New SCOTUS Term Begins as LEFT Continues Attacks

Today on Sekulow, a new Supreme Court term begins today and the left's attacks on the court continue to grow. We'll talk about that more today on Sekulow. 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. Well after the leaked Dobbs opinion and of course the overturning of Roe vs Wade, the attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh, the attack on the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court's back again today. And the left freaking out because some of the cases that the court decided to take up on its docket. Starting today, one involving potentially decreasing the power of the EPA when it comes to private property and specifically the Clean Water Act. In this case, there's someone who has a property out west. There's a stream that runs through the property. They would like to build a home on this property that they own. And the EPA, through the Clean Water Act, has tried to prevent them from building on the property.

I say, you know, use rational sense. These are folks who built onto property because it's beautiful. And you think they want to ruin the stream? Think they want to ruin the wildlife?

Of course not. Likely they're part of the conservationist movement, but yet tried to prevent people's ability to use private property the way they see fit. So you've got that one. The two different voting cases will be up in this term.

One on the Voting Rights Act specifically, one on elections and who has the ability for oversight of elections. So I think, again, the headlines on the left are wild. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, look at the headlines. Washington Post says, Supreme Court dogged by questions of legitimacy, ready to resume. The New York Times says, New term starts. Supreme Court is poised to resume.

Rightward push. New York Times opinion. The Supreme Court is broken.

Where's Biden? NPR. The Supreme Court will begin a new term with more contentious cases on its docket. Washington Post deputy editorial page. You thought the Supreme Court's last term was bad?

Brace yourself. New York Times editorial board. The Supreme Court isn't listening and it's no secret why. MSNBC. SCOTUS is back in session. Is the next Dobbs on the docket? USA Today.

A guide to the — well, that one's not as bad. This is a guide to the Supreme Court's momentous nine-month term. The Hill new Supreme Court term may be even more partisan. So, you know, it used to be that if you disagreed with an opinion of the Supreme Court in the United States, you would say you disagreed. You thought the court got it wrong.

That would be the line you would say. But now the left, at least, is taking the position that if they disagree with the court's opinion or the court doesn't come out on a case the way they'd like it to come out, Andy, now the court's not legitimate. Yeah, you attack the legitimacy of the court and say that the court is an illegitimate institution, as Donald Verrilli, who was formerly the solicitor general under President Obama, made a statement that really summarizes it all from the point of view of the left. I hope the majority takes a step back and considers the risk that half the country may completely lose faith in the court as an institution.

Why? Because of the decisions they make. No, you say the court got it wrong, as Jay said, but you don't undermine the legitimacy of the court and the decisions that are made. But the left is gearing up to do just that. I think that, and we'll, in the next segment, we're going to talk about some of the big cases coming up this term, and there's big ones. And by the way, add to that list, and they'll say this, but there's not really, there's one religion case on there, but there's now two that at least have been docketed, and that is the city of Ocala versus Rojas and Hale, and we represent the city of Ocala. This was a citywide prayer vigil. The NAACP was involved in the prayer vigil, other groups, but groups that were, quote, offended by the prayer vigil taking place filed a lawsuit, and the question's going to be, can these offended observers have standing to challenge a practice they disagree with in the United States of America? And the court has toyed with this issue for 40 years.

This gives them a chance to get it right. So that case, the petition for writ of certiorari has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, so we are docketed as 22-278, so going into our fifth decade of Supreme Court litigation with this case. We want you to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. If you've got questions about the upcoming cases during the Supreme Court term, get them in now. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Right back on Secular. All right, welcome back to Secular. So there are cases involving affirmative action again, this time at Harvard and University of North Carolina. The question of, should race play a role in the admissions process in 2022, or are we past that? There's been issues actually affecting Asian students because they have been overperforming, and so schools are saying, well, we can't have too many Asian students, so they're using affirmative action actually against a racial minority, which is, I think, why the court says, hey, we need to take a look at this again. This is very different than talking about African American students in the 1970s and 80s getting into these higher institutions.

So you've got two schools involved, Harvard University and University of North Carolina. The issue is going to be, can these race-based preferences be ended? This has gone up and back before the Supreme Court, Andy, 20, you know, over the last 20 years, multiple times.

There's never been a clear rule. In previous cases from Michigan and Texas, the court reaffirmed the validity of considering applicants race among many factors, but you've got a court now that I think is looking at this 20 years later and saying, you know, it's not working the way it's supposed to work, and it should be merit-based. But again, these are going to be close decisions.

These are 6354, you know, I'm not sure which side wins, but these are going to be very close. You're absolutely right, Jay. This is particularly the Harvard University case that I have followed very carefully along with my colleague Harry Hutchison. We looked at the briefs and the brief that was filed by the Asian students, if you will, who were being discriminated against by Harvard.

And it's a very powerful brief, let me say. The argument against Harvard University's racial discrimination policy is really a case that is very, very strong in my estimation, and I hark back to what Justice Roberts said in 2006 in a voting rights case. It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Good statement, good thought, very valid point. But these are contentious cases. We're just talking about those two, and the fact is that the justices are speaking out on these contentious cases and making very pronounced statements, Jordan, which are having, I think in a real way, having political ramifications. People are trying to say, hey, wait a minute, the justices of the Supreme Court are now speaking out on this.

What does this actually mean? Yeah, and I think, again, as we work through these cases and we look at the next set, I think the two most probably heated politically are when you get into voting cases, when you get into electoral issues. So there's a voting rights case on the Voting Rights Act. This is out of Alabama, and after redistricting, a lot of redistricting did happen all across the country because there was a census that occurred, and so we do those every 10 years. And right now there's Republican majorities in Alabama, and it's not based off Republican and Democrat, this case, but it's based off 27% of the state's population is African American, if there's only one congressional district that is majority African American. And the question is, this is what's unique, does that violate the Voting Rights Act, and will the court again go back to look and say, you know what, this is up to the states.

They've been gutting the Voting Rights Act for the last few terms of the Supreme Court because they're saying it's just out of date. But there's an interesting aspect to this case out of Alabama, and that's that even though, so Alabama has just one of the state's seven congressional districts, has a black majority, even though this 27% of the state's residents are black. A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which included two appointees of President Trump, agreed that the state should have to create a second district with a black majority, but the Supreme Court stopped any changes and said it would hear the case. Again, very interesting because that, it's going to, not into gerrymandering issues, but it does because, you know, I don't know how familiar people are, but if you're from Alabama, you know, there's a big black community. It is, I mean, it's 30% of the population, but it's not in one place. So, I mean, I think you'd have to have some pretty funky looking districts. I don't know what this one district looks like on paper, probably more Birmingham-focused, I'm guessing, but again, if you look at these others, you probably wouldn't have to like cut out like from Mobile to like up through, you know, like other, I think that's where it gets difficult. It's just because it's a large majority doesn't mean, it's not all in one or two cities.

It's throughout the state. So it's going to be, it gets a little more complicated, which is why it's usually left up to the states. Yeah, because you're looking at a statewide population and you're really not supposed to be drawing congressional districts based on the composite of the racial mixes of the country, of the state. It's supposed to be geographically center of the state, this and that, but they're also, but let's be fair, Republicans and Democrats have both done this, but it's going to be, it's very interesting. You had two judges appointed by Donald Trump saying, nah, Alabama one, I don't like the way it looks, but then the Supreme Court says, nope, stop, we're not going to not enforce it.

We're going to let the, we're going to hear the case in chief. Well, it's interesting Dave, because it seems like with, with Roe, the overturning of Roe and the Dobbs case, this Supreme Court is more inclined to look back to the states and to give the states, or as they say, the people, the right to make these determinations and not to impose federal or congressional oversight on these and to look at them with an eye for giving the people and the state courts more oversight and more word and say so as to how districting is done, how elections are done, how they're being handled and so forth. It was clear in the Dobbs case, as Justice Alito said, there's no federal constitutional right to abortion. It's a matter left to the states. And it seems to me that if they're going to lean in any direction with respect to voting rights, including the Alabama case, it's going to be to say that, and except for intentional discrimination on the basis of race, we're going to let the states make those decisions. So you've got, you've got the race-based admission, the voting rights case, and then you got an elections case. The elections case, not involving the Voting Rights Act, this is a state issue. So here you have a situation where North Carolina, they redrew their congressional lines at the state legislature. I mean, this is Article 1, Section 4, this is like their job of the state legislature. It says it in the Constitution. The question here is a court came in and said they redrew it. And they made it exactly equal, this time not about race, this about partisan politics, seven Republican, seven Democrat districts. And the question for the court, I think conservatives on the court, at least four, I would say, agree with the position that this, it is not about judges and courts.

This is a legislative duty to draw lines. If a court has a problem with it, it should go back to the legislators to redraw. Courts should not be in the business of drawing legislative maps because they don't have the, the Constitution is the state legislature. It doesn't say anything about state courts. No, so we had this actually in a case that we had during the 2020 election at the Supreme Court where the state of Pennsylvania Supreme Court changed the due date for various late ballots. And we actually got a stay from Justice Alito that those ballots had to be segregated because, you know, that's not what the state law says.

So here's what you got. The state GOP, the Republicans argue that state courts have no role to play, zero, in congressional elections, including redistricting, because the U.S. Constitution gives that power to the state legislatures. Four conservative justices have already expressed, you know, openness to this idea of what's called the independent state legislator theory.

I will tell you, those groups left of center hate this idea that the courts can't override the state legislature. But if we were looking at this on the federal constitutional base, we would say this was separation of powers. The courts have a role, the judiciary has a role, the executive branch has a role, but under the federal constitution, the election laws of the state are determined by the state legislators. That's the way the Constitution is designed, and that's the way it's supposed to be put in place. Well, that's exactly correct, and we've had this before, the idea that the time, place, manner, and method of electing shall be left to the legislature of the state. The Constitution of the United States says that.

Therefore, if this court is going to continue the strict constructionist attitude that it has taken, reading the text of the Constitution, not glossing over it with liberal and policy theories that don't belong in the Constitution, it's going to follow along, in my estimation, with the idea that the legislatures take the preeminent role in the area of elections. And that, I think, is what we're going to see, and that's going to be a thorn in the side of the liberals, but so be it. There's also an immigration case that's going to be heard this term as well. Yeah, this is an interesting one because this is the Trump policy, which was, if you're illegal, deport. The Biden administration wants to say, if you're a criminal with a criminal background other than illegal immigration, so you're violent, that you should be the first people deported.

And so the question is, and the Biden administration has come back on this multiple times, you go with the, hey, they broke the law by getting here illegally, that's it, you're deported. I want to play quickly Justice Kagan's sound because this is a fascinating statement she's making about new judges when a new justice has just been sworn in. If a new judge comes in, if there's new members of a court, and all of a sudden everything is up for grabs, all of a sudden very fundamental principles of law are being overthrown, are being, you know, replaced, then people have a right to say, like, you know, what's going on there? That doesn't seem very law-like. That just seems as though people with one set of policy views are replacing another. It's called the Constitution of the United States.

Invest in the President the authority to nominate and appoint justices, judges to the Supreme Court of the United States on the advice and consent of Congress. And of course they're going to have maybe different positions. So we don't have Dred Scott anymore. Karen Matsu should be off the books. Plessy versus Ferguson. Roe versus Wade.

I mean, you can go right down the list. So when they make those statements, it's they make these. Now, meanwhile, there's a new appointee from the Supreme Court that's been first day was today appointed by President Biden. Should her vote not count?

Of course it counts. We'll talk to you more in a moment. Welcome back to Sekulow. The American Center for Law and Justice. We just filed a Mecas brief in the Oklahoma Supreme Court in defense of the state's abortion ban.

The brief was filed on behalf of the ACLJ. More than 127,000 ACLJ supporters, including 2,200 in Oklahoma and 41 members of the Oklahoma Senate and House, including sponsors of the bill that we are defending. One of those sponsors, lead sponsors who has also assisted us in bringing in those legislators to our brief is joining us now on the phone, the majority floor leader of the Oklahoma State House, John Echols. John, we appreciate you being with us.

Yeah. Thanks, leader Echols for being with us today. I've got to, I want to start the conversation and appreciate your efforts on this. You know, Oklahoma has a history of saying that abortion is not in the state's constitution, but that's the new attack of the pro-abortion groups to have it as part of the constitution. How do you see it playing out and what are your constituents thinking about this?

Well, first, thanks so much for having me on and thank you for continuing in this fight to life. As you have said, you are instrumental in defending the bill that the Oklahoma legislature passed. I'm honored to be the primary House sponsor of the bill that was the elected people's representative said we are going to respect life at all ages, including that of the womb. I think the next step in the fight after we win this legal challenge with your help showing this is an issue that's decided for the state. You can't come find it under the Oklahoma constitution, but that will be the next fight that will be coming in showing just as Roe was wrongly decided. There is no right to death under the constitution.

There's that same right doesn't exist under the Oklahoma constitution. You know, this is interesting, Leader Eccles, we call us and CeCe Hallis with us, a senior attorney for the ACLJ. We have filed this brief is being filed now. We have just filed in Kentucky and are about to file in two other states. So this is a pattern is developing. We said this would go to the states. It has gone to the states.

Right. We have about nine states that we will, we've filed in two, we'll file in two more this week. And then we have, I think five more that we will file.

So there's nine that we are watching and engaging on. So let me ask you this, Leader Eccles, and in looking at your support within the two bodies of your legislature there in Oklahoma, how strong is this pro-abortion lobby? Because in Washington, they are still, look, I mean, the truth of the matter is Planned Parenthood is huge and they're still a huge force. What are you seeing on the state level? Oh, they're huge and they're very well funded on the state level. Even in states like Oklahoma, the pro-abortion lobby has tons of money and they use it to attack legislators like myself and several others who are in Metro areas that have a strong right to life stance.

But here's what we're finding. What we found is when you give the issue to the states, which is where it should have been from the very beginning, we have a federal system on purpose. States are independent underneath the main sovereign of the United States. But this is an issue that always should have been left to the state. The citizens of the state of Oklahoma are standing up to the big money and they're saying, this is not what we want. We want life protected. We want a culture of life in all areas. But no mistake, whether you're talking about Kansas, what happened in that election, or whether you're talking about here in Oklahoma, there is big money in the abortion lobby and it is being spent everywhere.

Yeah, Leader Ackles, we talked about this. We have a C4 ACLJ action and what we've been trying to get out through the education process is there is an opportunity here post-Roe. We knew if this day came and preparing for it, and we all were preparing for the possibility of it, is that we have to do a massive education campaign. Yes, there's the votes, there's the electoral side of it, the politics side of it, but part of that is educating voters, whether it's these ballot amendments that we're seeing that are really drawn and written up in a way that are confusing. We had one out of South Dakota where we were able to help clarify that if it does make it to the ballot, the first line is, this will enshrine a right to abortion in our state constitution.

But it takes educating folks. I know, talk to people about that too, just talking to your constituents, talking to voters about what's true and what's propaganda. Well, and I'd also like to talk specifically to listeners about what the ACLJ and you guys are doing with that wing.

As a matter of fact, I've talked to your organization several times, you've helped me with messaging, you've helped me with ideas, you're involved in the state level. I know in Oklahoma, I mean, as the majority floor leader, we've had multiple conversations. The key is speaking truth and being able to go to our constituents and say, here's what is really happening out there.

Here's the real facts. And you guys have been on the forefront of that. And I'm appreciative, even here, not just on the national level, but even here in Oklahoma. Well, it's because, and we appreciate your leadership on this, John, because the fact of the matter is this has now returned to the states and education, like Jordan just said, is a big part of this. Litigation is a big part of it, as Cece was talking about in the briefs, but this is a real challenge for the United States and to see where we come down state by state on this.

Yeah. And it's interesting that in Oklahoma, when once again, they're trying to say, we're going to create a right by litigation, not go through the constitutional amendment process, but trying to amend the constitution through litigation. What's interesting to note is that your Oklahoma Supreme Court has specifically stated that they have never found an abortion right in the constitution yet.

That's right. Planned Parenthood will fight and fight and fight even when you have at the highest court saying there is no right in the constitution. So, Leader Echols, how was your Supreme Court there in Oklahoma? You know, our Supreme Court in Oklahoma is to the left with the majority of the Oklahoma citizens, but I will say I believe they're going to get this right.

So I believe with the help of the ACLJ and other organizations, I believe they are going to get this right. And it's also important to note, Cece, that we have an initiative petition process in Oklahoma. If citizens really thought this was popular and they could win it on a ballot, they could circulate it and get a constitutional change on our ballot. But they don't because they know it's unpopular, because they know it's not in the Supreme Court, they know it's not what the citizens want, and that's why they're trying to do judicially what they could never do through the political process.

And I think that's what we're seeing, Leader Echols, from across the country is their strategy changes state to state. Some states they look at, they say, hey, we can win this in the ballot box, we'll leave the courts out. When they have to rely on the courts to create the right, that's their last step. We know that that's when they're in the most trouble is when you have to go to a court to say, hey, read a right into a constitution that's not there.

But we also, like you said, you can't just take that as a, well, a court's just going to throw that. We take it very seriously as we're doing with the ACLJ, that's why we put together this brief with your colleagues, with our supporters, and with Oklahomans. Yeah, John, we appreciate your leadership as the floor leader, majority floor leader in Oklahoma, and we'll have you back on as this case develops. Thanks for your hard work on this.

Thank you for having me on, appreciate all you do. I just need to say right at the outset here, folks, I mean, we're engaging this literally state by state, and your support of the ACLJ is critical. We've got an email going out today.

If you don't get our email alerts or our text messages, sign up for them at the website or at ACLJ.org or any of our social media platforms. And we talk about the fact that we've got basically, they've only, this is what we've said, they've got that Planned Parenthood and those groups have unleashed a blitzkrieg of lawsuits trying to enshrine a right to abortion in the Constitution. And then at the same time, they are trying to damage the Crisis Pregnancy Center's ability to even operate. Right, they're going after it twofold, well, probably fivefold, actually, because they go through ballot initiatives, they go through litigation.

And then, of course, they attack the groups that are on the front lines, the Crisis Pregnancy Centers, they're actually helping to save babies. So, Planned Parenthood hasn't given up, just because the Dobbs decision, they've just reengaged and they're doing more, actually. So, what we're going to encourage you to do is support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice. You can do that at ACLJ.org. I encourage you, if you're able to donate, give us some support, ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org. Hey, by the way, today, this afternoon, a new podcast from Sekulow Brothers is being released. You can find out and subscribe to the Sekulow Brothers podcast. It's on all of our social media applications, but also on podcast sites around the country. That's right, SekulowBrothers.com, S-E-K-U-L-O-W Brothers.com.

We'll be back in the studio this afternoon with a new episode today. 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. I'm talking about freedom. I'm talking about freedom.

We will fight for the right to live in freedom. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow. I wanted to follow up on this too with life. We were just talking about our filing at the Oklahoma Supreme Court with the majority floor leader there, Echols, John Echols.

It was great to have him, and he helped put together the legislators. But at ACLJ Action, remember that Title IX campaign we launched? Because the Biden administration proposed a Title IX rule change to alter the definition of what sex discrimination is so that they would include discrimination based off pregnancy or related conditions. Now, you cannot discriminate against someone because they're pregnant, but here's where it got bizarre. It included the definition of pregnancy in termination of pregnancy and placing abortion legally on par with being pregnant. Now, remember, you can't really hide being pregnant at a certain point, but you don't have to tell everybody about an abortion. So there's a difference there already between a company saying we don't want to hire young women because they can get pregnant, but the abortion part is something someone would have to share. But what it also really puts in play here is that if you can call that discrimination, this rule could prohibit or punish having a pro-life group, being a pro-life organization, forcing schools like Christian schools to provide access to or support for abortion services because you could say, well, if you provide that for pregnant students who want to have their child, it's discrimination if you're not providing abortion services. You can see where this gets very tricky and is, again, a bad policy right from the start.

Well, there was a comment period with this. Over 240,000 comments were provided on this proposed rule. That's a new record by any rule change ever in the federal government.

The previous record was set in 2018. It was half that number, about 120,000. ACLJ and ACLJ Action, we provided 12,000 comments, made up 5%, which is significant, of the total comments that came in on a federal government's proposed rule. This is ACLJ Action, a very new organization, and so I just want to thank everybody. We've got an upcoming ACLJ Action campaign on the attempt to turn VA facilities into the abortion clinics, so look out for that. But a big thank you to those 12,000 of you, 12,100 of you, who submitted your own comment on this proposed rule change, and that can have significant impact because they cannot ignore these comments. The federal government has to weigh the comments significantly.

100%, and I mean, when we talk about 5% of the national comments that came in came in through ACLJ Action, that's a very, very impressive number, but look, folks, we're having to handle these things in state courts, federal courts, regulatory process. So it's a very different world than when we started, you know, 40 years ago, and we've been at this for four decades. I said today, with the case we just filed at the Supreme Court, we've had cases in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010, 2020s. You know how many decades that is? Five.

Five decades. We've been before the Supreme Court of the United States. And then you've got these state court actions. Then you've got these administrative procedures that we're dealing with.

And, you know, so we're highly engaged. Your support of the ACLJ makes a huge difference. You can join ACLJ Action. It's a one-time gift of $25 and become a member of the ACLJ Action team. Go to ACLJAction.org.

That's ACLJAction.org. As I said, Jordan and Logan will be recording this afternoon and be releasing another Secular Brothers podcast. Go to SecularBrothers.com for that. And coming up on the broadcast, we're going to be joined by our colleague Mike Pompeo on a whole host of issues that we've got coming up.

Yeah, there's a couple Supreme Court cases we didn't even get to on the docket for this term. One involves bacon. We'll definitely be talking about that on Secular Brothers. It involves bacon? It's the bacon case. We're not talking about Kevin Bacon.

We're talking about crispy bacon. Save that for the Secular Brothers podcast. That'll be a lot of fun. Folks, again, support the work of the ACLJ. If you're watching on any of our social media applications right now, we encourage you, if you're on Rumble Hit Plus, if you're on Facebook Share, and if you're on YouTube, thumbs up.

That really helps keep these in active feeds. We're going to take your calls at 1-800-684-3110. Last segment, we're going to be talking about how disaster relief is going to be distributed. Troubling words out of the Vice President, so we'll talk about that. 1-800-684-3110, as if that's a shock these days, I guess, after the North Carolina mistake, North Korea mistake. I don't know, is anything troubling these days?

800-684-3110, back with more in a moment. Well, if you saw the news or you checked Twitter, then you go to the Ayatollah's official Twitter account at Khomeini, which, again, Twitter goes back and forth on, but this statement can be found there as well as media. Now, it's the first time that the Ayatollah, since the new protests have broken out in Iran, has issued an official statement. This is what the statement said today. Quote, I say clearly that these riots and the insecurity were engineered by America and the occupying false Zionist regime, as well as their paid agents, with the help of some traitorous Iranians abroad. We have Secretary Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State, joining us now.

He's part of our ACLJ team. Secretary Pompeo, I just said it's interesting to me that now the Ayatollah speaks out and he's trying to make it not about Iranians, that this is really Israelis and Americans who are behind this. What is your take? Well, Jordan, this is pretty typical stuff. It shows, I think, three things at least. One, he's paying real attention. He views what's taking place there as serious and jeopardizing their capacity to continue to maintain control. Second, his health has not been good, and I think he was trying to reassure the Iranian law enforcement, the Iranian bussies, the IRGC, the leadership around him that he is still well enough to be in charge and in control.

And then finally, doesn't it remind us, Jordan, of exactly what Vladimir Putin has done? Same kind of thing. Somebody else started this fight.

It wasn't us. It was the outsiders appealing to nationalism in a way that suggests a real frailty. So one doesn't know how this will end. It will almost certainly be very, very violent if these protests continue. They will stop at nothing to try and maintain control, but we know that there are always moments in time and flexion points in history, and perhaps this is just one of them. You know, it was interesting, Mike, during the Obama administration when you had a million people in Tehran and Tahrir Square protesting, basically the administration's position was for them to stand down, which was absurd when you think about it.

Now you've got about a million throughout the country protesting. The Ayatollah is forced to make a public statement, which he has, saying that this is the Israelis and the Americans, the Zionists. And you've got the, and I want to see if we have this bite, it's one of the really human rights activists that have been at the forefront of this saying, you know, the women of Iran are taking up the mantle here, but don't prop up the bad guys.

Don't prop up this leadership by giving them money through the Iran deal. Do we have that sound? We're going to get that sound. And we've got it.

Let me play it and then get your comment. We don't want you to save Iranian women. Iranian women are brave enough to bring democracy themselves, to save themselves, but we want you to stop saving our murderers. That's all. That's all.

Stop saving the murderers, and when you give them money, you're saving the murderers, Mr. Secretary. Amen. That is exactly right. We have multiple examples of how America has responded.

You're right. In the Green Revolution in 2009, the Obama folks wanted to stay away. They were trying to get their deal done. When there were protests during our time, when I was the Secretary of State, we immediately put out statements supporting the Iranian people. And all the while, we were denying the people who were killing Iranians, the people who were imprisoning Iranians, the people who were threatening Iranians, we were denying them the resources to continue their terror campaign. And sadly, Jay, we're right back where we were in 2009, with this administration trying to cut a deal, not enforcing sanctions, and making these terrible human beings that are denying these women their basic and most fundamental right, giving them money with which to continue their repression. It's an enormous mistake. It's not the case.

The idea told us wrong. This is not an American or an Israeli set of protests. This is an Iranian people's movement. What we shouldn't do is deny the Iranian people the opportunity to continue to express their free will. And this gets to my next question. If the right support was there from the world and Iran, the regime, was facing real crippling sanctions and they didn't feel like they were maybe getting access and they weren't able to use their airline to fly across Europe, do you think we're at a point where one day we could see the people of Iran, not because of Americans, not a military exercise, but the people of Iran coming together to overthrow this regime that it goes back to in Iran?

You know, in Iran that my age group is pretty unfamiliar with other than seeing the imagery out of, but in Iran very different from these religious radicals. Jordan, I absolutely think it's possible. We never know.

You can never predict the moment, but you do know this. Pressure over time is what makes the difference. And to the extent we're relieving the pressure, as Jay was suggesting, by providing the money, as you suggested, by allowing a Mahan Air and Iranian Airlines to fly across the world, we are fueling the very repressive regime that threatens Israel, that threatens American officials and former officials, threatens terror from Hezbollah, we're fueling that capacity for them to repress their own people in a way that permits them to behave precisely as we've seen since 1979. We should cut them off. We should apply pressure through sanctions, through all forms of capabilities that we have. And when we do, and when then the Iranian people demand their freedom and their liberty and their basic rights, we'll return to an Iran that the people of Iran will benefit from. Let me ask one last question on Iran, and that is because with Iran, we've had this situation before, as you said, during the Green Revolution. If this movement continues, can it successfully topple this regime?

I think there's no doubt that it can. I think it's also important that all of us think about what that looks like the day after, Jay, because that day will come. It's impossible to predict, but that day will come. The Iranian regime will not last forever. We should hasten that by continuing to apply pressure.

But we all need to be prepared for when that day comes to support the Iranian democracy movement, support the people who have driven this, and make sure that as the days move on, we need to give the regime the capacity to regroup, rearm, and reinstall its power, and provide the resources necessary for what are an amazing people, the Iranian people, highly educated, very capable technologically, to allow the Iranian people to have access to the world markets in a way that will allow their country to reenter the global stage in the way that we all pray that it will. You know, Secretary Pompeo, you've got to just switch the topics a little bit here. You've got a new piece up at ACLJ.org.

I really like this one. I think our folks will really like share this too on their social media so their friends and family see it. I encourage them to do it. It's titled, Wokeness is a Threat to Our Military. You bring up, among other things, the Air Force Academy, where cadets are being told to avoid committing what they're calling microaggressions. And these are now, these microaggressions, just so people understand what the Air Force Academy is defining these as, simple things such as, quote, saying, you guys, and even the term terrorists, with terms that have been deemed, quote, less offensive. Why is this the focus of a U.S. military academy?

Jordan, it's unexplainable to me. And worse than that, it's dangerous. You all know the ACLJs, but at the forefront of making sure that our folks in uniform have the capacity to express their voices to protect liberty, religious freedom inside the military. And frankly, all across the country, you all have been exemplars of that and fought for it vigorously. This is another chance for government to move away from tradition. When you think about militaries and how they're built, they're built on culture, on heritage, and on tradition.

And when you begin to walk away, when you tell them, I think you did mention, don't talk about mom and dad, just talk about parents and parental units. This is a use of language which denies what we know to fundamentally be true. And it loses the mission focus. Our militaries are designed for the singular purpose of deterring bad guys. When we start to focus on diversity, equity, inclusion in this way, it's dangerous for one of our America's core institutions, its military. But you hear parental units.

I mean, that's like the code heads. It's like we're making them use language. It's not even natural. It's not natural at all, right?

So I mean, you have to really reprogram yourself to even start speaking that way. It's unreal. We appreciate it, Mr. Secretary. As always, thank you for your insight and input. And it's great to call you a colleague and a friend.

Thanks for being on the broadcast. Hey, folks, you know, I was just thinking about this. I'm looking at, when you look at the ACLJ and her scope in nature, do you know that we have two members of the previous administration's cabinet on our team right now? We have another colleague that doesn't come on air much, but you all remember the former attorneys here in the United States, John Ashcroft, works with our teaching arm, our Law and Justice Institute. And your support of the ACLJ makes all of this possible.

And I say that, not in a matching challenge month, but you just need to know what your gifts and support do for the ACLJ. When you get an email from us today that has in it all these briefs we're filing, I think Cece said nine over the next week or so, on all these state Supreme Courts. And then, of course, our latest case at the U.S. Supreme Court defending prayer at the U.S. Supreme Court, which could, if they take this case, it will be a landmark case on who can bring these suits and who can't. That you just can't be offended by something and get it removed. Heckler's veto, basically.

And this case puts that square front and center. So I'm telling you, folks, your support of the ACLJ makes a huge difference. Then you talk about this broadcast. We're on hundreds of thousands of radio stations, Sirius XM satellite radio. We're on Facebook, Rumble, YouTube, Truth Social, Twitter, all these social media applications and platforms we're using. And then Jordan and Logan just launched a brand new podcast, which, by the way, last week had over 100,000 unique listeners. Yeah, so we release three a week, so it's about 35,000 each episode. That's combined in places like Rumble, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook. But again, it's a big launch number after just doing it for a few weeks. It's a very different show. I also encourage you, if you're not a typical podcast listener, one number we want to focus on is the people subscribed on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It doesn't cost a thing to subscribe. But I encourage you to do that.

That would really help out the Secular Brothers podcast. And there's another topic that is getting a lot of attention. When you talk about it's politicizing aid, we're specifically talking about after the hurricane or any kind of natural disaster. And politicizing it with these new terms, these are not new words, but usually when you think about, hey, we need to get aid out, you just figure out where do we need it? Who needs it?

Who cares what the color of their skin is, their financial background? Who needs what to make sure the water's running, to get the electricity back on? And of course, you saw entire places in Florida where we saw that imagery. We finally got to see the imagery, which we were very careful about last week because you said, remember, don't rely on these little cameras that are set up in the middle of the storm because that's not showing you exactly what occurred and most of those went offline. You had entire beach communities totally wiped out.

This is still a very long process. Still trying to figure out how many people may have lost their life. Did they heed the warnings and leave? Some beach communities, they say, may never really be built just because... Sanibel and a couple of those smaller islands... It's uninhabitable. ...the words they're saying on those, uninhabitable. But the vice President made a statement about how the aid should be distributed.

Can we play that, please? Take a listen to this. We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity, understanding not everyone starts out at the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work. I would think this would be the most inappropriate time to talk about equity and equitable solutions when people's homes, no matter what their race is, no matter what their religion is... Or their income, because I will say this. It doesn't matter how rich you are, you don't have the money to rebuild the infrastructure this takes out. Correct.

I mean, entire towns have been wiped out of here. It's like you could write a check and just be like, oh, I'm going to turn the water back on. I'm rich. No, that does not work. You can't rebuild the bridge. You don't have that much money.

You can't get approval for it. You get communities back and it doesn't mean... A lot of times the communities that get hit the hardest are ones that don't have the best structures in place. You get a lot of trailer parks, places like that. It's nothing to do with race. It just has to do with, okay, how do I help those folks? They're already being helped. Well, this is what is so outrageous about turning a crisis, a literal weather incident that has caused an active... Yeah, well, that's what the insurance companies call it.

A weather-related catastrophic disaster in a state and turning it into a race-baiting moment. And I hate to say that, but our director of policy is here, Professor Harry Hutchison. And Harry, I would have thought if your community is out of power, whether you're black or white, whatever your religion is, whatever your sexual orientation, male, female, whatever, none of this matters. None of this matters. What matters is get the lights on, restore gas, make sure there's not fires.

That's what I thought would matter. Well, I think you're right, but let me tell you something, Jay. Your problem is you are being logical. You are being reasonable. You are focused on the facts. Keep in mind that the left in the United States is not focused on the facts.

They're not focused on the data. They are focused on ideological abstractions. And first and foremost for these ideologues is the obsession with race. So the first question we need to ask ourselves is how do we define equity? How do we define equality? These terms are in reality abstractions. First off, we should note that no one is completely equal to anyone else. I will not be able to beat Tiger Woods when he's on one leg playing golf.

I just don't have that ability. Secondly, what does equality mean? Equality means we are equal before the law pursuant to the Constitution. If we look at equity in the United States, we need to answer several questions. Why do Syrian Americans, Korean Americans, Taiwanese Americans, Filipino Americans enjoy longer life expectancies, lower incarceration rates, higher standardized test scores on standardized tests than white Americans? And so if we tie this back to the whole affirmative action debate, it turns out that one of the groups that if we're going to be obsessed with race and ethnicity that needs affirmative action based on the activities of hardworking immigrants, white Americans would need affirmative action.

I think at the end of the day Kamala Harris and her ilk, they are consumed with an illusion and the American people ought to reject it. But isn't it the last place you would be talking about this kind of equity? When you've got communities wiped out, it's like what Jordan said, wouldn't you want to restore the roadways, get running water, make sure that whatever buildings might be left are stable or not dangerous? I would think that's how you would make that kind of assessment. Not well this one is this one and this one is this race and this one is this ethnicity.

No. It's danger. Where is the greatest danger? Where is the greatest need? Period. Not based on anything else other than fact. Yeah, electricity, water, roads, doesn't matter if it's what community it goes through.

Everybody is using it to some extent. But what I also want to point out here is notice she didn't have trouble getting this in itself. So when she actually cares about an issue and it's a political issue, politician Harris kicks in and suddenly she sounds confident and tough and she's putting out this, I don't agree with any of it, but she can get equity versus equality out, she just can't get North and South Korea right. Because I think what we see from her now more and more and what I'm starting to develop over these years is if she doesn't care about an issue, which is again you should care about a lot of things if you're going to be vice President, everything that affects the country, but she ignores and doesn't prep and then she comes across as someone who doesn't even care about what she's talking about.

On this one, no problem throwing this out there. They also try to press her on a clarification on this statement and here's what happened. Mr. Vice President, can you clarify what you meant about equity for hurricane relief?

Can you clarify what you meant about equity for hurricane relief and Harry, the answer was no answer. Absolutely, and that is par for the course. This is an individual who is, I'm told, our border czar and she really hasn't visited the border. This is an individual that has majored in her ability to issue forth word salads as opposed to substantive analysis. But I think at the end of the day, Kamala Harris and the Democrats, they are consumed with a so-called bias narrative. They believe everything is determined by ethnicity. There's an alternative narrative out there and it's called the development narrative and the development narrative is favored by hardworking legal immigrants who come to this country. They protect their families.

They encourage their kids to study hard and they do well in the United States. That, I think, is a testament to the freedom and liberty available to each and every American and Kamala Harris ought to be ashamed of herself. I think you're absolutely right. Alright folks, we want to encourage you to do something right now if we can. That is for the Sekulow Brothers podcast. You want to focus on people getting from their podcast sources.

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