Has Sen. Manchin Sunk HR1?

Today on Secular, an update on legislation in Washington D.C. has Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, sunk H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act. We'll get into it all today on Secular. Live from Washington D.C., Secular Live. Democrats are taking on one of their own Joe Manchin. Manchin opposes the voting rights bill and there is now a coordinated effort to pressure Manchin. Phone lines are open for your questions right now.

Call 1-800-684-3110. Is it possible we might change a few things here and there? We're going to do it. We've had discussions with Senator Manchin and they're continuing.

And now, your host, Jordan Secular. A very key statement from Chuck Schumer right there about where Senator Joe Manchin really is when it comes to H.R. 1, For the People Act, but also the idea that, listen, his vote would be important if he also was voting to override the filibuster.

Because that's what it would take to get to the next step of actually passing this federal takeover of our voting systems. But in an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette, so that's in West Virginia, the capital of West Virginia, speaking to his constituents, he said, 1. He doesn't support H.R.

1. He's too partisan. There's not been any Republican support for it whatsoever.

And 2. He's not going to support getting rid of the filibuster. Now, he put that out weeks before Chuck Schumer and the Democrats even planned to put this on the Senate floor for a vote. What does that mean when you're talking about Joe Manchin?

I think he has real problems with issues with H.R. 1 and this For the People Act. But he also referenced to this the John Lewis Voting Act, which has not actually been, there's kind of like bullet points on it and framework on it, but it's not in legislative text. And so is that what Chuck Schumer's talking about when he said, well, we're open to changes?

But we're going to walk through for you exactly what is in H.R. 1 that is, again, this federal takeover of what in the Constitution is very clear. I mean, in Article 1 of the Constitution, Section 4, time, place and manner for holding of elections for senators and representatives should be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof of the state. Again, I'll just give you one example of how Washington would be involved.

Listen to this one. The ability for a state to determine their registration voting practices totally gets trampled, even though under Article 1, Section 4, I just read. But it also would mandate what they're calling ethics standards for the Supreme Court. If the federal government, that is the one court in the U.S. Constitution that exists, the inferior courts are the courts of appeals, district courts, those were set up by Congress. But when they're set up, they then fall under Article 3.

They have their own ability to act as a separate branch of government. This idea that they would be putting in whatever that means with ethics, that's just kind of on the top of the bat. But I want to go Washington, D.C. quickly with Dan because, Dan, to me, Joe Manchin is putting out the right message to the senator from West Virginia that he's a no on this as it stands right now, and he's not supporting the filibuster move. I think it's a pretty big mountain to move for them to get him not only to support the legislation he said he won't to his constituents unless they made significant concessions to him, which is possible. But to do that, they'd also have to get him to say yes on the filibuster move, which he's not the only Democrat senator that's expressed potential opposition to that. Yeah, Jordan, it's a huge development, but I really think his constituents need to be a little bit wary here and actually really pay attention over the coming weeks. Obviously, if he doesn't support H.R. 1 and if he doesn't support gutting the filibuster, then both of those two items are dead, but Jordan, by expressing support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a bill that we have no idea what it'll look like by the time it gets to the United States Senate, that bill could very well look very much like S-1. So if he votes for that bill but the substance is the same as S-1, then he hasn't kept his promise. Right, so it's this idea that are we just playing a naming game with him?

Would that be his potential where he says, no, we need to remove the filibuster? We're going to talk about it all when we come back. Protecting your freedoms, defending your rights, in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. And we have an exceptional track record of success. But here's the bottom line, we could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms. That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side.

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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, the 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. We're going to walk through kind of the step by step, some of the most egregious provisions of this legislation, which is being done in the name of protecting voting rights.

But then you look at what it's really doing. I talked about one of those provisions, mandating new ethics for Supreme Court justices. As attorneys, we have ethics. Each district, each state that you are a member of the bar has ethics. Some differ slightly. There are federal ethics, there are state ethics boards, there are ethics issues that arise as attorneys.

You take classes on law school and ethics. You go on and on and on. The idea that, again, it's more, when we talk about a takeover of the voting system, we're also talking about trampling over on separation of powers. But there's something at play here when you hear people saying, well, this isn't dead yet. The bigger question there is, that means there's some communication. That's what I'm picking up on, is that while this may not be the piece of legislation Joe Manchin, senator from West Virginia, is willing to put his foot down and say, I'm going to support getting rid of the legislative filibuster.

Is he open to it in some other way? Basically, give me what I want, put it in terms that are better, more acceptable to me, and suddenly I'll get you this reform. So we talked about the nationalizing and just kind of the trampling over the first minute. I don't want to get back to you, but I just want to start walking through this now with all of you. I want to take your phone calls on it, 1-800-684-3110.

There's a lot of misinformation on it. This had to already get past the legislative filibuster. Then Senator Manchin's vote would be crucial. But he would also have to be crucial in that vote to end the legislative filibuster, which he's also said he's against.

So there's two ways to hold his feet to the fire on this. One is, you say you're against the legislative filibuster, you don't like this legislation, it's totally partisan. That's okay, but except for the fact that in the first impeachment trial, when 70% of your state was voting for President Trump, and I know for good and well Joe Manchin knew the right way to vote in that first impeachment trial. He still voted to impeach. He still joined Democrats. It was not a meaningful vote. It didn't change anything.

He makes a lot of calculations based off that. But just to the first parade of horribles on H.R.1, we did spend a lot of time on this one, but I just think it just tells you how they want this federal takeover. So there's matching funds available to Presidential candidates if they want to comply with limits on fundraising. No one is doing that anymore because it's outdated.

The system is not utilisable. But now they want to expand that program to further federal elections to create a six to one funding match. Should we talk about matching challenge on our broadcast?

We have them at ACLJ, right? We talk about, you know, it's double the impact. This is six times the impact with your federal tax dollars. So any small donor contribution so that they consider that $200 or less in a congressional or Presidential campaign.

So they're putting themselves in this to get matching funds. So every $200 that a candidate raised, the federal government would give them $1200. This is, again, this is $1200 of your taxpayer dollars.

But don't worry. They want you to be involved in the process and they're not going to give you $200. So you're not going to be a substantial donor, big enough to get that six times matching challenge that the government wants to run on its own. But they want to give you a $25 voucher so you can support any campaign that you want. I don't know how you'd get the voucher. Do you like the federal government giving you money that you have to then use to donate to a campaign?

That starts getting into some areas that are also very sticky. This is just the start of the legislation. I want to go to Harry Hutchinson on the ethics. So part one, this funding issue, I think, again, it's Congress. It's like a bailout for themselves. Makes it a whole lot easier because most congressional races, you don't have to raise more, you know, a couple million dollars. You raise a lot of money unless it's a very, very targeted specific race where there's money pouring in from across the country.

Makes it a whole lot easier to raise that if for every $200 you're getting $1200. But I want to move to the idea that they want to do ethics reforms for the courts. Harry, right away, I mean, they're trying to, they have their job in the U.S. Senate to vote, to confirm nominees or not. And they can vote them down. They can prevent the President from getting their picks. But that's their role. It ends there and then we have a separation of powers.

Absolutely. So the attempt to impose a new ethics rule on Supreme Court justices, in my judgment, goes beyond the boundaries of the United States Constitution. And I think Democrat Supreme Court justices, at least those nominated by a Democrat President, they would oppose this. It is clearly, I think, in violation of the Constitution. But this is a very subtle and a very crafty move by the Democrats. Because it is really about providing an opening salvo in the Supreme Court's dream of packing the Supreme Court.

So if they can pass this particular provision, and let's assume the Supreme Court invalidates it, then they will go to the next step, which is to try to pack the Supreme Court in order to nominate justices who agree with their interpretation of the United States Constitution. Essentially, they believe, the Democrats believe in what might be called living constitutionalism, which means that the tax means nothing. It's all about feelings. It's about emotions. It's about sentiments. It's about a sense of fairness. Imagine, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the United States Supreme Court, and even though she's not a lawyer, there's nothing that prevents her from joining the Supreme Court and emoting as a Supreme Court justice going forward. So this is the essential problem, I think, with this provision, imposing ethics requirements on Supreme Court justices.

There you go. That is just one example. Second example, I want to get people's thoughts on this from across the country, because your state has its ability to set up these methods for voting. Every state is a little different. But every state is different also in population, in how many urban areas, city areas, downtown areas, rural areas. I mean, some states are predominantly rural. Other states, major cities kind of dominate the map. And then you've got the rural areas, though, but they can still, you know, kind of make decisions that make sense for people. And if you don't like it, you have the ability to change, you know, move states.

If you feel like, you know, people have talked a lot about California, if you feel like you're not, you're kind of done fighting for it, and you just want to move on, you know, there's lots of states to choose from, and you get to make that choice. But then if they make the move, which was a rushed move, and this is kind of number three on the list, to put in place the same voting protocols that were rushed through, to say the least, haphazardly made, caused a lot of confusion, led to chaos in the United – not just Washington – the United States of America. And they want to take that, and they want to codify it into law so that everyone is registered automatically unless you opt out.

Again, I don't know how you do that, if it's automatic. And by the way, in most states, when you go get your ID or your driver's license, they will ask you, and it's not very hard to register to vote. In any state I've lived in, or the District of Columbia where I've been a voter before as well, this is a very simple process, very quick process to register to vote. But they like to nationalize that. They want to expand – they want to basically nationalize the mail-in ballot process. No more voter ID to this idea of – it's the exact opposite of what everybody said were the problems of the last election that cast doubt on – that put doubt in people's minds, wrong or right, and which led to chaos. And yet they want to codify that into law.

And they want to do it in a one-size-fits-all way, Jordan. I mean, look, even if it weren't rushed, which it clearly was in 2020, it led to confusion, it led to, you're right, people being not confident in the outcome. But even if it weren't rushed, even if various states, Jordan, decided to make some of these changes in a thought-out process for future elections, and maybe every state didn't look like each other, what this would do, Jordan, is would do take that authority away from the states and say, no, the state of Washington has to do elections like the state of New York. The state of California has to do elections like the state of Massachusetts. And by the way, not only do they have to do it the same, who gets to decide how they're going to do it? The federal government gets to decide how they want to do it. So, Jordan, I really think that the election that we saw in 2020 would actually be the high-water mark, as shocking as that may sound. There's only one direction for this to go if Washington, D.C., is making all the calls, and that is that these rules would get worse, they would get more problematic for states, and the federal government would continue to absorb more power.

As their commentators are saying, though they feel like this legislation is teetering and that may lead to bigger problems for the Biden administration, that Joe Manchin op-ed, every time I read it, I feel like there's an opening there, and an opening that makes me nervous about the filibuster and makes me nervous about this legislation if they just did a name change and a quick change here. 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 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. The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. And we have an exceptional track record of success.

But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.

That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today.

ACLJ.org. One of my issues that I've got with Joe Manchin, so if you watch on our social media, if you're watching the broadcast, you heard this. But I want you to listen to his interview with Chris Wallace from Fox News Sunday. So he came out on that.

The op-ed comes out in the Charleston Gazette. But listen carefully, because what we're talking about on the show is the problems with this as it pertains to voting and trampling on state constitution. That is not where Joe Manchin's problem is, because in his own words, it's the additional funding mechanism that he says have nothing to do with voting that he thinks makes it kind of like a bloated piece of legislation that's too partisan. So he's looking at it a different way than we are as we go through the problems we see with this.

Which, by the way, I'll just give you a little tease right off the bat, because we're just working through the top ten problems here. We haven't gotten to the speech czar. I'm not kidding you. That's a direct quote from the legislation. A speech czar. This is in a country with a First Amendment right to free speech. We don't need someone to police it at all. And if you, again, the idea of you yelling fire in a crowded theater, we have courts, we have legal systems.

We don't need the federal government with speech czars as it relates to voting, as it relates to politics, as it relates to elections. And again, I'm just kind of previewing that for you. We'll get into it further at the broadcast. The final one we've got to love, because you know, we're the organization that basically, I think the Washington Post had gutted the IRS, and especially their ability to try and politically pick winners and losers when it comes to applying for tax-exempt status for either C3 organizations, but especially C4 organizations. HR1, the For the People Act, would permit the IRS. Permit the IRS to investigate and consider the political and policy persuasions of organizations before granting tax-exempt status. Okay, I mean, I'm going to save getting really deep into that for our second half hour, because that is what we fought at the IRS. That is what, again, courts determined was wrong, illegal misconduct by the IRS to consider politics, to consider not just politics, but then the ACLJ, for instance, is a 501 C3 organization.

We provide legal services at no cost. But they're going to look at our policy persuasions. We're going to give the IRS that power again. I mean, you are basically installing a lowest learner on steroids who is protected, would be protected by federal law to impose their political beliefs, because they're going to have to assess the political beliefs of groups, and so if they don't like your political beliefs, you just disappear into the IRS system. That is just, again, Joe Manchin's not saying that's where his problems are, and that's what makes me very still nervous, and why we still have to take, that's why I want to choose today, start getting to some people's radar, because I feel like he's throwing out what his issues are. They're not necessarily the issues that, he's not seeing eye to eye with us on all of the issues. And then, of course, the filibuster issue, which would be the be-all, end-all, for kind of any way to kind of pause through before we make major legislative changes, on either side of the aisle. Yeah, you're correct to be nervous, Jordan, and look, when we get to the issue about the lowest learner rule, I've certainly got thoughts on that, but let me just give our listeners a view into how the legislative process is very likely to work in a scenario like this. Joe Manchin says he doesn't like S-1 because of these provisions that are in it, but he does like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Well, Speaker Pelosi herself says that that bill, which is basically a placeholder from a bill that was introduced last session, deals mostly with pre-clearance requirements from the Department of Justice. Set all that aside, Jordan. She herself says that's a bill that won't be ready until the fall.

Well, what will make it ready? Jordan, I am here to tell you that the thing that is very likely to make that bill ready to pass is that they're going to lift provisions from S-1, the Four People Act, they're going to drop them into the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and they're going to move that through the House and send it to the United States Senate. So you're going to end up with a bill in the United States Senate that is named the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, but the substance is mainly going to be the S-1 bill, and it's going to be specifically on the voting provisions. And I'm here to tell you, Jordan, Joe Manchin's correct about some of the extraneous provisions being problematic, but the voting provisions specifically, Jordan, those are the worst provisions in this bill. Those are the provisions that take the ability for states to protect the integrity of elections and remove them from the states and move them to the federal government, where we know those protections are going to be watered down. So when that day comes, when the fall comes, and there is a bill in the U.S. Senate named the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and it looks a lot like S-1, and Joe Manchin says he's going to vote for it because it's got the voting provisions in there, Jordan, those are the problematic provisions. And so take a listen. I want you to hear him in his own words.

This is with Chris Wallace on Sunday, bite 31. Is Chuck Schumer making a mistake in pushing this big bill, the For the People Act, and saying that he wants to vote on it by the end of the month? And two, if he does bring it to the floor, will you vote against that bill? Voting is the bedrock of our democracy, an open, fair, secured voting. We used to go around the world and explain and show and observe voting procedures in a democracy. And now if we can't practice what we preach, and we're going to basically do an overhaul, an 800-page overhaul of the Voting Rights, or what we call For the People Act, I think there's a lot of great things I agree in that piece of legislation, but there's an awful lot of things that basically don't pertain directly to voting. You know, so, again, what we're talking about is the things that relate directly to voting. He's talking about the pork, which, by the way, they put enough pork in for his home state, who I think, you know, again, all bets are off. Now, I do think the filibuster reform is also different. I mean, some of this was going to be a political vote to say, see, we're all united. It's the bad Republicans who want to, you know, suppress voter rights and these issues.

I mean, I'm going to just give you some of the highlights, what we're going to get into. I talked about the IRS issue. Also, you know, they love talking about, remember, Russia, election interference, and this, and they're hacking the systems. What if all of it ran through one system? Well, that makes it a little bit easier to hack. I mean, when you have states independently setting up their own systems that best suit them and that, again, is being set up by their representatives who are most local, whether at the state representative level or simply mid-level or delegate level, and then, of course, state senate, and this idea that that alone makes us more vulnerable. But I want you to understand, speeches are, your speech rights, political candidates' speech rights, is in this legislation.

Speech czar. So, yeah, you get $25 in a voucher to donate to any campaign you want, which, by the way, just, I don't like that at all. But then this six-to-one matching challenge that the federal government wants to run for House and Senate candidates, as many members of Congress have said, it's like a bailout for politicians. And in the Presidential level, though that matching exists, major candidates don't utilize it anymore because it restricts your ability to raise certain amounts of money, and that's not necessarily the type of internet you're able to reach out to a lot more people. So, again, a lot to talk about in the second half hour, and we'll take your calls on this.

1-800-684-3110. What do you think about the idea of a speech czar regulating politics in the United States of America? For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights, in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today. ACLJ.org. Live from Washington, D.C., Sekulow Live.

And now, your host, Jordan Sekulow. You know, our top ten most egregious provisions of H.R. 1 for the people act, and the reason we bring it up is because Joe Manchin has made an issue because he came out of the op-ed opposing it. Wonderful. Sounds wonderful. The vote is not for about two more weeks if they stay on the same track. He also says he's opposed to getting rid of the filibuster. Sounds great. But also, he basically in that op-ed lays out what he would vote for, so he's given Chuck Schumer the roadmap and the Biden administration the roadmap.

He has not expressed problems so far that I've seen of anything that we've brought up so far. Like, for instance, and we're just getting into it, in one half-hour broadcast, the public funds of campaigns, federal fines on corporations on their campaign funding and the decision to, again, utilize as a private business if they set up the right apparatus, but also the matching. For a congressional candidate, I mean, Thanh, I want to go back to this for a second. Most members of the House of Representatives are not coming from, like, the most heavily targeted districts in the country. We get high-profile races where both candidates have to raise millions of dollars to compete with each other even at the House level, sometimes in primaries in states where we see, you know, it's a blue state or a red state where that district is basically whoever wins the primary has got that, you know, seat for as long as they'd like, and so that becomes very competitive. But, I mean, for a house race, the Senate races are more expensive, but for a house race, if you can get $1,200 for every 200 bucks you raise, that alone, to me, it just reeks of corruption. One, that number is right below the level of reporting. It's $250.

But, you know, if you go to Open Secrets and all those websites, you can see, you can look up me, see where I've donated, you can look up anybody, look up your neighbors. Over $250 is usually the number that gets reported. So it's just under that number, and then they get six times that amount. That alone, to me, Thanh, could be heavily abused. It's one of the craziest provisions I've ever heard about, Jordan.

I mean, let me just give you a hypothetical. Let's say there's a congressional race, you know, somewhere in Kansas, and let's say there's eight candidates running, and maybe you support one of them and I support a different one of them, and so we each give our preferred candidate $200, Jordan. By effect, what we have done is actually subsidized the candidate we don't prefer, the one we don't like, to the tune of six times that number. So I give $200 to candidate A, and by default, you and the rest of the taxpayers have to give that candidate $1,200, even though you do not support them, Jordan. It is forced subsidization of candidates you don't support. People listening to this broadcast probably don't support people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well, guess what? Under this legislation, your tax dollars are going to fund her campaign.

And one other point I would make, Jordan, this is a discussion we've had internally as a team. There's so much conversation out there about dark money and money that we don't know where it comes from funding campaigns. Can you imagine the incentive if every taxpayer can actually be the vehicle through which their small dollar contribution can be multiplied by six times? If you think dark money is a problem now, I think there's probably a debate to be had about that, but if you think there's a problem now, just wait till this provision's in law.

There's not enough regulators even by Democrats to track that. And that was what we've already gone through. So another one, this one, they want to mimic California, which again, California, blue state right now, heavily blue. There's a recall move. We'll see what happens with that.

That's a different show entirely. But to say, let's take that and apply it to the whole country. What would that mean? Permanent mail-in ballot. So you legalize ballot harvesting, disregard voter ID laws. I will talk about how are they disregarding those voter ID laws as well, because they've come up with an interesting mechanism to try and do that. I want to put this all on your radars because I think Joe Manchin's op-ed is correct. He opposes this as it stands, but he's not against the provisions we're talking about. So, so, and he's put forward what he would support, which again, as Stan said, could be a very quick name change and maybe a couple small provisional changes. So we've got to watch this very carefully, folks.

It's not done yet. It's what everyone wants you to think as an activist. The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress and in the public arena. And we have an exceptional track record of success.

But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.

That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life changing work.

Become a member today. ACLJ.org. 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, the 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. We just talked about how this legislation forces states to expand mail-in voting, which again, some states have done with success. I mean, I think it's Oregon to all mail-in ballot. Now, if you look at the population of Oregon, it is not the same size as California. It is not the same size as New York or Florida.

I mean, that's nothing against Oregon and a beautiful state. But they've also implemented it over time. It was a test. They've got it in place, and people decided through their representatives they would move forward that way.

To force that on states is very different. But I want to go to the phones because Janet's got a good question. Online one from California. Hey, Janet, welcome to Secular. You're on the air. Hi there. Thank you for taking my call and for all of the great work that the ACLJ does.

Thank you, Janet. My question is regarding the HR 1 bill. Its intent is to nationalize the voting process, but I think the Constitution outlines that each state has the right and the authority to determine the voting process in their state. So wouldn't a bill like this that seeks to change all of that require a constitutional amendment?

Well, it's interesting. I think if this were to pass, Harry, certainly there would be legal challenges to whether or not this violates Article I's Section 4. Does it violate other provisions of the Constitution that have been laid out and amended over time? Through constitutional amendments on Presidential elections, the Electoral College, all these things that are running at the state level.

Remember, all those elections that get certified at the state level through their procedures, and then it gets to Congress, and then they have their role to play. But I think that, again, they can pass the legislation and then go find it out in court, Harry, and see what sticks and see what doesn't stick. That's always, you know, that's with any piece of legislation. I think there's serious problems with that. But again, we were talking about it yesterday.

I talked about it yesterday in an interview I did. When you are relying on court to save you, that is still the place of last resort. Absolutely. So I think the caller is precisely correct in her constitutional analysis.

However, it's also important to note that there is an important predicate to the caller's question, and that caller's question must be submitted to whom? Democrats. And then we need to ask the Democrats, do they believe in the Constitution?

My answer is absolutely not. They believe in what might be called a living Constitution. So they believe that through litigation, argumentation, and rational analysis, they can overwhelm the Supreme Court and then encourage the Supreme Court to overlook the actual text of the Constitution. So Jordan, I think you are correct. It is always tricky to rely on court judgments and keep in mind that the Democrats have a backup plan.

What is the backup plan? To pack the United States Supreme Court. And so at the end of the day, I think American citizens should be activated. They should take action now to oppose this legislation and any subsequent legislation that basically takes provisions from it because the best way of preventing this law from taking effect is to prevent its passage in the first place. I want to go to the, we talked about the legalizing of ballot harvesting. Again, there are states that allow that. There are states that don't. I don't like the idea of ballot harvesting.

I think it's taking advantage of people, vulnerable people, whether they are in care facilities, whether they are newer to the country as citizens. And it's ripe for corruption. But again, some states have decided they will allow this gathering of votes. And they still try to say, well, people have to ask for your help and then fill out the ballot.

The list goes on, but it causes problems. This would nationalize that. We talked about how it would disregard voter ID laws.

How does it do that? It would force states, think about this. I mean, this is absurd. It would force states to allow sworn statements to be used in place of ID and allowing for signature verification. So no ID, no signature verification, just a sworn statement. And you could submit that through a photo if the voter registers online. Who's photo? And if there's no signature, if there's no ID, what are you matching it for? Anybody then could just put up a photo, put it online. And by the way, is this another federal government database of, you know, U.S. is another way of tracking your voting?

Again, it just reeks of fan to me. This provision also, the idea that one, we don't even have the system in place. You talked about in our chat the fact that when they tried to roll out the healthcare.gov website, how it crashed immensely. That is not even close to how many people vote in elections, especially Presidential year elections. And the idea that you can just bypass any kind of verification by putting in a photo, I guess in your address in a photo. But if they don't have your ID or you don't have an ID, there's nothing to match that to. Well, if all you have to do is submit a signature, Jordan, in place of a photo identification, that means you don't have a photo identification law.

So a state can pass a photo identification law, but if the federal government says, no, no, no, you have to accept a signature in place of it, you don't have the photo ID law. Let me just kind of lift up to a higher level for a second, Jordan, because I think all of these provisions that you've talked about are really just an effort at unchecked power from the left in Washington, D.C. And Nancy Pelosi said something to her colleagues in a press release a couple of days ago that I think is worth injecting into the conversation here. She said, we are at an urgent moment because of the Republican assault on our democracy. And Jordan, I think all of us can concede that there are probably some on both sides who are trying to win at all costs, even willing to abandon the framework.

But listen to what she follows that up with. She says, by contrast, congressional Democrats have brilliantly and patriotically proposed legislation to respect the sanctity of our democracy. So, Jordan, she is saying that if the federal government is going to come in and eviscerate state photo ID laws and say that you have to take a signature verification in its place, that that is a brilliant and patriotic proposal to respect the sanctity of our democracy.

Jordan, it's not that. It's an effort to achieve unchecked power from Washington, D.C. You can't check the signature because you don't have to have an ID to match it to. And then you can't if you want to do the photo option, but you don't have to have an ID to do that because you could just submit the photo online.

They're not matching it to any system either. This would be, again, states would also be forced, Terry, to count provisional ballots that were cast outside of a voter's correct precinct. That, to me, that's one that really steps on, I think, article on Section 4. This idea that they're going to say, well, you don't only have to count them as provisional, you've got to count them as actual votes, even when it's not the problem of the state, but of the voter. And by the way, most of the time, if you are having an issue with it, you showed up at the wrong precinct, the correct precinct is not too far away. I mean, it's usually, you know, a mile or two away, especially in major election years because there's a lot of different precincts set up. In an early voting, most states, red and blue, Harry, allow people to pick where they want to go for the two weeks before the election or sometimes even longer than that.

You're absolutely correct. The Democrats are extremely creative in doing one thing, coming up with legislative proposals that favor them. Keep in mind, for instance, the Democrats opposed foreign interference in the 2016 election, yet this particular bill makes it easier for foreign interference in upcoming elections. With respect to voter suppression, the Democrats have majored in voter suppression going back to around 1870 to around 1950. Keep in mind, the segregationist South was controlled by Democrats, so they supported voter suppression. Now they oppose voter suppression.

So what's their latest move? They believe in constitutional suppression. So in other words, we throw the Constitution out.

Why? Because we believe, as Democrats, that favors us. So each and every proposal in this legislation, in H.R. 1, is designed to entrench Democrats in office.

This is basically a two-step melody, if you will. First, the Democrats have opened the border to a new pool of voters. Now they want to change the voting rules to allow those voters to get on a plane or potential voters to get on a plane in Timbuktu, go to Mexico, cross the border, and vote in a Louisiana election. That is the Democrats' strategy.

It's all about favoring them permanently. When we come back, and this is, again, it is, it's a Democrat wish list when it comes to voting, which is why Joe Manchin says that's not his issue with it. He's got other reasons to oppose it, but not the issues that help Democrats. The IRS issue, though, I saved that for last because I wanted to vote an entire segment to it. That's coming up next, and this is, again, this is what is, I think, one of the most dangerous tools we could give such a divided Congress.

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ACLJ.org. So right before I get to the IRS, because I want to get through the parade of horribles, and we talked about it before, it's back up because Chuck Schumer said he's going to put it to a vote regardless of where Joe Manchin is. But he also said he's talking to Joe Manchin.

Do we have that sound with Schumer? I mean, he's talking about basically they're not taking that as the end of this discussion. They say that, you know, we can keep that discussion going.

Take a listen by one, Senator Chuck Schumer, Majority Leader of the Senate. Is it possible we might change a few things here and there? We're going to do it. We've had discussions with Senator Manchin and they're continuing.

Now, we're going to do it. I mean, to me it's a pretty clear sign of if Joe Manchin, if what he's proposing through his op-ed is within the realm of reason, and all of these things that we're talking about make their way through. The second question becomes, is Joe Manchin at all flexible?

Is Kyrsten Sinema at all flexible as the Senator from Arizona on actually getting rid of the filibuster? Then, before I get to the IRS issue, kind of the final point of this, because we fought so hard to protect Americans at the ACLJ. And, by the way, when we got that injunction against the IRS from ever targeting Americans who apply for these status groups, for Texas status, because of their political beliefs, policy orientations, the fact is that has changed significantly the process.

And it's made it easier for Americans to organize at the grassroots level. They want to reverse that. But before I get to that, they also want now commissions at the federal level to decide congressional districts. Now, there are states, and again, parts of the Voting Rights Act have been lifted on some states, but there were in place provisions for states that had a history of Jim Crow laws, of voting suppression, where they had to go and get court approval. Not congressional approval, Thanh.

That was the difference. They took it to courts to review, it went through the state legislative process, and then a court to review. But now Congress wants the ability to draw, I mean, it's like getting their six-time matching donation, they also want to draw their own congressional districts. It's an important distinction, Jordan, and interestingly enough, one of the proposals in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would actually change some of those pre-clearance requirements, and I think there's a problem underlying there. But yeah, I mean, this is just another example of an egregious power grab by the federal government. Currently, states have the ability to draw their congressional districts within a certain framework.

There are some guidelines, like you said, based on a past history of abuse, to have to get some pre-clearance through the Department of Justice. This would turn this all on its head, Jordan. They use the guise of an independent commission that would draw congressional lines. Well, who sets up the independent commission? It's the federal government, Jordan. So I mean, you think that commission is truly going to be independent when the people who are appointing them are those who are elected officials in Washington, D.C.?

There is no chance. This is just another example of Washington, D.C. taking over an authority that belongs in the states. Harry, I mean, the final one, because I think this is the one, again, we fought to stop this. We represented, I will say this, as always, really brave Americans organizing at the grassroots level, and they were willing to take on the IRS. And of course, we were willing to represent them, but you have to have clients to represent. I always want to thank all those groups, because standing up to the IRS is no joke. And remember, during that process, not only was it the IRS, but we also found out, which is when this became even a more heightened situation, that the IRS was working with the FBI. And we had FBI agents showing up trying to interview our clients, who literally, I've gone out and spoken to a number of these groups before over the years.

These were real grassroots organizations where a group of 50, 60 people might get together in a local community once a month, maybe organize trips to go to bigger events or come together, the local organizations together. But they want to put in place not just a speech czar, that's included in this for the political campaign, but they want the IRS to, again, Harry, go back to having the power. Well, they didn't have the power before, but now legalizing what we stopped in court, which is to consider political and policy persuasions of organizations before granting tax system status, even though it's specifically under the C4 rules. I mean, it talks about in the IRS code what they can and can't do when it comes to policy and political matters.

And that's all you need to be abiding by is the rules, not what your policies provisions are or your persuasions are. I mean, this to me is the most dangerous provision because they know one strength of the conservative movement is the ability for grassroots organizations to pop up quickly and organize and mobilize quickly. So they want to be able to prevent a stop to it like they did the first time around with the Tea Party.

I think you're precisely correct. So essentially, this particular provision weaponizes the IRS to go after political conservatives. In a sense, you could look at this as a provision that names Lois Lerner as a special prosecutor to investigate only conservative organizations. That has been the history of the IRS.

They have not been even handed. In some sense, you could argue from a constitutional perspective, they have been violating consistently the First Amendment rights of conservative organizations. And this particular provision essentially reinstates the Lois Lerner rule and basically is designed to disenfranchise independent thinking and conservative Americans. And all independent and conservative thinking Americans should rise up and oppose this particular provision, but also they should oppose the entire bill.

This bill hopefully will not pass. No, but this is an obsession point they have for so many Democrats. I know from the hearings we did on Capitol Hill, the congressional hearings, they loved, and we found this out through all that work that we did representing the groups, sending letters to the IRS asking them to investigate this conservative group in their district that they don't like because maybe they're opposed to their issues and policies. And so they loved trying to refer Americans who are, again, organizing at the grassroots level, and they would refer them to the IRS. And honestly, that was wrong, but now they would not only be able to refer them to the IRS, but under this, the IRS would then have the unchecked power to say, I guess, their political persuasion is something they disagree with. And by the way, Sam, when you talk about the federal bureaucracy, you're talking about voter registration and donations and reports that you can look up, like we talked about earlier, in the 95 to 98% plus range going to Democrats. Jordan, it's just shocking to me that there's still support for this in Washington, D.C. The idea that an individual or a group's political views should be one of the rubrics that the IRS or any other agency, for that matter, is allowed to look through to determine your tax status, that's just shocking that anyone would support that.

But Jordan, this is not an accident. I mean, it's in this legislation that passed, and it's not like this is ancient history. We saw this abused just about a decade ago. That's why we worked so hard for this statutory provision, the Lois Lerner rule, to actually be in statute. The fact that that is so soon after that abuse, back on the table and back in this bill for reenactment, Jordan, it might be shocking that that's a prevailing view in the left in Washington, D.C., but that's just the reality we're working with. Well, this is the new left trying to oppose, and the old left is trying to appease the new left, and it's totalitarian.

It's the socialist ideas, the communist ideas, the idea of controlling, having speech czars in politics, controlling who gets their matching challenge and donations, controlling who gets approved by the IRS to operate a policy organization. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Check out ACLJ.org, as always, on Secular. Become a member today. ACLJ.org.