Background

• SCOTUSblog case page

• Previous episodes about RLUIPA

• Episode 4 – Religious Liberty and the Death Penalty

• Episode 11 – Religion Behind Bars

• SCOTUSblog - "Court appears skeptical of prison inmate's religious liberty claim"

• A Guide To Federal Religious Land Use Protections

• AU's amicus brief

• Cert petition

• Transcript of oral arguments

Cases Discussed

• Tanzin v. Tanvir

• Employment Division v. Smith

• City of Boerne v. Flores

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

Liz and Rebecca cover Chiles v. Salazar, the case before the Supreme Court seeking to strike down a Colorado law banning mental health professionals from practicing "conversion therapy" on children. They explain the details of the case and discuss the hypocrisy of a ruling striking down the ban. They also recount the October 7th oral arguments, where the majority of justices signaled support for a ruling that will nullify state laws in half the country protecting LGBTQ youth from these discredited harmful practices.

Background

• Oral argument transcript

• Tenth Circuit Opinion

• SCOTUSblog page

• Amicus briefs

• Americans United

• FFRF

• SCOTUSblog - "Does Colorado's "conversion therapy" ban violate free speech?"

• The Trevor Project - "Chiles v. Salazar: What you need to know about the U.S. Supreme Court case on conversion therapy"

• The American Psychiatric Association's position on conversion therapy

• The American Psychological Association's position on conversion therapy

• The American Medical Association's position on conversion therapy

• "LGBTQ Policy Spotlight: From Conversion "Therapy" Laws Protecting LGBTQ Youth"

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

Rebecca and Liz break down the strong history of courts rejecting government attempts to display Ten Commandments in public schools. They explain the seminal 1980 case Stone v. Graham, the SCOTUS cases since then reinforcing that precedent, and the growing number of states passing blatantly unconstitutional laws that force public schools to display Ten Commandments.

Background

• "Louisiana May Require the Ten Commandments Be Posted in Classrooms"

Cases

• Stone v. Graham (1980)

• Van Orden v. Perry (2005)

• McCreary County v. ACLU (2005)

• Louisiana: Roake v. Brumley (2024)

• Complaint

• District Court Opinion

• Joint Statement

• 5th Circuit Opinion

• FFRF Case Page

• AU Case Page

• Arkansas: Stinson v. Fayetteville School District No. 1 (2025)

• Complaint

• District Court Opinion

• Joint Letter

• FFRF Case Page

• AU Case Page

• Texas: Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District (2025)

• Complaint

• Preliminary Injunction

• Joint Letter

• FFRF Case Page

• AU Case Page

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

Rebecca and Liz commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial. They discuss the infamous "monkey" trial, and the history of teaching evolution in public schools. An "everything old is new again" episode, showing the impact of the Scopes trial throughout the last century and digging into the latest attempts by Christian Nationalists to inject religious teachings into science curriculum.

Background

• Original text of the Butler Act

• 2025 Scope Trial Centennial speakers' presentations - FFRF

• The Legacy of the Scopes Monkey Trial 100 years later - Americans United

• The Scopes "Monkey" Trial with Brenda Wineapple - Freethought Matters

Cases

• State of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes (1925)

• Edwards v. Aguillard (1987)

• Kitzmil­ler v. Dover Area School District (2004)

• Epperson v. Arkansas (1968)

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Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.