Jonathan Turley, you must be having a lot of vibrant in Red Bull, because we've been calling on you a lot for your legal expertise. Are you one of the people that was not surprised that Remain in Mexico was blown up? No, I was not particularly surprised. I thought it could have gone either way. This was a prototypical Roberts decision. It was narrow.
It was accommodating. It was an attempt to avoid what he viewed as a shakeup of between the two branches. But he went out of his way to repeatedly say, this is quite narrow, that he's trying to avoid undermining the president on an issue of foreign relations.
And so I don't think that this is going to have a big impact on the border, certainly, in terms of that policy. But legally, it was a fairly narrow ruling. So there's a lot of big rulings, but the president in Madrid, Spain, went out of his way to rip the Supreme Court. The sanctity of the Supreme Court, and I disagree with the decision, but listen to what he said, cut to. I really think that it's a serious, serious problem that the court has thrust upon the United States, not just in terms of the right to choose, but in terms of the right to who you can marry, a whole range of issues relating to privacy. And we know that that is not true. It's nothing to do with right to marry.
But this is the part which I have a huge problem with, cut for. 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. So it's a mistake in his view. And he says the behavior of the Supreme Court.
I'm scratching my head here. Yeah, it's really a continuation of this failure of leadership that we've seen with the president. I have no problem with his disagreements with the opinion. Plenty of people have disagreements with the opinion. But this is a time when a president can try to at least bring a civility and a maturity to the conversation and said he's repeating false notions about this opinion. This court, more than any in any decision I can recall, repeatedly and expressly cut off the very argument that he just referenced. I've never seen an opinion like it. They just keep on coming back and saying, once again, we do not believe that this opinion has any application to same-sex marriage, to contraception, to these other areas.
And yet it didn't hold this parade of horribles. But the president has really shown, and he was sort of like this as a senator, that he's driven by polling rather than principles. For example, he long opposed changing the filibuster when he was in the Senate. He even opposed it during his presidential term. But now he flopped and flipped and went and said, well, you know, I now think that we should effectively end it, because you don't create an exception to a legislative filibuster for one subject. That's not how it works.
You know, you don't have a filibuster except if it really causes you difficulty. So what I don't understand, and I need some education on this, is, OK, now all the decision goes to the states. A lot of the states had triggers that said, if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned, we now have this law taking over. And a lot of the law, for example, I believe in Mississippi, said no more abortions, period.
In Florida, they knocked it down to 15 weeks, and a judge decided that that's not going to work. Where did the judges come in, and where does the legislation come in with this language? Because they also stayed a lot of the orders when it comes to the trigger, those trigger rules in various states, correct? Yeah, we expected that there's going to be a certain period of hashing out these laws. Some of these trigger laws are quite old. Some laws actually predate Roe v. Wade.
And so we expected that all of them will be challenged. And courts will often enjoin the parties so it has a chance to review and basically rule on these laws without any major changes occurring. And ultimately these states have a right to ban abortion. They also have a right in places like Colorado to give basically absolute rights of abortion. In Colorado, they just passed a law that said you have a right to abortion to the moment of birth.
That would be a nine-month fully formed baby. So you're going to have this type of spectrum of cases. Now these state judges can rule not just on the federal constitution, which would be difficult now after Dodds, but they can rule under the state constitution. So some of these state judges are saying, well, under our constitution, our laws, there are problems here. And so we're going to have to hash those things out. It's going to take a couple of years.
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Subscribe and listen now at Fox news, podcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. So the Supreme court decision that really struck me is, and there's a lot, but this one in particular, the Supreme court rule, the EPA does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions by a six, three margin. And then the, and then I'm watching the descent and this line stands out with me, Elena Kagan obviously doesn't agree with that. She's one of the liberal justices.
She says, if the current rate of emissions continues, children born this year could live to see parts of the Eastern seaboard swallowed up by the ocean. That's an interesting way to talk. Maybe, I don't know, over dinner tonight, but I didn't think that would end up in the descent because it's hardly settled science.
Yeah. And we actually had a similar claims that were debunked by justice Sotomayor previously in oral argument. And I, you know, I'm not saying that this claim, it will be ultimately debunked, but there is a difficulty when justices start to lean towards policy discussions in that way. And there are many people that disagree with what justice Kagan said. So I think it's always wise for justices not to get involved in those types of scientific fights. The question for justice is not what's going to happen, but who makes a decision as to what to do about it. And whenever justices start to put their thumb on the scale and say, well, this was a really bad idea because all of these things are likely to happen, it pushes them more to looking legislative rather than judicial. But in terms of the EPA decision, it has been, as usual, grossly misrepresented in the media.
It's been grossly misrepresented by many politicians. I mean, you have Senator Warren, you have Senator Schumer, you have AOC all saying that this is horrific because, you know, they just stopped us from being able to do anything about climate change. And Warren saying, who's going to be able to take action?
Well, the answer is you. The funny thing about this opinion is it supports Congress. It says you're taking your power from Congress. You're usurping the legislative branch. And you have all of these Democratic politicians who are irate that the court is effectively reinforcing their authority under the Constitution. So what they felt with the EPA, EPA being used as a hammer, they were getting rid of coal plants, making it impossible through environmental, through environmental challenges to drill in certain areas or frack in other areas. And will those, will that no longer have any stake? So if they bring some of these same issues forward under this ruling, do they, will that no longer curtail the drilling, the fracking, a lot of the other things that maybe the Greens don't want to see happen? Well, they still may be able to do that, but they're going to have to find other grounds by which to do it.
This was really the Hail Mary. This was basically saying stop it because we're telling you to stop it because the president is the president and he doesn't want this to occur. And what the Supreme Court said, that's not enough. You know, you're talking about a major question impacting millions of jobs, the economy, obviously the environment. You have to go to Congress.
You need to convince them that this is the right thing to do. Now, they could try to break this up a bit and try to push some of these moratoriums on other legislative or regulatory grounds. But this is a very significant loss.
I mean, it's one of the biggest losses for what's called the administrative state. I mean, the Supreme Court is putting a shot across the bow of federal agencies that you've got to stop acting like Congress and Congress has got to stop being this silent partner in the governance of our country. And the thing is, Jonathan Turley, part of it is they can't get anything done. You need the 60 votes. They don't get it.
They wait for the courts to figure it out. So AOC said this, tweet this out, catastrophic. A filibuster carve out is not enough. We need the reform to do away with the whole thing for the sake of the planet. So do away with the Supreme Court for the planet, for the good of the planet. Yeah, well, AOC previously said she doesn't really understand the value of having the Supreme Court.
She said over a year ago. And this is part of that burn it down, you know, the whole mantra that you're beginning to hear, even usually sober voices like Senator Shaheen talked about a revolution if the Supreme Court didn't yield to these demands. Senator Warren said that the Supreme Court should be immediately packed because it's not responding to public opinion. I mean, these statements are breathtaking in their ignorance of our constitutional history and purpose. Could you imagine the system we would have if a court simply followed public opinion? It's designed not to follow public opinion. It's designed as an institution to stand against everyone, not just the president and Congress, but the American people themselves, because it's there to protect minority rights. It's there to protect constitutional rights.
So when AOC says, well, we just need to change the whole thing, she's saying that I support this system as long as it yields to my demands. So the thing I worry most about now is the Supreme Court justices security. They have not passed the bill to give them ball bulked up security.
They were in front of Amy Coney Barrett's house last night, I think for the last few nights. When are they ever going to feel secure in this environment? Well, I think that's a very good question because these politicians are continuing to stoke the anger, including the president. He's been remarkably silent. You know, recently he finally came out and said, I don't support violence or intimidation. It took weeks for him to do that. And you know, this administration in the meantime is reinforcing this view that this is a court that did something grossly wrong because it viewed the Constitution differently from the president. I didn't know Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was a professor at George Washington University.
Is that correct? Yeah, he's been teaching for a number of years and we are very fortunate to have him. Were you surprised there was a push to get him out off the faculty because of this Roe v. Wade decision? I was not surprised, but I was alarmed by how much support he got, how much support that campaign received in such a short time. How much did 5,000 people signed the petition within 24 hours? And I think many faculty and students supported it.
And the thing is this was an easy fight. You know, I have a blog that tracks all of these fights at universities across the country and there's hundreds of these cases. This was an easy one because he's a Supreme Court Justice and the university really would have held to pay if they yielded to this mob. The problem is that most professors in this country, 75% of them do not have tenure. They're like Thomas. They are what are called provisional or contingent faculty. They don't have a day job. They don't have a high profile position. When they get targeted, they tend to get fired. And so I think the important thing to come out of the Thomas controversy is not the outcome, which most of us expected, but the fact that this is an anomaly, that there are faculty across the country that are being terminated or forced off faculty with very little attention.
And it's resulted in almost the faculties are devoid of dissenting voices. Jonathan Turley, you're not afraid to dissent. I know that for sure. Thanks so much for joining us. Have a great weekend, Jonathan. Yeah. Happy fortune of a dog back in a moment.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-02-15 04:54:33 / 2023-02-15 04:59:58 / 5
