BREAKING: Supreme Court OUTLAWS Affirmative Action

Breaking news today on Sekulow as the Supreme Court outlaws affirmative action. 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. And if you've been seeing the breaking news, you might have heard it just in the tease of the broadcast, the U.S. Supreme Court today in a 6-3 and a 6-2 opinion, one with Harvard, one with UNC, so a private university and a public university, outlawing affirmative action as we know it in the United States. And what we mean by this definition of affirmative action is basically where in Harvard there were four final factors, race was one of them, that would be a reason why you beat someone else out. And they said having it that direct, that it wasn't based off the person's experience growing up maybe as that race, but just because that's the color of their skin, that's their background, that gives them an advantage.

Or if they happen to be Asian or white, a disadvantage. So there's a big discussion about Hispanic and black students versus white and Asian students and how we've really gotten to a point where even racial minorities in the United States of America are being discriminated against because of affirmative action policies so that it's no longer serving the purpose that it was supposed to serve. So we're going to go back and say individually your life story is important and that could mean something to a college admissions process.

If you came here as an immigrant or your parents were immigrants or you have this life story, I think Justice Roberts pointed out, Chief Justice Roberts pointed out, if you've overcome some obstacles in life and maybe one of those obstacles is the zip code you were boarded. You could of course put that in your application in your essay or if that's asked in the essay, but the school just can't say, well, this student's black, this student's Asian, we're going to go with a black student because they're black. It's interesting because John Roberts who wrote this opinion, in a previous case, Harry, he stated that the way to end racial discrimination in admissions is to end racial discrimination. And this opinion actually does that by eliminating what I would call the numerical factor, the bonus factor of this, of race, but still allowing that one's unique circumstance may be a factor of course in admission because at the end of the day admission is a subjective process. I think that is precisely correct and I think the real test of this particular opinion is whether or not university admissions officers will agree, A, with this opinion and will agree with what Justice Roberts said earlier. Admissions officers are more inclined to agree with Ibram X. Kendi's approach, which suggests that the remedy for past discrimination against blacks or other minorities is present discrimination in favor of blacks. And so I think that is the real test going forward, but I think Justice Roberts has provided a good roadmap toward a less race-conscious future in the United States and he has returned us, I think, to the text of the Equal Protection Clause.

We followed the brief and we'll put it up on the screen for everybody right now. So in Students for Fair Admissions versus President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions versus University of North Carolina, let me say something on a personal note here. The law firm that handled this were very good friends of ours. In fact, they were our co-counsel when we were representing the former President before the Supreme Court, Will Conseboy. He passed away, young man, was 42 years old, was a Clarence Thomas law clerk, brilliant Supreme Court advocate. We had the pleasure of working with him for four years. He was the mastermind of the legal strategy here. He did not live to see the opinion, although I'm sure he knows today.

I'm confident of that. So again, to his family, I know this was a big part of his life. There's also today, it's not getting as much attention, but you need to know about it, a big win for religious liberty. Another big win for religious liberty when it comes to employers who come back for the break. And that's out of the Supreme Court too. It's a unanimous decision. That's something we've seen a kind of a pattern when it comes to religious discrimination. The court has actually been very unified in this approach.

So a big win for religious liberty too. Hasn't got as much attention because of affirmative action, but we'll explain that case to you as well. At 1-800-684-3110, if you want to be on the broadcast, you've got questions about these cases.

1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secular. So two big cases of the U.S. Supreme Court today. The one getting most attention is affirmative action, which has been in the court a number of times over the last 40 years. Most recently, I think in 2006, where in an opinion upholding some affirmative action, the court said at some point in the next 20 years, we've got to do away with this. This is not a long term, this does not really meet constitutional standards.

Ultimately, this has to come to an end. And in today's decision, that's what the court has said. We have now seen reverse discrimination because of affirmative action policies against minority groups, racial minority groups in America.

So the policy itself, which was to right wrongs in the past and discrimination, has come to an end. That doesn't mean that if you are so enlisted in this broadcast right now and your child's overcome obstacles in life, that they can't say what their background was in their application. Of course they can. And that can individually be important. But they're not going to just get in or not get in.

They made a big deal about that. It's being a negative because of the color of your skin or your racial background. So Harry, you had an interesting point of the impact of this and how in states that have eliminated a race as a factor for admission, it's actually been to the benefit of minority students.

Absolutely. Significantly. So if you look at the state of California, which is the most populous state in the United States, they repeal affirmative action. Essentially, they repeal racial preferences with respect to admissions.

And guess what happened? For African American students, for instance, their graduation rates from the University of California system actually doubled. And why is that? What's the data showing? Well, the data is showing that without racial preferences, students are going to universities that they are better suited to enter. This doesn't then preclude them from transferring to the University of California at Los Angeles, one of the best schools in the nation.

And that is precisely what they have done. So they might go to a lower ranked university for the first two years and then transfer to the University of California. And they're graduating, as I suggested, in record numbers in a four year period. Now, one of the issues to keep in mind, however, is that university admissions officers, they're not focused on graduation rates. They're focused on looking at the statistics with respect to admissions. And I don't think they really care whether minorities actually graduate, particularly in STEM programs and demanding programs. But California proves that the elimination of affirmative action does not have an adverse effect on members of minority groups. John Roberts asked Seth Waxman, who was representing the universities that were using race as a basis, University of North Carolina and Harvard, at the oral argument about something very similar to what Harry just said. I think it's worth listening to.

Let's take a listen. Well, so there's only a little racial discrimination in the case. No. Are you asking me whether Harvard is, you're asking me to answer a question that assumes that Harvard is discriminating on the basis of race?

No, I can't accept that. Mr. Waxman, isn't that what the case is about, the discrimination against Asian Americans? Count one of the complaint was that Harvard was intentionally discriminating against Asian Americans. The entire evidence of that case, all of the plaintiff's proof, was that Asian Americans are treated worse than white applicants. That is, that there was prejudice, intentional discrimination. The evidence could not more soundly have refuted that.

What do you do with the charts? This kind of showed the problem here of what you were saying, which is what is actually happening. Other student groups, other minority groups.

White students were beating out other minority groups because the minority group was doing better academically, so it might have better test scores. So again, it's the reverse discrimination, the policy that was trying to right wrongs, and that's why I think throughout the discussion with affirmative action, that's why I think the people who were acting shocked today didn't, they knew what these cases said even in the past when they had victories on affirmative action, is that one day, this has got to be over. It's over.

And it's over when you start discriminating against minorities, racial minorities in America in the process. Yep. All right, we're taking your calls, 1-800-684-3110. Let's take one. Yeah, Mary Ellen's calling from Illinois on Line 1. Hey, Mary Ellen.

Hey, hello. Given my job background from the 70s requiring affirmative action reporting and documentation, my question about the cases, given the current culture that's been ingrained, does this decision also require oversight and documentation to root out the discrimination in college recruiting and selection practices? It would require litigation if there is a violation of the Supreme Court's decision. Now, let's say, I'm not saying this will happen, I'm sure Harvard and UNC are going to comply, but let's say they give it a wink and a nod but don't actually comply.

That would require you going back to court, seeking another order. So it's not self-policing, if that's what you're asking. It's not self-policing.

You have to, it's the law of the land now, so they have to comply, but if there's a violation of the law of the land, you have to go to court. Yeah, and I think that again is very important here because I think that schools are going to look at this and say, okay, they don't want to be a bunch of lawsuits. So they're going to have to be that much more careful with their policies.

I mean, again, well, they're always trying to be these workarounds. Of course, are there a lot of problems with higher education right now? Yes. Is that going to solve all the problems?

Absolutely not. What this does do, though, is make sure that in the United States of America, groups who are coming up, whether it's the Asian community, white students, Hispanic students, or black students, that no one is going to say, oh, you got in there because of this. That will be done because it's not going to be the decider, which is what Harvard got in trouble with. It was one of the four final deciders that they could click.

You could either check the box or you don't. Harry, is that how you read it? I think that is correct, although I would say I agree with the caller's skepticism. So what we need, I think, is eternal vigilance with respect to admissions, and I also wonder, and I'm just speculating out loud, whether or not there would then be a potential cause of action for damages if indeed a university violates the decision coming down today, particularly at state universities. I think it's really important to keep in mind what President James Garfield observed with respect to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, that it would hold over every American citizen without regard to the color and protect each and every citizen by the shield of the law, and that individuals who are the most despised in the United States would have an equal chance with those that are the richest in the United States. That, I think, is the tenor and tone of the equal protection clause, and I think, or at least I hope, that universities will comply with that. It was interesting because John Roberts asked another question to Seth Waxman, the lawyer representing Harvard and UNC, about this whole idea of credits being given based solely on skin color.

Take a listen. I think it's important for you to establish whether or not granting a credit based solely on skin color is based on a stereotype when you say this brings diversity of viewpoint. It may not bring diversity of viewpoint in a particular case at all. Well, number one, viewpoint diversity while Harvard values it and seeks it is not the only, by far, the only reason for wanting a genuinely diverse class.

We want a diverse class for backgrounds and interests and lots of things other than just viewpoint. We basically conceded the entire case with that line. Seth Waxman was a good lawyer, but that was a big gap because the idea that you're saying, well, yes, we really don't want diverse viewpoints, and it may or may not equal that, but diversity is more than viewpoints.

Well, if we're supposed to be a colorblind society and we're supposed to have equal access to law and equal protection of the laws, I mean, this, Roberts got it right and the majority got it right here. Yeah, and we'll continue to take your calls. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. We come back for the break as well. We are going to update you another victory at the Supreme Court today, a unanimous decision on religious liberty, so we'll update you on that as well. That's not getting as much attention yet in the news because of the affirmative action case, but it's very important to a lot of you who have calls and questions all the time about this when it comes to your employer and religious accommodations. And in this case specifically, so we'll update you, we'll give you that information.

We come back, we'll take your calls at 1-800-684-3110. If you have questions about any of these cases, also the two remaining cases of the Supreme Court, probably the most high profile is the student loan forgiveness that President Biden tried to do by executive fiat. Instead of going through the legislative process, which again has huge impacts on people depending on where you fell in those decisions, if you've got to still pay yours back, or who else is paying back those loans by the way?

Taxpayers. A lot of people who didn't take those loans. So again, I know there's been a lot of discussion about these loans not being great loans, and people have I think woken up to that and said they need to look more and analyze more whether or not it's worth taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to go to college based on what you want to do with your career.

And will your career be able to pay that back over time? But there's still contracts between adults and loan institutions. So I mean there's that case as well.

1-800-684-3110. There's another religious liberty case, another viewpoint case about a website designer too. Similar to those baking cases that have come about. So those are two more that remain that we did not get today. We'll be right back on Secular.

Welcome back to Secular. We've got calls coming in about the affirmative action case, religious liberty victory case as well. Again, I don't think I've even seen it discussed yet much in the news. Maybe in the news, but I mean maybe two seconds on some of the cable news shows.

Understandably because the affirmative action case has been one people have been looking at over decades at the Supreme Court as they've kind of come to these different conclusions on where we are as a nation. So we'll take phone calls on that. 1-800-684-3110 and we'll update you on that religious liberty victory as well. Let's go to Octavia in Maryland online too. Hey Octavia. Hi. Hi. Good afternoon everyone.

I thank you for your program. I just want to make a simple comment. I am a fifth generation descendant of Maryland. I am a descendant of American slaves and I just believe that we should just be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I believe that black and people are number one, not a race. We are not monolithic, but we are a community which needs to be served. I believe that there are disparities that exist. And there are just enfranchisement that also exists in both education, housing, and also in the labor force. However, I think that placing the defendant of American slaves under the category of minority may be causing a disparity within of itself because the community is coming from some grass root problem that may have not been addressed throughout the year. But I will say that the Christian church has always been a great advocate for the community and serving others and helping others and even starting the historically black colleges that allows the descendant of American slaves to both serve others in themselves.

I just think that as a community we need to have better leaders, better representation, even the former President had mentioned there needed to be some help. I don't want to quote him or mislead him, but the community needs to go back to the drawing board and take a look to see where the disparities are coming from and why it's there. And that's my comment. I think the opinion actually takes that into consideration. It does not say race is never a factor because if, and they use the specific example here of the essay which colleges require, that if you talk about overcoming a racial prejudice or you were in a unique situation and you were able to overcome something, these are factors that can be considered by the admissions committee.

It's just not a numerical one anymore. Yeah, I think they like, obviously if you grew up in a tough education and you know that, obviously by the time you're 18, if you didn't get the best educational opportunities but you were able to still rise above, you could obviously put that in your mission and they could totally consider that as a reason to accept you into the university. That is still very clear in this opinion. So I think those kind of actual specific stories, it can't just be I'm black so I get to beat out the Asian student. Right.

It's not an automatic, I get plus 10. Harry? I think that is precisely correct and I think Jordan offers a very wonderful summary. So one of the real issues is the absence of development within many African American communities. By that I mean family structures have fallen apart, many individuals have to deal with high crime rates, a lack of fatherlessness. But having said that and having given space, if you will, for unique stories to emerge, it's very important to keep in mind that most of the beneficiaries of affirmative action in the United States are coming from high income, even wealthy African American families. So it's not necessarily a situation where affirmative action is actually helping individuals that are suffering from disparities. Secondarily, it's important to keep in mind that affirmative action disproportionately benefits individuals with a black skin who come from Africa.

So in other words, they're immigrant families. So they don't have this long history, if you will, of disadvantage in the United States. So I think it's very important to keep in mind that this particular decision attempts to redress that, but allow individuals to write an essay suggesting that they have overcome some unique circumstances, whether they're black, Hispanic, Asian or whatever. What about the historically black colleges and universities? Does this decision impact them at all? Or are the students that are going there want that unique experience?

Is that what it is? Well, I think it could affect African American students, particularly at historically black schools in several different ways. To the extent that those historically black schools are doing a fabulous job of preparing African American students, or other students for that matter, for future jobs or for graduate school, I think they can indeed thrive. But it's also important to keep in mind that this decision will apply to historically black schools as well, so that they cannot discriminate on the basis of race, and most of them, to my knowledge, do not. So I think it can be a net positive.

I would have to actually engage in an investigation to give you a complete answer, but I think certainly that's possible. And the opinion has just come out as we're going live. And President Obama was asked about it when he was President, asked about his daughters actually, and he used them as an example and said, no, they shouldn't benefit from affirmative action. They have the daughters of the President of the United States.

So he even looked at it in the view of like, individually, they should not be benefiting from it because of their back of what they have not had to overcome. Their dad was the President of the United States, very successful attorney, very successful, highly educated families, and so that shouldn't be a factor into the schools. And they went to really great schools for lots of other factors, like growing up as the daughters of the President of the United States. Pretty interesting students to have at your school. The school could take that into account.

Like, hey, having the daughters of Presidents is pretty cool to have at our school. Let's go ahead and take Cambria's call from you until you're on the air. Thanks for taking my call and all the work you do. Thanks.

I appreciate the attention you gave me and my state. My question to you is, does this affirmative action also apply to hiring? Probably not because this was very specific as to admissions criteria. It was based on admissions and the equal protection clause. And companies have diversity programs and most of them are private companies. They're not getting federal funds unless they're like a federal contractor.

So I'm not sure. I don't think it would apply to companies. Just because Harvard's private, because they take federal funds for their research programs and things like that, they fall under the same kind of jurisdiction when it comes to this decision.

Right. All right, next half hour of the broadcast, we're going to get into the religious liberty case that was decided. We got a big decision there, too. We'll take more calls on both of the cases.

Give us a holler if you want to talk to us. 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. ACLJ filed briefs on all these cases.

I'm holding them in my hands right now. This is the one in the admissions case. This is the one in the religious liberty case. So there you go. And your support of the ACLJ allows us to do that, allows us to bring you this broadcast, allows us to have lawyers deployed around the country.

We appreciate your support. Do that by going to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org to support the work of the ACLJ. If you've got questions, give us a call. 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. We'll take those calls when we come back to discuss the religious liberty case. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Welcome back to Sekulow. Take your calls to 1-800-684-3110 if you want to weigh in on or get questions about the affirmative action decision. Again, we'll get to the case right now on religious liberty and the two big remaining cases out of the Supreme Court. One is on the student loans. A lot of people are upset about this because they feel like, hey, if I didn't take these loans and you give this student loan forgiveness, who's paying for it? What's taxpayers who might be blue collar Americans who never took out these student loans who are working hard and literally now they'd be paying for people who made bad decisions contractually based off where their career path might be. Thankfully, it's woken people up to that idea that maybe taking out hundreds of thousands of loans for careers that are never going to pay that back is not a great idea. So people are rethinking education as a whole.

Colleges are actually, there are companies now that rate the rate of return from the college investment and determining whether that was a good rate of return. Yep. And the other case is another case involving kind of viewpoint and involves a web developer. Does a web developer have to develop a website if you go to them and want to hire them?

Or can they say, you know what, I'm not comfortable with this position or that position? To me that seems, should be fairly easy. The only complication with that case, and it involves a web designer who did marriage wedding websites, you know, pages, and she didn't want to do a same sex couples one. And normally that would be a fairly easy case. It's like I always say, you know, an African American on dry cleaner doesn't have to do the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan's robe. A kosher butcher doesn't have to do pork. The only thing he hears is that they said this was a public accommodation. And when you get into public accommodation, then you're looking like a restaurant, a hotel, and there you don't, you can't discriminate on the basis of these kinds of things because that would be a license for pure discrimination. But we'll see how they deal with that.

And maybe the fact that it's a creative endeavor will be different, but let's focus on the one today. Yeah, there was a religious liberty victory to a unanimous decision out of the Supreme Court involving a postal worker working on Sundays and Amazon. We get these throughout the week at ACLJ.

And oftentimes they're handled fairly quickly. This case, the postal service fought back. And one of the reasons they fought back is, remember, they made a deal with Amazon, so a lot of times you'll see postal services delivering your Amazon packages.

On Sunday. On Sunday, so you'll see the postal trucks out, you'll be like, oh, they're not delivering your mail, but they will deliver Amazon. That's because Amazon's paying them. And so I think they had a bigger economic reason to fight back here, whereas in the last few years we've seen these kind of handled pretty quickly. Yeah, so, see, we get hundreds of these requests every month. And normally, like Jordan said, we handle them and we get resolved. This particular case, the postal service said no. This was creating an undue burden on them, and the case ultimately went to the Supreme Court.

Right. So Title VII requires employers to grant religious accommodations when requested unless they cause an undue hardship. There was a case in the 1970s that basically said undue hardship actually means kind of this de minimis standard instead of really what undue… Let's explain what de minimis is to our audience. I mean, like, it… It's very trivial. It's very trivial.

De minimis is very trivial. It's just a trifle. Insignificant. Yes, very insignificant. In other words, the employer didn't have to say, this really is a burden, so we don't have the ability to cover this. It's affecting other employees and their ability to work their hours. Right. But it was anything. It creates more paperwork would have been enough.

Right. So employers could actually, this de minimis test, they could pass pretty easily and say, I'm sorry, we can't grant your accommodation because that would force us to have other employees work overtime or other employees are upset about it. Not this undue hardship. And so this court literally just got rid of that de minimis test and they said that Title 7 requires an employee, or sorry, that denies a religious accommodation to show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased cost in relation to the conduct of its particular business. In other words, they can't just say, boy, this makes it harder for us. They've got to show it and establish it. That's right. We'll get back from the break.

We're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. By the way, that case was unanimous, 9 to 0. Harry, were you surprised at all about that? I was. I was a bit surprised. That it was unanimous. Well, that it was unanimous, but also that they reached that particular decision. Yeah. Yeah.

So interesting development. We'll say how that affects other areas of the law. We'll take your calls on any of these topics.

1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. Back with more in a moment. We're coming in and questions coming in about whether the case involving the admissions and not taking race as a numerical factor for admissions, in other words, affirmative action, is going to impact at all the DEI, the diversity, equity, inclusion policies of a lot of universe, of a lot of, excuse me, a lot of corporations, a lot of businesses. So, Harry, and it's an interesting one because if the business has nothing, if it's just a private business that has a DEI policy, well, private business can have that. I mean, that's up to the private business. Now, whether that constitutes an act of employment discrimination on others would be interesting, but I think harder.

That was not the case that was before the court. But a lot of these companies also have federal contracts. Yes, I think that's going to be the linchpin of a potential lawsuit against private corporations. And one of the things that I would also mention is that the size and scope of the federal government has doubled or tripled over the last 30 to 50 years.

What does that mean? It means more and more corporations are having to deal with the federal government. They have contracts.

They may be supplying goods and services. But I think it's going to be a more difficult case. This case, the affirmative action case with respect to universities, it's going to be much clearer and more clear cut. And, Cece, on the religion case, the Goff case, a lot of people are asking, what's the practical impact of this for employees of companies that want a religious accommodation in the workplace? I think it'll be just a little bit harder for employers to blow off religious accommodation requests. I think they're going to have to take a closer look to say, is this truly an undue hardship?

And throw out this de minimis test of, oh, it just makes somebody else mad, which I think some of them were relying on. That's enough to be able to reject these accommodations. All right. We're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110.

We also got some interesting developments coming up on this whole situation with Hunter Biden as it relates specifically to this investigation by the U.S. attorney in Delaware. We'll get to that in a moment, but let's take Kevin's call. Yeah, Kevin, calling from California on Line 1. Hey, Kevin, welcome to Secular. You're on the air.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. It seems like on the student loan issue that if they would just make student loans more easily forgivable under bankruptcy, a reorganization or straight-up bankruptcy, then after two years after you graduated, maybe, just like federal taxes, my son's a bankruptcy attorney, then somebody who took out one of these loans, like a car or a house you bought, now you can't afford it, and you truly can't afford it. The federal trustee would come in and say, okay, let's reorganize, let's reduce, or let's forgive. Why don't they just do that? And then the people who can afford to repay and they'd be vetted, you've got to repay. Those who can't won't.

Well, that may be a good solution to this. The problem is what the President did was, by administrative fiat, was forgive trillions of dollars worth of – or billions. I don't know if it hit a trillion. I think it maybe was a trillion dollars worth of these loans, and if you really studied it, someone's going to get a master's in accountancy from the University of California since we've been talking about them today, and they have loans. Well, President Biden just forgave whatever the number was, $10,000 or $20,000 of that loan. Well, who's paying for that loan?

Probably the plumber or the electrician that didn't have those loans in the first place because they went to trade school or learned to trade. That was where the whole thing was just totally unjust. Now, if Congress would have done it, different story. Yeah, I think, again, Congress can make decisions.

You don't necessarily – legislative decisions, especially when it comes to these kind of programs. I do think, again, when it comes to the bankruptcy thing, too, is that that's not where all these people necessarily were situated. So I don't know if they'd even be able to declare bankruptcy.

I think they might say, no, you're not eligible to declare bankruptcy. You could pay this loan back over 30 years. A lot of times that's how long these loans – they're very long loans.

They do start ballooning. And they have big interest rates when they start going up. I think it was a scam on the American people, on students. Yeah, the whole price of college admissions is out of control. Where I went to college was a lot then has doubled in 20 years.

It's going to be over 100. A year. That's ridiculous. And that's normal now. I have two in college and I can say that. A hundred grand is pretty normal. A hundred grand a year is pretty normal. So people come out and you take also loans out for some of your expenses. So let's say even if you're a school that's at $50,000 a year but you need another $25,000 to cover your other expenses, you're getting close to a hundred grand a year per school. And then so you've got a $400,000 debt just coming out of undergrad. That's without grad school.

Yeah, and if you went to medical school on top of that you could end up with a million dollars worth of debt. Some of this is just – we've got to rethink how this is all done. There is another development.

We'll take your calls on any of these topics, by the way, of course, at 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. But House GOP is now demanding a transcribed interview from Hunter Biden's prosecutor, that's Weiss, out of Delaware, the Department of Justice, the IRS, and also Secret Service officials. This is because there was breaking news the last 48 hours about Merrick Arlen saying, we gave the U.S. attorney full reign. He could have brought charges anywhere. He could have subpoenaed anywhere.

And we didn't constrain him at all. And then a report was out that Weiss had told – this is the prosecutor in Delaware – he had told the IRS, hey, I've been told I do not have the authority to bring indictments or seek subpoenas out of California or Washington, D.C. Then he's putting through the grapevine. Well, that's not what he said. So, Jordan, you want to explain what's going on in this Washington mess?

Yeah, I think – Because that's what it is. Yeah, you've got to – I think what was interesting here is we don't have the bunch of unnamed whistleblowers. And the whistleblower who came out from the IRS by name and has done interviews now named other names. So he's put together a list of names. He said, I wasn't the only person, by the way, in the meeting when the U.S. attorney David Weiss out of Delaware came and said this.

In fact, here are the other people. There were some IRS people. There were some DOJ people. So those individuals have been requested to come testify because he named them as having direct knowledge. The others have been the two U.S. attorneys, one out of D.C., one out of California, who supposedly said, you can't bring prosecutions here.

We're not going to allow you to bring prosecutions here. What has Weiss said? That's what's confusing here. There's back and forth discussion on that because some say that he told the DOJ, no, that's not true.

He has absolute prosecutorial discretion and he could bring cases wherever he wanted to. We don't know when he said that. So he could have said that when he got held over and then that didn't become the case. So this is what Congress is saying.

Somebody's not telling the truth. Yeah, and that somebody may include Merrick Garland. And then in that kind of situation, you have Merrick Garland and others that could be dealing with this and they may have had information that they thought was correct.

And Weiss is saying something else. It shows that what is happening up there with this whole prosecution is so outside the normal approach of prosecutions. Tondra Biden had great lawyers.

Abuloh is one of the finest criminal defense lawyers in the country. But it does show the two-tier system of justice here, or what appears to be that. Yeah, and especially when you have a whistleblower who's saying, listen, I documented what happened in these meetings and it's exactly the opposite of what the Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney are saying today. So it's once again, you know, you have two sets of laws and two sets of prosecutions when it comes to really Democrats and conservatives or liberals and conservatives. Yeah. Harry, looking at the situation right now, we've got, let's play Merrick Garland's comment.

Mr. Weiss, who was appointed by President Trump as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during the previous administration, would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to. Okay. That's a very bold statement of giving wide prosecutorial discretion to that U.S. Attorney.

Absolutely. And I don't think the American people are entitled to believe Merrick Garland, given his record, number one. Number two, I think subsequent testimony suggests that Merrick Garland has been basically, his statements have been invalidated. Now, we need basically a congressional hearing to verify what witnesses are saying. Are actually saying, yes. And pin them down with respect to timing because it's possible, as you suggest, that Merrick Garland did give him wide authority initially until he began to press the envelope and say, I need to bring charges in California or Washington, D.C. That's why timing, what Jordan was saying on the timing of, you know, he may have said, I could bring it anywhere.

And then as he went to do it, he could not. On the other hand, these investigators of the IRS say it was made in front of numerous people. But like you said, Jordan, I think the timing of this is very important. Yeah. I mean, and even they're also calling secret service members who supposedly tipped off the FBI, got a tip from the FBI that they were about to, so the FBI called, someone at the FBI called a secret service officer who worked with the Bidens and said that Hunter's about to be interviewed by the FBI. Okay. And the IRS. But she wasn't until the O.J.

did it with a, under the subpoena power. Yeah. So there's, I think there's a lot of questions. Republicans are being very honest about it. Someone's not telling the truth. And it does seem like this whistleblower came out and said, he didn't say, I just overheard it. He said, literally, we're in a meeting. Here's the other people at the meeting. And the U.S. attorney said, unfortunately, guys, I can't bring the cases anywhere, which would have affected the money out of China, I guess. And there's also a question to me, they're not attorneys, a lot of these people speak about it.

No. All this money, you would think, ended up in Delaware. So why couldn't you have jurisdiction? Well, that's what you need to find. So what's going to happen is the House is going to get the depositions and it'll get to the bottom, but we'll have more when we come back from the break. All right.

Welcome back to SECCIO. We're taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110.

Let's go to the phones because people have got questions too about cases that are still outstanding at the Supreme Court. I think the student loan one is huge. It affects 30 million people. So not everybody that had student loans, but 30 million people to meet certain economic, right? I mean, I don't remember the exact.

Certain amount of debt, certain amount of income, certain amount of time frame that you were out of school. Yeah, it was a number of factors to get this relief, but it's about 30 million Americans who are still trying to figure out if they will. It never went through. Right. It's been held up in the courts the entire time. I would, I'm leaning that the courts would not, don't like these executive fiat moves that are this broad. I mean, President Biden was trying to use it under a law that was really for military. Right. And say that everyone can qualify under that because you said I could do this. I could do it for anybody.

Military is always viewed differently. All right, let's go back to the phones. Yeah, Ray in California, online one. Hey, Ray.

Hello, thank you. On the college loan and admissions issues, how does it affect colleges admitting foreign students for their higher tuition than admitting the American citizen student? Yeah, and that's not a factor, by the way, that the Supreme Court said you can't take into consideration.

A university can say, hey, we're going to take a certain amount of foreign students because our tuition base for those foreign students, Harry, is higher than what we're charging domestic students or in-state students, so we're going to do that. There's nothing prohibiting that. I think that is correct. That's not based on race. That's based on economics.

And that's a worldwide phenomenon. Yes. And so you would see it at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, at Canadian universities as well. They would take the higher tuition students over the lower tuition students, and in effect, they're subsidizing domestic students through foreign admissions. Yeah. I mean, and that's not prohibited by – this is affecting race-based admissions. That's what this affects. I think we're starting to try to drift it into these other areas where it's not clear to me it goes there at this point. Yeah, I don't – I think – Not the way John Roberts wrote this opinion.

No. Let's go back to the phones. More on student loan debt. Ray in Florida online through – hey, Ray.

Yes, thank you for taking my call. I'm calling about the colleges. I have a nephew next month that's going to be starting medical school.

Yep. And he's going out of state, which is going to cost him close to $100,000 a year. He had multiple offers out of state. Why are the colleges in the state not offering him anything in the state? Is it because they pay a lot less than what an out-of-state student pays? It seems like the colleges are going after out-of-state students. Well, this is an economic decision the universities are making. Like Jordan was saying, his undergraduate school has doubled since you've been there, at least, maybe more than doubled.

Yeah, that's about 20 years. Were you paying – were we paying more for you because you were out of state than the District of Columbia? No, not there. Not because it was the District of Columbia. No, private schools doesn't matter. You've got – State universities have it as – but they also – like the North Carolina has to – is probably mandated to take a certain amount, and a majority of the students have to be from North Carolina under that lower threshold. So then they are trying to find the out-of-state students who are not going to qualify for a bunch of scholarships who can then help subsidize the fact that they are giving 90 percent of the students that have to be from North Carolina. Most of the states that have those programs, they still are told by the state, you have to take so many students that are from our state. The University of Tennessee system gives a priority to Tennessee students, not based on race, based on residency in the state. They do accept out-of-state students, and they do charge more for the tuition.

Those are the money makers. You've got two, but one's in state school, one's in private. Well, both will be in private.

One's coming up, right? Yeah, that's right. And I will say that every year, tuition has increased at both of those schools. What about in the state school system? In the state school, the tuition did increase not as much as in the private school, but the tuition is increasing every year. And then Tennessee does have some good, you know, scholarships that they give Tennessee students.

Harry, you've been teaching for decades. What is your sense on the value of the – some of these reports you see now are they're valuing the tuition. You're paying this much for tuition. This is your rate of return from this university.

Is that a valid factor? Oh, I think it is, but it's also important to keep in mind, in connection with what the caller suggested, that many universities have much more flexibility with respect to graduate programs. And so I went to the University of Michigan Business School, and I would bet that up to 80 or 90 percent of the students were from out of state. And at the University of Michigan Business School, they could charge a premium to these out of state students because they essentially have a top five or top ten reputation in business schools. So many of the provisions limiting the number of out of state students who can attend a state school, they apply to undergraduate programs as opposed to graduate programs.

And so many of these universities are making huge amounts of money with their graduate programs and basically recruiting out of state students. All right, the Supreme Court term is going to end tomorrow. There are two more cases that are significant. The student loan forgiveness issue, which let's talk about that one first, which, Jordan, is beyond the student loan forgiveness. It's really focused on Presidential authority. Yeah, it's a Presidential power.

This wasn't an act of Congress that went through a normal legislative process. This was just done by executive branch under this other piece of legislation that was called the Heroes Act, which was really for veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq and their student loans. And it was utilizing that to say, well, there's an economic hardship provision here that I can extend to any Americans with economic hardships. So, I mean, the biggest recipients of the loan forgiveness, you had to take a Pell Grant.

If you didn't take a Pell Grant, but you still meet the threshold for how much loans you have left and where you are economically, you could still get some relief. Remember, the President was also highly criticized by the left for how small this amount was. It's $20,000 or $10,000. So, I mean, most of the loans we're talking about here, unfortunately, we're talking in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, while it might provide relief to people at the end of their loan payment, people who are just now getting these million-dollar loans starting to pay off after they're finished with school, they're not getting a lot of relief from this anyway.

So, it's still 30 million Americans, so they're watching closely. It never went into effect, so no one's going to have to retroactively give back money or anything like that because the courts stopped this from the get-go. So, that's case one that's going to come out.

I don't know if it'll be the first one announced tomorrow, but they'll all be announced by 1030. And then the second case is a case involving a web designer on not wanting to do a particular—this was a same-sex marriage—did not want to do the web design page for the wedding for that one. And the case will hinge on whether her First Amendment—the web designer has a First Amendment right, too.

You can't be compelled to violate your conscience. The question will be, how does that public accommodation aspect fit into all of this? So, it could be a very narrow— Yeah, and a web designer— I suspect it'll be a narrow decision. Right, just like you said, a web designer, that's a little bit different than walking into a restaurant. Right. Because, you know— You've got a creative impact there. That's right, absolutely.

An artistic element to it. Yeah, but when you say public accommodation, which they said this was by the—I mean, when I say they, not the court, the plaintiff said, I'm going to place a public accommodation. You know, public accommodations by nature, Harry, it changes—that's the only thing that concerns me about that case.

Does it change the nature and scope of it? Yeah, I'm surprised at the concession by the plaintiff. That was the only way they could get the court to hear the case, to make sure that the statute actually applied it.

If you were to place a public accommodation, you were exempt. Right. Sometimes you play it too cute by half. I mean, I don't know. I think it'll probably come out okay, but okay being—I'm not even sure what the answer is.

These are not that easy questions. I'll tell you, it's like the baker in that situation. I argued why the guy—the baker should have made the cake. I could argue why they shouldn't make the cake. Same thing with the African American-owned dry cleaner. I don't think he can compel them to do the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan's gown, but I don't think he could say, I'm not going to do white patrons dry cleaning. I mean, you can't do that. So, again, nuances. The term ends tomorrow, thank goodness, so we will get the final results then and we will talk to you when we get them.