JD Vance’s political career has been defined by an apparent paradox. On the one hand, Vance is a member of the upper echelon of America’s ruling elite — a graduate of Yale Law School, a New York Times best-selling author, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and a United States senator. On the other hand, he has become a vociferous conservative critic of that same elite on behalf of disaffected Middle Americans, a role he can claim by virtue of his upbringing in post-industrial Ohio and his family’s roots in eastern Appalachia. At various points throughout his career, Vance has acknowledged this tension — without really trying to resolve it.

“It’s the great privilege of my life that I’m deep enough into the American elite that I can indulge a little anti-elitism,” Vance said in one of his first major interviews in 2016, on the heels of the publication on Hillbilly Elegy.

Now that Vance is accompanying Trump on the top of the Republican ticket, this paradox has opened Republicans up to fresh criticisms. How populist can Vance really be while cozying up to billionaires in Silicon Valley? What does a Yale-educated attorney and ex-venture capitalist understand about the lives of Trump’s blue-collar voters? Is a guy who owns not one but two million-dollar houses a credible mouthpiece for the GOP’s fledgling economic populism?

But the deeper I’ve dug into the conservative world Vance comes from — often referred to as the “New Right” — the more I’ve come to see Vance’s split identity as a feature rather than a bug for his ideological supporters.

In fact, Vance embodies an archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to). By forging an alliance between the elite “New Right” and the MAGA masses, Vance, according to this reading, could serve as the leader of a new movement to institute an illiberal and explicitly reactionary political order. Though adopting the rhetoric of conservatism populism, this new order would be a fundamentally elitist one: It would expel America’s current ruling elite in order to replace it with a new, more conservative one, drawn from the ranks of the New Right.

The details of this plan differ between the various writers and thinkers that have influenced Vance — people like the Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen, the internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But taken together, their prescriptions amount to a kind of three-step plan for the New Right’s project: Identify a member of the New Right elite who can tap into the energies of an ascendant right-wing populist movement, ride those energies to political power, and then carry out a top-down transformation of American society along illiberal lines. It is, in effect, a plan to accomplish through elite rule what even the MAGA movement has failed to accomplish through democratic control: The creation of a social order built around conservative values, even if those values remain broadly unpopular with the American people.

In fact, Vance has articulated his own political strategy in terms that closely echo those found in the pages of the New Right thinkers who have influenced him.

“One of the ways in which I’m very much populist is that I think people need to have elected representatives [who] try to channel their frustrations into solutions that will make their lives better,” Vance told me when I interviewed him in his Senate office in December 2023. “One of the ways I’m very much not a populist is that I think every populist movement that has ever existed has failed unless it’s captured some subset of the people who are professionally in government.”

He added: “You can’t just run a political movement purely with voters — you need voters, you need bureaucrats, you need lawyers, you need business leaders, you need the whole thing.”

As Vance hits the campaign trail, parsing this blueprint is essential for understanding his political trajectory — and what underlies his support for Trump. Given his past criticisms of Trump, Vance’s new-found affection for Trumpism and the MAGA movement has been chalked up to a “moral collapse” or rank opportunism. But read against the ideas found in the writings of the conservative intellectuals close to Vance, it begins to appear like something else: the first step in a much broader plan.

On a summer evening in 2023, Vance strode into a marble-lined ballroom at the Catholic University of America, where a crowd of 250 had gathered for the launch of a new book by the Catholic philosopher Patrick Deneen, a political theorist at the University of Notre Dame, hosted by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Vance, then just a few months into his first term as a United States senator, made a beeline for Deneen and wrapped him in a big hug, both men smiling as they greeted each other like old friends.

That hug served as a vivid metaphor for Vance and the New Right’s embrace of Deneen’s work as a kind of intellectual roadmap for their emerging political movement — a process that Deneen spoke to me about at length for a POLITICO Magazine profile in 2023.

In his breakout book Why Liberalism Failed, published in 2018, Deneen argued that small-L liberalism is inevitably self-destructive; that a political system predicated on the expansion of individual rights and autonomy will eventually undermine the collective institutions — like family, organized religion and local communities — that make political life possible in the first place.

In his next book, Regime Change, Deneen doesn’t embrace the term “illiberal” but lays out a vision of an ideal “postliberal order” that would jettison liberalism’s protection of individual rights in favor of a social order that promotes “the common good” — a purportedly objective set of social conditions, borrowed from Catholic social teaching, that “undergird human flourishing.” According to Deneen, liberalism’s phony commitment to egalitarianism currently provides cover for a corrupt (and left-leaning) elite to pursue its own interests at the expense of the interests of the downtrodden (and right-leaning) masses. In Deneen’s postliberal order, by contrast, a new ruling elite would foster collaboration between “the few” and “the many” in pursuit of the common good. This new order would look the same and be governed by the same institutions as the current one, but it would be infused by a “fundamentally different ethos.”

In practice, Deneen’s policy prescriptions for fostering the common good would be even more far-reaching than Trump’s: sweeping protectionist trade measures to promote domestic industries; aggressive trust-busting of corporate monopolies; a robust “pro-family” welfare policy to promote the formation of traditional families; strict limits on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

The crux of Deneen’s book is his plan for the transition from the liberal order to the postliberal order. This “peaceful” transition, Deneen argued, would not happen on its own. It would require the creation of “a new elite” — a “self-conscious aristoi” (or aristocracy) who could enter the halls of government, academia and the media, take them over and repurpose them toward conservative and illiberal ends. While drawn from the upper echelons of society, this new elite would effectively act as class traitors: Having replaced the old, corrupt liberal elite, they would ally with and rule in the interests of the “many,” using their power to foster conservative values like “stability, order [and] continuity.” Deneen calls this political arrangement “aristopopulism” — an alliance between a “genuinely noble elite” (the “aristoi”) and the populist masses, working together to replace secular liberalism with a postliberal system grounded in a “forthright acknowledgment and renewal of the Christian roots of our civilization.”

Vance — whose background and biography make him a living embodiment of Deneen’s “aristopopulist” vision — has not hid his interest in Deneen’s ideas. During a panel discussion at the launch event for Deneen’s book, Vance — appearing alongside Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts — identified himself as a member of the “postliberal right,” adding that he “sees[s] his role and his voice” in Congress as “explicitly anti-regime.”

In response to a question from the moderator about how he balances the interests of “the few” and “the many” in practice, he answered like a card-carrying member of Deneen’s new elite: “Things in American society are so tilted toward the ‘few’ that I just focus on the ‘many,’” he said, “and let the rest of it figure itself out.”

Curtis Yarvin’s ideas do not garner formal discussions in the marble-lined halls of America’s universities, but they are no less influential in the intellectual ecosystem that has shaped Vance’s worldview.

Yarvin rose to prominence on the online right in the early 2000s as the leading voice of the “neo-reactionary” movement — or what came to be called “NRx” — while blogging under the pseudonym “Mencius Moldbug.” The premise of the movement, which Yarvin unspooled in his signature meandering and irony-laden prose style, was that “democracy is bunk” — both as a philosophical system and as a principle for organizing modern society.

According to Yarvin, America in the 21st century is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense. Instead, it has degenerated into a corrupt oligarchy run by an interconnected network of academics, media elites and government bureaucrats that Yarvin calls “the Cathedral.” Although most Americans have carried on believing the elections and the popular will continue to be the source of political power and legitimacy, Yarvin argues that the real decision-making in America — including the critical power to determine what is true and what is false — rests with the Cathedral, regardless of who occupies the White House or which party holds a majority in Congress. (At the National Conservatism Conference in 2022, Vance gave a speech titled “The Universities are the Enemy” that was effectively a layman’s explanation of “the Cathedral.”)

To a point, Yarvin’s critique of this system can sound like a more traditional libertarian or conservative critique of the “administrative state” or “the deep state” — the notion that a set of unelected bureaucrats have usurped power from the sovereign American people. But unlike traditional conservatives, Yarvin does not advocate for a return to small or limited government. Instead, he argues that America needs a “national CEO, [or] what’s called ‘a dictator’,’’ who could implement a type of centralized American monarchy, run on the model of a Silicon Valley tech start-up. (Yarvin’s model for this style of leadership is, half ironically, FDR, whose presidency he as described as “a personal executive monarchy.”) Yarvin has laid out an extensive (though not always clear) playbook explaining how a democratically elected president could claim monarchical power — a process that would involve a smartphone app to organize voting, reinforced by police forces in red armbands.

Here and elsewhere, Yarvin’s plans diverge sharply from Deneen’s — and neither Deneen nor Vance have endorsed the explicitly monarchic parts of Yarvin’s vision. But they share one essential element: Like Deneen and Vance, Yarvin believes that the transition away from progressive liberal democracy will be led by a self-conscious cadre of conservative elites who gain power through an alliance with the popular masses — yielding, in Yarvin’s vision, to the rule of a single “national CEO.”

Yarvin’s description of this dynamic is much stranger than Deneen’s. Borrowing from the universe of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Yarvin describes American society as divided into several classes: “Elves,” (the highly educated ruling class); “hobbits,” (the average middle-class red-state American) and “dwarves, orcs and zombies” (the working- and lower-classes). These groupings, Yarvin has written, describe different roles in society, not races or fixed classes: The elves are the people who run the powerful institutions of politics and culture, while the hobbits just “want to grill and raise kids.” (“These roles tend to be hereditary, but do not need to be,” Yarvin has written.)

The elves are almost uniformly liberal, but Yarvin believes that mixed in among the elves are “dark elves” — reactionary elites like Yarvin who oppose “the regime,” sympathize with the plight of the hobbits and understand democracy for what it really is: a cover for a corrupt oligarchy. The only way to realize a “pro-hobbit” regime, Yarvin argues, is for hobbits to form an alliance with the dark elves to defeat the normal elves, and then to allow the dark elves — and eventually a single dark elf — to rule on their behalf.

This is, in effect, a more extreme description of Deneen’s “aristopopulism” in dorkier terms. On a popular conservative podcast in 2021, Vance cited Yarvin — whom he has called “a friend” — in support of his view that a second-term Trump should “fire every mid-level level bureaucrat and every civil servant in the administrative state and replace them with our people,” thereby allowing conservatives to “seize the administrative state for our own purposes.” (Yarvin has recently distanced himself from Vance, calling him “a random normie [politician] whom I’ve barely even met.”)

Vance’s citation of Yarvin has attracted much attention since he landed on the top of the Republican ticket — especially Vance’s suggestion that Trump should ignore the Supreme Court if they step in to block the mass firings. But the public scrutiny has overlooked one critical part of Vance’s plan. When Vance is talking about installing “our people” in the government, it’s fair to assume that he’s not talking about enlisting the hobbits. He’s talking about promoting the dark elves.

All of these threads come together in the thinking of Vance’s primary political patron and close personal friend Peter Thiel.

Thiel and Vance met in 2011 after Vance attended a talk by Thiel at Yale Law School — an encounter that Vance later called “the most important moment of my time at Yale.” Vance later went to work for Thiel’s venture capital firm, Mithril Capital — the VC company is, fittingly, named after Lord of the Rings — and later founded his own fund with Thiel’s backing. Along the way, though, Thiel became a sort of tutor to Vance, introducing Vance to the intellectual influences shaping the politics of Silicon Valley’s right-leaning cohort.

One of those influences was the Austrian libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises and two of his American disciples, Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. That trio formed the core of a group of thinkers known as the “paleolibertarians”: For von Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe, real political freedom required shrinking — and eventually abolishing — the centralized state, making way for an “anarcho-capitalist” system governed exclusively by markets and the forces of social competition.

Even as libertarians gained political momentum and support throughout the 1970s, the paleolibertarians remained relatively marginal on the right, and their followers knew that the program wasn’t popular enough to gain widespread support. By the 1990s, Rothbard in particular had given up on building a broad-based electoral movement based purely on libertarian principles. Instead, he began calling for libertarians to devote their energy to a new style of “right-wing populism,” based on an alliance between libertarian intellectual elites and the middle- and lower-class masses who felt oppressed and disillusioned by contemporary American life. “This two-pronged strategy is (a) to build up a cadre of our own libertarians, minimal-government opinion-molders, based on correct ideas; and (b) to tap the masses directly, to short-circuit the dominant media and intellectual elites,” Rothbard wrote in a 1992 essay titled “Right-Wing Populism,” which the writer John Ganz has called “the Ur-Text of Trumpism.”

Over time, this coalition would consolidate behind “inspiring and charismatic political leadership … who will be knowledgeable, courageous, dynamic, exciting and effective in mobilizing and building a movement,” Rothbard wrote. (The rabid anti-communist Joseph McCarthy offered one historical example of what this leadership might look like, Rothbard argued — but looking to the future, he pinned his hopes on Pat Buchanan.) Once this movement had concentrated power under its charismatic leader, it could seize political control from “the unholy alliance of ‘corporate liberal’ Big Business and media elites,” dismantle the American state and usher in a new hyper-libertarian order.

Under this new order, Rothbard presumed, a natural elite — the people who could win out in a world of unfettered competition — would inevitably rise to the top.

Although the paleolibertarians’ goal was in theory the opposite of a strong centralized state or reactionary monarchy, it nevertheless proved attractive to thinkers with authoritarian inclinations, in part because it espoused a frank skepticism of liberal democracy. For the paleolibertarians, democracy existed to protect markets, and once it had ceased to do that, it became expendable. (Yarvin, for instance, has cited Rothbard and Hoppe as major influences, as have key figures on the alt-right.) This view had a decisive influence to Thiel, who has spoken at an organization founded by Hoppe, and who infamously declared in 2009 that he “no longer believe[d] that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

On the surface, Deneen, Yarvin and Thiel want different things — a postliberal order grounded in Catholic social teaching; a monarchy styled after a tech startup; a stateless techno-libertarian paradise in which the only rights are property rights. But they are united both by their opposition to liberal democracy and by their fundamental elitism — their shared belief that America is and always will be run by elites, but that it is currently ruled by the wrong type of elite. Their goal is not to abolish elite rule but to replace America’s current elite with a purportedly different, more conservative one, and they share a blueprint for doing so. Implicitly recognizing that their ideas are not popular enough to win broad-based political support, they advocate for an alliance between reactionary elites and the alienated masses, channeling popular frustration against the democratic order they hope to eventually replace. The “hobbits” are the engine of this transformation, but they are never its leaders.

Forging this alliance, all these thinkers agree, will take time — but the crucial first step is identifying and cultivating a new conservative elite. This new elite must be made up of people who are steeped in elite culture and reactionary ideas but who understand “the people” and can credibly claim to govern on their behalf. They must have one foot in the world of the elite and one foot in the heartland. They must think like elves but be able to talk like hobbits.

In other words, they must look like JD Vance — and their first task is to build a bridge between the elite reactionary circles and the right-leaning masses.

“Maybe the most important role that I have to play from the New Right’s perspective is to help build institutions and to get people engaged in politics who weren’t previously engaged in politics,” Vance told me when we spoke earlier this year, referring to his role in founding a handful of new institutions devoted to the nationalist-populist cause.

“It’s definitely an interesting thing,” he said, “but it’s going to take a long time.”

For years, the anti-abortion activist Lila Rose has pushed the GOP to curtail access to abortion. But now, as Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance conspicuously soften their abortion message ahead of the November election, Rose — who leads the prominent anti-abortion group Live Action — is embracing a more radical strategy: Urging her followers not to vote for Trump unless he changes course.

That position — which she teased in a series of social media posts earlier this week — defies both Democratic and Republican common sense about Trump’s strategy on abortion. In the eyes of many Democrats and anti-abortion conservatives who support Trump, a second-term Trump would still be sympathetic to the anti-abortion cause — even if he needs to moderate his message to win in November.

But since Trump and Vance have come out against a number of the anti-abortion movement’s key policy priorities — including a national abortion ban, a crackdown on the abortion pill and restrictions on IVF — Rose, who leveraged her large internet following into influence in the first Trump White House, is no longer confident that Trump is an ally, she told POLITICO Magazine. “It’s disappointing to say — but perhaps he personally lacks principle on this issue,” said Rose.

Rose’s position has inspired fierce resistance from some on the right who argue that a Trump presidency would still be better for the anti-abortion movement than a Harris administration. (Several of the most prominent anti-abortion groups are still backing Trump.)

But Rose said that’s not enough. If the election were today, she’d be writing in a candidate other than Trump or Harris. “Don’t get me wrong. … I would love to see him stop saying this nonsense about supporting abortion. But unfortunately, that's not the case.”

The following has been edited for clarity and length.

You’ve been arguing online that Trump and Vance's position on abortion has made it “impossible” for anti-abortion voters to support them. What was the breaking point for you?

[My] direct quote is that “they’re making it impossible” for us. This is an active thing. The recent statements that they have been making — increasingly pro-abortion statements — and the positions that they are choosing to take are making it untenable for pro-life voters to get out the vote for them. This is, unfortunately, the path that they've chosen.

So just to be clear, as things currently stand, you don't plan to vote for Trump. Is that correct?

I am going to see how the next few weeks unfold.

But if the election were today?

I'm going to see how the next few weeks unfold. The election is not today.

But you're urging anti-abortion voters to follow your lead in withholding support for him right now?

I'm urging President Trump — and Harris, for that matter, though she has refused to hear any of this — I'm urging President Trump to change course.

OK —

To clarify your earlier question, I would not vote for Harris. If the election were today, I would not vote for Harris or Trump based on their policies and their statements and their positions.

Anti-abortion activists who support Trump and pro-abortion rights activists who oppose him seem to implicitly agree with each other that Trump is just moderating his message on abortion for political purposes, but that a second Trump administration would ultimately benefit the anti-abortion movement. Do you think that's wrong, and if so, why?

You’re saying that people think Trump's lying about his position right now, and when he gets into office he'll secretly do pro-life things?

Yeah, that he’s moving to the center for the general election, but if you look to his first term as a guide — 

I think that's pie-in-the sky thinking. I’ve received no confirmation from the Trump campaign that they're going to secretly lie about abortion and then go do pro-life things afterward. I think that's a narrative that there's no proof to back up. And I think that if he actually is secretly pro-life and he's just doing this to win both — I think it’s morally wrong and it's extremely misguided politically.

He's alienating his base. Kamala Harris spent a whole week at the DNC rallying her pro-abortion base. Abortion was a headline issue at the DNC, and Trump's response to that is saying, “Well, I guess I'm going to alienate my base.” He's not getting Kamala’s base.

You said you have not received any assurance from Trump that he will substantively help the anti-abortion movement in office. Have you sought those assurances from his campaign?

In my personal capacity, I've reached out to both campaigns, but I've certainly reached out to the Trump campaign. 

And what have you heard?

They have not told me, “Oh, we're lying with our public statements, and we're actually going to go back on our public statements and do otherwise in our administration.”

I think this is a foolish narrative to say Trump is just going to lie, say pro-abortion things, secretly somehow get the pro-abortion vote, then he's going to be in office and then he's going to do pro-life things. I don't think there's any evidence to back that up.

I think people look at his record [on overturning Roe] and extrapolate forward — but I take your points.  

If you look at the 2016 campaign, he was much more vocally pro-life than he is now, and he had more public promises to do pro-life advocacy. Now he's changed his position. And he is not only not saying pro-life things — he's actively saying he would support pro-abortion policy. That’s a very important distinction, and no amount of “Well, it’s just politics” cover up that fact. Vance has come out and said that [Trump] would veto an abortion ban, that he supports abortion pills, that he supports “reproductive rights” without clarifying what that means. [Trump] was behind the RNC platform being weakened on this, which for four decades was strong on life, and now it's been weakened.

Don’t get me wrong — I would love to see Trump coming out standing strong with life and say, “I'm going to fight for life” [with] a strong pro-life message. I would love to see him stop saying this nonsense about supporting abortion. But unfortunately, that's not the case.

What about the classic “lesser of two evils” arguments — that a Trump administration might be softer on abortion, but a Harris administration would be worse, and therefore he deserves the support of the anti-abortion movement. What's your response to that?

People will need to vote their conscience in November. We're over two months out, so there's a lot of things that can change. I think that it's the job of the pro-life movement to demand protection for pre-born lives. It is not the job of the pro-life movement to vote for President Trump.

In some cases, you can make the argument that it can be the right move to vote for the lesser of two evils. But part of our job is not to just accept whatever position we've been handed — especially from a politician who, in the past, has counted on our vote and has indicated that he is pro-life [before] changing his position. It's our job, if we want to be an effective lobbying group in any way, to demand more and to say, “If you want my vote, I need to see more from you.” This is how politics works. This is how any advocacy or movement works, whether it's gun rights or immigration rights or whatever the advocacy group is fighting for. If you will always be happy to support a candidate provided that they are just a fraction better than the next candidate, you will never achieve your goals for the group that you're fighting for.

Unfortunately, President Trump has decided to come out and say that he supports abortion pills — which account for 60 percent of all abortions — and that he would even veto an abortion ban, and he needs to get blowback for that from the pro-life community. It is not the pro-life community “suppressing the vote” — that is President Trump, choosing to suppress the pro-life vote. That is fully the decision his campaign is making.

But aren’t you in some respects suppressing the pro-life vote by calling for pro-life voters not to vote for him?  Aren't you accelerating that process?

What statement are you referring to?

You recently posted a clip of Vance on social media with the caption, “If you don't stand for pro-life principles, you don't get pro-life votes.” That seems to me like a pretty clear signal not to vote for this guy.

We’ll have to see what President Trump does, and I think that's very, very fair. I think any advocacy group or movement would say the same. It's my job. If President Trump wants to respond to that by saying, “Yeah, I don't want your vote, I'm not going to stand for pro-life principles” — that's his decision as a politician. That's not my decision.

Is there a longer-term political calculus for you — that it's better for the anti-abortion movement to withhold votes from Republicans who aren't substantively on board with the movement, even if that means electing a Democrat in the short term?

To be clear, we pro-lifers are not going to elect Kamala Harris. So the question you're asking — there's a premise in there.

I mean, not supporting him is not helping to elect him — and it's one of two people, so it's the other person.

There are other candidates running for office, and we have the ability, in many states, to do write-in candidates. This idea that you are morally responsible to vote against Kamala Harris by voting for someone like Donald Trump — I don't buy that. I think the bottom line is that it's our responsibility to advocate for the issues and the causes we believe in, and to urge candidates, if they want our vote, to stand for what is right. No one owns the pro-life vote. This is very important. No one owns the pro-life vote. The vote must be earned.

Who do you see as a viable write in candidate?

We will have to see how the next few weeks play out. I won't comment on that at this time. I truly hope that President Trump embraces the pro-life movement again. If he's politically wise, and if he wants to stand again on principle, that would be what he should do.

Why do you think Trump has changed his messaging so abruptly on the abortion question?

I think that he's getting bad advice from people close to him. That would be a guess. It’s disappointing to say, but perhaps he personally lacks principle on this issue. That’s always been a suspicion of the movement. He was pro-choice over a decade ago before entering politics, and he supported abortion. So I think that now he's just going to what may be the closest pollsters next to him, that he seems to trust for whatever reason.

You can torture data to get it to tell you any number of things, but I think it's completely false that pro-life is a losing issue. I think it completely depends on how it's presented, on who's presenting it, and of course the money involved. I know the state ballot initiatives are being trotted out as the reason why you can't be pro-life in a federal election. I think that’s garbage. We have had some landslide victories for strong pro-life executive candidates, like Florida and Texas with Gov. [Greg] Abbott and Gov. [Ron] DeSantis.

Whatever Trump is doing with the pollsters and Beltway advisers that he’s listening to — it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’s saying, “Well, I'm not going to be pro-life so I can win,” but then he might lose, because if you're not pro-life, you're not going to get the pro-life vote. And then he's saying, “It's the fault of the pro-lifers.” Well, if you had just stood for life and stood by principle here — as he did in many ways in 2016 — I think that he has a real shot.

You say he's getting bad advice from people close to him. Who are those people?

I mean, you should ask the campaign who's advising him.

But you don't have knowledge of people who have his ear on the abortion issue in particular?

I mean, I may have personal theories about why things are happening the way that they are, but I'm not inside the mind of Donald Trump.

What's your theory?

I can just say this — I think it's very foolish what he's doing. It’s politically unwise, it may cost him the election, and it's morally unprincipled as well. Right now, it’s all about turnout. If he wants to galvanize his base, he needs to stop trying to pander to Kamala Harris' base, because they're never going to vote for him anyway.

OK, but you don't want to share your theory of who's pushing him in that direction?

I'm not sure I have a theory. Maybe he's originating it. It could be any number of pollsters and Beltway consultants who are blaming pro-lifers for [losing] elections. It's ironic that they might blame pro-lifers for an election but then they need pro-life votes. They're kind of shooting themselves in the foot by blaming their own base.

What could Trump say at this point to win your support? What threshold for anti-abortion policy would he need to meet to lead you to vote for him?

I would love to see a September or October surprise where Trump comes out swinging for human life. He says that we have got to fight for human life, we will do everything in our power through the executive branch to protect the lives of innocent children. That if Congress wants to send him pro-life legislation, he will sign every single bill that passes his desk, because life has to be fought for that. That in his private capacity he will vote on the Florida amendment and vote for life. That he would reject all abortion expansion, and he will fight against the abortion industry and the political persecution of pro-lifers. These are just some of the things that I think would be very compelling if he said them to rally his base.

Lauren Windsor is not apologizing for recording her undercover conversations with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, his wife Martha-Ann Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, the progressive activist and documentarian discussed how and why she posed as a sympathetic anti-abortion activist to secure candid — and pugnacious — comments from Alito and his wife, including on the controversy surrounding the Alitos’ decision to fly politically-coded flags at their properties.

She said it was “shocking” to hear Martha-Ann Alito say she fantasized about designing a flag featuring the word “vergogna” — the Italian word for “shame” — to fly in response to LGBTQ+ pride flags. “I definitely did not see that coming,” she said.

Alito, meanwhile, raised eyebrows for his response to Windor’s question about the polarized state of American politics. “One side or the other is going to win,” Alito said on the recording. “There are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

Windsor also dismissed criticism from media ethicists who argue that she should have identified herself as a journalist and shouldn’t have secretly recorded the justices in 2023 and 2024.

“The Supreme Court is shrouded in secrecy, and they’ve really been dodging any accountability to the American public,” Windsor said. “Is it a bigger ethics problem for me to pretend like I’m a fangirl, or is it a bigger ethics problem for them to accept millions of dollars of undisclosed gifts from GOP donors?”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Were you surprised by Justice Alito’s response to your question about our polarized politics?

I was surprised that it was a departure from his response he gave to me in 2023. He was more forthcoming. Particularly at the Supreme Court level, judges exercise a very high degree of discretion, so I suspected that it would be very difficult to be able to get him to say anything newsworthy. I was really just trying to delve into whether he might give a different answer or if his thinking had evolved on it, given the level of media scrutiny he’s been under.

Why do you think he was more candid now? What could account for that change, in your mind?

It could very well be that he had the same belief when I talked to him in 2023 but he was just more guarded about it. That’s one option. It could be that he’s more aggrieved or has a bigger sense of grievance with the media, given everything over the past year. Maybe he felt like there’s a little bit greater trust since he had talked to me that one time before. It’s hard for me to say — I can’t see inside his mind.

Were you planning on going back to him to talk before the flag episode, or did you decide to do it after all the attention on the flags? 

I had planned on going back regardless of the flag, but it certainly made it more interesting when the flags incident happened.

What are the logistics of these interviews? How do you get into the events, and then how do you actually get the recordings? Are you wearing a wire or something?

I’m not going to discuss methodology on any of this, but you buy a ticket. I registered, and I was a dues-paying member.

I think many of Alito’s critics have suspected for a while that his political biases are influencing his work on the court. Do you think your conversation with him revealed something about his thinking that his critics didn’t already suspect?

I think [some] people dismiss the story as, “Well, we already thought that this was happening — we already thought that his religious or political beliefs were influencing his decision, and this just confirmed that.”

It is something new, though, because it is a verbal confirmation of his lack of impartiality when deciding these cases. If you say there’s fundamental things that can’t be compromised, what are those things?

What did you make of that comment, as well as his comment that “one side is going to win”? It’s a little bit ambiguous what he’s saying, so I wonder how you understood it.

The reason that I chose to ask about polarization is that judges are very discreet, and if I had approached him asking about Democrats and Republicans, he probably would have shut down pretty quickly, right? But talking about polarization is really shorthand for political polarization, and that’s really bound up in the political conversation about religion. I feel like it’s kind of hard to separate out the religious from the political when talking about achieving “godliness” or “godly ends.”

He said at one point, “There are differences on fundamental things that can’t be compromised.” Do you agree with him that there are genuinely irreconciled views in the country, or do you think there is a path toward pluralism and peaceful coexistence at this point?

I believe in secular democracy. I don’t think that we should be legislating morality, and in order for that to happen, there has to be a separation of church and state. I think that is a fundamental value that we should not compromise. That’s a value that is bedrock to the founding of our nation.

Do you think that the type of reporting you do strengthens that barrier? Is it putting us on a path toward some sort of reconciliation, or is it just highlighting the contradictions that are already inherent in our political system?

I fear here that we are at a crossroads in this country of whether or not we want to remain a secular democracy or whether or not we want to become a Christian theocracy. And my reporting and my role is to expose public servants who will lead us down that path so that Americans are armed with the information they need to know to make decisions to hold those folks accountable.

Your conversation with Martha-Ann Alito was the most unusual of all your conversations. At one point in the conversation, Alito repeatedly meows at a woman named “Cat.” Were you expecting what you got from her?

In the audio, you can hear that I bring up my conversation with her husband, and I was definitely trying to get further evidence of bias in [his] decision making. Was this really her flag?

Let’s be honest here: He clearly knows that she has this affinity for these flags, and he let it go and let her do it anyway, even though it’s important to have an appearance of impartiality. I’m not going to let him off the hook as, “Oh, well, those are my wife’s flags. I had nothing to do with it.” He was clearly enabling that.

I didn’t expect a lot of the other color at all. I didn’t expect the story about Robin Givhan at the Washington Post [in which Alito tangled with the Pulitzer-winning fashion critic]. I didn’t expect her to meow several times.

The thing that was most shocking was probably the thing about the “vergogna” flag and how she said that fantasizing about making flags satisfies her. I definitely did not see that coming.

What did you make of that? What do you think she is trying to signal by saying she fantasizes about flying a flag that says “shame”?

I don’t understand what is so abhorrent to her — I mean, I do understand what’s abhorrent to her about the pride flag, but it’s other people expressing who they are, and it’s their First Amendment right. But it clearly deeply affects her, because she spends a lot of time thinking about it.

Justice Roberts pushed back against some of your provocations. Were you heartened by his response?

I was heartened by his response because I was like, “OK, you know, this is great — this is someone who is an old-school, rational jurist.” But as the chief justice and someone who’s widely regarded as an institutionalist, he’s going to have much more discretion. So given that he says these things but then he allows Justices Alito and [Clarence] Thomas to act in a more brazen manner without really enforcing the appearances of propriety on the court — he’s enabling that behavior, so I have to question his sincerity.

You also brought up the leak of the Dobbs decision with Justice Alito. Why did you want to ask him about that in particular?

It’s widely suspected that he’s the person who leaked the opinion, so I was trying to gauge his reaction. And he seemed uncomfortable. That could be for any variety of reasons, but I’m not sure exactly what he was going to tell me. It was more of trying to gauge his reaction.

He looked uncomfortable? What gave you that sense?

You can tell when someone’s not comfortable talking about a subject. You know — a little fidgety and kind of looking the other way. That was over a year ago, so it’s not crystal clear, but my impression was that he wasn’t comfortable with it. But that may have also been an aggressive line of questioning. I don’t want to impute things on him that I don’t have evidence for, but it was my impression was that he was not comfortable.

In the recordings, you kept swearing and dropping F-bombs and then apologizing profusely for them. Was that a tactic?

I was only doing that with Martha-Ann. Obviously it would have been very inappropriate with the justices, and it was borderline inappropriate with her, but it was a way to show that I really care about this and am very passionate about it and I’m just so angry about what they’re doing to [her]. I felt it was a way to commiserate with her that would be a little bit more believable.

I mean, it seemed to work.

You did get some meowing out of her.

You’ve got to realize, too, that it’s at the end of a dinner, and we’ve had a couple glasses of wine.

That gets the conversation flowing.

You know…

You’ve gotten some pushback for conducting these interviews undercover, without identifying yourself as a journalist. Why do you think it’s justified to take that approach?

The Supreme Court is shrouded in secrecy, and they’ve really been dodging any accountability to the American public. They’re not going to go out and talk about what they’re doing or why, so we can’t get the answers to anything.

Is it a bigger ethics problem for me to pretend like I’m a fangirl, or is it a bigger ethics problem for them to accept millions of dollars of undisclosed gifts from GOP donors? Obviously this is what I believe, but maybe the media and others — instead of pearl-clutching — should be trying to get more answers from the court and more accountability.

Is it sort of an eye-for-an-eye equivalency in your mind? Like if they’re lying to us, it’s OK for us to deceive them?

I am not a fan of an eye-for-an-eye on things. I am a fan of accountability. I think that people who are in positions of power — if they’re going to refuse to be held accountable, then it warrants taking measures that you might not otherwise take.

Do you worry that the justices will become even more reclusive and more unwilling to answer any sort of questions now that something like this has happened? Or do you think we’re past the point where those considerations matter?

I don’t know what the marginal difference there is. They’re already not answering anything.

Was it all worth it in your mind?

Yeah. I think we have got to force a conversation about what’s at stake on the Supreme Court. We have a court that is now made up of five religious extremists and jurists, and I don’t think the average American is quite aware of the impact that’s having on the court’s decisions and how that trickles down into their everyday lives. But they’re becoming more and more aware of it as rights are being stripped away and as women are losing reproductive rights. And it’s not just abortion. Is birth control on the table?

There are many, many ways in which the Supreme Court’s decisions impact Americans’ lives, and I think the more that journalists can expose the decision-making process that goes into that, the better.

What kind of political response would you like to see?

The appropriate political response is holding congressional investigations. Let’s get the evidence, and let’s hear what they have to say about these various breaches, and then take appropriate remedies as need be. I’m not going to say that so-and-so will be impeached, but there have to be consequences. I don’t think the founders ever intended for us to just have a rogue court that’s not accountable to the American public.

Do you think your reporting will persuade anyone who’s on the fence about the court’s impartiality? Or have people just made up their minds, and this just confirms one side’s view and entrenches the other?

The country is polarized, but people can change their mind with new information. I feel like I do my part when I give people more information. That’s really all I can do, is make sure that the information gets out in the world and then people can do what they want with it. But beyond that, I can only do what I can do.