This is Logan Sekulow with breaking news.
President Biden calls for the end of the filibuster specifically to codify Roe. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.
Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. An interesting morning to say the least as we are talking about a very specific subject. Obviously we know less than a week ago Roe versus Wade was overturned by the United States Supreme Court. Everyone celebrated victory for the first time in decades, 50 years nearly. You had the overturning of a law that a lot of people in the pro-life movement spent their whole lives thinking they'd never see and they saw it.
But guess what? The sneaky Democrats are at it again and this time it's not just Senate, not just random Congressmen, Congresspeople. It's the President of the United States who went on the record in a rare press conference, not even in our country, not even on our soil, to say essentially that they're willing to do whatever, including cheating, to make sure that abortion rights become specifically codified into law because they're going to supersede the Supreme Court of the United States.
That is what's happening. If you don't believe me, let's hear from the President himself, Joe Biden. The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States, an overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy. I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law and the way to do that is to make sure the Congress votes to do that. And if the filibuster gets in the way, it's like voting rights, it should be, we provide an exception for this, require an exception to the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court's decision. So to deal with the Supreme Court's decision, we're going to throw out the filibuster to try to get this through and it's simply, one, thankfully, Than, not that easy as there aren't the votes just quite yet, but that can easily happen.
And look, this is a real threat that we can't just ignore and pretend isn't real. This is a problem if they decide to, just for this one moment, to just throw out the precedent of the filibuster to, because they feel like, you know, other things, not important enough, but for this, for the taking of human life, we feel like we got to do it. Yeah, Logan, this is something that we warned about even before the decision in Dobbs came down. This is something that Democrats in Washington, D.C. have been telegraphing for some time now. There is a bill called the Women's Health Protection Act that would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law and, Logan, it would go a lot further than that. We can get into some of these details later, maybe, but it would also eviscerate all state protections for life, both that have already passed and in the future. Logan, they've passed that in the United States House and they've tried to pass it twice in the United States Senate and failed. I will tell you this, we told you, we told listeners that if Dobbs went the right way, they would come back, they would try to change the filibuster, they would either try to change it outright or they would try to pass this carve out. You know, say this issue is just too big for a filibuster to carry and then they would try to codify Roe, but Logan, you're right, we have to start here.
Something the President is not saying. Currently in the United States Senate, they don't even have a simple majority. The filibuster is not blocking this. They only have 49 senators in favor of ending the filibuster and, Logan, when they took this vote just a couple of weeks ago, only 46 senators voted in favor of codifying Roe.
There were another three who weren't there, but even that, Logan, I was pretty good in math growing up, that's 49. That is not a simple majority out of 100 senators. But razor thin margins, Will, as we head into midterm elections, this is where the midterms are going to have major, major consequences and we can't let up because just because there's a big win on the Supreme Court, clearly they're going to do whatever they want to potentially end their decision. That's right.
And whether it be cheating by going against the rules that are established in the Senate or whether it is going on towards November and trying to flip a few seats in the Senate just to get it over the finish line, we'll see what they do as the days come down. Hey, we're going to take your phone calls. I want to hear from you today.
It's me, Will, Thanh. We're going to be talking all about this, as well as some of the other Supreme Court decisions you may have seen today, whether that's the EPA ruling or the Remain in Mexico ruling. We're going to talk about both of those coming up. If you have a question or comment, 1-800-684-3110.
That's 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard on the air. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secular. We are seeing right now, by the way, the swearing in by Chief Justice Roberts of the new Justice Brown that will be coming.
And that's an interesting moment when all of this is breaking. You have a new Supreme Court justice coming in. And what is bizarre, in the same moment, you have the President of the United States saying, we need to supersede the Supreme Court of the United States.
That's not good enough for us. You ruled in a way we don't agree with. And by we, we mean this specific administration.
And by the way, by we, I don't even really mean me. Because if you don't remember, back before I decided I was going to become the President, I was a pretty moderate, safe, legal, rare kind of guy. But before that, I was someone pulling up the Creed and Hyde Amendment. This was not the most ultimate pro-choice candidate.
This was not putting an AOC on the bill. However, we've seen that come up in the last few days of conversations happening. We've seen that Stephen Colbert had on AOC and said, you know, you're going to be 35 right before the election. And that shows you if those journalists, and this is the interesting part, is they're saying, you know, he's going to be running for reelection. He's hoping to run for reelection. Have you ever had a presidency in your lifetime where you've heard this many times, the President get asked, are you going to run again? And not even two full years in.
He's a year and a half into his presidency at this point. Are you still thinking about running again? Because I don't know if you know about this. It's not going well. It's not going well.
People don't seem to be too thrilled with you. So now he's going to pull a fast one. Again, a Supreme Court justice is being sworn in. We now have this from President Biden saying it's time to end the filibuster. Look, just for this.
Just for this. Just when I find it convenient. Just when I would like to cheat the rule of law. Just when I would like to change things for our own self, for what we agree with. Because guess what? You know what happens if things flip? They're going to want that filibuster.
And it just happens over and over and over again. They're not afraid to do anything when it comes to threatening any part of their feelings or their emotions that go in beyond the rule of law. Again, as you've just seen, only a week later from that decision, now Justice Jackson, part of the court. We have a day where you have the President of the United States saying forget about the Supreme Court.
You have the Vice President saying and tweeting out, I believe this morning, I'll have to pull up the exact tweet, but essentially saying it's time. We've got to skip the filibuster. We've got to codify Roe.
They go, we have to codify. This is from the official. Now, this isn't even from the Kamala Harris account. This is from the at VP account saying we have to codify Roe versus Wade into law. If the filibuster gets in the way, the Senate needs to make an exception to get this done.
As Thanh said in DC, it's simply not that easy. The votes currently aren't there. However, pressure could push a lot of these people to switch, and you're talking about there's not one or two votes.
We're not talking about there's 20. That is why these midterms, and Thanh, you gave us a whole list, that's why these midterms are maybe more important specifically to the causes that we support, are maybe the most important midterms of our life. Yeah, one or two votes in the United States Senate. Logan could flip both of these.
I mean, you're exactly right. It is a razor-thin majority for both of these. I don't want to get too in the weeds here, but I do really want our listeners to pay attention to this because it's not just as simple as having to convince one senator to switch his or her vote on the filibuster or on codifying Roe. Logan, there are a lot of procedural shenanigans, I would call them, that Leader Schumer could use. He's going to have to get to 50 votes twice.
Let's put it very simply. He's going to have to get to 50 votes to create some sort of change to the filibuster. Then he's going to have to get to 50 votes to make some kind of change to codify Roe or to push back on a state's authority to regulate.
But here's the thing, Logan. He doesn't need the same 50 votes on each of those. So he can convince a certain set of 50 senators to vote one way on the filibuster, and then he says, OK, a couple of you can have a free pass to vote the other way when it comes to making the changes on Roe.
I'll use a different 50 votes to get there to make those changes. And you can try to get political cover that way. So I say all that, Logan, to say we cannot look away from the danger of this potential. The United States Senate, I've seen it before.
This can happen. And you're right, Logan. There are 20 Republican seats that are up for defense this fall. If only a couple of them go Leader Schumer's way, all of a sudden this math gets a whole lot easier for him. And Logan, one thing that really bothered me about the way that President Biden put this forward today is that this wasn't from his press secretary in the White House briefing room on any given weekday headed into a July 4th holiday. No, these are the words of President Biden himself in a rare press conference.
He doesn't do a lot of them. You know why? Maybe you even heard this press conference.
We had to do some editing so you could even listen to it. But this was also in Madrid, Spain, at the tail end of this NATO meeting that he's been at. He decided to rebuke the United States Supreme Court. And I'm going to play by one because it shows that he wasn't just talking to a domestic audience. He was talking to a global audience about an institution within our Constitution, within our U.S. government, a co-equal branch of that government, the U.S. Supreme Court. And he calls it destabilizing. That doesn't mean just for within the United States. He's talking on a global stage. He's saying it's destabilizing to the world. One of our three co-equal branches of government. Listen, it's kind of scary.
Play by one. The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States, an overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy. We've been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights, and it is a mistake, in my view, for the Supreme Court to do what it did. Yeah, it is a wild time to see something like this happen. It's not a shocking thing. They're going to try to find any way to try to rally people up heading into an election season.
We've got people on the phones, 1-800-684-3110. A lot of people are concerned because if this happens and they're able to do this and supersede the Supreme Court, what does that mean? If you're liberals out there who are listening, what does that mean for you if something that you feel so passionate about eventually could just get switched and codified? And don't worry about it.
It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court has to say. Let's go to Tim in California. He's calling on Line 1. Tim, you're on the air.
Thank you for taking my call. Is it constitutional for Joe Biden to try to get – he wants to get rid of the filibuster so Roe can be codified? I thought Roe was done away with when it was found unconstitutional. Yeah, you'd think that, Tim. You'd think it would be. It was ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, but the President can step in. So this is a big question here.
Big conversation, yeah. The lawyers at the ACLJ have been looking at, even since the leak of the draft opinion, one, the constitutionality of the filibuster, that's within the Senate's own rules so that there's no issue of him saying, I want the Senate to do this. They don't have to do it, but they get to make up their own rules. But the other aspect of what he's asking is, since the Supreme Court did do away with it, and the way the ruling reads when it comes from Justice Alito is – Yeah, essentially saying there's not a constitutional right. It goes back to the states, and now it's who controls the states. And so therefore there will be a question, and especially if the Democrats are upset about the way this Supreme Court is made up, I don't know that it's necessarily the most prudent way for them to go into this is to try to do something at the federal level, because there is an argument to be made that the way that the ruling came down, because it's not found within the Constitution, does Congress have a place to actually make law based on that, or is this a state's issue? So if they are to get forward, I personally believe that there will be a challenge very quickly by states saying, hey, the Supreme Court just said this is ours.
But don't let up, people. If you understand this, you're seeing it now play out, as a lot of us have, and as THAN in Washington, D.C. has seen it play out, it's never simple. It's never a – well, not never. I won't say never, but when there's issues like this, when a Supreme Court decision like this happens, you'd think sort of the end of the story. Now it goes back to the states, as the Supreme Court ruled. But THAN, kicking and screaming, they will not go away. Yeah, and I would say it's very rarely simple in Washington, D.C., Logan.
I think that's probably fair to say, and I will say this as well. I think it would be imprudent for Democrats in the United States Senate to go down this track, but prudence does not often guide these decisions, Logan, and they really seem committed to going down this track to me. And look, I mean, this is part of the problem that you get when you get a Supreme Court that made up out of whole cloth this constitutional right. This was never enshrined in the Constitution. It was never in statutory law, and I think that's the distinction that maybe our caller needs to understand here. This would actually be an effort to take the principles of Roe that were really first created by the Supreme Court and actually write them into federal law.
So I agree with Logan – with Will. There's a strong argument to be made that that is not constitutional, but that would have to be challenged. That was not what Roe addressed. Roe addressed a Supreme Court decision.
This would be actually writing it into federal law, and then that law would have to be challenged. It's wild time. We're going to keep going. We're going to keep talking about this. We're also going to talk about the other Supreme Court decisions that came down this morning, the last of the term.
And obviously, we just saw a new Supreme Court justice join the court as of just a few minutes ago. So with that, we're going to discuss not only this challenge to a Supreme Court decision as they're calling for the end of the filibuster to codify Roe into law, even though it was just ruled unconstitutional, but it could be potentially codified into law. We're also going to talk about the EPA ruling. We're going to talk a little bit about the Made in Mexico ruling, what it actually means.
Just like a lot of these, you kind of have to go in the weeds to understand who won, who lost, who lost, and how that works. So we're going to get into that as well. We do have some phone lines open at 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secula.
We will be taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. Will, we wanted to give a quick update. Also, obviously we're talking about the Senate. We're talking about calling for the codification of Roe. We're talking about them ending the filibuster temporarily just for this, just because this matters more than everything else. We also don't want to forget about what's happening on the state level and in Kentucky.
You may have heard the show yesterday. We talked about that. There has been a lot going on in the state of Kentucky, whether their trigger laws were going to go into place and what's happening. We have some updates.
That's right. We had Frank Mannion on this week to give us kind of an update because we knew that the ACLU, along with Planned Parenthood, were suing the state of Kentucky. Kentucky, the weirdest state. If you're listening right now, the weirdest state because, you know, a traditionally conservative state, but always this weird case of a Democrat governor and a Republican attorney general, then that flips.
And the attorney general is constantly suing the governor no matter who is in power. It's an odd situation in Kentucky always, but not necessarily the best news, but we have some news. So that's right. So Frank Mannion gave us an update that the court, he was at the courthouse yesterday, this morning granted a temporary restraining order against the Kentucky trigger law. So that would be a law that if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade would go into effect, which would limit the abortion industry within the state of Kentucky. And so this morning, the judge out of Louisville did give a TRO, temporary restraining order, against the trigger law.
So that is a loss there. The preliminary injunction hearings will start next week. But the ACLJ attorneys, as well as our folks over at ACLJ Action, are already engaging with this, already having these communications within the state. And we will be engaging and fighting this in Kentucky to hopefully get a positive outcome and get that trigger law into effect. Yeah, it goes down to the state level, as we said, as Roe overturning Roe would do, brought it to the states. So that's what's happening in Kentucky, maybe happening in your state. There's about a quarter of the states that have these 20 plus states. I believe they have some kind of law that is going to go into place, either already has or in the next 30 days.
Like the state of Tennessee, it went to immediately to a shorter window and then in 30 days or less goes into a even stricter law. But we're getting a full 50 state review. That is something that we've been working on right now through the ACLJ of each state and what's happening.
Assuming they don't get to in the filibuster, codify Roe real quick and really throw everything out the window, which would be just a horrible shame and another really big blemish in the American world. But for this, we do have this project going on right now. Yeah, Logan, I was actually reviewing this right before coming down to being on air. Our legal team has been hard at work on this really for months now, Logan.
And I know it can be confusing for people to now look at this sort of patchwork across 50 states of life laws that exist. So what we've done is we've compiled a snapshot of what that looks like across all 50 states at the moment that Dobbs came down and therefore Roe fell. Now, obviously, as Will was just reporting, this is going to change rapidly, Logan. So there's going to be moving parts on this for weeks and months ahead.
But we wanted to give people a snapshot of what that looked like all across the country at the moment that Dobbs fell. And so that's actually going to post at ACLJ.org tomorrow. We're also going to provide people with an opportunity to stand with us as we go all across the country defending these new state laws and then also trying to beat back some of the states that are actually going to try to do similar to what we talked about on the federal level, Logan. They're going to try to enshrine the right to abortion either in their constitutions or in their state law. So we'll be playing defense on that as well. But people should look for that tomorrow at ACLJ.org. It'll be a great way to get up to speed at where things are in your state.
And that kicks off our July and our go kick off our matching challenge. So make sure you stay tuned on there and make sure you check out ACLJ.org. I say it out here a lot whenever I have the opportunity to host or be a part of the broadcast. So I'm going to take a second of your time talking about this at ACLJ.org. It's not just a great place to support the work we do here legally or the support that the media operation that we have here, which, as you can imagine, if you're listening or watching us right now, you know there are so many people in so many positions. And so much work that gets done to get all of this done for you each and every day.
But on our website at ACLJ.org or on our social media platforms or on all the different outlets, we have the ACLJ app. These are things that get talked about that much. The secular podcast, new podcast that will be coming very soon. There's a lot happening.
New films, new documentaries, new projects that are coming, new partnerships that are coming. Go to ACLJ.org and just spend some time looking at the incredible content, whether that is from people like my dad and my brother, Jay and Jordan Sekulow, or people like Mike Pompeo, Rick Grenell, people that you hear on this show, some people you don't hear on this show. Because we have such a deep roster of incredible people who contribute to this broadcast, to this organization, to daily videos, radio. You can obviously get involved, sign petitions. You can get so deeply involved. And of course, if you need legal help and it's within our purview of what we do at the ACLJ, all of that is because of the support of people who support the ACLJ.
Because none of that gets charged to the clients. And that's a great thing that we offer here at the ACLJ. And you can find out so much more on our website, on our app, on our social media platforms. So get engaged in what we're doing here. It's not just a great place to hear a radio show every day or to sign a petition or to make a donation.
There is new pieces, new articles, deep, interesting pieces that could put up each and every day. That's right. And let's go to a caller here. We have Johanna calling on line two from California.
Johanna, you're on the air. Thank you for taking my call. I have a question. I do think I heard you correctly. They appointed a new Supreme Court justice on the Supreme Court to add to the original nine.
No, no, no. I'm going to clarify that. Today, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson was it was the end of the term.
Right. So the end of the term happened. Justice retired. Justice Breyer retired and was replaced. So this was not a tenth justice.
I apologize if that was confusing. But today, all of that switched. And as we were on the air, I just thought it was very pertinent, very interesting that as we were on air talking about superseding the Supreme Court of the United States, you had President Biden's pick being replacing Breyer happening at that moment, just hours after the same day. Confirmation hearings were they were months ago, so it did feel like you were repeating history almost for a minute. His retirement was always going to take place today at the end of the term. Today, we didn't know when the end of the term was, but the end of the term.
So no, I'm sorry if that was some confusion. I just thought it was an interesting almost bit of trivia that as the President was on mic saying we need to essentially overthrow the Supreme Court's decision. He's destabilizing. In the moment, he was like, oh, but my pick goes in today.
So pretty I thought it was an interesting fun fact. We're going to keep talking about this and talking about some of the other Supreme Court decisions. We head into the back half hour of the show. So, you know, for a lot of you, if you're listening over the air on the radio, some of you only get the first half hour. Maybe you get the second half hour later.
Maybe you don't get the second half hour at all. There are a lot of ways that you can get it right now if you're listening to this when we're doing this live. We are live for an additional half hour on social media platforms on a lot of radio stations as well. Social media platforms, Facebook, YouTube, Rumble. We are there on aclj.org.
Maybe the easiest. Just go to aclj.org. You can find us broadcasting there live right now. So make sure you tune in because we got the second half hour and we're going to move into some other topics. We're also going to take some more calls at 1-800-684-3110. So if you think you lose us here, you don't.
If you do have to step away now, you can catch up. The show is broadcast not only live. We put the show on the secular podcast. You can find it all on again on our social media platforms. And you can find that pretty much immediately after the show is over on the secular podcast feed gets uploaded pretty much immediately. And you can find it broadcasting live again for the next half hour.
I will be taking your phone calls. I want to hear more from you when you hear something like this, when you hear that the Supreme Court of the United States had maybe their biggest ruling and overturning Roe versus Wade in our lifetime. To less than a week later, having the President of the United States say, yeah, we need to just do away with that. Do away with the filibuster. Let's codify Roe into law. That thing that the Supreme Court of the United States just said was unconstitutional.
How does that make you feel as an American voter? Give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. We will be right back. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life changing work. Become a member today.
ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. This is Logan Sekulow to just reset where we're at right now. We obviously were talking about the fact that the President went on the record saying we need to not only end the filibuster, but specifically just for this moment in the filibuster, take a temporary pause on the filibuster so they can codify Roe into law, superseding what has happened at the Supreme Court of the United States under a week ago.
But that's just where it starts. In this segment, we're going to talk a little bit about what's happening in a couple other cases that came out today. One involving immigration, the Remain in Mexico policy, and the other one in the EPA. So two top things that we know you're interested in. We're going to break down those in the upcoming segments. I do want to quickly take some of these phone calls because people have been calling specifically about the life issue. Before we move on, I want to take some calls about that. And if you still are on hold about life, we're still going to get to our best, at least. Let's go to Jeff. He's calling in the great state of Tennessee. Jeff, you're on the air.
Hi, thanks for having me on. So I feel like I'm an average person that is evaluating the whole thing going on with the Roe being overturned. So give me a second just to lay out the context of my question. Are there any states that are re-legislating abortion law at their state level since this happened?
Because I think that would be the best way to go about what we're going through right now. And then the reason I say that is trigger laws were probably passed under different circumstances in different contexts, maybe simply for political purposes. But we need to know where our state legislators actually stand with regards to abortion. And again, I am against it, but I am very much I very much think the Supreme Court's decision was a victory for liberty. But we need to see where the state legislators really stand and we can use that to judge our votes in the future.
Well, and Jeff, you do bring up a lot of good points. And many of these trigger laws weren't necessarily for political purposes. They were knowing that the decision in Dobbs would be coming. So when the case out of Mississippi was taken up, that's the Dobbs case.
Dobbs was the health administrator there. So that's why his name gets attached to it in perpetuity. But a lot of the states knew this was coming. So they knew there was a potential that these laws would be in effect.
That's why they're called trigger laws. If the Supreme Court went in their favor, they would be triggered into effect. So we also saw the reverse of that from the left in states like New York and California. Maryland has is trying to get something through as well, where it's trying to expand the abortion industry. We know in New York up until the point of birth, remember in Virginia when Governor Northam had the famous, we will let the baby be born and then we'll make a decision line that was outrageous to so many people. That was all in this context, knowing that the Supreme Court was likely going to be taking up some sort of case like this and people getting ready so that it wasn't all of a sudden this this cloud of confusion. But that states already had in place where they thought the state law should be as they approach something where there's no longer the precedent from the Supreme Court. So in a sense, Jeff, they've already been doing that for years now, leading up to this, knowing that this was a big moment. Either it was going to be affirmed for probably the final time after Casey or it would be overturned, which is what we ended up seeing.
Interesting. And we've had this conversation and this debate over the years. We're involved in a lot of those cases and those laws that get passed. And I was kind of always in the room going, yeah, but there's still Roe. So if there's still Roe, what's the point of some of this? Honestly, as much as I hoped for the day when Roe was overturned, I never thought I'd see it.
I never thought in my lifetime I'd see it. I never thought we'd have a Supreme Court that would do it. So a lot of times I was in the background going, but what is this random new law or this heartbeat bill as much as I'm for it? What does it actually mean when Roe is still the law on the land?
Well, here's what happens. A lot of those were passed fairly recently, like what's happening in a lot of these states and in the Dakotas and Tennessee and other areas. So Will's right. Some of this stuff has been happening and anticipation for the overturning of Roe. In the next segment, we're going to take your calls. We're also going to do our best to dive into the other Supreme Court cases. Obviously, Roe dominates the conversation, but we're going to try to jump in here, talk about the EPA, talk about Remain in Mexico.
Be right back. Welcome back to Secula. Let's jump in and take some calls. A lot of you have called in. We will take some more calls as well. 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Royce.
He's calling Line 1, South Dakota. You're on the air. Hello. Hello.
Hello. I want to get my my opinion on Roe Roe versus way. And I am happy that the Supreme Court did what they did.
And us believers in all over the all over America, we've been believing that this is going to happen. OK. But I want to give my opinion on about the President.
OK. The President of the United States should never step in and tell state. You know, like tell South Dakota what to do and how we should do abortions, allow abortion.
OK. Yeah. No, you don't think the President should be jumping in on state laws as now it's been ruled? The roads unconstitutional does not provide a constitutional right to an abortion.
Now it goes back to the states. Well, and that's exactly what the President is trying to stay out of instead of going and trying to fight each individual state law. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to have the attorney general, Merrick Garland, try to do that at some point. But that's why he's trying to push for a federal codification of Roe. He's trying to make the federal law. And this wouldn't be an edict.
This wouldn't be an executive action. He's calling on Congress to make a law and to pass it so that he can sign it to. And I think this they are engaging in a little bit of misinformation.
That's their favorite term. They keep saying and the President himself with his tweet and his statement was that we need to codify Roe versus Wade into law. That's not what they're trying to do. Don't let them tell you that they're trying to codify Roe versus Wade. The Supreme Court decision, what they are actually trying to do is go way beyond what Roe versus Wade set into into practice. There was the viability line, which was often criticized that came out of Roe versus Wade, of, you know, setting the limits of where abortion could happen at what stage in development. The federal legislation wants to do away with that completely and have federally abortion up until birth.
It wants to get rid of any it wants. It does want to supersede the states that have put in protections or limitations or regulations regarding abortion. So this is not just as simple as we want to take what the the decision of Roe versus Wade was drafted in legislative jargon and try to put that forward as law. They're trying to do that so that they think they can get in polling data a good amount of the country to support that as far as it goes. But it's not that it is much more extreme than just codifying Roe versus Wade into law, which would be extreme in and of itself.
Yeah, extreme, as you said, and a political tool to hopefully rile people up for the upcoming midterms as well. So that's something that we need to look into. Now, I want to take a second away from Roe to talk about the last decisions that came down this morning. Will, it's there at least hot button topics, right?
There are issues that I know a lot of our audience care about, maybe not quite to the level of life because what's really more important. But you have ruling coming down about the EPA and about immigration. So let's first start with the EPA, maybe break down what happened.
Right. So this was West Virginia versus the Environmental Protection Agency. This was one of two that we were waiting to get a result on. This actually was an opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, but it was a six to three decision. So all of the conservative block with Chief Justice Roberts.
And then you have the three dissents from Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Breyer. And what it essentially was at stake was the EPA, some of the regulations went much further than West Virginia thought should have been OK with under the way it was written under legislative text. This is the best way to break it down because it gets really technical when it comes to Congress and the regulatory making. This is a Politico headline. It says the Supreme Court handcuffs Biden on a major climate rule.
This is why this is important to our listeners. The Supreme Court limited the authority of what they call the regulatory state or administrative state. It's these agencies like the EPA, the even the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FDA, all of these administrative agencies that fall under the executive branch that make a lot of these rules that impact our lives that aren't federal law.
It's not coming from Congress. They're taking Congress's laws and making rules on it. This greatly limits the authority. So one thing we've been concerned about is whether, say, the EPA could try to get rules through the non-legislative process that would effectively create the Green New Deal by giving things that are mandated as far as the clean energy or the way you get your electricity or the gasoline. And this limits their authority. So if they try to do an end around, whether with the IRS with targeting people or the EPA with trying to get the Green New Deal, it limits their ability because the Supreme Court is saying that they only have a limited authority in that rulemaking process.
So maybe you could touch on this, too. So it's not necessarily just an EPA regulation win. This is a win for limited government, essentially. Yeah, Logan, I mean, I know this gets a little bit technical. This is a great ruling.
It really is. This is a great ruling because it says that on questions, major questions. So things that like climate change, things that would be significant changes to policy. It was a question of whether or not the executive branch could really act on their own, really act without the people's legislature writing the laws in the first place. And the opinion clearly says no.
So, yes, Will's correct. The most immediate impact is on initiatives tied inside the Green New Deal. And I think that in itself is terrific, Logan, because this administration was inclined to do it. But let me just tell you, from a D.C. perspective, both parties do this. The administrations try to enact law that is probably beyond their statutory authority and they try to get away with it. This ruling is going to do a lot to curtail it.
So it's not going to get the attention of Dobbs. But, Logan, I would tell you, this is one of the best decisions of this term. And this even goes to the book your dad wrote, Undemocratic, was about a lot of these things these agencies were doing. And this really helps with some of the problems that we saw. But, Than, I have a question for you because where my mind immediately goes, especially with what we're talking about today, we know that Xavier Becerra was trying to push from the Department of Health and Human Services saying, hey, I'm going to try to do a lot of rulemaking here to expand abortion rights under the federal government without going through the legislative process. Do you think that this win against the EPA could, in fact, have positive ramifications against something that Xavier Becerra would try to do? I love that your mind goes there, Will. Congratulations.
That's excellent. Yeah, I mean, I can think of so many rules where this is going to be one of the decisions that when we make comments on behalf of our members, we're going to cite this decision, Will. We're going to cite the fact that the Supreme Court has now ruled very clearly that there has to be a clear statutory delegation from the Congress if the executive branch is going to rule on a certain area. So I think it applies to that area. I think it applies to things inside the Treasury Department, at the IRS, the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, really all down the line, Will. This is going to be a ruling where we can point back to it and say unless you can point to a specific delegation authority that the United States Congress gave you, you can't go there.
Yeah, we only will have a couple minutes before we end this segment. I also wanted to touch on the remain in Mexico ruling that came out because where this one is a big win, this one is a little bit more gray. That's right. So this was essentially when President Biden came into office and tried to get rid of anything that President Trump had put into place. One of them was what is called the remain in Mexico policy. More officially, it's called the migrant protection protocols. They tried to do away with this. This was when an asylum seeker got here. Instead of remaining in custody in the United States or being released on bond into the United States to come back for a asylum hearing, they were removed from the country, put into Mexico.
And it was a very the entire point was to be more safe, also to be able to keep track. And that was what the Trump administration did. Biden administration tried to get away with it. Texas sued the Biden administration, saying you didn't do this through the correct processes. It was outside of law. It was on the face of it.
It was a loss. It was a five four decision where the chief justice wrote the decision and Brett Kavanaugh joined on that. I don't think this one has as big of an implication because they could have gone through even just the standard rulemaking process, probably. And and it would have gotten rid of the rule a lot quicker than having to wait for the court to decide.
But it does. Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, said in general, when there is insufficient detention capacity, so they don't have enough room at the border on our side, both parole option and the return to Mexico option are legally permissible options. They deferred to the executive branch to have a lot more authority on the immigration stance. In the future, though, while it's a loss today, could help us with a conservative President being able to get in, try to undo some of the really bad policy we're seeing at the border from the Biden administration.
If then a more liberal state like California tried to sue and say, hey, you can't undo what President Biden did. So there is a little bit of wiggle room, but on the face, as far as the remain in Mexico policy, not a victory for that today. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to be taking some phone calls coming up in the next segment. It's our last segment of the day in the next one. We want to hear from you. I have a couple of people on hold. I got a couple lines up. So right now, if you want to hear your voice on the air, this is the time. Have your voice heard to millions of people?
That's at one eight hundred six eight four three one one zero. We could touch on any of the topics that we talked about today, whether that's the two Supreme Court rulings we talked about this segment or, of course, President Biden said do away with the filibuster for a second. Let's codify Roe and maybe not even codify Roe. Let's give you a more extreme abortion rights law. Give us a call.
One eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten. Last segment of Sekulow for the day. We'll be back tomorrow, but you can give us a call right now. I'd love to hear from you tomorrow. We're going to be joined by some great guests. We're going to talk a lot about a lot of different topics.
What's going on in Israel? And I've had some comments saying, hey, looks like there was some sort of victory in the Ben and Jerry's front. We're going to talk about that.
It seems like a silly topic, but we know there was quite a loss of the BDS movement. So we'll take that tomorrow. We'll talk a lot about that. We're also going to have Rick Grenell is going to be on tomorrow.
Yeah, we'll have Ambassador Grenell and former director of national intelligence. So tune in tomorrow. We've got a lot more to talk about, but I wanted to turn the microphone over to you. I want to hear from you. One eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten to have your voice heard on the air. Let's start off with some phone calls. Jim's calling in New York. And Jim, you've been on hold for a while. I appreciate it.
Go ahead. Well, again, thanks for taking my call and thank you for everything that ACLJ does for the full life movement. My question is, according to the Ninth Amendment, the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution shall not be construed to deny others that are retained by the people. Now, I would presume that those rights would include the right to life. That's certain and self-evident in the Declaration of Independence and comes from a higher authority, our creator. Why isn't it law of the land?
Sure, Bill or Jim. And we get into this a lot. And these are very specific questions that certainly the left doesn't even want to consider when it comes to these. What is life? Where does life begin? That always is a discussion. And I feel like we've gone past that. We've gotten past that in terms of the legality of abortion rights, of when life begins, when it doesn't begin. As we've always said, technology was always going to be on the side of life. So those who claim still, and I've seen it now, they've returned a little bit to the clump of cell argument, which has been odd when we all, a lot of us now have seen it firsthand. I got into a large debate last night on Facebook, which is where you get large debates, discussing with people and having different points of view.
Some still go back to that. And yes, sure, the Bill of Rights says protect all life, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, all those things. But it's not that simple specifically when it comes to people who are aggressively pro-choice. Well, and part of Justice Alito's decision did start to weigh into some of those. It didn't go fully to the personhood declaration by the court, but it did get into that there are competing rights at stake within this decision. That it's not just the rights of the mother, there are also the rights of the unborn child as well. I also heard a pro-life activist they had on CNN that CNN posted this clip as though they owned her.
I saw that as well. But I was like, that's a really good comment. She said the comment of, I'm just a clump of cells myself.
Like our bodies are made up of a clump of cells. It still doesn't get away from the argument that at some point rights attach. And that's where you have to discuss that. Yeah, she said something to the effect of like, no one denies that a unique, one of a kind unique genetic code is created at conception. Right. Like that's just part of what's happening now.
And it's a little bit harder. Look, I think a lot of people start conflating faith in your views on abortion. And I think that should obviously play a part. And my pro-life views certainly are dictated at least, I would say at least this. Before I was a father, were maybe dictated by my faith.
However, as a father who went through high-risk pregnancy with my wife or wife through high-risk pregnancy, I went through it with her and was monitored week to week and ended up having premature children. My faith only placed a very small portion now into where I consider the idea of the sanctity of life because I've seen it. I've been in those hospital rooms over and over and over again. And that does change your opinion on life. And I think that happened with a lot of people when partial birth abortion became an open conversation.
People started to see what it was and that became a bit more horrifying. And a lot of people, the majority said, okay, maybe we've gone too far. Unless you're in California or New York.
Right. And that is the argument that we're seeing out again is that there are states and the party, the Democrat Party itself, wants to go that far. They want no restriction on the practice of abortion. They want restrictions on everything else that can be restricted.
Except for that. They want it to go as far as possible. They don't even want restrictions on the operating rooms and the procedure itself. They want everything to be hands off approach when it comes to these procedures. But with everything else in your life, they do want to be involved.
Yeah. And the conversation of viability, whether it's 16 weeks, 20 weeks, 25 weeks, to me, doesn't even weigh into part of the conversation at this point. Because, you know, how do you win that argument? How do you win the win as a life viable when you have a baby? They're born full term. Let's say full term baby doesn't need any medical assistance. Can that baby survive on its own?
No. I'm pretty sure my kids, maybe, maybe if we're going to be like the most gracious at like three, could start, you know, once they can fully speak and can advocate a little for themselves. But until then, I'm pretty sure they need some kind of supervision and attention and to be fed and to be kept and to be cared for and to be protected and be taken to the doctor if needed.
And all of the given medicine, all of these things happen. So viability of life is the silliest argument to me at this point, because then you're saying, well, until something can fend for itself. And with that viability question there, if you are to ignore those, ignore those responsibilities, the government's at your door immediately saying, hey, you're ignoring your responsibility. We shouldn't give them any ideas.
We've seen Northam, we've seen those things happen. We don't want to give them any ideas saying, well, maybe, maybe three is the cutoff. We don't want to say that. And look, at this point, with today's news saying we got to overturn essentially the Supreme Court's five day old decision, I wouldn't be surprised.
OK, they'll cheat and lie their way into anything they can to make sure this is protected of all things. Let's take the last few calls. We only got two minutes. Let's try to take one of them and we'll do our best to get the second. Bill in Wyoming, you're on the air quickly. All right. Thanks for taking my call.
I have one question. This decision with the Supreme Court on the EPA, is that kind of like in the area of President Obama's speech, I have a pen and I have a phone? Well, actually, the ruling relates back to the EPA rules that were under the Biden Obama Obama Biden administration. And then President Trump changed things actually to make it more narrow. And then there was a lawsuit to try to get it all clarified. So, yeah, in effect, that when President Obama was a lot more liberal with with the way that he would conduct policy. Yeah, a lot of it does go back to that era when the EPA was taking things upon themselves to go a lot further than was enumerated in the statute by Congress. So that's a good point there, Bill.
You touched right on where it did all kind of start with that lawsuit as well. All right. I'm going to have to apologize to Joseph. Unfortunately, we just ran out of time. You are on hold the last the least amount of time. So I feel the least bad, but I still feel a little bad. Five minutes is not nothing. And I feel a little bad for you to call back tomorrow early.
I'll do my best to get to you. But thank you all for listening. Thank you all for supporting the work of the ACLJ. Tomorrow starts the ACLJ matching challenge, but doesn't mean you need to not support the work. Now go to ACLJ.org. Find all the great information. Follow us on all social media platforms.
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YouTube was my... Now Truth Social, I have the most followers from me. Yeah, I don't think they get my jokes sometimes, but I like being on there. I do it.
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Whisper: medium.en / 2023-03-27 18:20:08 / 2023-03-27 18:41:27 / 21