Breaking: Far Left Seeks Massive Power Grab in Senate

This is Jay Sekulow, the far left seeking a massive power grab in the United States Senate. Live from Washington, D.C., Jay Sekulow Live. Phone lines are open for your questions right now. Call 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. And now, your host, Jordan Sekulow. Welcome to the broadcast, everybody, and here's an interesting dilemma. If you get a ruling you don't like from a court, do you fire the judge?

No, you don't get to do that. You've got to take it up on appeal. There's other things you can do, and ultimately, if the ultimate decider of fact makes a decision you don't like, that's the law. So the Senate has a parliamentarian, they're sort of like the judge, and the parliamentarian's role is to make rulings on questions that come out. And part of what's going on in the COVID relief plan, which I know you all want to see a bill passed, signed into law so aid goes to Americans in need, has become a parliamentary battle. And that parliamentary battle is focused on whether the $15 an hour wage increase for the entire country can be included in a COVID relief package, and the parliamentarian said no. Well, let me tell you what else is in this little bill, not so little bill, $1.9 trillion, an upcharge, if you will, for money for Planned Parenthood.

You ask, well, how could that possibly be in this? So, Than, let me go right to you in Washington and get the latest on exactly where this is. Well, Jay, because it's not a COVID stimulus bill, it's a liberal leftist wish list of all their policy priorities.

About a third of it is COVID stimulus, the rest is a wish list. Let me address this parliamentary issue first, Jay, because we told our listeners weeks ago that this was going to be an issue. This was not a guessing game. This is a procedure and a provision that is not allowed under budget reconciliation. They decide to try to do it anyway. Just like we told our listeners what happened, the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonough, ruled that it was not in order under the rules of the United States Senate, Jay. Here's what we have. We have Senator Sanders saying that the parliamentarian should either be fired or that the Senate should override her based on making a ruling. But, Jay, here's what would happen if that happened. If they overruled her and they left this $15 minimum wage hike in there, guess what would happen? Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would not be in favor of the underlying package and the COVID stimulus bill itself, Jay, would go down. It does not have the support in the United States Senate. So they've played this against themselves and, once again, the COVID stimulus package is in trouble.

So, you know, Harry Hutchison, our director of policy, is here and, of course, law and economics professor, so I'm going to talk to you as Professor Hutchison right now. And I look at this and I say, okay, there are American – this has been being debated now for four months. And the Biden administration has only been in since January 20th. They still don't have it through. They have to stick in an increase for Planned Parenthood, of course, which has nothing to do with COVID relief, and a minimum wage increase, which also has nothing to do with COVID relief. There are people that just need relief.

Absolutely. And I think it's clear beyond question that this bill fails to deliver. Left-wingers, after failing in their attempt to impeach President Trump twice, have now firmly directed their attention at another power grab taken out of a malevolent playbook aimed at subordinating the interests of disenfranchised Americans. Left-wingers are now urging President Biden to overrule the Senate parliamentarian in order to do what? They simply want to continue to wage war on working-class Americans, and more specifically, to wage war on the so-called unfit. This Democratic Party maneuver goes back to the days of Plessy versus Ferguson and separate but equal.

Why? Because a minimum wage bill, particularly an extreme one, does what? It leads to the increase in unemployment for African Americans and Latinos. That is, at the end of the day, precisely what the Democratic Party wants.

Of course, they want to get rid of the parliamentarian's decision and have that decision made by the Vice President of the United States, Vice President Harris. Hey, stay tuned. Share this with your friends, because if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube or Rumble, wherever you're watching this, parlor platforms, whatever platform you're on, let me encourage you to do this. Rick Grenell's coming up.

You're not going to want to miss it. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. 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. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. If you're watching on our Facebook feeds or YouTube or ACLJ.org, Jordan was just on with kind of a list of who he thinks could be one of the people running for President of the United States if President Trump decides not to run. I would include our next guest on that, Rick Rinnell.

Rick is not a guest, though. Rick is a senior advisor to the ACLJ on national security affairs as well as international matters and, of course, was the former acting director of National Intelligence Ambassador Germany. I want to play, Rick, something you said at CPAC, and then we're going to get right into it.

Take a listen. As we've seen, even in the first month of a new administration, America First's electoral popularity and strategic accomplishments ensure that it no longer belongs to a single party or politician. By successfully realigning U.S. foreign policy with the interests of the American people, America First is now positioned to guide our country through the trials and tribulations of the next generation.

So, Rick, you gave a great speech, by the way, but let me really get right into it, and that's this. Look, the power grab in Washington right now is unreal. We've got a COVID relief bill that was passed in the House that has this $15 minimum wage, which a lot of economists, including our own Harry Hutchinson, thinks is going to be an economic disaster for the United States. In the same bill, they put an increase for funding for guests who planned parenthood.

To me, this doesn't sound like America First. It sounds like special interests first, but give me your sense of what's going on right now. And, of course, they want to ignore the parliamentarian because they ruled against her.

She ruled against them. What's your sense of what's going on here? Look, information is power, and what the left has tried to do in Washington for a very long time is control that information. They want to spoon feed us. They think, you know, we're not so smart, and so they leave us out. They over-classify information.

They leak only certain parts out that are not accurate. They really work overtime to hold in the information. That's the only way that Washington works is when they control it. But what's happened, I think, with an America First agenda, with Donald Trump, with social media, a whole bunch of issues have come together to expose Washington and to bring greater transparency. Washington will not work if we bring light into the swamp. I mean, we talk about the swamp in a funny way, but the swamp is kind of an intellectual argument about Washington, D.C. Because no fresh water comes in. It's a place that traps all of the water, all of the ideas.

There's nothing new, and, therefore, it's stinky and smelly in the same old system. And I think that's what we're seeing in Washington. They are trying to control the message and make sure that we don't hear the full information. So when I look at this, I want to go to Fan for a second on this, because, Stan, I agree with what Rick just said, and it looks like to me what's happening is there is a real attempt, instead of getting this bill through, which the American people do need, by the time they get it through, it could be academic. This process has been a prime example of what Rick's talking about, Jay, because, look, there were five stimulus packages passed into law in the last calendar year alone, and none of them got fewer than 90 senators supporting them. So the idea that there's not a bipartisan path to the support that the American people need is just not accurate.

But what Rick is saying has played out in every sense of the word. I would rather than take that path of least resistance and provide the targeted assistance that Americans need. Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer, I would say, along with President Biden, have put together this wish list that they would rather have than the stimulus. It's not that they want it in addition to, Jay.

They want it instead of that. And the proof, to me, is playing out in the United States Senate right now, because Senator Sanders has said he's going to force a vote on overruling the parliamentarian to put this $15 minimum wage back into it. Jay, that's a legitimate policy debate to have, but that debate has been had inside the Democratic caucus, and they don't have 50 votes for it. So let's say he wins that. Let's say he wins that debate and that provision stays in there.

What happens? The COVID stimulus package fails. He is saying he would rather have the stimulus package fail than lose out on that policy priority of his. That's exactly my point here, and that is, I'm looking at the policies and the way we were able to get things done over the last four years, and I'm looking at the first month and a half here, almost two months now, I guess month and a half. And I'm saying to myself, what is the legislative policy analysis that's getting him to this point?

Because it just seems like it's hitting your head against the wall. Well, look, the criteria is to please the Democratic activists. Remember that all of the Biden appointees have been living in Washington, D.C. vicinity for the last four years like a shadow government. I mean, most of them were just down the street working together, waiting to just come in en masse. And so the priority is to please the left-wing activists with a minimum wage. It's not to help the economy because we know it's going to hurt the economy. It's not to help small businesses because we know the struggling small businesses right now, the last thing they need is an increase of their minimum wage and a decrease of people being able to provide services in these small businesses. So it's just the focus of the Biden team, the left wing, the progressive part, just trying to please the people that brought them to the party. They're not thinking about the American people. But the tragedy of this, of course, is, Harry, that as Rick just said, is this does not help the economy, as you said, and also it's actually hurting Americans that need relief now.

Absolutely. So if we focus first on the Americans who have been most disadvantaged by the pandemic, we will find that a significant number of African-Americans and Latinos and working class Americans have been massively hurt. And the minimum wage bill goes to the heart of their pain, and the Democrats are adamant in their support of raising the minimum wage, irrespective of its impact on so-called disadvantaged Americans.

They really don't care. Representative Ro Khanna has suggested that businesses that fail to pay $15 per hour for their workers should simply go out of business. Well, what does that mean for workers? They lose their jobs.

AOC has suggested that she supports raising the minimum wage to $24 per hour. What does that mean? It means that a significant number of American businesses go out of business or they have to pay people under the table. So it's a policy that cannot stand.

Yeah. Rick, looking at the situation right now, as you kind of look at both the internationally and domestically, on the international front, what do you see as the biggest risk factor right now? Is it the situation with China?

I think it's China. I think it's the overall philosophy of the Biden administration that instead of pushing America first, they're going to push consensus first. So they want to please our allies. They want other people to like them, other countries to like them. They want the Europeans to say, Joe Biden is great. And that's why we're seeing a move in Europe to allow Germany to not pay its fair share and continue to have a surplus at NATO. It's just all throughout Europe, we're seeing the Europeans really get exactly what they want. Now, you were the ambassador for the United States to Germany.

So you know the situation better than most would know it. Why would the Germans, with their economy, which has been very strong, get a pass? Well, Germany is the largest economy in Europe. They've made some, I think, reckless decisions when it comes to energy. After Fukushima, Chancellor Merkel decided that they were going to get rid of all nuclear energy. And there were lessons from Fukushima, but the lessons of Fukushima were not emotional in nature to say get rid of nuclear energy. It was, you know, don't build your power plant on the ocean.

Don't build it in a gully. I mean, there were a whole bunch of lessons that you could have learned from Fukushima. But we also have seen, because of the Paris climate push, a commitment by the Germans to get rid of coal. Now, they talk about getting rid of coal, but that's going to be impossible. They are fundamentally relying on coal. They just don't want to talk about it. Our CO2 in America has decreased.

That's not the case for the Germans. And so you see this reliance on and dependence upon any type of energy that they can get from Russia. One last question.

We've got about a minute here. And that is this, Rick. The Biden administration says they want to get back to the table with Iran, but they acknowledged that the Iranians are not in compliance with the JCPOA, which is still in force with the European countries that signed on and, of course, Iran. So they acknowledge they are not in compliance.

They've acknowledged this for years. Even the Trump negotiators got the Europeans to agree to the fact that the Iranians are not abiding by exactly what they said before. But we're going to, you know, the Biden team wants us to go backwards and really give the Iranians a total pass on their cheating and go back to the days when the Europeans get to have trade with Iran. There's no, you know, moment where we're demanding that Iran comply.

And the fact is, is that the Europeans don't face the same threat as America when it comes to Iran. Rick Rinnell, senior advisor to the American Center for Law and Justice on our international issues and national security. As always, thanks for your insight and great speech at CPAC, by the way. Excellent.

Really well done. Thanks, Rick. All right, folks, your support of the ACLJ. And here we are on the second day of our matching challenge.

We're able to hire people like Rick Rinnell, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And we're in a matching challenge campaign, which means any amount you donate to the ACLJ, we're going to get a matching gift for. That means a group of our donors agreed that they will match what comes in from you all this month of March. So let me encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. Go to ACLJ.org and make that gift and it will be matched by another donor. ACLJ.org.

Back with more in a moment. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our Matching Challenge today. 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.

Hey, welcome back. We were talking about some domestic issues. We're talking about the power grab in Washington. There's another power grab going on, and that is on the issue of life. You know, we've gotten a little bit, we had a good four years on the life issue because we had the conscience rights of citizens in our country protected. But now, and I'm reading from a memo that our team, Jeff Surtees, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ, is joining us, have prepared.

Let me read it. The rate of healthcare workers, including pharmacists, nurses, and doctors, to practice their profession according to their religious and moral consciences continues to be threatened, and that threat doesn't come just from within the workplace, hospitals or pharmacies, but from the government itself. Indeed, the new administration has promised and is already taking steps to fulfill that promise to reverse the protections of conscience rights that the previous administration made great strides in establishing. In fact, they had a whole department, a whole division to protect the conscience rights of medical professionals that did not want to engage in abortion procedures or facilities. Jeff Surtees, the Senior Counsel for the ACLJ, is doing a lot of work on this issue.

Jeff, let's talk about first what's at stake here. Jay, what's at stake here is the right of healthcare workers to be able to practice their profession according to their religious and moral beliefs, respecting the sanctity of human life. I mean, if the left gets its way, if Becerra becomes the head of HHS and gets his way, then not only will there be no conscience protections for healthcare workers in hospitals, pharmacies, retail pharmacies, and so forth. I think we're seeing the darkness at the end of the tunnel here is that these pro-life healthcare workers are going to be mandated, required to actually take affirmative steps to violate their conscience by participating in abortion procedures, by participating in the provision of the morning-after pill, by participating in medical procedures that the pro-life community abhors. And so what's particularly disturbing here, it's not just a question of a right to abortion. The left wants far more than that. They want to coerce pro-lifers into participating in that choice. And all the legal protections that we got these past four years are being, it's now starting.

They're going to be systematically reversed. All the lawsuits in those cases are going to be dropped, such as the Department of Justice last, in December of last year, filing a lawsuit against the University of Vermont Medical Center regarding the systematic, systematic violation of federal conscience rights in that case. The DOJ has already asked... Let's talk about that one for a minute because that's our case. So let's tell everybody what happened there.

I think it's important for people to understand what happened, what our client was involved in, and what action we were able to get from the Department of Justice. Well, that situation was a really outrageous one, Jay. In 2017, our client was deliberately misled by her supervisor into participating in an elective abortion. She was told that this was just going to be a post- miscarriage, morally noncontroversial procedure. But once she got into the OR and scrubbed in, she saw and realized that she was actually tricked, deceived into participating in this abortion procedure. And she knew that right off the bat. It's when she walked in. The doctor told her, don't hate me for this.

Everyone knew about our client's pro-life beliefs. So she called out to say, hey, can someone swap in for me here? And she was told in no uncertain circumstances, no. And so what we had was the complete dismissal, the complete disregard of her pro-life beliefs that everyone in the hospital knew about the Department of Justice, filed suit against the University of Vermont Medical Center, saying that not only was our client's federal conscience rights violated, but the federal conscience rights of other nurses in that same medical center.

But what's happened, Jay, since the new administration, instead of filing an answer to the complaint, the University of Vermont Medical Center said, hey, let's stay everything until the new administration gets in place and comes up with new policies and revisits whether or not this case should go forward. And that's exactly what's going on in that case. So let's take a worst case scenario, which is probably likely here, right, Jeff? I mean, the worst case scenario is that they decide not to proceed with the case and dismiss it. What happens to our client then?

Yep, that's exactly right. It says she's out of luck because under the church amendment, there's no private right of action. This is why the federal government is so necessary in protecting conscience rights. It's why HHS is such an important actor in protecting conscience rights. If someone like Becerra becomes the head of HHS, this lawsuit's going to just be dismissed. It's going to be forgotten about. All the other protections of conscience that the previous administration gave us are going to be rescinded. So, Jeff, I want to give people hope, though, because I don't want people in despair saying, well, then I guess I have no choice and now I have to do this. If someone's conscience rights are violated, we have gone to court before and gotten jury verdicts. So what would prevent it here?

Oh, yeah, yeah. So we continue to get contacted, Jay, by nurses, pharmacists, surgical techs, and other health care workers who are being discriminated against. What they can do is get in touch with us, ACLJ now more than ever, especially with this new administration going on. And then we can work behind the scenes to try to resolve that matter as we do time after time.

And if we can't resolve it behind the scenes, then we go public and file that lawsuit. And look, folks, I mean, this is the reality of what we've gotten. There is still a pro-life, you know, a lot of pro-life members of Congress, but the administration is going to be able to set a lot of policy here. They're going to be able to set a lot of policy, but you're right, especially in this conscience space, Jay, there is a little bit of room for some bipartisan protection. Let me give two reasons for hope for our listeners.

The first one Jeff alluded to a bit here. First of all, the law is on our side. I mean, ever since the 1970s, these church amendments for about 50 years have provided this legal protection, but the federal government has never been willing to actually press the suit. Jay, that changed under the Trump administration. Now we have no expectation that it will continue under this administration, but people have to understand this is an incremental game.

Now that that precedent has been set, we can pressure this administration and every administration in the future to actually enforce that law. Number two, Jay, Jeff alluded to Javier Becerra, who's been nominated to the Department of Health and Human Services. Jay, his nomination hangs in the balance right now. He will not get a single Republican vote because he does not have any medical experience in a time of pandemic, and Jay, both Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have expressed some concern. His vote in the finance committee happens tomorrow, and we have a letter ready to go to every member of the United States Senate on Thursday morning making the case why he should not be the secretary. Jay, that would be a win, and if you could get a secretary in there with more understanding in the conscience space, you might be able to win some of these fights. Then do you really think there's a chance that he does not get confirmed?

I do. It's an uphill fight, Jay, but Joe Manchin has already been willing to take down one cabinet nominee of Joe Biden. Has he made a specific statement about Becerra? He has said he is still evaluating his credentials. I'll just tell you this. It's still an uphill fight. He's probably more likely to be confirmed than not, but Jay, on the eve of the committee vote for a member that they have to have to get him confirmed to not be issued a position, that tells me we have a chance.

So real quick, Jeff, less than a minute here. Becerra, of course, we battled him at the Supreme Court of the United States. We won, but he was trying to force abortion, pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to provide referrals for abortions. That's exactly right. Can you think of a more outrageous violation of free speech?

Yeah. As attorney general of the state of California, he was enforcing a law against our pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise free or low-cost abortions paid for by the state. And of course, because the state doesn't itself perform the abortions, that means paid for and provided by the state with abortions done by Planned Parenthood itself.

Becerra should not become the head of HHS. Folks, this is why we fight. This is why we're on the air. This is why our legislative teams and our lawyers are working to protect the right to life.

That means you can help us. We're in a matching challenge campaign. Day two of the March matching challenge. Go to ACLJ.org.

Any amount you donate to the ACLJ, we're going to get a matching gift for. And that allows our teams in Washington, our lawyers around the country, frankly around the world, stand up for life. And we're battling it out right now. Yes, it's uphill. That's the task we've been called to. It's an uphill battle right now. That doesn't mean you don't fight.

In fact, it means you double down. ACLJ.org. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 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. I'm talking about freedom. I'm talking about freedom.

We will fight for the right to live in freedom. Live from Washington, D.C., Jay Sekulow live. And now, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow. We said this is the left's power grab in the United States Senate, and man, are we seeing it. So, the parliamentarian says you can't add this $15 minimum wage to the COVID relief bill because it's a substantive law. And that was the ruling. They sought a ruling, they get a ruling. They don't like the ruling, so the progressive wing of the Senate and the progressive wing of the House say, well, why don't we just override the parliamentarian? In other words, we don't like the decision we got, Harry. Thus, ignore her and install the vice President under a procedure to let the vice President make the decision on this.

Absolutely. So, what the Democrats are attempting to do is to engage in a massive power grab. And this is a massive power grab by one segment of the Democratic Party. And it's basically comprised of left wingers who love elites and they want to perform for those elites. So, rather than provide fulsome COVID relief for Americans who are hurting, they have said we are going to raise the minimum wage.

And the clear and unmistakable evidence out there empirically over the last 70 to 100 years suggests that by raising the minimum wage, we increase the unemployment rate of African Americans, Latinos and other disadvantaged Americans. So, here you have a party that claims to represent the interest of the American people and what are they doing? They are performing a worship service for the state, number one, and they're advancing the interest of elites who really could care less about working class Americans. Here's what a congressman said about it.

Let's take a listen. There is precedent for not listening to the parliamentarian's advice and we are hopeful that the vice President or whoever is in the Senate chair will do that in this case. So, I mean, Thanh, it's happened before and they're going to try it again. I don't know if they'll be able to get away with it because like you said earlier, there's still not the votes for it to pass. This is such an academic waste of time. Jay, they can't win under the rules, so they want to change the rules.

But look, I know I'm hesitant to do this. They changed the rules, Thanh. Here's my question.

They changed the rules. Does the bill get through? No. Well, in fact, it would be actually what would tank the bill and that's what I was going to say. Even if you give Bernie Sanders the benefit of the doubt, which, you know, is a dangerous thing to do, but even if you do, Jay, and he says his personal view, this is what he said, is the idea that we can't have a high-ranking senior staffer decide on policy issues. So let's say he's right on that and let's say the Senate exercises their constitutional rights to change the rules or overrule the parliamentarian or whatever they want to do and that language stays in the bill. Then you need Joe Manchin's vote to get the COVID bill off the floor. So right after Senator Sanders said that, they went to Joe Manchin and they asked him, is there any chance you might change your mind on the filibuster, which is what you would need to get this language through at some point? And he turned around, Jay, and he yelled at the supporters, never.

What don't you understand about never? So, Jay, is Senator Sanders trying to take down the COVID bill? It's what it looks like to me. It sure does.

You know, Logan's joining us now, too, and I'm thinking about this. I don't know if you've handled this on the Reprogrammed show, but this is the dysfunction of Washington at its worst while people really do need help. There's a chance when people need help, it's always, you know, what sounds good, never what's actually good. You bring up the minimum wage thing. Sure. When you just read a headline and goes, we want to move the minimum wage to $15.

Sure. On paper, that sounds great. You know, why wouldn't you be for it?

Why wouldn't you be for student loan forgiveness? Those are things that we look at and go, well, yes, as people who have compassion, people that have a heart, you go, I would like people to make more money and I would like people to have less debt. Those are two things that are excellent.

No one would argue those two things. However, the conservatives have to be the party of the realistic and you have to look at it and go, well, this can't be how it works. You know, it's sad that it can't work that way. I understand.

You'd be disappointed in it, but it can't. All right, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about what's going on watching. We're going to take your calls, especially on the COVID relief. We need to hear from people. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard on the air today. We've got some lines open right now. So if you want to call, this is a great time to do it.

Once again, 1-800-684-3110. You did a reprogram today on Dr. Seuss. Yeah, we just did a reprogram on the fact that it's Dr. Seuss's birthday. There's some bigger news in the Seuss world, the Seussian world going on. We'll talk about that.

We'll talk about that. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith. I'm covering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. 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. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, planned parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement.

Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. This is not a Logan Secular Reprogram takeover, but thank you for the homage. I appreciate it.

That's our theme song written by Rudy Lantos. Take a look at the Logan Secular Reprogram show I do on YouTube each and every, not every day, but each and every week we put out a new one at least, if not multiple times a week, especially when topics like this arise and we just put out a 30-minute episode that we recorded this morning. On the cancel culture. Let's take this call on the HHS stuff and then we're going to go right to the cancel culture issue with Dr. Seuss of all people. Let's go to Frank in Florida. Frank, go ahead.

Yeah, thanks a lot for taking my call. I was watching the confirmation hearings about Xavier Becerra and I'm asking myself, if Becerra does become Secretary of HHS, what are the financial ramifications for all of us Americans in the United States? Well, I think the financial implications are that the elites will receive a larger share of the pie.

What does that mean? Planned Parenthood will see its receipts, its profits, and its revenues go up. And it's very, very likely that the needs of average working class people within the healthcare system space, they will see their needs basically diminish by Becerra. He has never been a friend of the American people who believe in the right to life. He has always been a friend of those who believe in the right to death. There you have it. We beat him in the Supreme Court.

Now, the question will be whether we beat him on Capitol Hill on his confirmation. We'll talk more about that in the next segment. I do want to bring up this cancel culture issue that Logan has addressed, I'm sure, with depth and humor on the Logan Secular Reprogram show, which everybody should be looking at. And where do people – what's the best about YouTube? Yeah, it's on YouTube. You want to see us. We're pretty people. You want to see what we look like. No, it's on YouTube.com slash Logan Secular Reprogram or just type in my name and click subscribe.

That would help out. We put out new shows, like I said, quite often. It's also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, however you get your podcasts.

We're there, but I like the video version. Today we dove into this, and I didn't really cancel culture in the traditional sense. Dr. Seuss. But it's also self-censoring. The Dr. Seuss organization, the company that controls the works of Dr. Seuss and the trademarks and everything, put out a statement today on Dr. Seuss's birthday. This is a big reading week. This is the big one that you get every week in school. My kids have had Dr. Seuss-related characters or costumes. Today was Dr. Seuss hair day at school.

This is something that we get a lot. On his birthday, they put out a statement that six titles have been removed and will no longer be published. Here's what gets a little sketchy. Not only will not be published anymore, if you want to go to Barnes and Noble right now, you're not going to be able to buy this.

If you go up to Walmart, sorry. Some of these books have to say, not exactly, these aren't the cat in the hat, which by the way, people have also said has some issues. Guess what?

They're not pulling the cat in the hat because it's making $30 million a year still. To think that I ran on Mulberry street, and if I ran the zoo or probably the top two, and then there are some sort of ancillary ones. Here's what Will and I discussed on the reprogram, which you should watch. Is there content in this that through 2021 lenses, maybe even before, you would look at and go, yeah, that doesn't feel right anymore. That feels a little, that has racial undertones. Absolutely.

There's stuff in there that's not great. However, there's also a full story of Dr. Seuss, which is someone who not, it's definitely not a conservative activist, not a fan of the American first type ideas. You know, a guy pretty progressive, the Lorax, those kinds of things had a real shift in his life. And really by the end of his career was creating books about being inclusive and was creating books about diversity. Someone is an apology to some of the stuff that he maybe did early on his career.

The problem is we're saying, well, then all those works early in his career, they're not putting a label on it even, which you could say a lot of people are doing. Disney's doing for the Muppets or HBO is done for Gone with the Wind. They're not putting a label on it saying, hey, this doesn't necessarily reflect our views now, or hey, maybe this isn't one for your kids, but we should keep it because the oeuvre, if you will, of Dr. Seuss should be maybe kept. This is what has become, and by the way, if you have a copy of any of these books and you are not that interested, throw those on eBay today, because that's the interesting, the consumers demand goes crazy.

You can't get it, if I ran the zoo, you can't find a copy right now for under 400 bucks. So Harry, you raised the point when we were talking during the break about this cancel culture and they're canceling Dr. Seuss' books. And Logan said some of the early ones had some stuff that was questionable, let's say. Yeah, it's a lot of the imagery. It's a lot of imagery.

It's not unlike Mickey Mouse being dressed up as an Orthodox Jewish garb in certain cartoons. Is it bad? Yeah, it's not great. Is it of the time? Also, yeah, stuff was written in 1930.

It's a little different. But there's a whole series of books that are still published that are directly anti-Semitic and directly prejudice and directly racist, and they're on the shelves of the bookstores right now and on Amazon. I don't know, if I look up Amazon, could you get Mindcom?

Let's see, look it up Will, go ahead. So yeah, the problem is we have this disproportionate focus on Dr. Seuss. Meantime, you can buy a huge number of copies of Mindcom. You can buy the works of Karl Marx. These are individuals that were stubbornly racist and anti-Semitic. And so there is not a fulsome or wholesome approach on the whole cancel culture.

And so what we are doing is we are selectively canceling certain individuals. I can make the argument based on 30 years of research that supporting the minimum wage is arguably racist. Because if you look at the entire history of the movement, going back to the 1920s and the 1930s, it was linked in part to whom? Margaret Sanger and other exclusionary actors who were out there.

So I think it's very, very important to have some sense of proportion and some sense of history. But we live in an era in which we want instantaneous satisfaction and we don't want to actually engage in the research. And people are saying, well, they're doing it themselves. They're self-canceling themselves.

No one forced them to remove these six titles. But you're not telling me that that's true. Because what's true is you had mobs of people. By the way, not even real people. These are internet trolls. These are not real people. Go find someone who really cares about this, who really cares about the works. Or even was thinking about the works of Dr. Seuss as an adult. Not very many people.

These are fictional creations of social media, but big corporations are going to back down. Because you know what happened? Joe Biden yesterday, Read Across America, the day that, I mean, eight years ago, Michelle Obama had everyone in the audience in Dr. Seuss outfits. The characters were there. She's reading the Cat in the Hat. The whole thing does not mention Dr. Seuss.

Something that's really based around his birthday removed. So the corporation has to go, well, we have to say something or do something because they're trying to hurt our bottom line at the end of the day. And look, it always backfires from people. But the problem is who's kind of the overlords. And the overlords do control a lot of this. And that's the big corporations. And that will kowtow to what's going on on social media. And it's sad.

It's a sad day. Not necessarily just for these six titles. Again, these weren't the blockbuster Dr. Seuss titles. More than we even have to have this discussion.

This is something that book burning and digital book burning. And look, this is becoming a big concern, something we need to talk about, which is this show. Think about this. Think about J. Secular Live, Secular Radio, whatever you've been doing.

Think about the Logan Secular Reprogram. Think about every movie that you've ever watched that has been made in the last 20 or 30 years. Or let's say last 10 years in sort of a post-physical media world.

You can say at least those Dr. Seuss books. There's millions of copies of those available. You can find them.

It's going to cost you a arm and a leg now, but you can find them. They decide to do the same thing on any of our shows or your shows. Guess what happens? They just disappear because it's all on a cloud. What we've said is like digital book burning. Because it's not just about, well, you can still get the book.

Not anymore. There's disinformation. And look, I'm not saying to be the person. The person's going, go buy your DVDs now. But if you see something that you like, maybe create a hard copy. Maybe create something that can't be removed. Because if it's coming for Dr. Seuss, I mean, it's coming for anybody. I mean, it's really sad. Again, it has nothing to do with even the traditional cancel culture kind of mind.

But it is a, it's accepted as this is the right thing to do. Again, imagery that I would not want to necessarily show to my kids that's in some of these books. That doesn't mean, like you said, look, you can go buy a bunch of copies of Mein Kampf.

You can go buy a bunch of Karl Marx. But guess what, though? Guess what we're not saying?

We're not saying that those need to be removed. That's part of history. So who publishes Mein Kampf, by the way? Oh, it's part of history, though. Of course.

That's just it. You can't buy one copy of Mein Kampf, but you can buy dozens of versions of Mein Kampf. There's many.

You can buy one, you can buy a hundred and one. I assume it's in the public domain at this point. It probably is in the public domain. The point is we are now reaching the point in our culture where, Harry, this has become acceptable. Absolutely. So the entire environment, our entire cultural discourse has now been poisoned. And there are certain magic words or magic people that you cannot talk about without risking your career.

And I think Logan is absolutely correct. One of the key actors in this space are large corporations. That's what Rod Dreher calls surveillance capitalism. They're basically saying, we're going to remove certain content.

Why? Because we are so focused on the bottom line. But it also underscores a much larger point.

And that is, we've allowed many of these corporations to get larger and larger without fully enforcing antitrust laws, which would allow for a diversity of opinion in our public discourse. You know, it's interesting. I think we should do a whole program on the whole cancel culture issue. And maybe the Dr. Seuss way is the way to do it.

Now, you've done a 30-minute program. Maybe we should air that on our entire broadcast platforms. You could just share it on your social media. If you guys want to share it, at the end of the show, maybe we can share the YouTube link and you can watch it again. Or just subscribe on the Logan Sekulow Reprogram YouTube channel, youtube.com slash logansekulowreprogram, or just search for it. You'll find the first thing, the only Logan Sekulow on there. Click subscribe.

We'll have new episodes coming, but the brand new episode just dropped within the last hour. All about Dr. Seuss and what this means, the future threat to media and media consumption. Alright, don't forget, support the work of the ACLJ, ACLJ.org.

Call us, 800-684-3110. Taking your calls. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, a play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith. I'm covering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our Matching Challenge today. 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. Well, it's been quite a program. We talked about the minimum wage of $15 an hour and the power grab in the United States Senate attempt anyways. We talked about conscience clause objections. Rick Rinnell talked to us about the major issues facing us internationally and domestically.

We talked about the cancel culture with Logan and Dr. Seuss under attack. And we're now in the last segment where we take your calls at 800-684-3110. Let's go ahead to Marsha, who's calling on Line 5. If you want to talk to us, 800-684-3110. Marsha, you're on there. Go ahead. Hi.

Thanks so much for taking my call. The one thing I don't understand is for Ro Khanna. He seems to be in a mindset for California. $15 an hour. Well, in Mississippi, where I live, $15 an hour is the average wage across the whole state. You know, they're not thinking about the rest of the country. They have a mindset of $15, which I don't know where they got that from.

Well, let me go to Thand Bennett on that because, I mean, I think you raise a good point. But let's let everybody know what is the status of it. The bill is now delivered to the Senate with the $15 in there.

Yeah, and the House could have taken it out when they knew it was going to be a problem, Jay. The Parliamentarian ruling from the Senate came down before the House considered it, but they decided they were going to leave it in there anyway. So the bill is in the United States Senate right now, and they're going to go through a process on Thursday that they call Vote-a-rama. There's going to be a lot of amendments. There's going to be a lot of Parliamentarian rulings. This minimum wage provision will likely be stripped out.

Here's what's going to happen, though, Marsha. Senator Sanders is going to go down to the floor, and he's going to probably offer a motion to overrule the ruling of the Parliamentarian. I think what's going to happen, it's always a little bit dangerous to predict this, but I predict that motion by Senator Sanders is going to fail because Joe Manchin and maybe a couple others are going to vote against it. And Marsha, here, the point you make about California is exactly why I think that vote will fail because Joe Manchin looks at a place like West Virginia and says, if we put a $15 minimum wage in West Virginia, it's not going to raise people's income. It's actually going to cost them their jobs. And the CBO, which is a fairly left-leaning budgetary office here in Washington, D.C. that scores these things, says that it would cost 1.4 million people their jobs. And that gets back to Harry's point about who this would impact.

It would impact the low income and would impact people disproportionately in places like Mississippi and West Virginia. And, Jay, that's the beauty of the system we have. People come to Washington, D.C. from all different states to represent different perspectives, and it's not because of the rules the Democrats are losing on this. It's because they don't have the support that they need in the United States Senate.

They can't get to 50 votes. Logan said you've got a bite you want to play? We do. We have a comment from AOC, which I think you'll like, specifically about the $15 an hour minimum wage. So let's go to that.

It's from MSNBC. What's your message to Joe Manchin tonight? Listen, I think that if any, not just Senator Manchin, but any person who thinks that a $15 minimum wage is the crazy socialist agenda is living in a dystopian capitalist nightmare.

There you go. The dystopian capitalist nightmare. Look, again, on paper, if you said everyone gets to make $15 now, you're an $8 employee at McDonald's? Except it doesn't work economically. You get to double every McDonald's employee salary. Sounds great, but economically it would be a disaster. By the way, who do you think pays for the $8 an hour, the people buying the hamburger? So it needs to be capital-driven, not forced.

Yeah, not mandated. Absolutely, and one of the big issues is it's inflationary, particularly in Mississippi and West Virginia, so prices have to go up, and that hurts what? People who live in flyover country, and the Democrats apparently disdain them. All right, let's go ahead and take some phone calls, 1-800-684-3110. Yeah, let's go to Chris in Maryland on line three. Chris, you're on the air. Hey, Chris. Great show today, guys.

Thanks. Question, why do the Democrats so desperately want Becerra for HHS? Is there not a liberal or a leftist that has some healthcare experience that they can nominate, that they can cram in? I'm not understanding the logic in why they have nominated him to begin with and why there wasn't another candidate with healthcare experience that they would have nominated.

Chris, you asked a great question, and I wonder, fan, I've wondered about that too. Here you've got the most rabid pro-abortion nominee that they could possibly come up with for HHS, except he has no healthcare experience. You just touched on the answer, Jay. I mean, look, of course there is someone with significant public health experience that could be easily confirmed in the time of a pandemic, and Jay, I really believe if Xavier Becerra wasn't so radical on abortion, if he just had mainline pro-abortion views, which I am viscerally opposed to, but if he was just mainline, sort of in line with the left in Washington, D.C., he would not be confirmed because he does not have that public health experience. But the dedication to the pro-abortion agenda in Washington, D.C. is so absolute, Jay, that they don't think that they can take down a nominee with those extreme views.

They're not willing to do it even though he doesn't have the public health experience. I really think those two issues play in here. All right, let's keep going. Let's go to Cambria, who's calling in Utah on Line 4. Cambria, you're on the air.

Hello, gentlemen. I just have a comment that if we as Americans let them get away with ridding Dr. Seuss, how much longer is it going to be that they're going after the Bible? I think we need to take it seriously.

I think, Cambria, you're right. We need to take it seriously. Look, again… There have been public schools that have banned the Bible. I've handled those cases. And countries.

Well, this comes in actually for our friends in Stryper from Michael Sweet and Stryper. I saw you post about this this morning that their whole gimmick for the last 30 years have been to throw Bibles out during the show. That's their thing. That's their thing. That's their shtick. It's always been since the MTV days in the 80s.

It becomes specific. What happens when these venues say, hey, you're not allowed to do that anymore. Hey, you're not allowed to distribute the Bible now at these things.

When does that become culturally unaccepted? Because there's stuff in the Bible. A lot of murder in the Bible. There's a lot of stuff going on in the Bible that you don't necessarily, not everyone can read the Bible fully. There's a lot going on. And look, I don't think that the people will say you're jumping to a big conclusion here to go from Dr. Seuss to the Bible.

But it's not that far removed because doctors, look, again, they're self-censoring themselves to protect their own business interests, not because they want to. People keep missing. No one in the Seuss organization was just sitting there going, you know, I think we should pull six titles out of this. No, they got a lot of corporate pressure and they had to do it. And that's what happens. That's what happens to Disney when it comes to what happened with Gina Carano and the Mandalorian.

Right. This is what's happening, which is there's too much pressure on these organizations where they have to say something or do something that may not be in their immediate best interest, but will be the best interest hopefully for their stockholders or the corporation overall because they're nervous and they get scared. And this way you as a customer and a consumer has to show them. It's the reason why the prices of these books today skyrocket on eBay.

It's because you can't buy a Karen Doan action figure right now, Gina Carano action figure, and not just because target took it off the shelves because they were told they had to because the demand was there. These are people speaking up saying that's the problem with the whole cancel culture idea. It's not coming from the people. It's coming from a very small, loud group on social media who then can somehow control and dictate multi-billion dollar organizations. Unreal. Harry, it is really unreal. It is.

And I think it confirms the analysis offered by Connor Sweeney who argues that secularism has become an alternative form of religion, which basically is grounded in the notion that there is indeed a God and the God that they worship is the state. I'll tell you something. We're going to do a whole program on this cancel culture, I think, coming up in the days ahead. I mean, there's been so much news breaking that we've had this other.

All right. Ten seconds, Stan, on this important COVID relief because people need it. This bill is going to go down what happens next in 20 seconds. I think, Jay, that Joe Manchin is going to win on this. The $15 minimum wage is going to be stripped out and it's going to be passed into law, but it's going to be way later than it should have been, Jay.

That's my guess. I think we'll win it for the COVID relief, but what a battle. All right, folks, don't forget, matching challenge day two, ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Any amount you donate, tax deductible, we get a matching gift for. So, I really encourage you to participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge at ACLJ.org.

Don't forget, also, Logan secular reprogram on YouTube. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 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.