Episode Details

Hey fam, welcome back to the Gilead Gazette, where every week I read the news about women’s bodies and every week it sounds like it was written by a man who got turned down in 1987 and never recovered. This week: Arizona ruled that churches, not courts, decide whether clergy report child sexual abuse. A congressman accused of domestic violence got a new restraining order and kept Trump’s endorsement. Trump asked the Supreme Court to rule that defaming E. Jean Carroll was part of his job. Elon Musk went to federal court to defend AI that undresses real women. Kansas votes on abortion Tuesday and the word abortion is not on the ballot. Plus a government payout to a man who blockaded an abortion clinic. Let’s get into it.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that a church, and not a judge, and not a jury, gets to decide what counts as a confession. Which means two Mormon bishops who knew a man was sexually abusing his own daughter will never stand trial for saying nothing. Paul Adams of Bisbee, a Border Patrol agent, told Bishop John Herrod back in 2011. Herrod called the church help line, which is staffed by church lawyers, and the lawyers told him not to call the police. Adams told a second bishop. Then he told an entire disciplinary council, a room full of people who listened to a man describe abusing his child and decided the matter was handled. They excommunicated him. That was it. That was the consequence. He kept his job, his house, and his children, and he abused that daughter for as many as seven more years and then abused her infant sister too. He was arrested in 2017 because cops in New Zealand found the videos he had been posting online. Nobody in that room ever picked up a phone.

On Thursday the court blessed all of it. Vice Chief Justice John Lopez wrote that the First Amendment bars courts from second-guessing how a clergy member applies his own doctrine, so the church defines confession, the church decides whether it has to report, and the court takes the answer on faith. Then the justices volunteered that if Arizona lawmakers ever try to close this loophole, they should expect that law struck down too. Nobody asked them. They just wanted the legislature to know.

Ohio Congressman Max Miller’s ex-wife filed a new restraining order against him Thursday, and Donald Trump has no plans to pull his endorsement. Emily Moreno alleges in court filings and police records that Miller threw hot water on her chest and stomach, held a gun to her head, threw her against a wall hard enough to leave a grab mark, and fractured their two year old daughter’s collarbone. The police report has her recounting that same two year old saying “Daddy kill you.” Mother Jones obtained those records and broke the story. Miller denies all of it, sued her for defamation, filed his own domestic violence charge against her, then dropped it this week. Emily’s father is Bernie Moreno, a sitting Republican senator, and when NOTUS asked him whether his party should take Miller off the ballot, he said, “I don’t know.” My dude. That’s your daughter. Republicans spent months demanding Democrats answer for Graham Platner, their Senate nominee in Maine, and when he was accused of sexual assault his own party had him off the ballot in two days. Republicans have police reports, a toddler with a broken collarbone, a deadline of August 9, and a strategy of standing very still.

And the man they all take their cues from spent this week asking the Supreme Court to throw out E. Jean Carroll’s eighty three million dollar defamation verdict, on the grounds that publicly calling a woman a liar about her own sexual assault was part of his official duties as president. Official duties. He also had his Justice Department petition the Court to swap the United States government in as the defendant, which would erase the case entirely, because federal law does not let anyone sue the government for defamation. The eighty three milli