BREAKING: DEMS Push Bill to EXPAND Supreme Court

This is Jay Sekulow breaking news. Democrats in the House pushing a bill to expand the Supreme Court, keeping you informed and engaged.

Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow. So we got to act. We got to be proactive. I'll tell you this much.

The other side would not hesitate once. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110 to do what we're about to do, which is continue to push and advocate. And I'll tell you, when I've learned over and over again, it's supporting movement organizations, those on the ground that know what is at stake. So we're going to stand here with the folks that have members, others that believe in what we're trying to do, which is expand the court.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. You're watching, you know, but if you don't, you know, that was just, you know, you get confused a lot. It's fine. All right. Anyways, you're back.

You're back. So let me tell you what's going on. So as we expected, the decision comes out in the Dobbs case. So is there any hesitation in time between when the Democrats get that decision and when they say we got to pack the court?

Yeah, about three days. So Hank Johnson, Democrat from Georgia, as well as Jerry Nadler, Democrat from New York, have proposed a bill entitled the Judiciary Act of 2021. What's interesting about this bill, we got it up on the screen for those that are watching. What's interesting about it to me anyways, is that they are now proposing, they're not just going to do, originally it was going to be 15 justices. Now they're saying, I think they say any, what are they saying, six or three now? Four. Yeah, they came up with four, which would put us at the court at 13.

So still keeping it an odd number, because they have to keep it an odd number. But realize, folks, if another, if a Republican administration did this, a conservative administration did this, the screaming would be from the rooftops, packing the court. By the way, the last time court packing was tried, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That did not work out for him so well.

That failed. But look, they're going to try to do it, Logan. That's crystal clear. Yeah, absolutely.

It's unbelievable when you really think about it. I mean, how long has it been nine justices? Oh.

I think 1869. Yeah, I was going to say it. I was going to say something like that. And all because a couple of cases don't go your way, you're going to decide to change fundamentally the way that this is ruled. And of course, the President gets to pick these four justices.

This President. The whole point of a lifetime appointment is so politics doesn't necessarily impact this in a long-term way. But of course it does. But this is a reaction to a couple of Supreme Court decisions going the wrong way. So that's what they're trying to do.

Yeah, absolutely. And of course they'll say it's because of this Dobbs decision and the radical right-wing justices that did a bad decision. But they did a great decision. The problem is they don't disagree with the justices. They disagree with the Constitution is the problem. And they're trying to get rid of the justices that are trying to actually follow the Constitution. It's also interesting, Logan, is though, this is coming to you from the same group that leaked a Supreme Court opinion.

Yeah, absolutely. The Dobbs opinion before it was down. Look, there's a lot of people who are asking one big question, which is what can be done? Can this be stopped?

How that can happen? We're going to talk about that with our Director of Government Affairs in a moment. I think in the Senate is where the stop will come in place. I'm very concerned what will happen in the House of Representatives. We'll take calls on all this, by the way.

1-800-684-3110. And we're going to fight this on Capitol Hill. But you just need to understand that this is a moment in time where, as CeCe is what you said, I think you're right. It's totally a reaction to cases going against what they want. Absolutely. It's so political. It's completely political, which is exactly what the Supreme Court should not be. So your support of the ACLJ could not be more critical than it is right now.

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We plan on taking calls on the court packing issue as well as plenty of other topics. Again, that's at 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org.

Go to the website. Make a donation. Effectively, there is another donor waiting there to match your donation. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secular. We are taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, talking about the new move to pack the Supreme Court. Hey, maybe we should flash back to President Joe Biden. But before he was President, this is back in 1983. But when this came up, because clearly, as we've said, just like Roe, just like any of these topics, nothing is new. Nothing is new in Washington, DC. It's all cyclical.

It's all in a big loop. So what did Joe Biden have to say in 1983? You know, just about 40 years ago. When President Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States.

Yeah, let's take a listen. Put in question, for an entire decade, the independence of the most significant body, including the Congress, in my view, the most significant body in this country, the Supreme Court of the United States of America. So Joe Biden. Thank you, Joe Biden. Joe Biden called it.

He is what he said. He said, court packing is a bad idea. And by the way, they're even using the term court packing. I mean, think about that for a moment.

So court packing means we're going to stack the court enough so that it basically overrides the existing term. It's a negative term. Of course it is.

It's almost a pejorative term. Like you're cheating. Well, Thanh Bennett is with us. And Thanh, let me ask you this. So we've got this legislation, H.R. 2584, adds four justices. We have Senator Ed Markey talking about in the United States Senate.

Where does it stand in the House? Well, look, Jay, I'm concerned that there's momentum building behind this. This legislation was introduced back in April, and I really think it was introduced as a placeholder for this moment that we're in now, now that the Dobbs decision has come out. You know, there are members of the House of Representatives on the Democrat side that say they have concerns about this.

But, Jay, we've seen this story before. If it were to go on the floor of the House of Representatives, I have to think it would pass. And then, of course, it would move to the United States Senate.

And at this moment, you're correct. I don't think it would pass the United States Senate at this moment. You've got people like Senator Mark Kelly, Senator Jon Tester saying that they're opposed to it. Interestingly enough, Jay, even though he's not a member of the United States Senate, I think it illustrates one of the problems that the Democrat Party has right now. Even Governor Newsom says that he's not in favor of this as recently as last year.

But, Jay, I think about the clip that Logan just played from then Senator Biden in 1983. Of course, he was correct then, and the White House press secretary reiterated that position last week. But, Jay, think about another issue that Senator Biden was good on for 40 years, the Hyde Amendment. He has recently flip-flopped on that, and it followed the same exact track where the base of his party moved ahead of him, and then that provided cover for him to move.

So, look, you can't take this for granted. And, by the way, the makeup of the Senate changes in November as well. Yeah, how do you feel, folks, about the President of the United States, if he were to get the bill, signing it and to change the Supreme Court outcomes, he simply adds more justices. I mean, you could add four. Maybe then if another conservative President wins, maybe then the next time around they decide they want to add 10.

It'll be 50. Or like in the European Court of Human Rights where they've got, or the ICC where the full chamber can be, you know, 14, 20, 30. I mean, it's just, it's such an obvious political move, Cece, because what they've done is they've done this in response to a decision that they not only don't like, they subverted the entire Supreme Court process as it was coming out, even before it was coming out.

Right. There's no doubt this is completely political. I mean, they're not even hiding that fact. Like Logan said, packing the court. They want to pack it with justices that go along with their political ideology. We need to pack it with people, and we do have it right now, with people who care about the Constitution and doing, looking at every case through the eyes of the Constitution, which this court did in Dobbs.

And there is no, there is in fact no constitutional right to abortion, but the left obviously wants there to be one created and they're willing to put the justice on the court that are willing to do that. I mean, it's such, it's an obvious political move. Now, I got concerned, Thanh, when I heard Ed Markey, the Senator from Massachusetts say he doesn't like it either, and he would basically co-sponsor this in the Senate. Yeah, you're right to be concerned specifically about Senator Markey because he also said that we need to repeal the filibuster so that we can expand the Supreme Court.

Look, you've talked about this on this broadcast many times before. This effort's not unconstitutional, Jay. The Congress can change the number on the court now.

It varied between 5 and 10 early in the 19th century. Since 1869, it's been at 9, but when you have someone like Senator Markey say he's not only willing to add justices, so if you don't like a decision, you just add more numbers until you get the requisite number, but he's also willing to change the rules and the precedent of the Senate to do it. Jay, that's how you get something like this done. Now, today, if that vote takes place, I don't think a senator like Joe Manchin goes for it, but look, if they add one or two senators come November, Jay, this could absolutely be accomplished by doing exactly what Senator Markey is proposing, circumventing the filibuster and enacting it. Yeah, Vice President Harris said they're not going to let the filibuster stand in their way.

Take a listen. We will not, and the President has been clear, we will not let the filibuster stand in our way of our most essential rights and freedoms. So this goes back to this idea of removing filibuster on legislation, here it would be adding justices to the court. Look, the Constitution does not say 9. The Constitution said judges of the Supreme Court, doesn't even call them justices in the Constitution, but that's what we call them is justices.

If the President, if they got the legislation through, do it. Yes, there's no constitutional challenge to that, but even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I don't know if we have that bite, said 9 was the right number, but what is so patently obvious here is that they are willing to politicize the court because they view the abortion decision as a political decision rather than, Cece, a constitutional one. Right, and the pro-abortion side loves to spin that abortion is the norm across the world, and this court got it right that there is no constitutional right to abortion, but guess what, there's no international right to abortion either, and the majority of countries across the world have very strict restrictions on abortion, but the pro-abortion group does not want you to know that. They want you to think it's the norm. Yeah, and interesting, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the most liberal members of the Supreme Court in the United States, when asked, is 9 the right number?

Take a listen. You mentioned before the court appearing partisan. Well, if anything would make the court appear partisan, it would be that. One side saying, when we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number of judges so we will have more people who will vote the way we want them to. So I am not at all in favor of that solution. Justice Ginsburg was absolutely correct.

9 has served the country well. Listen, there are decisions where I wish we had more conservative justices on the Supreme Court, but that's not how the political process really is designed to work, and if you start adding just based on political decisions, you've turned the court into a Congress. Yeah, then we need two Presidents.

We'll need a few other things, which, look, maybe we need to fundamentally redesign everything, but if that's the case, then we can't just start with just packing the court. No, let's go ahead and take calls. 800-684-3110. Let's go to Michelle in North Carolina. You're on the air. Hi, Michelle.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. I was just wondering, where would this eventually stop? I mean, if they make this precedent, what's to say that the next President that comes in doesn't add more? I mean, is it going to stop at 100 justices? Absolutely.

That's exactly, fan, the problem. So if the next President comes in, and let's say the Democrats add four, so they've got a majority now. So the next President comes in, and if he has control of the House and the Senate, he says, hey, team, let's do this. We need more justices, so let's add three more. That'll give us a little bit of a majority.

Yeah, the answer is it wouldn't stop, Jay. I mean, I think eventually this would be a day one activity for a new President. He'd add seats to the Supreme Court, he'd nominate the justices, and he'd work to get them confirmed. And, you know, I expect this view will probably change, Jay, but that's essentially what Governor Newsom said when he was asked about it just last week. He said he's opposed to it because then his kids would have to live with a Supreme Court that's larger than Congress.

And, Jay, it's not just about the number. I mean, what is the one thing the Supreme Court needs to uphold its duty under the Constitution? It needs the validity and the confidence of the American people. I can't think of anything that would undermine it more than both parties saying we don't like this decision, we're just going to add justices. So I really do think this is a door that if it were opened, Jay, I don't think it would be closed and you would just see a constant expansion of the court as the political cycles waded through. Well, I think we have to be realistic.

We're going to have to be on this very aggressively because, you know, you never know how the—listen, November's close, but it's still a long way away. And you don't know if they're going to try to move something, Logan, in between, which would totally politicize the court, would turn the court into a legislative body. Yeah, and unfortunately, I think there's a large part of the country that doesn't mind that. They don't mind the fact that things will get completely underwritten just to serve their own values, not understanding the damage it can make, of course, for them later on. And that's been the hardest part with dealing with people when it comes to these kind of issues is not a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Supreme Court works. Like I said, it's never an issue that comes up, very rarely, in campaigns.

The Supreme Court is largely overlooked until moments like this happen where it is a bit divisive and divides the country. And then all of a sudden it's, we have to figure out how to rewrite everything. Well, start that conversation before if you really want to have this. Don't just use it as a political tool.

If you decide you want to go from 9 to 13 or whatever it would be, how about don't do it right after a major decision happens. Make it actually look like you care, not that you're just trying to get your political way. I'll tell you this, we're coming up, we're going to talk about some major cases at the ACLJ. We have a couple of our lawyers joining us, so you're not going to want to miss that. Don't forget, folks, we're in a matching challenge campaign.

We are more than halfway through it. We're a little bit behind last year, so we could use your help if you're able. The way it works is this. If you donate $20, we get someone that matches that, so that 20 becomes 40. We encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org.

Whatever amount you're able to give, we get a matching grant for. That's at ACLJ.org. Back with more in just a moment. Hey, welcome back to the broadcast, everyone. We're going to go over some ACLJ cases, so if you're watching on our social media applications, we encourage you to share this with your friend. Christy from our office in D.C. is on, and she has got a case that we've actually gotten resolved. Christy, I want to go through the facts first, because this kind of case happens all the time. It's not getting media attention, but we do these routinely.

What happened in this particular case in Arizona? Yeah, so we wrote a letter explaining an individual's right against religious discrimination by an HOA. This individual had a small white cross in his front yard that was 3.5 feet tall. There were several other statutes and decorations in the neighborhood that were even larger than this cross, but he was told specifically that his cross was not an HOA-accepted decoration. He then went to challenge the board and was told that the cross was too tall to be a regular decoration, but was also told that it could be a display for holidays, only at Christmas and at Easter. However, the HOA handbook doesn't clearly define decorations. It doesn't give limitations on size. It's all subjective, and the approvals are on a case-by-case basis. Let me jump in here, because it's important for people to understand. This sounds really basic.

Why would this be a problem? You've got a three-foot cross, so you're not talking about Logan. You're talking about the size of a little garden statue. Yeah, a garden statue. I have a bigger bulldog in my front yard. Yeah, okay, statue.

So, you're talking about 3.5 feet. They're literally having a constitutional crisis at this homeowner's association, over a 3.5-foot small white cross. So, what did we do, Kristi? Yeah, so we wrote a letter, and we spelled out the different rights that the individual had under the HOA. I mean, we have several cases, such as Block B Fitzgerald's from the Seventh Circuit, that is saying that HOAs cannot discriminate under the HOA when they're allowing secular decorations, but not religious ones. So, here, there were other statues of angels. There was a giant bicycle display.

There were large rocks with other words on them. But yet, they were saying he couldn't have his small cross. Because it was a cross.

That was the reason they censored it. Exactly. All right, so we wrote a letter for the client, and then what happened? And then it took them several months to go back and forth in board meetings, where he kept going in, making his argument.

He was really strong, you know, advocating for himself, because that's what he wanted. But finally, they came to the decision, just on Friday, that he can have his cross in the front yard. All right, very good.

Chrissy, we appreciate that update. So, here's what happens, folks. Sometimes the local people that live in the community don't want the lawyers descending. So, what do the lawyers do? We write an information letter, basically a mini legal brief, on what the law actually is.

It's up there on the screen, and we get a result. But sometimes, we have to go to federal court. Sometimes we have to go to courts of appeals. And in this particular case, we had to go to, that I'm going to talk about right now, we've been in the Sixth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit. So, Abby Sutherland, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ, you've had a series of cases.

You've been very busy. Let's talk about the Ocala case first, the prayer case. Quickly, facts on that one and the status. I mean, I know we're still in the Court of Appeals on that.

Go ahead. So, we're before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. We presented a oral argument. There was a community crisis, right? There was. And then what happened?

There was a crime spree. City officials called for prayer in the community. Citizens organized a prayer vigil and everyone attended. The city was ensued by a group of atheists, and a lower court actually held that city officials cannot call for prayer and that chaplains cannot lead citizens in prayer.

I mean, I want you to think about that for a moment. The city's in crisis. They call for prayer. I mean, you had that horrible situation in Uvalde.

Of course, people were praying. I mean, and they criminalize, so to speak. I mean, it's civil.

They get it stopped. So, now we're at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. You've argued the case. We're waiting for a decision.

You feel pretty optimistic. I do, especially in light of the Supreme Court decisions that have come down this summer, find holding that the test is really one of tradition and history. Do you think the atheist group would take it to the Supreme Court if they lose? I think they will.

I think they might. Yeah, I think this one could be destined for the Supreme Court. Let me hop to a pro-life matter we talked about yesterday.

Go ahead, Logan. This is crazy because it feels like such a waste of time in the way the culture is right now, the way the world is right now. The fact that you would be protesting a prayer vigil.

That you didn't have to go to. Right, I'm saying just the time spent and the money spent to do this, I think most rational human beings at this point in the current state of our country and of the planet, you would say, how is this worth your time? But we have to be there, and you have to stand up against it. Because you're right, they'll take it to the Supreme Court, which is wild.

Literally. No, they'll literally take this to the Supreme Court. And then they'll pack the court, and then you pack the court, and then you lose.

Well, we just had a good decision for Coach Kennedy, and sure, they would try to undo that. I want to go to a pro-life situation. I know you covered it yesterday, but this is important, and then we'll hit one other case. These crisis pregnancy centers, folks, because I was out of town, and it is in the local news all over the country, the attack these crisis pregnancy centers are under, and Chris Wray, the FBI director who you know I've not been a real fan of, do we have that sound from him?

Okay, we don't have the sound. He said it. He said these crisis pregnancy centers are clearly subject to an attack.

They always are. When you have a win for life, and the pro-abortionists go crazy, the people that are at the front of their attack are always the crisis pregnancy centers, the pregnancy resource centers, because they're the ones that are effective and saving lives. All right, so I'm going to go back to the Court of Appeals here. The last case was handled at an HOA level. The case that Cece's talking about is a national campaign that we're involved in to get these matters handled for these crisis pregnancy centers, and we've been to the Supreme Court on those issues, by the way, in the crisis pregnancy centers a half dozen times successfully. Now, it's interesting. You've got this Vision Warriors case. Talk about that one.

We do. So, ACLJ represents numerous nonprofit ministries that find themselves subject to zoning discrimination, and fortunately, there are several federal laws that protect them from that zoning discrimination. So, we have two cases right now, one before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and one before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals right now with regards to zoning discrimination.

The egregious facts in Vision Warriors are this. They seek zoning approval from the county. They meet with zoning officials. They're very clear about what their vision and purpose is for the property. They are granted zoning approval, and then neighbors begin to complain because the neighbors find out that this ministry provides help to a vulnerable community or vulnerable members of the community. And then zoning officials respond and revoke their zoning approval.

So, we've got the Religious Land Use Protection Act. So, where is that case right now so everybody understands the nature and scope of this? You're at what court there? The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. We will finalize briefing this summer, and then likely oral arguments will be in the fall.

All right, folks. So, we have taken you from literally a homeowner's association meeting to two cases at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, both of which could end up at the Supreme Court. And Cece was talking about the crisis pregnancy centers being in a crisis, but we've offered our resources nationally to help them, by the way. We've stood with these crisis pregnancy centers for years.

I was upstairs in our office here and was signing some briefs that we filed in cases. I write donors' notes from time to time, and we've had the stack of briefs that we filed on these crisis pregnancy center cases, and the last one was about two years ago, which we won at the Supreme Court. But they keep coming. New York, there was a bombing in a clinic in Buffalo, and what do they do? Then they try to pass a law eliminating the crisis pregnancy centers. Elizabeth Warren says, shut them down. So, we've got our government affairs office on it. Our lawyers are handling it at the courts. This is serious. Your support of the ACLJ allows us to continue this fight. Logan's going to let you know what you can do right here for this matching challenge campaign. We really need your support if you're able.

If you're not able, I totally understand. Take care of your family. Take care of your needs. But if you have the resources, supporting the work of the ACLJ could not be at a better time. Yeah, in the month of July, every donation is effectively doubled by another donor waiting to make that matching donation. I know you've seen that a lot. It's something we talk about every few months. We have these special matching months.

This is one right now. Go to ACLJ.org and make that donation. It will be effectively doubled. We'll be back for a second half hour. If you don't get it on your local station, find us broadcasting live on all your favorite social media platforms and at ACLJ.org.

We'll be right back. A $50 gift becomes $20. A $50 gift becomes $100. You can make a difference in the work we do protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org.

To live in freedom. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

And now your host, Jay Sekulow. The interesting first half hour of the show, the program, we talked about this move by the Democrats. The House version is by Congressman Jerry Nadler and Hank Johnson of Georgia, Jerry Nadler of New York trying to add four justices to the Supreme Court. The Constitution doesn't specify the number of justices. So it's set by the Congress. So that's what we call court packing. FDR tried it.

He wasn't successful. Just couldn't get it through the legislature. Well, this administration may try it and they're going to use as the guise of this, of course, the decision in Dobbs. Now, at the same time, in the Senate, they've got a more difficult task. Although Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts said this is really important, and he would like to see it move forward. And the Vice President has said, and I'm going to play this again, when talking about the filibuster on this issue, take a listen.

We will not, and the President has been clear, we will not let the filibuster stand in our way of our most essential rights and freedoms. So there you have it. I mean, that's about as clear, Logan, as you can get of what they will do because they're so obsessed with the Dobbs decision. Yeah, it has become one of those situations where the rules don't matter. Any precedent doesn't matter.

Throwing out everything to try to reverse this. Look, I think this is a big concern when you hear things like codifying Roe and what that can mean. And you have midterm elections coming up and they're going to be utilizing that. And then when you go beyond that, you get to packing the court, meaning you're going to add additional Supreme Court justices, something that even Joe Biden said a number of years ago was a boneheaded idea. But now it's not. Suddenly it's not a bad idea.

I think we've heard that over and over. You've seen Joe Biden go with a more progressive front than he ever was when he was running himself. He was being a senator before he was being controlled by everyone around him. And now you have these issues where the Supreme Court, they essentially just want to add an additional group of Supreme Court justices, which of course won't be picked by you, won't be picked by the voters, won't be picked by the electorate. Four new Supreme Court justices picked by one President. And what does four do? Well, four undermines everything. Gives you 13. 13, if you add the four to the three you have, that's amazingly seven.

Seven is more than six. Thus, the majority of the Supreme Court goes from a conservative Supreme Court to a liberal Supreme Court. And then I guess the next President comes in and they're conservative. They said, well, we'll add three more because we'll get our majority back. And you've turned then, you'll have 100 justices and turn the House of Representatives turns the Supreme Court into a legislative chamber.

Yeah. And then the Supreme Court becomes parliament and without, but not elected. Unelected, right.

And no respect for separation of powers and no understanding of the role of the judiciary. This segment of the broadcast coming up, we're going to be joined by Mike Pompeo. We talked, as you know, the ACLJ, we have an office in Jerusalem and that office is active. We've been to the International Criminal Court in The Hague more than once on Israel's interests.

We handle a lot of issues globally, the boycott, divest and sanction issues. You just had the trip by President Biden to the Middle East, which really not only did it not produce anything, but can I read this headline, Will? I know we were going to save it, but can I read this headline?

This is a headline. And this is from a former Palestinian cabinet member Hassan Asfor. He said, Biden is so weak.

This is the Palestinian authorities member. Biden is so weak he could not even come up with a plan for us to reject. He then said, even Biden's predecessors employed a more just political language with regard to political solutions. Trump presented a deal, which we rejected, but at least he presented one. Biden came empty handed. He did not even offer a solution for us to reject.

Imagine that. He did not bring us an offer that we could read and reject because he does not consider you to be a force to be reckoned with. Interesting dynamic. Now, frankly, we're going to talk to Mike Pompeo about this. He knows a lot about it because he was instrumental in the Abraham Accords. And of course, as I said, we have an office in Jerusalem. We broadcast out of Jerusalem regularly. You've seen it on this broadcast. Folks, whether it's a local school district, Supreme Court in the United States or an office in Jerusalem, American Center for Law and Justice is there.

That's right. We had Rick Grenell on yesterday live from Jerusalem. So that's what we're doing here at the ACLJ. In the next segment, as you said, Mike Pompeo will be joining us to make sure you stay tuned. We'll be taking some phone calls later in the show. The lines are open right now. 1-800-684-3110. If you want to get in line, now is the time to do it. 1-800-684-3110.

Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Again, Mike Pompeo joining us next. Welcome back to Sekulow. Mike Pompeo will be joining us in just a moment here on the air live. And we are going to be taking some phone calls.

There are a couple lines open at 1-800-684-3110. We got an interesting comment about court packing that came in from Corey on Rumble. He said they can't make up their mind. They call this court illegitimate, but now they also want to pack it. Well, their view is we'll make it legitimate by packing it, which is an illegitimate way to have the court change, in our view. Now, having said that, there is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits this. This is what we got to keep understanding.

So that's where you have to be able to fight both on the judicial front and on the legislative front. These are not mutually exclusive. They're just precedent.

They're not necessarily. It was seven for a long time. It was five. So now it's been nine for a long time.

I mean, you're talking about since, you know, 140, 50 years. It served the country. But I think it's fair to understand that this is all in reaction to a Supreme Court decision that came out in favor of life. And that was enough for them to say, hey, we're going to do something. They leaked the opinion to intimidate the justices. Now, you don't hear a lot about the protests anymore.

I don't even know if they're going on it. I think they probably petered out now for the summer because it's hot in Washington, D.C., and the decision's out. It didn't change how the justices voted. But it just shows you the nature of the hostility is so high. I want to talk about when Mike Pompeo joins us what this whole little Middle East trip that the President just did because we saw progress in the Middle East in the last two years of the Trump administration in a very significant way. And that was the Abraham Accords.

It was a huge moment for our country. And it was huge because you started having allies come together, the Gulf states. These are majority Muslim countries. Jordan, Egypt. They're already signed some peace accords, but this was at a whole new level of trade. Saudi Arabia allowing Israeli flights in between Israel and Riyadh.

I mean, these are big moments. And it was interesting to me is that the Biden administration didn't really want to build on that, it seemed like. But then when they got over there, they started saying, oh, we may want to build on it.

Well, of course you want to build on it. It reshaped the Middle East. And they acted. And listen, you don't understand the Middle East unless you're there. And we've been there a lot and we have an office in Jerusalem. You've seen the broadcast from Jerusalem.

Logan, you mentioned that Rick Rinnell was there yesterday. Yeah, he was there during, I think, a CPAC Jerusalem that's happening right now. And he is over there, but yeah, was calling us from his hotel there in Jerusalem and getting work done as well. Yeah, Jeff Balibon, our senior counsel is based there now. Send us some interesting stories that we're probably going to cover in the coming days that are coming out of that office.

I mean, some really wild stuff. So, and Rick will be back on the broadcast on Thursday. I'm sure to discuss the remainder of his trip and what's all going on. Yeah. So, I mean, this is all happening simultaneously.

So again, to understand the Middle East, you have to have been there. We used to take groups there. I mean, this is the way we used to do it.

We haven't done that obviously since COVID, but hopefully one day we'll be able to do it again. We are getting a lot of calls coming in on the court packing issue. The people are very, very concerned about it.

I think a lot of comments are coming in as well. A lot of people are just concerned because it does seem like, it seems like cheating. It seems like the Democrats are like, fine, we don't get our way. I mean, you saw that reaction to when Roe was overturned because you had even the celebrities who were like, why did we even campaign for you, Joe Biden? You let Roe get overturned. And then you go, you fundamentally don't understand how the court works.

And you know, maybe that's your problem. I believe Mike Pompeo is now joining us. All right, great. So Mike, I wanted to get your, thanks for being with us. I wanted to get your take on the President's trip to the Middle East. You've done, as Secretary of State, a tremendous amount of work there. Of course, CIA director, you were involved in the Middle East too, and member of Congress. But as Secretary of State, we had this great success of the Abraham Accords. The Palestinian Authority, it's interesting, the headlines coming out of that, they're saying the former President is so weak, he could not even come up with a plan for us to reject. That was from the Palestinian Authority's leadership.

What's your assessment of the trip, first of all? It was as disastrous a trip into the Middle East by any President that I can remember in every dimension. You know, the media covered some silly things, fist bumps and, you know, the mistake he made when he used the wrong words at Yad Vashem.

Fair enough. The reason the media focused on those is because there was nothing that came from it that was good for the United States of America or for the region. The Saudis don't trust him, the Emiratis don't trust him, the Israelis have no confidence that he'll be with them, but they all watched Afghanistan.

To your point, even the Palestinian Authority basically said, we didn't get anything from this, and they're continuing to pay people to commit terror acts in Israel. It was calamitous in terms of prosperity and security in the region, and that's bad for the American people, Jay. You have an article up at ACLJ.org that says President Biden continues to disrespect our vital allies on his Middle East trip.

So what was your assessment on that? I mean, we've got our allies, and the disrespect, explain what you're talking about there. I think it's important for people to understand it. So we built with our friends, the Israelis, a relationship that was deep and strong, and we hoped lasting. We had then told them that we were going to help secure them from the threat. That threat in the Middle East comes from the Islamic Republic of Iran and that regime. And that enabled us to build out relationships between not only the United States and the Arab Gulf states, but between Israel and those states as well.

Some of them were codified in the Abraham Accords. He disrespects them by saying, no, we're still going to try and do a diplomatic solution with the Iranians who just have rejected this for decades and who continue to have as their primary mission the destruction of the nation of Israel. So it's disrespectful to our allies to say we're going to negotiate with the Iranians while saying that we're going to make the Saudis a pariah nation.

And I think we saw that on full display last week. Yeah. And I'm just curious when a lot of our listeners wonder what can even be done, what can be done in these situations to stop Iran from building and using nuclear weapon?

Yeah. They just said, Mike, that they announced that they have enough, you know, enough. They could do it. They said they're there. They could do it.

Nuclear weapon. So they have enough enriched material to do this. That's their claim. We knew they were close. They made a lot of progress these last 18 months. Look, this is a hard problem. But our theory of the case is first thing you have to do is starve them of the resources that they need.

What is that? That's the ability to trade, the ability to create wealth, to pay scientists to purchase the things that they need. And we sanction them in ways that really put pressure on the regime and slow down their capability to build up these exact nuclear programs. The second thing you have to do is you have to be prepared to engage in activities that create risk for them. We did this. I did it when I was the director working alongside Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. And then you have to be prepared to make clear that it's unacceptable for you to actually have a weapon or a weapons program and all that that portends.

I was happy. The only happy note struck was when President Biden said that he would not remove the military option from the table. And the sad part of that is I don't think anybody believes them.

I don't think anybody thinks that it's actually credible that President Biden would support Israel and the Arab nations at ensuring that Iran never got a nuclear weapon. They knew for our four years. They knew that we would.

That confidence, that trust is absolutely gone today. It was interesting. Benjamin Israeli, the famed prime minister for Great Britain, when talking about Russia in those days. But it was a lot of Middle East discussions going on.

They had the whole Eastern question. It was a big issue when he said, you know what these countries understand? Power and force.

And if you don't have power and force, you're not going to have an impact. Now, we've got the Palestinian Authority, as you mentioned, rewarding families of terrorists. Now President Biden is talking about releasing cash assets back to the Palestinian Authority. That doesn't starve them out.

It's almost rewarding them, Mike, for bad behavior. It's precisely the opposite of power and force. It's the theory that there is some carrot out there that's going to convince the Palestinian Authority to stop their terrorist ways.

You've been around this long enough to know that is simply not in the cards. And so it takes power and force. Those follow leadership.

It's not without risk. But if you are determined and resolved, you'll not only get the outcomes that you're looking for, but you will build friends and partners and allies in the region that will support the things that you know matter to the American people. You can you can begin to reduce the risk that we may have to send our kids over there again someday to fight in what's been a historically fraught region. The Biden administration has it precisely backwards. They're rewarding the Iranians. They're rewarding the Palestinian Authority. They even refused to tell Israel Israelis they had the right to defend themselves when Hamas fired rockets into Israel. Those are the kinds of mistakes.

That's the absence of power, the absence of force. And the negative implications of that are really, really important to us here in the United States. We appreciate your insight, as always. I'm going to talk to you in the coming days about China. That is a growing threat domestically, and we'll get into that. Mike, thanks for being with us.

As always, we appreciate it. Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state and senior counsel for global affairs at the American Center for Law and Justice, which lets me explain to everyone, gives us a chance to explain. Look who's on our team. The former secretary of state is a senior counsel for global affairs of the American Center for Law and Justice. You just see him on you see him on air. But what you don't see is the work he does, the writing he's doing, the advice he's giving on a whole host of issues that we're engaged in around the globe. Rick Rinnell, also he's a cabinet member.

Rick Rinnell, former director of national intelligence, also a cabinet member, part of the ACLJ team. Our international team, Logan, is as strong as any team in the country. Absolutely. We put together not only our international team, I feel this way about our entire team. We try to bring on the best of the best when it comes to everything from legal to production to our international team. So the the broadcast you get here is top notch.

The videos and the films you get here are top notch and our legal expertise as well. We can't do that without the resources. We can't do that without your support.

And if you are listening, you are able to right now. We know it's a tough time for a lot of people. If you're able to right now, we appreciate any donations you can make at ACLJ.org.

Middle of our middle of our matching challenge right now, which again means any donation you're made is doubled by another donor who is waiting to unlock their donation at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to secular. We're going to start off by taking some phone calls and we'll move to another topic. But a lot of people are calling about the court packing situations. Let's take their calls. Let's go first to Richard in Arizona. You're on the air. Hey, Richard. All right.

Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to state that I felt like our congressman and a rep should be required to take classes on the Constitution because it seems to me many have lost their way when it comes to how they define what the Constitution stands for. Well, there is divergent views on and, you know, you had the Justice Scalia model, which was this textualist originalist. What did the Constitution mean?

What do the words say? And then you had Justice Breyer, who believed the Constitution was a living document. But on the court packing issue, we need to be clear, there is nothing in the Constitution saying the number. So Congress could change the number.

And if it got to pass the House and Senate and got to a President wanting to sign it, they could sign it. Let's take one more call on this topic. Yep. Stephen's calling in Kentucky line two. You're on the air. Hey, Stephen, go ahead. You're on the air. Thanks.

Thanks for taking my call. I was just wondering, can they put into law the amount of judges on the Supreme Court? Well, here's what's interesting. Could they lower the number?

That's one question someone asked. Could they lower the number? And the truth is, it's a lifetime appointment. So once on, I think it would be unconstitutional to remove them, subject to, you know, a legitimate removal for impeachment. So the reality is they can set the number.

I don't think you can subtract from the sitting justices. I want to turn our attention to a very troubling meeting that took place in all places of Iran attended by Vladimir Putin and the President of Turkey, Erdogan. Wes Smith, our senior military analyst is with us here.

Wes, tell us about the meeting first. Tell you what, anytime there is a geopolitical vacuum and a good force backs away, another force will fill in where they're backing away. And so the context, the background of this meeting in Iran today is that there's a perception that the United States was backing away from the Middle East, retreating, coddling the Palestinians and backing away from our Arab neighbors in the Gulf States who are now allied with Israel as well.

I'll give you some examples of that. Early on in the administration, President Biden suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia. They were defensive weapons. They also during that same time, he took the Houthi rebels in Yemen off the terror list. And they're still off that list, even though this group has bombed civilian targets in the UAE and in Saudi Arabia.

Last week, President Biden announced that in spite of the provisions of the Taylor Force Act, he was going to give the Palestinian Authority three hundred and fifty million dollars. So when you have this kind of changing geopolitical dynamics going on, other forces will step in. Russia and Iran, China, they want to be an influencer in the region. And so what you have today is Erdogan and Putin and the Iranians. Well, Turkey is a NATO ally, Wes. This is what's so bizarre. Turkey is supposedly a NATO ally.

Yes, that's what makes this so strange and troubling. Erdogan is on very friendly terms with Putin. Historically, Russia and Turkey were at odds.

Oh, yes. He bought the S-400 missile system from Russia over the objections of all other twenty nine members of NATO. To this day, Erdogan has yet to sanction Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Whenever the war first started, the invasion of Ukraine, Turkey, under international treaty, actually controls access to the Black Sea. They can stop any combatant ships from going through there if they want to. They did not stop Russia sending combatant naval ships towards Ukraine.

So let me let me ask you this. What is the symbolic significance of the meeting in Iran and who did they meet with in Iran? They met with Khamenei, the supreme leader, and they also Russia signed a 40 billion dollar energy agreement with the Iranians as well. I think Erdogan and Vladimir Putin shared this in common. Relatively speaking, smaller economies, less influential nations, but they both have big egos. And so they're meeting together with a sworn enemy of Israel and the United States. It is not a good omen.

It truly isn't. Erdogan, as an Islamist, of course, has a great relationship with Iran, even though he is supposedly a NATO ally. Of course, we wrote about this kind of axis of evil developing this.

We called it the unholy alliance. It involved Syria, Russia, Iran, and Turkey. We wrote a book on Turkey called Burning Bridges because they were supposed to be the bridge to Europe.

That is not the case. And under Erdogan, I think people don't understand, Turkey was more of a secular country. And I mean now they've converted historic Christian churches into mosques. The Islamization of Turkey really, Wes, is unprecedented.

Unprecedented. The religious climate in Turkey is not that much unlike the religious climate in Iran. And of course now, in this meeting that's going on, Iran has agreed to sell drones to Russia, which they will use in Ukraine. And they're gathering together and making agreements. Even with Erdogan, who's a NATO ally, I think any time they perceive weakness or hesitancy on the part of the West, especially the United States, they will try to step in and take advantage of that and do things that are to their advantage and to the disadvantage of the United States.

It is unprecedented and it should be unthinkable that a NATO ally with all this going on in the world, Ukraine, Iran on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon, that one of our allies would fly to Tehran and sit down and meet with Vladimir Putin and Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. It is a very troubling symbol of what's going on in that part of the world. Logan, this is another example, though, of the breadth of the work of the American Center for Law and Justice.

That's right. We are doing work all over the world. And you hear American Center for Law and Justice, you may not realize our international impact that we're having, sorry, the international impact that we're having all over the world.

We have offices in places we can't talk about. We have ACLJ.org. You can find out a lot of great information. There's so much there.

You need to go to the website. I know I've encouraged this a lot. I really feel like as of late, it deserves it. There is incredible content that's being posted each and every day to our social media platforms, to ACLJ.org. And we're talking about blogs, we're talking about articles, videos, great resources, but not just resources, commentary on all current events that are happening in our country right now. And to do that, go to ACLJ.org and spend some time. Download the ACLJ app. It's available in the App Store where you can easily learn how to sign petitions and interact and listen to this show live and check out old episodes and catch up. Because I know a lot of you, like I look at the podcast numbers, I see a lot of people get this show on the podcast and they'll stack them and they'll download them all at once and you'll listen to 10 at a time. And I think that's important to make sure that you're staying up to date with not only the work that we're doing at the ACLJ, because look, some of you may be listening to this, not even in the month of July.

You may be listening to it next month already, but that's okay. But we can still support the work at ACLJ.org. Yeah, Wes, one last question here. As you look at President Biden just completed his trip to the Middle East, we just had Mike Pompeo on, what was your sense of the trip? He came back virtually with no accomplishments.

He did not accomplish anything. Maybe, just maybe, because of his meeting in Saudi Arabia and in Israel, maybe he's trying to reassure our allies there that we're not disengaging. But you say maybe. Maybe.

Why do you say maybe? Because there was nothing definitive that he got, that he brought back to America. He spent a lot of jet fuel and a lot of money and spent four days in the Middle East and came back with not a lot to brag about, exactly. There you go. Colonel Wes Smith, of course, Senior Military Analyst for the American Center for Law and Justice. Folks, as we close this broadcast up, you're getting an email today from us on the life cases, and we've got a whole plan we've instituted nationally, helping states, lawmakers on the post Roe versus Wade approach to defend life. Your support for us could not be more critical than it is right now, and we are in the July Match and Challenge campaign. We're about two-thirds of the way done. We're just a little bit behind last year.

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We encourage you to do that at ACLJ.org. Also, live concert, end of the month, because we do that when we're celebrating our Match and Challenge months. We'll be coming to you with some new songs. We're tuning up tonight, even, in our practice. Talk to you tomorrow.