America's Talking - Episode 45: Leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion would overturn Roe v. Wade

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and America's Talking Network's Cole McNeely as they discuss: Leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion would overturn Roe v. Wade. Roberts: Supreme Court to investigate leak of abortion opinion. Abortion could be severely limited in 23 states if Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Democratic judge in Texas border county implores Biden to visit before suspending Title 42. While Mayorkas continues to defend DHS 'Disinformation Bureau,'. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A number of states across the country in recent years, mostly red states, have passed laws of putting further and much tighter restrictions on abortion. Welcome to America and Focus. I'm Cole McNeely General Manager of America's Talking Network. If you have not already, we ask you hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast so you don't miss any new episodes of American Focus. Now here's your host, Dan McAulip. Thank you to myself, and I would only be so lucky to be host of this program. Dan McAlead, but I am not. I am Cole McNeely, general manager of America's Talking Network. Welcome to American Focus. American Focus is powered by the Center Square

and a production of America's Talking Network. Go check out all of our podcasts at Americastalking.com. And joining me is the aforementioned executive editor of the Center Square, Dan McKalib. Dan, it's Mother's Day this weekend, and you're filling in for Casey Harper. A lot going on. Yeah, well, first, happy Mother's Day,

all the moms out there. Casey Harper decided to take the week off. If our loyal listeners, remember a couple of weeks ago, confused Sweden with Denmark. And so they get caught up on European geography, decided to take a trip to Europe. Dan, that's interesting because the rumor around my apartment complex is that DC Bureau Chief Casey Harper is mixed in with this political leak. That's just what I'm hearing around my apartment complex, Dan. Oh, boy. Speaking of this political political leak, man, what what a bombshell story this week. That's all everyone's been talking about. Well, I know.

And in my head, Dan, you know, you and I had a good laugh when you said, hey, Cole, do you want to fill in for Casey this week? And I said, hey, at least there's nothing, you know, controversial going on. Well, Dan, let's let's hop right into that then. You know, we just referenced it. And I'm sure at this point, everyone has at least, I mean, made some sort of contact with this story. but there's a big leak out of the Supreme Court about Roe versus White. This leak is a couple months old and it's a draft. So there's nothing set in stone for sure.

Right. So let me just set some background. A number of states across the country in recent years, mostly red states, have passed laws putting further and much tighter restrictions on abortion. So-called heartbeat bills. when a fetus has a heartbeat, usually somewhere around the six weeks stage of pregnancy, that abortions would be banned. In Mississippi, the state of Mississippi, they put restrictions in place banning abortion at 15 weeks. And lawsuits were filed against the Mississippi law, and lawsuits have been filed against many of these laws across the country. Well, in December, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the Mississippi case.

And usually what happens in these cases is after arguments, the justices get together, they talk about what their opinions are on it. And then they start to write drafts of their opinion. Well, a draft of an opinion in this Mississippi case was written by a conservative justice Samuel Alito in February. And this week, that draft an opinion, it's not a final opinion. It's just a draft because there's a lot of back and forth on this stuff between the justices. It was leaked to Politico, and Politico reported that essentially the draft that they obtained from a leaker, from a source inside the U.S. Supreme Court, that five justices, the five most conservative justices on the nine-person Supreme Court, were signing on to an opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Roe v. Wade is the landmark 1973 decision by a previous Supreme Court that essentially guaranteed or that essentially said that the Constitution guarantees a woman's right to an abortion nationally across the country. So effectively, Dan, if it does get overturned, then this gets kicked back to the states. And as you're mentioning, whatever laws are in place in those states would go into immediate effect. Correct. Prior to Roe v. Wade in 1973, that's how it was. States could decide the elected representatives of each state put their own laws on the books on how to deal with abortion. Many states were much more restrictive than other states. And in recent years, since the, since President, former President Donald Trump was able to appoint three new members to the Supreme Court, and he appointed all

members, since that happened, there was some thoughts in these states that the Supreme Court very well may overturn Roe v. Wade. So they started putting in more restrictive abortion laws into place, and those laws would kick in if, in fact, if this draft memo becomes official, or this draft opinion becomes the official opinion of this new Supreme Court, regulating abortion would be returned to the states. Well, and this is this draft that got leak has obviously opened a whole can of worms and it has a lot of fallout between the debate over abortion to states rights versus natural rights at that federal level, constitutionality argument.

But not to go ignored is the fact that a leak out of the Supreme Court is pretty rare. And Chief Justice John Roberts has opened it. investigation into that as well. Yes. In a rare statement from the Supreme Court Chief Chief Justice himself, one, the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the leak was Monday night, or the Politico report was Monday night. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court came out and said that that draft opinion that Politico reported on was authentic. But they also clarified that it's a draft. It's not a final opinion. There's always a lot of back and forth before the formal opinion is released. Usually in late May or June is when the Supreme Court issues its decisions in big cases like this. So we're about a month, month and a half away

from learning what the final opinion is going to be. But Chief Justice Roberts came out on Tuesday and said it was an egregious breach of trust within the U.S. Supreme Court that someone would leak a draft opinion to the media and called for an investigation. of who the leaker was and how it came about. Well, and I'm sure, you know, Dan, there's going to be a whole lot more that happens after this. You have some in the Democratic Party right now who are calling for an expansion of the court. You have a lot of people in the Republican Party or more conservative sides that are part of the pro-life movement, celebrating this draft.

And it really seems like no matter where this final draft and this final ruling comes out, there's going to be a lot of uproar one way or another. Yeah, let's let me, let's face it. Abortion is one of the most contentious issues of my lifetime, of most of our lifetimes, particularly since 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided. Conservative groups, Christian groups essentially argue that abortion is killing an unborn baby, more liberal groups, those who support, you know, abortion rights say that it's not a live baby until it can live outside of the human body. And it's just, it's split America now for decades. The abortion rights groups, in fact, are planning protests this, this Mother's Day weekend at churches across the country. And they've been encouraging, protesters have also been showing up at Supreme Court.

justices homes, the Supreme Court has had to increase security since the leak, both at the court itself, with barriers being put up outside the U.S. Supreme Court and for the justices themselves because of concerns about threats to the justices who have signed on to this opinion. So it's crazy. It's a contentious issue. It's going to continue to be contentious. But let's Let me be clear here, too. We touched on this, but if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, as it appears like they're headed to do right now, it does not ban abortion in the United States. It just sends the matter back to the states. And states like Illinois, where I'm at, have very open abortion laws. It's not going to affect you if you live in a state like Illinois or California or New York.

the impact will be in those states that have passed these more restrictive laws against abortion, Bible Belt states, states like Mississippi and Texas. Louisiana is one of the few states that has a Democratic governor who signed on to further abortion restrictions. Yesterday, we had Wisconsin-in-focused recording, which if you're in Wisconsin, go check out that podcast. But Ben Yount was talking about how in Wisconsin, I think there's actually, I think the year was a 1929 legislation that immediately would go into effect after this. So you have some of these laws that went into effect a few years ago. The heart beat bills, as they're called. But you also have laws that are nearly a century old now that would go into effect in some of the states.

If states haven't addressed abortion legislatively since 1973, then those, as you said, decades old laws, will kick in. So I would in those types of states, I would expect that there will be legislatures looking to update their laws. Yeah, well, hey, I'm just looking forward to this Supreme Court ruling coming down because it'll put all this to rest, Dan, I'm sure, and we can put this all behind us. That's, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's wish, that's wishful thinking. I think, I think this is going to be, it's going to be a fight that's going to drag on for, for years and years. As you mentioned, there are calls on the Democratic side to expand the court, claims that under Trump, the court was packed with conservatives. And by expanding the court,

which would be a difficult thing to do, you need both chambers of Congress to approve expanding the court. President Biden signing it. President Biden has not said one way or another if he believes that the court should be expanded. But what that would do, let's say it happens, is Congress could decide how many Supreme Court justices there should be. There's been nine for decades. And they could add three seats. And President Biden could appoint three members to put more liberals, for example, on the court.

And so that debate is going to heat up again. And the nine numbers. from my understanding is a pretty not to say it does have meaning behind it, but it's a relatively arbitrary number that has been set and kind of agreed to that that is the number that everybody will abide by, but, you know, there's nothing kind of set in stone there that says you can't have more, you can't have less. Right. And in in recent decades, until recently, in recent decades, it's usually been like a five, four split with one of the one of the five, the majority, sort of more centrist and sort of going one way or another, depending on what the

issue is. Now it's more like a six three split, six conservatives, three liberals, but one of those six conservatives, the chief justice himself, John Roberts, has been more of that moderate justice, but that still gives conservatives the advantage on the court. Well, I'm sure you and Casey will talk about that in coming weeks as, you know, the this is all going to keep building on itself so if case you decides to return if we'll find out that next week we'll see if he's yeah if he's just you know he's kicked out the country for good we're still not it's very blurry what's happening with casey harper but we'll move on to another story there are other new stories going on in the nation

outside of Washington DC in the Supreme court as we go down to the southern border this has been a constant concern for for United States citizens particularly in the southern border where this is closest to them. And a Democratic judge in Texas county implores Biden to visit the border before suspending Title 42. Dan, what's all going on down there? Yeah, so since a lot going on at the border, a lot of different elements in play here. So let's talk about this one, this one first. Under President Biden, since he's been first elected, there's been a massive spike in the number of illegal immigrants entering the country. illegally. And President Biden has said that he wants more open border policies. He says his

policies are more humane than, for example, President Donald Trump's, former President Donald Trump's policies where he wanted a closed border. He was building the wall. He put in place that remain in Mexico policy where illegal immigrants who claimed asylum when they crossed the southern border were sent back to Mexico until their asylum claims were heard in U.S. courts. He put in place Title 42, which is a health authority during the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed border patrol agents to immediately expel illegal immigrants who crossed the border under the guise of a health emergency, meaning essentially COVID-19, to not further spread COVID-19 in the U.S.

So in that light, there's been a lot of lawsuits filed against the Biden administration over his open border policies and the millions of immigrants who have crossed the border illegally, and now many of them still remain in the United States. And Title 42, the health authority that I talked about, the President Trump put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. President Biden and the administration want to end that this month, later this month. later this month, May 23rd, and a Democratic judge in a border town in Texas and many others have said that that's going to create a spike on top of a spike. So we already have elevated

illegal immigration numbers, and we've had had those month in and month thousands since President Biden took office. Well, if Title 42 ends later this month, that surge is going to grow even further most border authorities believe. So this Democratic judge in the border community essentially implored in a letter to President Biden implored the president to come visit the border so he can see firsthand what these spikes in illegal immigration are doing into these border communities. President Biden has not been to the border since he first took office. And that's essentially what the judge is doing. How can you make these open border policies, the judge is asking, if you haven't visited the border to see the impact it's having on

on these border communities. Well, and this judge is not the only judge who has come out here recently. There was also a federal judge that took issue over the Biden administration's what they call the catch and release immigration policy. Right. Under President Biden, essentially border patrol agents, because of this huge spike in illegal immigration. There's not enough places to put the illegal immigrants in terms of prisons or shelters or whatever. So what Border Patrol agents have been doing is essentially giving illegal immigrants

who cross the border illegally under Biden essentially a court summons. And so they caught them. You cross the border illegally. Now you have to appear before an immigration court to determine your status and then releasing them into the in to the U.S. public. So there are millions of immigrants who have crossed the border illegally who are in our communities. Many of them don't show up to these court hearings and there's no way to track them. So there were lawsuits filed against that policy. And a Florida judge, a federal judge in Florida this week. The Biden administration's argument in defending itself against the catch and release policy was that Florida, the state of Florida, didn't have standing. It's a federal issue,

and the federal government can decide on its own. The state of Florida who filed suit didn't have standing. A federal judge this week blasted that argument by the Biden administration in really a scathing 37-page ruling. the judge was also offended in the Biden administration's argument that the court didn't have standing in this case. That was completely up to the Biden administration. And the judge of that court took that to offense and let it be known in his ruling. Well, and beyond kind of the courtrooms and the judges, there's also a decent amount of the population that has a vested interest and seeing the immigration policies either changed or restricted, things like that.

An interesting poll came out here, Dan. I think this past week where actually a majority of Hispanics also want the border closed. Yeah, a new poll released this week by the Tophagher Group. They surveyed Americans of all dissents, and their poll found that first, near 56% of Americans support closing the border, essentially going back to the Trump years when the border was much more closed that it is under President Biden. But the one interesting takeout from that is that that number increases to 65% of voters who are

Hispanic. 65.2% of Hispanic voters say they want the border closed, because of the problems it has caused. Yeah, and it doesn't seem like it's going away anytime soon. And I do think one thing that I thought was interesting about that poll, the phrasing of, quote, having the border closed, obviously easier said than done. Right.

Even under the Trump administration with the idea that they came in with the building a wall or a barrier in these different areas, there's really no easy solution to closing the border, but there's at least a will of sorts in the American people, it seems, even among Hispanic voters, even more, as you said, to do so. Illegal immigration existed under Trump. It existed under both Bush presidencies, of course. There were spikes during Obama presidency, too.

Illegal immigration has been an issue for decades and decades, and we'll continue to be, regardless who the president is, but under President Biden, it's just gotten more significant. because of his border policies. And the other thing that we should mention, too, Hispanics, traditionally, not all, certainly not even vast majorities, but a majority of Hispanics traditionally have leaned Democrat

at the polling places. But what we're seeing with issues like illegal immigration now, more and more Hispanics are starting to lean more towards the Republican side. So it'll be interesting to see, one, how Democrats respond to a poll like this when generally Hispanics have voted, has supported them. But now they want this poll shows that they, they more than the general U.S. population, want to see the border closed.

And this, of course, is a midterm election year. Every single member of the U.S. House of Representatives is up for election. About a third of the U.S. senators are up for election. So it's a big year. And abortion, which we just talked about, is going to be a big campaign issue this year, as is border security. And of course, of course, the economy. You know, once President Dan McAelb gets in there, we'll get this, we'll get all this stuff figured out. Border policy, once again, another subject that I'm sure you and Casey will be discussing for a long, long time here on the American Focus podcast.

So let's move on. So I think we got time for about one more story here, Dan. Sounds good. Let's hit this Department of Homeland Security, what they're calling the Disinformation Bureau. What is going on with this? Is it as dystopian as it sounds? I mean, where is the goal of this disinformation bureau? Yeah, so the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, let it slip at a commitment congressional hearing about a week ago, a little over a week ago.

By the way, Dan, briefly. I saw that name just took absolutely no interest in it. So I'm glad that you said it. I've struggled with it too, and I hope I pronounced it correctly, and my apologies if I did not. But anyway, he let it slip at a congressional hearing last week that the Department of Homeland Security is creating a disinformation governance board to track misinformation, particularly as it relates to U.S. security. Of course, in the COVID era, quote-unquote, disinformation that has been another hot topic

with social media, for example, censoring speech in particular speech that pushes back against COVID policies around the country. And there's been some other political speech that has been censored by social media. One of note would be the New York Post story from 2020, right before the presidential election about a hundred bide in the president's son laptop and the information that was contained on that

laptop about hunter biden's business dealings internationally and how the president then candidate uh... jo biden benefited from those and whether or not there was any uh... security issues related to that that story was censored uh... identified as misinformation prior to the election but we have censored

learned that it was not misinformation, that in fact it was a true story. So anyway, lots of conversations in the last couple years about quote-unquote misinformation and censorship. And there's a big concern, particularly on the right, but not just on the right. There are Democrats who are pushing back against this Bureau, this board as well, saying that government is going to try to regulate speech, despite the First Amendment of the United States, a constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech for Americans. So there's been pushback about the creation of this board, but then there's also been pushback against the woman who's been picked to lead this effort. She's infamously called the Hunter of Biden laptop story misinformation, has called other things that have turned out to

be true, have labeled them misinformation, and now she's the one who's going to lead this misinformation board. So yeah, there's plenty of concerns about this. There's plenty of people pushing back against, in fact, a bunch of attorney generals yesterday just sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security demanding that they disband this board or they will file suits. So we should expect to file more lawsuits against the president's administration. I think the average day person going through their lives, paying their mortgages, things like this. They don't think about this all the time. But there are indeed restrictions already on

speech. Can you fire in a crowded theater? That's the example of the... You can't create chaos. And there's obscene material. There are restrictions on these things of certain kinds. So there is leeway with the government. I mean, the First Amendment doesn't protect

inherently everything. There are some restrictions on it. But the question is, of course, what are they going after? And is this fall under a reasonable umbrella of what is already kind of the standard that the government has there. Right. Even speech has been politicized in the last several years. And this critics say this is another attempt to politicize speech. Well, I'll tell you what, Dan, the one place where I know

it's certainly not a source of disinformation. That's the center square, Dan. And that's what I use to counter the disinformation in my life. And if you're enjoyed, did you like that? I thought Appreciate the blog. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. If you enjoyed this podcast, American Focus, we're going to wrap this up.

It's powered by the Center Square. You can go check out all of Dan's articles and Casey Harper's. If you ever gets back in the country at thecenter square.com, American Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can go check out our podcast at Americastalking.com. And Dan and Casey should be back next week. And I'm going to implore everyone listening. If you enjoyed this,

It will probably be worse because Casey will be here next week. And I apologize. But I do ask that you subscribe. And if you're a longtime listener and we appreciate all you leave us a review on all of your little different apps that you may listen to us on. So for Cole McNeely and Dan McAulb, this has been America in Focus. And happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. Yes.

Yes, yes. Thanks, Mom.