BREAKING: Another MAJOR Supreme Court Victory

Breaking news today on Sekulow is there is another major victory out of the U.S. Supreme Court. You don't want to miss it. Share it with your friends and family and a lot more to talk about as well. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.

Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. So after overturning Roe vs. Wade and Casey on Friday, the Supreme Court is issuing an opinion today in favor of religious liberty and the free exercise of religion. On Monday, the court ruled for a former, I know you've been paying attention to this case, former high school football coach lost his job after leading postgame prayers at midfield. In the court's latest decision, they have again said, and this is Justice Gorsuch 6-3, that the prayers of the coach are protected by the Constitution's guarantees of both free speech and the free exercise of religion clause. So the free exercise of religion. So you have again a case on Friday, monumental, the Roe vs. Wade case. This case very much staying in line with where the court has been building when it comes to religious liberty in the public square, especially when it involves young people, students, minors basically is what we're talking about. But again the court said that this coach had the constitutional right to make that prayer so that firing of him for doing that was wrong. Yeah it's interesting because the biggest aspect of this case was was the court going to leave in place what we call in the legal world the Lemon Test. And this was this very complex three-part legal test to determine if an activity violated the establishment clause, separation of church and state as the left likes to call it. What's interesting about this case is they not only said that the judge, excuse me, the coach had the right to engage in that prayer, it was private speech not government speech, but they also said that the fact that there were students around the area did not make it immune from First Amendment protection. We'll go into the particulars in a minute, but the court also did away with the Lemon Test. What they said was that the application of the Lemon Test in this context and in the and they talk about a history of cases has been misplaced and then they said in place of Lemon and the endorsement test, those were the progeny of Lemon if you will, the court has instructed that the establishment clause must be interpreted by reference to historical practice and understanding. And that really focuses in on lack of coercion. You're not gonna, you will have an establishment clause violation if the government said, for instance, for you to be a officer of a police officer, you have to believe in this religion or that religion. Or if you want to get your diploma, you have to go to this baccalaureate service at a high school. Or if you want to play next weekend at the football game, you have to participate in the prayer by the coach. That would be a violation.

But individual student speech is fully protected. We'll get into the particulars on that in the next segment. But it's a good decision. Finally gets rid of Lemon.

Even the dissent says Lemon's gone. So that's a big win. It's important. I think it's important to emphasize these cases are still gonna be very fact-specific. Yeah, that's what they're talking about when they say you look at the historical practices, the understanding. But it did say too that, and I think this is important because we kept talking about the free exercise of religion meaning something again. And it's not just all about the establishment clause. The court went on to say, a natural reading of the First Amendment suggests that the clauses have complementary purposes, not warring ones, where one clause they're talking about there, the establishment clause, is always sure to prevail over the others. An analysis focused on the original meaning in history, this court has stressed and has long represented the rule rather than some exception within the court's establishment clause jurisprudence. So I think that this is important to note is that the free exercise clause, which has meant nothing to courts for decades, means something to this current court. And they've done that time and time again.

They've shown that. And that they don't just bow down and say, well, if there's the exercise clause and the establishment clause at issue, the establishment clause always wins. That is no longer the case anymore. No, in fact, they cited our case of Mergens v. Board of Education for this proposition. The establishment clause does not compel the government to purge from the public sphere anything an objective observer would reasonably infer as endorsement overtakes of religion.

In other words, the fact that there is a religious connotation to it doesn't mean it's immune from First Amendment speech and free exercise protection. It's a big win. We're gonna get into the particulars when we come back from the break. We'll take your calls on it as well at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110.

Back with more in a moment. All right, welcome back to Secular. We are taking your phone calls to this as well, 1-800-684-3110, certainly for conservatives. A lot of victories out of the Supreme Court in just the past couple of days, the court's opinions Friday, overturning Roe v. Wade and Casey Hughes, and we're not done analyzing that by any means. We haven't even really gotten started on explaining to you about the next steps we'll be taking at the ACLJ. We are gonna get into some of the next steps Planned Parenthood's already taking in court in places like Utah, which is interesting because their legal arguments are all over the place to say the least, which means that they were prepared, but not prepared to make really anything that doesn't seem like anything that would be convincing based off the Supreme Court opinion, eviscerating all these federal rights. And then today, another religious liberty victory that this court case that went on way too long, years of litigation, just to say that there's no constitutional crisis for a football coach in a public school to go on to the, whether it's the 50-yard line or the end zone, and pray on and pray on their own.

That's what this is about. Is there a constitutional crisis? And the court said- And the lower court said yes. Lower court said yes. Supreme Court 6 to 3 said absolutely not. This is a first free speech issue and a free exercise of religion issue. The establishment clause doesn't always win. And they said, I think what was important as well, this was from the court's opinion, in place of Lemon, which is the test that really caused all of these cases, because Lemon was so involved factually. Did it do this?

Were you involved this way? Did the government have to look at it this way and that way? So the three-part test was not like an ABC test.

It was very fact heavy. And what the court said today is in place of Lemon and the endorsement test, which kind of followed Lemon, this court has instructed that the establishment clause be interpreted by reference to historical practices and understandings. That still opens the door to more cases, essentially. It doesn't end in that. It's not like Roe where it says, this is not us. It's not the federal law. It's not in the constitution. So don't come to us for it to find this right. This still keeps a lot of these cases in federal court. But what I do hope it means is that they won't have to be seven-year long battles.

It will not. And what's interesting also is the court on page 22 of its opinion cited our case in Mergens v. Board of Education, Westside Community Schools v. Mergens for this proposition. An establishment clause violation does not automatically follow whenever a public school or other government entity fails to censor private religious speech. So I think it's fair to say that the battle line, Harry, has been clarified that private religious speech, which has been true since Mergens, is constitutionally protected when you have the mechanisms of government involved, not so much.

I think that is precisely correct. And so I think Coach Kennedy clearly established that his conduct, the conduct at issue in this case, was private religious speech, and that speech was protected by the free exercise clause as well as the speech clause of the First Amendment. And so if we look at this particular case going forward, this is an important case because it re-emphasizes that private religious speech is a protected right and we can no longer utilize the establishment clause to infringe on private religious speech. In past cases, the Supreme Court has allowed what could be called the heckler's veto.

Someone who simply objected to the kind of speech engaged in by Coach Kennedy or someone else. This court, I think, has now firmly established that the heckler's veto has now been sent to the grave for purposes of future constitutional litigation. That's a welcome development. And I'm glad to see that the ACLJ has supported through an amicus brief the decision-making of the Supreme Court. You know, it's also interesting that Justice Scalia wrote in a case, it's also cited in the Spinnin' Lambs Chapel, which was the ability of a church to use school facilities for educational film series from a Christian perspective, which was denied, and we won that unanimously also. What's interesting about that case, Justice Scalia said that the Lemon Test was like, he called it a ghoul in a late-night horror show that scares school districts and evidently school children because it continues to come out of, as he called it, the grave to wreak havoc on the free speech and free exercise clauses in the guise of an establishment clause problem. His reasoning in that case was utilized here. So I think it's important to point out, Jordan, that the court has finally said that the shortcomings associated with the Lemon Test, the chaos that it created in its wake, where you could never really determine what was legal and what wasn't, that we've reached a new season now. Yeah, it was completely, again, subjective to what kind of majority you had. You could always say the Lemon Test prevented something. You could always say that you could also ignore the Lemon Test. I think what the late Justice Scalia would talk about is that most of the time they did ignore it until they felt like they needed to bring it back from the dead.

I mean, that's the exact word he said. And as some commentators have said today, maybe this is the final nail in the coffin so that it can't keep coming back from the dead. I wanted to play that this was the exchange between Paul Clement, who argued this case, and Justice Gorsuch, which I think is probably at the heart of where we got to this decision today because it was really, hey, is there coercion here? No, but take a listen.

Bite 39. One of the difficulties of this case is getting one's hands around the district's rationale. And as I understood it, it was based on kind of our Lemon Endorsement Test. And you're arguing, as I hear you, that that was a mistaken test, and it is a mistaken way to think about what the Establishment Clause requires. You had a colloquy about coercion as an alternative, and I just like your thoughts on that subject generally.

I appreciate the question. I don't think, I mean, you know, people are trying to dispute this record. I think it is very clear on what motivated the district, and it was endorsement, endorsement, endorsement, endorsement, again. Not coercion. Not coercion.

So what's interesting about that is... And that's what you picked up on, is that, again, coercing people saying you're not going to play next week on the team... Unless you do the prayer. ...courts out into that, putting it over the loudspeaker, coercing everybody to be a part of the prayer.

Court's not into that right now. Students individually, as a group, the entire student body at a football game would stand up and say that, you know, prayer at a football game, for instance, students are doing that. What they're doing is they're doing it without the mechanism of the government. But here's the test that is now in place for placing Lemon. It's that the line that the courts and governments must draw between the permissible and impermissible has to do with history and faithfully reflect the understanding, Harry, of the Founding Father. So this is very much a textual test that's being put in place.

I think that is correct. And I also think that the court has rejected and reacted to the Lemon v. Kurtzman analysis, which was the result of a deliberate attempt to remove all traces of religion from public life. And this particular court opinion restores the viability of religion within the framework of public life so long as there is no evidence of coercive intent or action by the individual. And so in this particular case, Coach Kennedy simply knelt by himself at the middle of the field. He didn't coerce anyone.

He didn't demand that the district endorse his religious perspective. And I think the court finds that his conduct falls within the history and traditions of the United States. Yeah, let's go to the phones. 1-800-684-3110. And by the way, we're going to take questions about row two. There's plenty of those.

And I understand that. So if you've got questions on that still from the last week, absolutely, we'll take your calls. 1-800-684-3110. This is an interesting one from Daniel in South Carolina on line one. Hey, Daniel. Oh, hi.

This is Daniel, but I'm from South Dakota. Oh, okay. That's okay. I just wanted to ask you this question. But before I do that, I wanted to compliment Jay very much.

He never shows age, even after working in legal cases for 40 years or more. So I just wanted to give that compliment to him. That's on the outside. Yeah, there you go. Go ahead. Anyhow, I heard yesterday, as I was driving locally in my area from my radio station, that according to CBS, the majority of Americans do not approve the change a Supreme Court made for us by abolishing row versus weight. Is that correct? I think it's all based off how you asked the question. So people thought that row versus weight was really about women's rights in general. So when people get asked that question, yeah, I think you start to see a little... It favors not overturning row versus weight. Of course, it's not reality now because row versus weight has been overturned. But when you change the question to say, do you believe that there should be abortion after 15 weeks?

The shift happens right then. So when people actually know what they're being questioned about, when is the abortion going to occur? What are we going to allow in our state? And there's a seismic shift to where the majority of the country says, no, there should not be abortion after this many weeks. There should not be late-term abortions. There should not be abortion on demand with no restrictions at all.

So that's the difference. I think on that row versus weight question is way too broad of a question to poll people on because they don't exactly know the full ramifications of what it means. But it's fair to ask that because you're gonna hear that a lot from politicians who want to codify row either at the state level, but even at the federal level. This new plan at the federal level will say, get us two more Democrat senators and let's abolish the legislative filibuster completely and codify row versus weight. I mean, there is a move by that by Democrats trying to seize on this election cycle to get row codified.

I don't think it's a winning message, but I'm not a Democrat and I'm not a Democrat voter. So they're speaking to a different group than me. Be right back on Secula and taking your calls.

All right. Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your phone calls too. A lot of calls on row, and that's understandable because the opinion just came out Friday. I think people had a weekend to kind of take a breath and realize, what does this mean for my state? And people are starting to look at that. I know for ACLJ action, we're already ready to go. We know what it means for your state right now, and we're starting that process as we speak. We're going to get into more detail of that as we go on at the ACLJ, but we do want to answer people's questions about it, but also talk about, again, thankfully, and this is what I was most concerned about Friday. I was happy about, of course, with the decision, I'm happy is the name of the right word to say, but is that let's not see violence, let's not see police officers get hurt, let's not see a ton of vandalism. Thankfully, there wasn't mass. I would say it was not mass.

Antifa certainly showed up at some events, but it didn't look like they were able to take over the crowd. But there was some, and we're going to put it up on the screen to show you. This out of Virginia. Let's go first to Virginia. So you see there, smashed windows. You're seeing daylight images and that message from James Revenge, if abortion ain't safe, you ain't safe. That's in Virginia. And then also in Colorado, this was at night, they had fire bombed.

So you'll see the fire. These are, again, pro-life pregnancy centers and, again, pro-life organizations that have come under attack. But thankfully, they did not up those attacks in the sense that they didn't try to attack people.

It's interesting to me that it's still being talked about, but I think the protests were actually pretty muted if you really look at it. But the focus is on the crisis pregnancy centers. Clearly, these groups like James Revenge, CC, are focusing on the crisis pregnancy centers. Yeah, they always do because they're the ones that are on the front lines. And so are the legislatures, by the way. That is true.

Yeah. Yeah, they're the ones on the front lines and they're the ones that are making the difference. They provide free and confidential services, pregnancy tests, ultrasounds.

They even provide life coaching, life and parenting skills coaching, and post-abortive counseling as well. And so they're the targets. They're the ones that are cutting into Planned Parenthood's bottom line.

And that's why we see these fire bombs and the vandalizing. And we've seen 66, I think, now since the Dobbs opinion was leaked. But like Jordan said, only three, I think, over the weekend after the actual opinion on Friday. Let's take some of the calls, 1-800-684-3110.

We're already starting to see the battles. There's already a court case filed in Utah that Planned Parenthood will talk about later in the broadcast. Rick in Montana with an interesting question on Line 3. Hey, Rick. How's it going, guys?

Thanks so much. So after the Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court, Montana Supreme Court said no, it's still protected under the Constitution. So does the Montana Supreme Court have jurisdiction or does it fall back under the U.S. Supreme Court?

So no, it goes back to the states. So what we're doing at ACLJ Action is looking at a state like Montana. Like if you've got a precedent like that where either the court read in that from your state constitution, one, it's I don't know if your current court said that, right?

You said since 1999. The current court may look at this and say, well, without Roe, we're not going to read this into our state constitution anymore. But we are looking at how it's very difficult at the federal level to amend the U.S. Constitution. At the state level, it's a very different process.

I wouldn't say easy, but it's a lot more manageable. So we're putting together the states that we believe will have to put in constitutional amendments before their laws will be safely upheld in the courts where you know they're going to be upheld in the courts. So Montana looks like it might be one of those and we're working on that ACLJ Action. So part of the problem is when you go to, it returns to the state. So the state could say, yes, the state definitely has authority. They have the authority to say, yeah, we recognize the right to Roe. The right to abortion is recognized in Roe.

Here's what's under the state constitution. If it was based on Roe's equal protection clause kind of analysis, that is now totally suspect. So we require going back into court to take a look at those. And that's part of what we're doing.

Right. And so if a constitution doesn't actually have the right to abortion in it, but they found it following Roe through the rights of privacy and these judicially created rights, then that's when we're going to go back in and we're going to have to have these same battles that we saw at the Supreme Court where the justices rightfully found that the privacy rights and these judicially created rights don't stand. But there are going to be courts. I mean, we need to be clear on this. There are going to be state supreme courts that say that under their state constitution, there's a right to abortion. Oh, absolutely. And there's nothing in the opinion that prohibits that.

Absolutely. Returns it to the states. That's what Roe v. Wade did incorrectly.

It federalized a right that really was based on, it should have been decided by the people and their elected representatives. Yeah, we're going to continue to take your calls to answer your questions. 1-800-684-310. I think this was interesting too from John in Nebraska on line one. Hey, John.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. Yeah, with this whole thing, you know, like from the get-go, like when they released the letter or when that got leaked, I really didn't believe that it was a leak. I thought that that was kind of like a test to see how the American people would react. Also, I think that this whole thing is happening really fast, and it is motivating the left. It is motivating a lot of Democrats to come out and vote. A lot of Democratic women are raising their voices. And I seen on the news the other day that they were saying that these Supreme Court justices lied under oath about this issue. I don't know exactly.

I mean, I guess they have videos. Let me jump in on that. That is, I want to end that. That is total nonsense. If you listen to what they said, they said exactly what stare decisis is. That is previous precedent and how you view previous precedent. But it doesn't mean that previous precedent cannot, stare decisis does not mean it can't be overturned because if that was the case, you would still have the internment of Japanese Americans after World War II, separate but equal, quote unquote, in Plessy versus Ferguson. And I could go through a list of cases that were decided and had been on the books for a long time, but eventually were overturned as a violations of the law. So that part, I think that's nonsense going after these justices.

Yeah, I think the truth is, I don't like using this word, but people are going to hear a lot of myths and disinformation from the left on this. And so you're going to hear things like that, that the justice lied under oath. No, they did not.

They carefully answered questions. And let's be honest, all of these, every one of these justices, people knew their feelings on this issue. I mean, the Democrats who voted for him or the Republicans who were pro-abortion voted for him. Come on. You knew who you were voting for when you were voting for Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.

Yes. And look, their opinions, the opinion that Alita wrote is extremely well-reasoned. The fact of the matter is though, this is, I think we got to be clear on this. We're celebrating the victory.

Like Jordan said, saying we're thrilled is an understatement. We've been working on this for 40 years, but we also were aware that once that was successful, the fight's going to be in the states and there are going to be states that allow it. And there's going to be states that restrict it. And there's going to be states that are going to take middle grounds and it's going to be very much dependent upon constitutional analysis under the state constitution.

Yeah. And we've always been very clear that the, you know, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, which it was, thankfully, the battle does not end there. That now the battle turns to the states and there are definitely states that we're going to have to be engaged and fighting in. In fact, we're going to talk, I think about one later on, Utah, that's already been attacked. And so we know where the fight's going to go.

We've been prepared for that and we're ready to take action in the states as well. Let me take Michael's call quickly on line six. Hey, Michael. Hello, sir. Wish you all well.

Thank you for what you do. I have a question on cities. I live in Washington and already, uh, starting to use the sanctuary city term and I wonder, I wonder if they're prepared for the influx and a circumstance is one way or the other.

Yeah. I mean, there's going to be cities. You live in a pretty liberal state in Washington and states that are going to become abortion centers. I mean, that's what they want their states to be known for. I think their residents will think twice about, is that a state I want to live in?

That brings this much attention to this much celebration of the ending of a human life. But certainly they're going to exist in New York, in California and New Mexico. I think in Washington state, we're going to do battle there though, folks, because we're going to expose what these politicians are supporting. You know, it's been so focused at the federal level. Now your state elected officials are going to have to confront it firsthand.

And I don't think they're going to like what they see. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Now you know about the huge victory for life, the overturning of Roe vs Wade Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court. But today a big victory for religious liberty at the U.S. Supreme Court, that for the coach, a case that took way too long. A coach came in and said, a high school football coach, public school coach, who after the game would go to part of the field and pray. This became a constitutional crisis because someone claimed that their student was an atheist or even that was questionable because it wasn't the family. It was about the student. But okay, the student wasn't being asked to pray. The student wasn't. The coach didn't say, you must pray. And the student, the coach didn't use those terms.

Like if you don't pray, if you don't show up to this, you're not playing next week or you're running laps, nothing like that. So the Supreme Court clearly in favor of the coach's free exercise of religion rights, but also first amendment rights. And I think that is pretty clear on where the court is when it comes to religious liberty involving at least young people.

So I know that some people in high school are starting to become adults at 18, but mostly they're looking at minors here. Yeah. And importantly, I think for this is there was a legal test that was being applied for the establishment clause that was called the Lemon test.

And it was a disaster. It was this three part test. She had to determine what was the secular purpose, was there entanglement, and what the court has replaced it with is history and basically a coercion test. If there's not coercion involved, in other words, if the coach were to say, listen, I'm going to do this prayer. And if you participate in it, you're going to play football next week.

If you don't participate, I'm not going to let you play. That would be unconstitutional. But if the coach just wants to pray or if the students want to get meet together and pray, they have the right to do that.

And that's what the court said. You can't use the mechanism of the government. You're not going to let you use the PA system, but the students, the entire stance could get up and say the Lord's prayer, which happened in Santa Fe in the case involving prayer to football game, but you could not use the mechanism of the state, constitutional. I'll tell you what I think would still not be constitutional.

A minister, a rabbi, priest coming in before at the graduation ceremony and offering an invocation. Now, after the town of Greece case, it's a little bit suspect. I think there may be some wiggle there, but the court, in this opinion today, did not indicate that. That anything where you've got compelled attendance for students would be problematic. But the court acknowledged that students themselves have the right to do that kind of activity. For instance, the valedictorian of the class, once gave a speech and talk about their particular faith journey, they're going to be allowed to do that under this test.

Yeah, that's right. So again, we're taking calls on that, 1-800-684-3110. People still have questions, honestly. And I think, fairly, we're going to be answering a lot of those questions for weeks on what it truly means now that Roe versus Wade has been overturned and how that's going to impact your state. So, I mean, you could go through literally 50 different broadcasts focusing on 50 different states. We're going to be doing it as needed as your questions come in, but we're also going to be focusing in ACLJ action and utilizing the ACLJ's legal team on some states that are kind of right in the middle that need a little help. They need a constitutional amendment at the state level. They need to change some law.

So it's not just that they don't just have a trigger law in place and they're ready to go. They need a little bit more work. They've got the votes. They've got the pro-life support of their state, but they've got to do a little bit more work. And we're going to be involved in those states very directly, firsthand, whether it's through advertising, lobbying, through ACLJ action, and of course, utilizing our legal team to put together those constitutional amendments that may need to be moved forward in your state. But a lot of questions, a lot of calls about that at 1-800-684-3110. This was interesting.

I think we can answer very quickly. Lori out of Arizona online too. Hey, Lori. Hi.

Thanks for taking my call. I want to ask you, with Roe or Wade being overturned, does that mean that there will be no federal funding of Planned Parenthood? No, that's a different battle because Planned Parenthood technically can't use those funds to pay for abortions. Now, it's an accounting gimmick because it frees up another dollar for them to use to pay for abortions.

But that is a different battle. Legislatively, that will take a Republican House majority and a Senate majority and a Republican President. And we're talking significant majorities because there still is a legislative filibuster that requires 60 votes.

Even when President Trump was in office and had that House and Senate, as you saw from Susan Collins, Lisa McCaskill, and a few others, we don't have 60 votes to defund Planned Parenthood yet. Yeah. And so I think you got to just be conscious of those. These battles continue. What we're doing is organizing so we know how to approach these new issues. This is not catching us off guard. We've been planning this for months. So more when we come back, 1-800-684-3110 will take calls as well. Yeah. Rick Rinnell is going to be joining us as well.

All right. Welcome back to Sekulow. We do want to update you on some of what's going on in the world too. And of course, we've had these major domestic court decisions, which by the way, put us in line, especially Roe versus Wade, with the rest of the world. So we're not an outlier country when it comes to infanticide like North Korea and China, which we used to be in that group. It used to be the United States, North Korea, and China at the federal, national level had basically no restrictions on abortion. We're no longer in that bad group, if you will, that club. And we return now to really where most states and most of the restrictions we're talking about will be in line with where Europe is, including a lot of predominantly Catholic countries, including even Latin America.

So again, it's more mainstream for the United States, actually, instead of being this extreme country that is associated with the worst human rights abusers when it comes to the abortion issue. But I want to go to Rick Rinnell, our senior advisor for foreign policy and national security, because there's two big meetings occurring right now, Rick. One is the G7 that is occurring in Munich as we speak. And it's a lot of talk again about economics, but of course, Ukraine as well.

Yeah, these are big issues that are on the plate for the G7. Obviously, the Ukrainians would like to see the G7 do a lot more. We clearly have seen the Germans talk about doing some more, but they haven't really. It's been shocking how little Europe has done led by the Germans. They did this phony thing where they said, oh, we're going to put the Ukrainians into the application process to join the EU. And then the Germans quickly thereafter said, we would like to have more power on who becomes members of the EU and therefore they will shut it down.

So they're playing a little games. They're never going to let the Ukrainians into the EU, but they've announced that they get to at least fill out an application. Rick, on the Ukraine situation with regard to Russia and the conflict, we talked before we went on with our military analyst, Colonel Wes Smith. And Wes said that Ukraine is suffering some real damage right now. I mean, there were more attacks in Kiev, which have been pretty quiet for the last four months.

How do you see that right now, that whole situation? You know, Vladimir Putin is watching exactly what we're watching with the Americans getting distracted with an abortion debate and a ruling. And I think that there's no question that the Russians and Putin will amp up, will go on the offense when they think that the West is distracted. You've got a G7 meeting. Clearly the Germans have sent a very loud message that they're not going to provide immediate weaponry to the Ukrainians.

They're talking about doing it at the end of the summer. They're talking about delivering tanks that the Ukrainians didn't request. So they see the distractions from the United States and from Germany and the rest of the West.

And I think he's doubling down and going on the offense. And then, you know, after the G7, you know, we move into NATO, the NATO summit in Spain. And I know you've talked already about this idea of playing, like, will Ukraine become part of NATO?

Will it not become part of NATO? But honestly, what I'm hearing, Rick, which I think is something too that the United States and the American audience is hearing when we do cover this issue, is that it's months and months and months in advance now. It's like, well, in two months this will happen and maybe six months and like a never ending war is basically what I'm getting to. It sounds like we're at least on a path for many more months of bloodshed. No one is better at bureaucracy and slowing down the process than the Europeans. They love to talk about this. And that's one of the frustrations I think that many Americans and others are having is that there's a lot of talk, but there's not a lot of action when it comes to NATO.

You know, I'll just reiterate it again. I just don't think that members of NATO who aren't paying their 2 percent aren't paying the obligations that they signed up for. Those members should not be voting on expanding the membership of NATO. Why are they getting a vote to expand the responsibilities of the defense shield when they're not paying the current requirements and the current obligations that they have?

Until every member of NATO is paid up and doing their fair share, I just don't think that we should be talking about expanding the alliance. The other thing I wanted to move to, Rick, is the situation with Iran. And there was talk over the weekend that the administration wants to get back into this dialogue with the Iranians. The Russians have, I think, been kind of putting up a little bit of a kink in their wheel there so that the Biden administration hasn't been able to move forward. But it seems like that President Biden and his team are committed to this idea of a deal with Iran, which is absurd to me, but it seems like where it's going.

Look, Foreign Minister Lavrov was just in Tehran. I think this is a sign that they're pressuring the Iranians to move forward with the blessing of the Russians. They're going to try to jam the Americans once again while the Americans are distracted. Look, the Russians, as you know, Jay, they want some help in Syria. They want to get out.

They are fully responsible, but they want to dial back. They clearly are feeling overextended between Ukraine and Syria. And so they're trying to get another country to take over their responsibility, their role in Syria. They'd like the Iranians to do it.

Obviously, that's not what the Israelis or the Americans want. And I hope that the Biden team is laser focused on making sure that no one takes advantage of us while we're being distracted at a high political level. You know, Rick, you just texted me, but there was a lot of talk, and I think you can answer it because people are wondering why President Biden's ambassador to Germany was not there when he arrived. And people are speculating all of this.

You've done some work on this to be able to answer that question. Yeah, unfortunately, the US ambassador to Germany has tested positive for COVID, and she wasn't able to join the President. I know she's got to be greatly disappointed that the President of the United States comes to Germany. She's not able to be there. It's kind of one of those shining moments. And a lot of work gets done between the Germans and the Americans if you have an ambassador that's kind of driving things forward.

So she was not able to be there, and, you know, our hearts go out, and I hope that she's going to be okay. So, Rick, I wanted to ask you, I want to follow up on a portion of that, and that is you served as the US ambassador to Germany. Germany is the most powerful economy in Europe. And give us a sense of what it was like dealing with your counterparts and the chancellor. What was your sense of that? I think it'd be very important for our audience to understand the nature of what goes on. First of all, on a personal level, I loved Chancellor Merkel.

She was very friendly, very nice, has a great sense of humor, and we could talk pretty openly and casually, and I enjoyed that. But there's no question that the Germans, I believe, and I articulated this very clearly, moved away from the Western alliance over the last 15 or 20 years. They want an alliance without it being Western-facing. They want to sell cars and all the capitals. They want to be everybody's friend. They want to be Switzerland when it comes to foreign policy.

And one of the things that I tried to push and President Trump tried to push is to say, you don't get to do that. You're Germany. Americans have made lots of sacrifices for Germany, and we expect the Germans to be Western-facing, not some of the problem countries in Europe. And so that relationship, I think, was always trying to be one of reminding the Germans that they have responsibilities to the West.

And sometimes we had members of the German cabinet that were really supportive, that encouraged me to be stronger and more potent. And then other times they would say, no, we want to just be Europe, and we're done with this kind of Western alliance of picking fights. I think the war in Ukraine has changed them. I think that there's a flipping of the policies, and they realize that they have to be more Western.

They haven't quite said Donald Trump was right, but I hear it. A political question for you, Rick, to finish up today, and that is the Democrats seem to be seizing on the Roe vs. Wade being overturned as like their saving grace for the midterm elections. I have my own thoughts on that, but your kind of reaction to that, that that will somehow people will ignore inflation, this foreign kind of insecurity for Roe vs. Wade? Well, first of all, I don't think anyone's going to ignore inflation or gas prices, but to the extent that the Democrats want to make abortion the issue, Republicans have an opportunity to make abortion the issue and show the world that the Democrats are radical. You look at other countries around the world and nobody wants late-term abortions.

It's very unpopular. Governor Newsom here in California is making a move to enshrine it into the California constitution. I've made it clear, if he tries to do that, we will fight him hard because I don't believe pro-choice Californians want to see late-term abortions. Let's have that debate, and I think that they lose this when we are able to talk about the issues and what they're trying to put forward.

Let's be very clear with what they're trying to do. Rick, as always, we appreciate it, both the international insight, the foreign policy insight, and the political insight, as always. Thanks, Rick, for joining us. And Rick, of course, is part of our team at the ACLJ because of your financial support of the American Center for Law and Justice. And so to have him as our senior advisor for foreign policy and national security, who's been the ambassador to Germany, who has been the acting director of national intelligence, but also very involved in politics, very involved at the UN. So on so many issues that come before us can provide insight that others just can't because they haven't held those positions of power.

Yeah, I think that's right. And your support of the ACLJ makes all that possible. We're going to be taking more of your calls when we come back on Roe v. Wade and the impact. 1-800-684-3110. If you want to call us, a couple lines open.

800-684-3110. Back with the morning moment. Welcome back to SEC Hill. We're going to go back to the phones and also talk about one of Planned Parenthood's first legal challenges since the Roe v. Wade decision overturning Roe v. Wade on Friday.

They are back in court in Utah. We'll talk about that in a bit, but I do want to keep answering people's questions on Roe, and it's understandable that people still have those questions. Let's go to Robert in Florida first on line one. Hey, Robert.

Hey, thank you for taking my call. My question is, since the Dobbs case was decided on a five to four vote, if Joe Biden were to be able to appoint another Supreme Court justice, what do you think the likelihood would be that the new court would quickly move to reinstate Roe v. Wade? First of all, it was 6-3 that the law was constitutional. Five justices said Roe should be overturned. Six said that the Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks was in fact constitutional.

So they'd have to have a lot of replacement. It would depend on who the judge justice is. But I think this decision is safe for the term. But I think what we have to really focus on, which we're going to, as you look at like Utah, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit literally within hours of the decision coming down.

They did. They went after Utah. Utah had a trigger law so abortions are banned in Utah except for the life of the mother, rape and incest and severe brain abnormality of the baby. And of course, then Planned Parenthood sued immediately, and they allege that the law violates Utah's constitution in seven ways.

And these are right to determine family composition and to parent, right of equal protection, right to uniform operation of laws, right to bodily integrity, rights of conscience, rights to privacy and the prohibition of involuntary servitude. So they're basically trying to do what Roe just said, the justices in the Dobbs decision said, you know, Roe created these rights from the constitution and they can't do that. And now they're trying this in Utah and Utah Supreme Court has not previously found an abortion right in the Utah constitution.

But that's where the battle is going to be now. I mean, it's going to be the state courts. Yeah, I mean, it got to the point where they're arguing an anti-slavery position in the Utah constitution is one of their claims, the cause of action here, involuntary servitude, you know, equal protection, meaning that this is somehow anti-women. And so, I mean, you've got, again, they are what in this case, which is interesting, is that unlike some of the states which have some interesting constitutional amendments that have been made or laws on the books, they're asking the Utah court to do what the Supreme Court just rejected doing, which is reading into the constitution, a bunch of rights that aren't there and legislatively haven't been legislated by the people's representatives. And the Supreme Court of the United States has held since 1991, it was reincorporated on Friday, that opposition to abortion is not discrimination against women.

So the whole equal protection clause, which is where all this is emanating from, doesn't apply. But look, we're not shocked that Utah went and did this. We'll take more calls.

Yeah. 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Cheryl in New York on line six.

Hey, Cheryl. Hi, thank you for taking my call. So I live in New York, and I heard that the governor is, of course, trying to make this a welcoming state for women to come here and have abortions. I'm totally against it. I am pro-life all the way. I'm a member of ACLJ Action.

I wanted to know if at some point, is ACLJ going to go after New York? Because they're doing abortions, I believe, up until birth, if it affects the life of the mother. So our plan, Cheryl, I don't want to give too much away to our opponents, but our plan is, and we're looking right now at all 50 states, and what we'll initially do with the resources we have available is pick a couple of similarly situated states that are very pro-life, a couple in the middle, and a couple like New York. And we are going to do work there.

One is to expose. I think what we first have to do is run ad campaigns to expose to the voters, Cheryl, what exactly they mean when they say abortion with no restriction. And as you said, abortion up until birth, sometimes they're using language now that would allow them to have the birth and then decide whether or not to kill the child. It's the postnatal, perinatal. Yeah, we heard that from Governor Northam of Virginia.

I remember he said that, you know, keep the child comfortable while you decide whether or not to kill them or not. So we are going to expose the politicians with the real facts because so far, this has been really focused at the federal level, and they've been able to hide behind Roe and Washington, D.C. They can't do that anymore in New York.

It's really, it's going to be New York that has those laws, not the federal government, not the United States government, New York politicians who have to own that, and we're going to make sure they own it. Yeah, and I think also on the... And I appreciate you being a member of ACLJ Action. Yeah, by the way, you can join ACLJ Action. It's $25 once a year. You can donate more if you'd like, but that's all it is to become a member of ACLJ Action.

We encourage you to do it. That's going to be an arm of the ACLJ, so to speak, separate organization, so that we can get in on the legislative side of this and, like you said, take ads out. We're exposing what is at play when you say, when someone says they're... That's why these polls are meaningless. Someone says they're pro-choice. Well, then if you ask them, do you believe that abortion can take place in the seventh, eighth, or ninth month of pregnancy? Well, no, but yet a lot of states, a number of states, I shouldn't say a lot, a lot of, a number of states allow it. Right. Not only allow it, but now we see legislation where we see the perinatal language, which means after abortion. So the baby is born, and now you can kill a baby that is born alive, and they have rights now that they're trying to push through to kill a baby after it's born.

So these are the things that we'll call to the forefront, and people, like you said, aren't going to be able to stand behind the federal government and the Roe v. Wade decision. Let's continue to take phone calls. 1-800-684-3110. Sally in North Carolina, online.

Hey, Sally. The question I have is, with this overturning of Roe v. Wade, does this include the abortion pill, or is this specific to the procedure? I think the answer is it could. It depends on when you're utilizing the abortion pill based off the state law. So is that pill effective past 15 weeks? If so, and the pill is prescribed after 15 weeks, knowingly by a doctor, that could be violation. If it's, again, prescribed before, then that would not violate, currently, I think, Mississippi's law.

But right now, we're talking about just the 10 states that have trigger laws going into place. This is going to be a huge part of the debate, though, is the medical, and when we say that, it's using medication abortions. This is not the morning-after pill. This is not the morning-after pill.

This is RU-486 and other more invasive pills, which usually you need to be under doctors because people can bleed out. So the court said there was not a constitutional right to abortion in the Constitution. They didn't say that there was not a constitutional right to a medical surgery procedure abortion. They said there's not a constitutional right to abortion. Right. So there is no right to kill your baby, and that doesn't matter what the procedure is. Under the pill constitution.

Right. Whether it's a pill, whether it's surgical, this will be the states, then, are going to have to frame their legislation to say what they will allow and what they will not allow. And that will be surgical abortions, medical abortions, that'll have to be addressed in the state's legislation. This is a good time to remind everybody, though, that we've launched ACLJ action. And this, because so many of these questions fall within the purview of what ACLJ action can do.

Why don't you take a moment, Jordan, here, as we close the broadcast. When I say this, too, it's in line with the South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem announcing that she will ban abortion pills that are prescribed online. And we represent the governor already in an abortion pro-life speech case involving one of the pregnancy centers and informed consent. But ACLJ action exists to do really three things.

The first thing is to, one, go right into the states. Not for court purposes. We've got ACLJ for that. But for your legislative purposes. So we go right into the states. What it enables us to do is, one, hire lobbyists. Lobbyists that are working on behalf of you. So that when we're writing this legislation and new legislation on life and protecting the unborn, we are part of that. And we're having our team review it to make sure, or sometimes write it, to make sure it's the best legislation possible.

That's the same thing when we talk about those constitutional amendments that are necessary. We very much will be drafting some of those constitutional amendments for state legislators. We'll also be doing something you'll see more publicly through ACLJ action is ad campaigns, calling out the bad politicians, praising the good ones, praising the good policy as well. So check it out. ACLJaction.org is going to be front and center this battle. You can join as a member.