ACLJ Beats Planned Parenthood

Today on Sekulow, the ACLJ beats Planned Parenthood in federal court. 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. Hey, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. We're less than a month out from the midterm elections. We'll talk politics today as well and give us a call at 1-800-684-3110. We just briefly mentioned this on Friday and I wanted to spend a little bit more time, especially for our ACLJ supporters out there.

You deserve to know where your resources are going and how they're being used. And this is a great victory against Planned Parenthood in federal court, in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, out of South Dakota, where your ACLJ attorneys, including me, we were deputized by the governor there, the attorney general's office, to represent the state. This battle goes back to 2011. So we talk about taking on those billion-dollar-a-year abortion interests like Planned Parenthood. It's no joke. These aren't just two-year battles, which that alone can seem long to people now.

You've got to be dedicated to the fight. South Dakota's been dedicated to the fight, but they ultimately got to a point in 2020 where state officials and the pregnancy health centers filed a joint motion to dissolve the injunction against what is a third-party requirement to, it's basically informed consent, so you have to, before getting an abortion, visit a pregnancy health center before you consent to an abortion, which, again, informed consent is a normal part of medical practice and laws in states. That's why, you know, if you're in a doctor's office, they go through all the things that could go wrong, even if it's a sliding scale of more likely to less likely. You've got to get all the information.

They provide you these packets of info, this is what can happen. And so in this situation, again, going back to 2011, 2020, we get brought in in 2021, and by Governor Noem directly, and we have been filing all of our briefing, but we did know that this case would turn on Dobbs at the U.S. Supreme Court. It would be a very different case if Roe vs. Wade was overturned.

In fact, no case at all. And this is that first time I've seen in federal court since Dobbs, where because of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, we are winning cases without having to go to oral argument. So oral argument was the injunction was lifted against this law, it now goes into effect in South Dakota, and we don't have to make oral arguments, we just beat Planned Parenthood. This is why taking abortion from the highest level of scrutiny under federal court, the abortion distortion, as we call it, back to a state issue or legislative issue, even in some of the federal laws moving forward, we're able to get victories in federal court that usually this case, without the overturning of Dobbs, could have gone all the way this— I mean, it was already a decade-plus long legal battle to get informed consent. Now that informed consent will move on, but I'll bring in C.C.

Hall immediately. The other part of this CC is that there's going to be a lot less abortions in South Dakota. So with all that combined, the court said, no need to come in to argue this, you've won. Yeah, and that is a great victory. And we've seen, obviously, you thanked our supporters, and we do thank our supporters because we are in a battle against Planned Parenthood constantly, and they are very, very, very well-funded. And this was a case that, like you've said, went on over a decade, and we were brought in and appointed as special assistant attorney generals, and were able to do the briefing and filings. And then the Eighth Circuit got it right that said, you know, Dobbs has come down, and therefore this third-party counseling requirement, South Dakota can definitely do.

So it was a great win. I want to take your phone calls on this. When we talk about life, 1-800-684-3110, when you're talking to folks in your community, now that we're less than a month out from the midterm elections, are people talking abortion to you? Are they voting for or against someone because of their stance on abortion? Because certainly we're seeing the left pushing that as the choice, even though you've got all these other economy, war in Europe, the threat of nuclear armageddon.

So I want to hear from you. Is that something you're actually hearing in your community, and do you think it will affect the outcome of the midterm elections positively or negatively for conservative candidates out there? Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back on Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls too.

As the abortion issue, a front and center for Democrats. They keep trying to recenter, and they're going all in to recenter your vote in the midterm elections. We're less than a month out, folks. I mean, it's going to all start flying now. If there's anything negative about somebody, dirt about people, this is when it all starts coming out.

And so you have to prepare yourself for that because you might hear things, and I'm not just talking about the Herschel Walker kind of situation either, but some of the people you might not have, again, even been on the radar about negative stories and this and that. This is when it all starts coming to a head. But where the Democrats want you to focus is not on the economy, not on war in Europe, not in the uncertainty, not in the crime in the United States or the border. They want you to focus in on abortion. So they're going all in based off polling that shows the country's divided on the issue and hoping that that's the little margin where maybe it keeps suburban mobs, that kind of vote, and keeps them away from Republican candidates or conservative candidates who are openly pro-life and who aren't afraid to talk about the issue. The question I have for you is, is that what people are talking about in your community, or are they talking about the economy, inflation, crime, border?

So I want to hear that from you. You give us a call at 1-800-684-3110. We're also ceasing because of what happened in Pennsylvania and that pro-life activist who was not charged with any state crimes, even a civil case was dropped because the person bringing the civil case said he shoved them after they were screaming obscenities at his minor son. The FBI came in, 20 agents, and now we're starting to hear from more pro-life activists. We see this time and time again where maybe they weren't speaking out about it or wasn't getting the attention it should deserve, and now people going back from a couple years ago are saying, Yeah, I have this video. Here's the FBI.

We just played the break for folks who are watching the broadcast. The FBI did the same thing to us under the Biden administration. Yeah, it's ridiculous how the Biden administration definitely has weaponized the DOJ and the FBI against pro-life speech and pro-life activists. We saw that exactly like you said with the Pennsylvania father of seven who got arrested by 20 to 35 FBI agents with their guns drawn. We saw that now just happen again in Tennessee with a father of 11 being arrested, again, by FBI agents, you know, guns drawn for, again, an event that happened over a year and a half ago and charged with violating the FACE Act, which is Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances. So it seems pretty suspect that the FBI and the DOJ are getting involved in events that happened over a year and a half ago, many of which, you know, the local authorities did not pursue, did not find any crime happening there, and yet the FBI is coming and going, targeting anyone who dares to really protest at an abortion clinic.

I want to start taking the phone calls now because, again, this is all important. The legal side of it, you know, the ACLJ, as we talked about, big victory. We beat Planned Parenthood, deputized by the state of South Dakota. After this case had been going on for over a decade, and we come in, ACLJ wins. We don't even have to go to oral argument.

We got the victory. That law goes into effect in South Dakota, finally, after more than a decade. And we're starting to see more restrictions in place. I asked you the politics of it, and a lot of the politics of it is what's on the ballot. You've got all these ballot measures, and you can't just say, hey, everybody listens to broadcast, vote yes, or everybody vote no, because the different ballots, some are positive. You want people to vote yes, some are negative. You want people to vote no, and they are written in a way to, most of the time, there's a already, you know, and everybody knows this in politics, that most people go in and just vote no on new ballot issues, if they vote at all. So to pass a new ballot issue can actually be more difficult than just getting people to vote against it, because a lot of times people aren't that, sometimes you walk in, you haven't heard about any of this. It could be local things, it could be at your city level, it could be at your district level, it could be statewide, and you haven't gotten a lot of education.

Now these, there's a bit more, there's a lot more politics at play. I want to go right to the phones on it. Steve's calling out of Michigan online, too, about an initiative there. Hey Steve, welcome to Secular, you're on the air.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. You know, to your point, you know, Prop 3 in the state of Michigan, while what you just said would be accurate, I think the other side has done so much putting out of information about wanting to say yes, which would allow so many negative things to happen all the way up into 37 weeks of a pregnancy. The wording of Prop 3 is so confusing, and just wondering, you know, how much of that's really on purpose. You know, my daughter works for Pregnancy Resource Center, and thankfully she gets to give us a lot of information, but that's not what's being portrayed in the media and what's being said on numerous commercials from the other side. So I'm just wondering, you know, your take on that, and it's so confusing that it's very scary. Yeah, I'd say it like this, Prop 3 in Michigan, which would be a no vote for the pro-life side, but the way it's written is more like reproductive health, and they use pregnancy a lot early on in a positive sense throughout your pregnancy, but it's so extreme that if you actually take it where it goes, I mean, a minor would have a right to abortion under the Michigan, you know, your state constitution.

But what we're seeing is exactly that season. It is, they hope, I think our folks, our supporters, they would be able to read it and know this is pro-abortion. But that's not the majority of voters, even in midterm elections.

Midterm elections, you still get a lot of people who are not following everything. They show up on maybe the day before election day, maybe a week before they start paying attention, and ballot initiatives are pretty low on their list of priorities when they're trying to figure out what candidate I'm going to vote for, and then if they'll even read it when they're in the booth is another question, especially when they go on and on and on. Yeah, so ballot initiatives, you literally, the wording is confusing, and I think that is intentional a lot of times. Just like you said, you can't now know if a yes vote really is yes or no vote really is no. And so I think, you know, it's very important for all of our listeners, as you go into to vote in November, that you do your due diligence and you do the research, just like, you know, our caller said, you need to do the research on this and find out exactly what those ballot initiatives mean and which is the correct way to vote.

Yeah, and of course, you can always call in with us. We're tracking all of that through ACLJ and ACLJ Action, and in some places we're doing more, and we're partnering with groups, too, on education, some on polling. You know, people talk about the Kentucky a lot, and that issue there where we had not gotten, we were talking to Frank Mandy last week for our team, and we were talking about the issue that is, it could go to court, but it also could be decided by the voters before it goes to court, and there's no polling on it. Well, I'll tell you, ACLJ Action is going to make sure we get polling on that. So we have an idea of where should resources be spent? What are people thinking? Is this top of the mind issue? Even if they're pro-life, do they know how they should vote?

So even a secondary kind of step there. Let me go to Joe in Texas on Line 3. Hey, Joe.

Yes, thank you for taking my call, Jordan. I live in Texas, and we have a gubernatorial election coming up, and Abbott is running against Beto O'Rourke, and the bulk of his ads for Beto are basically about abortion. He even has a couple that I would consider probably above childbearing age talking about taking your rights away from you, and the only other ad that he's really running that's of any significance is a woman that lost her child in the novelty shooting and how Abbott is not able to, you know, prevent that sort of thing. But the overwhelming number of ads that are hitting us here are about abortion. And the interesting part, Joe, if I can ask a follow-up, I mean, that's quite a gamble, I would think, in a state like Texas. It is, I mean, it's a very diverse state.

It's very different geographically everywhere you go. But to go all in on that as your main issue, to me, I would say that's, when you're ignoring the economy, when you're ignoring the border crisis, that could be off-putting to a lot of voters. But is it resonating, or do you think it is more and more off-putting? Because I feel like a lot of these Democrats, Joe, like Beto, like Stacey Abrams, have been falling in the polls since they started going all in on this. Well, I can just tell you, my circle of influence, you know, what's affecting the bulk of us, I think, probably across the country, is the economy, is the crime. You know, I don't think the abortion issue is resonating with those of us that are of faith and, you know, believe in Scripture and that sort of thing.

And, you know, we're hoping and praying that, you know, that people realize that, you know, the right to kill a baby is not the thing that people should be focusing on. You know, so, you know, he had a strong showing when he ran against Ted Cruz, but the economy isn't where it is now. Right.

It was a different timing. Stacey Abrams had a strong showing, too, when she ran against Governor Kemp. It was very close to the point. She's an election denier. She doesn't believe she lost that election.

Now she's starting to really seem desperate in a lot of her statements. And I think, again, you go all in on an issue. It's not that it's not important. Roe versus Wade was overturned. It's important to both sides. I get that. It's important to us.

The ACLJ, of course, were winning cases because of the decision without having to go make oral arguments. But how do you ignore the economy? How do you ignore the issues that really are front and center for those officials, whether it's a gubernatorial race or Senate race or a House race? You've got to, again, I think by ignoring the issues that are front and center, it is very risky.

If this was a time when there wasn't inflation and the economy was great, that would be a different calculation. I can make different statements about it. So we'll continue to take your calls. 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back.

All right. Welcome back to Sekulow. And we are taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. The question we asked, you know, in light of our ACLJ's victory against Planned Parenthood in South Dakota, a great victory for Governor Noem, the Attorney General there, the state, after a 10-year plus legal battle, were able to secure that victory on informed consent. And it is a loss for Planned Parenthood.

I think any time you can beat Planned Parenthood that directly is a huge victory. And in light of that, we were talking about the abortion politics of what's happening in your state. And there's a lot of ballot initiatives and there's some confusion on ballot initiatives. And I think Kansas was a good outlier to show it was the first one that had a vote. And there just wasn't, in my opinion, on our side, there was not enough education done so that voters knew even what they were voting on. And that is really important when you talk about these initiatives because you can't just, it's not national, you can't just say blatantly, you know, go vote this way. I can't do that on a show like ours.

I have to take it state by state if people have questions about even how they should vote or is that a positive or negative response kind of initiative. So I want to go back to the phone calls. First to Randy in Ohio, online one. Hey, Randy.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. You know, I live in Ohio, the Bible Belt, and so naturally the jobs decision triggered an abortion law that we have in place. But all of the people I talk to, none of them are concerned about nationalized abortion. It's more about the economy, the crime, and these nuts trying to push us to nuclear war. Well, I think, Randy, where you are, that is probably why, and Ohio's changed. You know, you wouldn't have probably said that politically about Ohio. Now, depending on where you live in Ohio, you may feel more like you're in the Bible Belt than other regions of the state.

It's a big state, a lot of big cities that are different and unique. But it has certainly become a much more solidly red state over these past few election cycles, even more so than in Florida, I would say. And because of that, you have your statewide candidate, Tim Ryan, on the Democrat side, tries to run as this moderate. Now, he's got like, I think, a hundred percent voting record with Biden, and I'm sure on abortion, a pretty extreme. And he's trying to pivot away from those issues more and more and trying to sound like he's more of a kind of a middle of the road candidate.

But his record just doesn't reflect that. And time and time again, I think that those races where J.D. Vance and Ryan, where it looked like they could be very tight, they might still be polling tight. I think when it comes down to it, if, you know, 28 days from now, when people get into the voting booth, are they, if they're voting on the economy and security, I think it's pretty tough to pull that lever for a Democrat or to punch that in onto the screen. Unless you're a hyper-partisan person where you're just automatically going in to vote. And listen, a lot of voters in midterms are hyper-partisan. That is, I don't know if it's the majority, but it certainly makes up a base of voters if you combine both the partisans on the Republican side and Democrat side. Because it's a midterm election, they don't get as much attention.

And it also depends on where you live. Do you have a big statewide race? Do you have a big initiative on the ballot? Or is it more of the House races and not as big on the statewide level? So if you're not in those states that constantly are getting, you know, attention in the news, turnout won't be as high. So we will see. It will be very interesting that a few days after the election, after November 8th, to start figuring out where this played in people's voting. And did it matter here but not here?

And was it because of what else was on the ballot? Or how the economy is doing there? I think we're going to learn all of that. Let me go back to the phones. Teresa in Michigan online too. Hey Teresa.

Hey Jordan, thank you so much for taking my call. I just wanted to bring up the point that in my lifetime I've never seen where they have pushed abortion so hard. And, you know, going back to your original question, people are not talking about that. People are talking about, am I going to be able to heat my home this winter?

Can I fill up my gas tank to get to work? I can only buy this amount of food because I can't afford the groceries. It's just a sad, sad world we live in right now. Yeah. Well, and Teresa, if that's how people are voting, then this whole calculation will have been wrong. But I think, again, CC, unfortunately what we know from the other side is their secondary part of their message here is that it's economic related because, hey, babies are expensive.

Right. And that's the abortion distortion we see all the time. So they will try to tie it into maybe an economic discussion, but in the negative way that, you know, you don't want to have a baby because you can't even afford food.

So how can you afford now? But they don't want to talk about why people can't afford food. That's why they are focusing on the abortion issue. I want to spend a little bit of time too on just ACLJ for our supporters out there, donors out there, they should know about our work. And, you know, there's always breaking news, a lot to talk about. But we just filed 14 UPRs with the United Nations. France, Tonga, Romania, Mali, Burundi, Botswana, Bahamas, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Liechtenstein, Serbia, Barbados, UAE, and I think most interesting this time, Israel. Tell people about, because I would imagine most of those UPRs filed on Israel are pretty nasty.

Yeah. So this is the 49th session of the Working Group on the Universal Periodical Review. And they meet three times a year. And it's basically, we do reports evaluating the human rights records of the member states that we're evaluating.

We do 14 at a time and three times a year. And then by the end of a five-year cycle, we've actually done all 193 member states. So the interesting thing is that Israel is usually the target at the UN of, you know, just a lot of shaming and slamming and condemning. And so we are able to, in our report, actually do a commendation for Israel on their human rights records and especially, you know, with the issue of war crimes and show how really they go above and beyond and take measures that no other country would take. Yeah. And again, for our listeners out there, these reports, you know, some of these are Western countries, some of these are small countries.

It gets into the, again, we're able to focus in. So if, like when it comes to Israel, you can focus in then on their judiciary and on their court system and on their rights that they offer to people of different backgrounds and faiths. And it is the, technically on paper, you know, some of the liberals might not like it, but it's the most progressive country in the Middle East by far.

Absolutely. And I think we show that in our report, you know, how they're attacked and they're surrounded by Arab nations and they're constantly attacking and really what they're doing is self-defense. And again, you don't see that, but we're able to actually put the facts in the report, which is hard for the UN to turn a blind eye to, to show that, you know, Israel and its human rights records really should be commended. And, you know, most of these reports out of the 14, we deal with religious issues and sometimes that gets into human trafficking and abortion. And this, in this report, I think Mali was one that we actually got into Christian persecution as the 24th worst nation for Christian persecutions.

But it's great. You can find all those reports on our website and you can see exactly how each country's human rights stacks up. Again, at ACLJ.org. And you also learn about, again, our victory in South Dakota, beating Planned Parenthood in federal court, a victory for life, again, because of your support of the ACLJ.

So I encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. You can learn about what we're doing from all these different issues. Life, foreign policy, national security, human rights, and of course the political side, the issue side of everything, you know, we're talking about today with the abortion politics. You can't deny that that's a big part of our politics right now. Mike Pompeo is our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, going to join us in the second half hour.

We're going to talk about some of the international issues too, which are on people's minds, like the nuclear arm, again, those kind of statements. ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow.

We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. The question, because I wanted to get more as we did in that first half hour, that ACLJ victory in South Dakota, representing the state of South Dakota. We were actually deputized in the state, and that's because, let me thank Governor Noem for bringing the ACLJ attorneys in to defend the state law and informed consent there when it comes to abortion. And we won that case, beating Planned Parenthood in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. That case is over because of Dobbs, importantly too, because the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. So you're starting to see also the effect of what that means for laws that are in the books that may have been, in South Dakota's case, it was a law held up since 2011, so over a decade. And that's because of the precedent that Roe had set, and the scrutiny level, and abortion distortion. These laws, any laws that touch abortion were treated differently than any other law. Now that's not the case, and it's a good example of how you're seeing victories coming out of the Dobbs decision.

The media doesn't want to focus in on that, of course, the left doesn't want to focus in on that, but we're fighting those battles at the ACLJ, and so a great victory out of South Dakota. But we talked about abortion politics. I don't think, again, it's not every election cycle that abortion politics kind of leads the way. In Presidential races, usually you know what the Republican is, and you know where the Democrat is, and they kind of state their opinion and move on. But what you're seeing is a lot of Democrats doubling down on this issue, and what we're going to know very soon, in less than a month, is whether or not that doubling down was a good political strategy.

I think it would be very different if you didn't have such a turbulent economy with inflation, with rising crime everywhere, with the drug crisis we're seeing, with the border crisis we're seeing, with the international crises, whether it's China, North Korea, and of course Russia and Ukraine. Yeah, it'd be a different political time, but that's a lot of things to take out, right? That's a lot to say, well, if it wasn't this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, I mean, it's like 10 different things, then maybe abortion politics would be taken more seriously. But they would all in, a lot of these politicians, because you've got to get your ads in now for this final stretch. So whether it's Beto O'Rourke in Texas, like we heard from one of the colleges, basically all they're running ads on, all these running ads on. Stacey Abrams kind of doubling and tripling down on that as well. And already she's putting out, which is just interesting to note, you know, that this is, that polling now is voter suppression. So now that if you even put out polls a month before election, that's now voter suppression because she doesn't like the way the polls are leading right now. I don't think she would have minded this if it showed a tide or if it showed her leading, you know, would she still be like standing up for Republican voter suppression? Say like, oh, this is going to suppress Republican votes. So regardless of what side of the aisle you're on, you should be against this.

It's just crazy stuff. But that's what we have to be ready for now that we're under 30 days is, you know, if you're backing a candidate, be ready. You're going to hear probably anything nasty about them that they could find is going to come out now. And it may not be like the Herschel Walker situation where people are more prepared for it, obviously. And the support was already solidified, it appears.

But we'll see if there's that small group of voters that votes in midterms but isn't really, you know, aren't really that hyper-partisan, how that's going to persuade them, just like the abortion issue. So we're taking your calls at 1-800-68-431. Tim, we come back for the break. We're joined by former Secretary of State, our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, Mike Pompeo, to talk about what's going on around the world as well internationally. I think that's very important as well. So we just talked about our UPRs that we found at the U.N. But there's a lot of uncertainty being generated by what's happening all over the world, not just in Ukraine, but also what's happening in China.

The fact that North Korea said no to bilateral discussions with the Biden administration. So we'll continue to take your phone calls on that, 1-800-68-431. Tim, let me encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Support the work and learn. You know, if you're finding our broadcasts, whether you're watching on Rumble, YouTube, or Facebook, and you're new to the organization, like who are these guys, what do they do, learn about us at ACLJ.org.

It's a lot more than just a show. We'll be right back on Secular. Welcome back to Secular. We're going to take your phone calls to 1-800-68-431.

Tim, that's 1-800-68-43110. Abortion politics, your state. I really want to hear from folks, whether you've got ballot initiatives, whether you've got statewide candidates who are running. And as we've heard from some folks, there are statewide candidates in places like Texas. You think about that, yes, demographically changing, always. It's a huge state. There's people moving in and out, especially under COVID. A lot of people relocated to places like Texas. And we saw that Texas and Tennessee and Florida especially were businesses from the West Coast, a lot of the West Coast and Midwest, and even Northeast, who had just said, you know, enough, we're moving. And so I've asked you to kind of give us a call about what you're seeing in your state and in your communities when it comes to abortion politics.

It's not every election cycle where it's this front and center. Now, I know to our supporters, they are concerned greatly about this. And so, again, we'll take your calls on that, 1-800-68-43110. We are joined now by our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And Secretary Pompeo, I saw the announcement. I was in the car this morning on the way to the office when you were on Fox and Friends, a new book.

It's available to pre-order right now. It's called Never Give an Inch, Fighting for the America. I love untold stories about your time as CIA Director and Secretary of State.

Tell people a little bit about it. Of course, we encourage them to pre-order the book now. Thanks, Jordan. Yes, you can go see – you can go get Never Give an Inch pre-ordered on mikepompeo.com. And Jordan, to tell us the story from my perspective, I was the only senior national security person who made it all four years in the Trump administration. To tell us the story about how we literally every day put the American people first. And so I talk about the things that I did, the way that I interacted with President Trump, how we executed and implemented that America first foreign policy in a way that I think we can all see pretty clearly now was really good for the American people compared to what President Biden is voicing upon us today. You know, I don't want to give all the book away, but I think one of those topics that was especially unique to your time as Secretary of State, just for the world, was the interaction with North Korea. We just saw the Biden administration make an approach to North Korea after they've been shooting off more and more rockets, causing alarm to our allies. They tried to make that approach, as much as they tried to mock what you all did on the Trump administration, they tried to make that similar approach of a bilateral, nothing's off the table, no strings attached meeting. And the North Koreans said no, which was interesting to me, is that they feel like they're in a position of enough strength to blow off the United States of America. It's pretty remarkable to watch the North Koreans reject the opportunity to engage with American leadership. They clearly don't have the same concerns that they had when we were in office, which was that we would take serious action to make things more difficult for them. They must view the administration as being pretty weak.

You know, Jordan, it's a story I've told, right? So now you have Chairman Kim that refuses to talk to him. The Saudis refuse to take his phone call. I can't tell, but it doesn't appear there are serious efforts to be talking to Vladimir Putin about the costs we're going to impose on him. This is a pattern in practice, and it is really, if you're living somewhere in Idaho or Texas or Florida, this is a really perilous moment in American history, and we have a President that doesn't appear to be able to engage with those folks that are trying to do America harm. To go to another one of those, the people who are picking up the phone, and they are answering the call of the United States and the Biden administration, whether it's Iran, but I want to focus some attention on Venezuela as well, which has been done, you know, they work very closely with Iran, and there's a lot of Iranian agents based out of Venezuela, you know, bad actors. And you tweeted out that, quote, energy independence doesn't just mean lower costs for Americans. It also means not having to beg Venezuelan dictators or the Iranian regime for more oil.

Of course, OPEC announced their big cut, two million barrels a day. But then Venezuela is responding. I mean, unfortunately, that's who is picking up the phone, saying, oh, yeah, great, you want to take the sanctions off and let Chevron go back in, and they welcome that there, of course.

So it's true. It's like there's conversations between the administration and Maduro, who has caused more harm. It's one of the greatest catastrophes, not war-based in the world's history, right? Now 20 percent of the Venezuelan population living in displaced or had left the country already.

And they bought that, right? They said, hey, look, if you'll talk to us, we'll lift sanctions in exchange for almost nothing for the United States of America. It is cataclysmically bad idea to think that you're going to run the country on sunshine and windmills, and you're going to leave these fossil fuels in America, the self-help that Americans need for our national security and for affordable energy, that you're going to leave that in the ground and you're going to put crazy rules, ESG stuff, all on top of the American energy industry that can create so much prosperity, so much security, and so many jobs here in the United States as well.

Instead, you're going to tell Maduro, no, you pump it. I mean, Secretary Pompeo, that gets to kind of like back when we were talking about North Korea. Do you think they say no to this kind of like no conditions because they say, listen, everybody else is getting something in return for taking your phone call and sitting down with you, so why would we just go sit down with you if you're not willing to lift sanctions on us or do this or that?

Because if, for goodness sakes, if the Venezuelan dictator is getting that, then maybe we should get something in return for even taking your call. I think that's absolutely true, the best example of that to the Iranians. We have now offered them billions, if not tens of billions of dollars in exchange for conversation, and frankly, they think they can get more. We've offered them all kinds of things to get back in this deal, and the Iranians continue to say no to our ES. It is a feckless response from the United States of America when the Iranian people are trying to do the right thing for themselves, for the United States to now give them a clear pathway to a nuclear weapon. It's precisely the kind of thing that the Iranians and now the Venezuelans, the Chinese and the Russians, all of whom, Jordan, you know, are part of the, call it the President Bush, call it the Axis of Evil, but these are folks that are working together. The Iranians shipping drones to Russia today, they are of a kind, and our response has been of a kind too.

Too weak, too short, and too slow. You know, this is a point, I just, I want to keep hammering to folks so they understand because, and especially when they're talking to friends and family, and we're 29 days from the midterm elections, you're all over the country for good conservative candidates, and everybody's out there talking up the issues, and when they talk about gas price, they talk about inflation, we see this use of the strategic oil reserve for, I mean, I'm not afraid to say, it's a use for partisan politics. It's not there, and even if we weren't in an election cycle, it's not there to bring down prices, it's there for, you know, strategic needs during a time of war, but I think it's a message people have to understand, like, why is that reserve important and why we shouldn't really be tapping that because of inflation? Jordan, the strategic petroleum reserve is exactly that. Its purpose is to have energy stored underground in the United States of America in the case that we have a conflict, and we need it, and can't get energy from someplace else. Barrels a day, I don't want to say how many, it's supposed to be classified, but big reserves and big stocks, what it's not supposed to be used to do is to buy votes by trying to keep the price of gas down when you've decided to adopt the Green New Deal lock stock in barrel, and that's what they've done, and it is now as low as I think it's been in 40 years, the levels, or as low as they've been in 40 years. It hasn't done anything to impact the price. I think crude's at 90 bucks a barrel plus today.

It is a failure of American policy, and most importantly, puts us at risk if we actually need that product for what the strategic petroleum reserve was originally intended to do. You have a final question today, Secretary Pompeo. I want to take it to New York, the border issue, because the New York mayor, Eric Adams, has actually declared, it wasn't over the crime there, but over the immigration, and just the fact that I think it's 17,000 people. For a city the size of New York, you would think it would not be a state of emergency, but it's interesting to see, because he tweeted back a few years ago, New York is always going to stand up to Donald Trump, and we are the place to come for immigrants as well.

So he plays that up, and now you see liberals, once they kind of feel what it's like to be a little bit, I mean, it's just a taste for New York. 17,000 people can be pretty easily kind of disappeared to the city that size, and yet they're declaring state of emergencies over it. Is it politics, or do you think they really just are finally getting a taste of what it's like to have these kind of mass influx of people that you might not be prepared for? It's remarkable how they foisted this upon the people of California and Arizona and Texas and my home state of Kansas, and now that there's just a little bit of cost to them, they are screaming bloody murder and demanding that this stop in declaring a state of emergency. The border is the perfect place.

You know, my book is called Never Give an Inch. This is the place that we understood that you had to protect American sovereignty, and I hope that Mayor Adams in New York City is finally saying that the Trump administration had this right, that Remain in Mexico made sense, that we were prepared to fight for the America that we love in a way that actually preserved and protected the great things about our republic. It's incomprehensible to me that 17,000 people could really be causing as much trouble as Mayor Adams has described, and to declare an emergency after so many other places have been through so much for so long because of the failed Biden policies is truly, truly outrageous. Alright folks, I want you to go to MikePompeo.com and get our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs. Pre-order his new book, Never Give an Inch, Fighting for the America I Love. And folks, as a member of our team, you see the insight we're able to do. In one segment of the broadcast, hitting all these issues with a former Secretary of State and a former CIA Director, and he's got this new book out to give you insight into that. And think about all those times that the Trump administration was mocked. I want you to remember, the Biden administration asked to have the same meeting with North Korea and the North Koreans said no.

And now they're going to Venezuela to open up drilling there, which will support a dictatorship, which is one of the worst human rights abusers in the world, and also allied with countries like Iran. We'll be right back on Secula. Alright, welcome back to Secula. I do want to play this, because this is Mayor Adams in New York. New York is the biggest city in the United States, or one of us. Does LA have more people?

It's definitely not concentrated in the same way. There has been a lot of change, demographically too. So this is, again, when you're talking about 17,000 people, this is not like a small border town being inundated with 17,000 people and they're not having the resources. In fact, 17,000 people, more than people come in and out of New York, even during probably COVID, through the multiple international airports and this and that. Yeah, there are concerts that attract more people to come into town. We really think about it that way.

There are multiple places there, and there are so many different places. But they're getting a taste of what it's like to have some of this immigration uncertainty, because they're not border states, and they're freaking out. They're declaring states of emergency, not over the crime in the subways, not over the fact that they've lost like 10 or 15 percent of their population or maybe more who just decided not to come back to the city, not the fact that tourists aren't back yet because of the crime. No, it's because of 17,000 illegal immigrants in a city that size.

I want you to play, let's play by five. This is Mayor Adams. New Yorkers are angry. I am angry too. We have not asked for this. There was never any agreement to take on the job of supporting thousands of asylum seekers. This responsibility was simply handed to us without warning as buses began showing up.

There's no playbook for this, no precedent. First of all, that's so many lies. I'll just go to the first is the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, where most people who had immigrant families, your family started out in New York.

Yeah, likely. They at least went through. And a lot stayed. And a lot stayed, or at least for periods of time until they finally kind of spread out across the country. But this idea that, I mean, first of all, one, it's like 17,000 people. Two, the idea that New York is not a place for immigrants, even though they are like, it's a sanctuary city because of Democrat policies and extremely liberal.

On top of that, Logan, it's 17,000 people. Yeah, so we have the tweet, right, that he did also from a couple years ago, or no, we haven't, can we maybe get it in the chat, where he specifically said just like a couple years ago, he said something to the effect of, yeah, we'll always be welcome. Yeah, 2019, make no mistake, New York City will always stand up to real Donald Trump and call out his cynical plots to divide our country. To anyone in the world fleeing hatred and oppression, the ultimate city of immigrants wants you to remember, you're always welcome here, but not... Not unplanned. Not if, yeah, not, which, again, when is it ever planned? Right, especially if you're seeking asylum or you're seeking those kind of things. So it's pretty wild.

Yeah, but he used the Statue of Liberty in that tweet. Good, like fine. Which is fine. But it is, yeah, it's definitely gonna really counter the actual narrative that's happening here, which is now that they've been faced with it, they're having to figure out how to deal with the fact that, or deal with what a lot of these other states have already had to deal with, whether it's Texas or any of the border states, having to deal with the chaos, and now instead of just this theoretical thought of we'd love to welcome everyone, now when you actually have to do it, you know, put your money where your mouth is, they don't want to. That's when it becomes hypocritical.

I think a lot of people can go, well, at least if they were the people who at least would accept immigrants into their society. Yeah, exactly. Act like a liberal and just be cool with it.

But no, you have to now act like, you know... I think it's diversion, too. They don't want to talk about the issues that are really plaguing the city and why it's not back and it's the crime. And it's not crime from this group.

And even if they were part of it, it would be a very small percent. It's rampant. But I want to tell people on our podcast, too, because our podcast, we get to hit things that we don't always make it to on this broadcast, like Crazy Kanye, more of those things. We were already last week concerned about elevating him too much and just kind of what's going on in straight-up politics as well and culture. Culture and politics and news, we talk about that on again. Succulent Brothers, it's our new podcast. We're doing it three days a week, so it comes out Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, just to make it a little confusing.

Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, we come and give a little break, come back with whatever's going on in the world, not just news but also what you said with culture. We touched on the interview that Kanye West had with Tucker Carlson and now sort of the fallout from that, which we predicted a little bit as much as we were fans of his art and everything. I kind of said this sort of happened when he became a strong evangelical character figure, if you would. Or when he ran for President. He gets elevated because of his stature, and again, I don't think anyone can take back his creative genius, but you start making statements, you start going too far, and this seems to happen.

It's a starting interesting interplay. A little preview of our podcast today, we haven't talked about this at all today on Secular, is who was standing up because he got elevated by conservatives. We have AOC, you know, if he would have just said he was going after the Zionists, like you said, and didn't say Jews, but said Zionists, I don't think AOC would be tweeting out anti-Kanye. Right, he made some statements that all social media platforms have deemed to be pretty anti-Semitic and maybe threatening, and he made those statements, and you're right, who's the first person to pop up? Other than, like you said, some of the Jewish activists is someone like AOC, and of course all of them are laughing at her, going, you're the one who literally props up.

Maybe the most high-profile anti-Semites in the country are your best friends. My best friends, Ilhan Omar, Presley, these are her top colleagues. There's the Squad. She's, I would say, the leader of the Squad. I think so. And she felt like she needed to say something, and it did.

It doesn't even match her brand. Yeah, she put, we're talking about this more on the podcast, but yeah, she put, there's absolutely no room in this country or world for anti-Semitism. It's important to see how harmful, dangerous Kanye's words are not only to our Jewish brothers, sisters, and siblings, but also to our collective society at large.

We must reject this wherever we see it. So, pretty straightforward. We have words we'd love to have heard when her own friends, colleagues, have come after and said some of the, all about the Benjamins and the nastiest stuff as well.

So, we're going to cover that and a lot more on the podcast. And again, it's kind of a misstep too. The only reason she's getting this opportunity is you elevate somebody who should be elevated in politics. Right. You know, I think culturally, they can say whatever they want, but when you elevate them as like a political hero, and a meme quickly, or you're tweeting, you know, it suddenly, and you don't have the full context of who they are. And it's hard not to because you do see someone, like you said, who has had very strong pro-life language. It's exciting for us on the right because we don't have many people. Right. I mean, we don't have many celebrities. Yeah, you got John Rich and Kid Rock.

That's about it. And it's not a huge group of people who are willing to come out and say. There's a lot of secret. Yeah, there's a lot of people not coming out and willingly saying a lot of these kinds of things. So, when you have someone, especially on the life issue, come out as strong as he did, you don't see that very much at all.

It was easy to jump on that bandwagon. But like you said, a lot of people have already been burned before. I appreciate him and his art, but I think that he definitely went too far on social media in some of his rhetoric that come out. There really was like anti-Semitic rhetoric. But we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about a lot more on Secular Brothers. Again, it's on three days a week. We'll have a new show out this afternoon.

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