Tangle - Lindsey Graham's abortion bill.

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Lindsey Graham's abortion bill, a question about the migrants in Martha's Vineyard, and the incoming challenge to student debt cancellation.Click here for Tangle's previous coverage on abortion and Roe v. Wade.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (01:00), Today’s story (02:00), Right’s take (06:20), Left’s take (10:57), Isaac’s take (15:42), Listener question (20:02), Under the Radar (23:43), Numbers (24:26), Have a nice day (25:12)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about Lindsey Graham and his abortion bill,

a bill to ban abortion after 15 weeks with some exceptions. Obviously a pretty controversial thing, apparently on the left and the right, which we will get into shortly. Before we do though, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, Puerto Rico's National Guard has rescued over 1,000 people stranded because of Hurricane Fiona, and 750,000 people are now without running water on the island. Number two, a sheriff in Texas opened a criminal investigation into flights organized by Ron DeSantis that transported 48 migrants to Martha's Vineyard. Number three, Mark Frerichs, the last known U.S. hostage in Afghanistan, was released in a prisoner swap. Number four, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the CBP, reported 204,000

encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in August, a 1.7% increase from July. More than 2 million migrants were encountered this fiscal year for the first time ever. Number five, officials in four Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine announced plans to formally annex the regions while Moscow threatened an attack on NATO. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has introduced a new bill today pushing for a national abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. National ban on abortion, which would strip away women's rights in all 50 states. It's wildly out of step with where the majority of Americans are. In terms of scheduling, I think most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level. I have chosen to speak. I've chosen to craft legislation that I think is eminently reasonable in the eyes of the world and I hope the American people.

Last week, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, proposed legislation that would restrict abortion access at the federal level. Graham said the bill would ban the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy nationwide, with exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or risks to the mother's life and health. The bill has no chance of becoming law in the Democratic-controlled House and Congress, but Graham framed it as a way for Republicans to take a clear position to counter Democrats and to put the U.S. in line with other Western countries that impose similar restrictions. After they introduced a bill to define who they

are, I thought it'd be nice to introduce the bill to define who we are, Graham said at a news conference while standing in front of 10 anti-abortion leaders, all of whom were women. If we take back the House and Senate, I can assure you we'll have a vote on our bill. While the bill immediately drew fire from Democrats, who pointed to it as proof Republicans were never interested in leaving the issue to the states, it also drew the ire of Republican strategists. Since the ruling in Roe v. Wade was struck down, polling has shown abortion rights are becoming a major motivating issue for women and Democratic voters in 2022, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had previously said Republicans would

leave such legislation to the states. Some Republicans, including Senators Lisa Murkowski, the Republican from Alaska, and Susan Collins, the Republican from Maine, criticized Graham, calling instead for a bipartisan bill to codify the abortion rights laid out in Roe v. Wade. Graham also came under fire for comments he had previously made about leaving the issue up to the states. I've been consistent. I think states should decide the issue of marriage and states should decide the issue of abortion, Graham said in an August 7th interview on CNN, a quote that was shared widely after news of the bill's introduction. Graham, defending the bill in a Fox News interview, said he has always been consistent in his decades-long effort to ban abortion during the second and third trimesters. To suggest that I'm new to the game opposing

late-term abortion is ridiculous, he said. The Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for abortion rights, maintains comprehensive data on the number of abortions in America and is cited by most advocacy groups on the issues regardless of their political affiliation. In 2019, Guttmacher said there were 629,898 abortions in the United States compared to 1.5 million at the peak of its record-keeping in 1991. That year, 93% of all abortions occurred during the first trimester and 6% occurred between 14 and 20 weeks of pregnancy. We have covered Roe v. Wade and Democrats' abortion legislation extensively. You can find those articles with a link in today's episode description. Today, we're going to look specifically

at some responses to Graham from the right and the left, and then my take. Alright, first up, we'll start with what the right is saying. Many Republicans support the idea of the bill, though some worry about the timing. Some call for Republicans to step up and sell Graham's bill to the public. Others say there is no need to nationalize the issue, especially right now. In Politico, Rich Lowry defended Graham's abortion bill. The South Carolina senator proposed a national restriction on abortion that has popular support and could represent a defensible consensus GOP position. For this, he's being portrayed as a political incompetent who has needlessly endangered his

party's prospects in the midterms, Lowry said. It's certainly true that any hope of rallying Republicans was quickly dashed as they, once again, scattered in panic and confusion like a herd of antelope after a big cat shows up at the watering hole. But that reaction is another sign of how badly the party needs to find an incrementalist position on abortion where it can plant its flag, and then focus its fire on the vulnerabilities of the other side. The Republicans experiencing a case of sudden-onset federalism on this issue are clearly motivated by political fear, he wrote. Regardless, the debate at the national level has already been joined. Democrats want to pass the so-called Women's Health Protection Act that would strike down all state-level restrictions on abortion.

If nothing else, Graham's proposal is a tool in this fight and the broader battle for public opinion. A Harvard-Harris poll found that 72% of voters, including 70% of independents and 60% of Democrats, don't think abortion should be permitted after 15 weeks at the state level. According to a Gallup survey, only 28% of people believe abortion should be legal in the second trimester and 13% in the third trimester. A WPA intelligence poll shows even 51 percent of voters who think Republicans are extreme on abortion favor a 15-week ban. In National Review, Alexandra DeSantis said the GOP platform has long called for legislating abortion at the federal level. Why is it only now, when in the absence of Roe, such a policy might take effect, that congressional Republicans have

suddenly decided to voice their constitutional objections to federal abortion laws, DeSantis said. There's hardly a principled case for a no vote now. Instead, it seems to be out of their fear that their yes will be more noticeable when the bill stands a chance of becoming law. Perhaps the weakest objection to a federal pro-life law is the claim that it will give progressives reasons to attempt a federal law legalizing abortion. For one thing, they've already attempted that several times and come quite close to succeeding. For another, the progressive case that Congress has the authority to legalize abortion is far weaker than any argument pro-lifers have offered for the reverse, she added. There is simply no good case to be made that the Constitution protects a right to abortion, and attempting to argue that the Constitution might work in the opposite direction doesn't give credence to that non-argument. Finally, there are those on the

right who fear that the pro-life movement will cost Republican seats in Congress, and that the national GOP ought to keep quiet on the issue at least until November is behind us. But there's little reason to believe a 15-week abortion ban is unpopular, much less an albatross. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said it was constitutionally dubious and risks misreading the politics. The Democrats' bill in Congress is far more extreme, they wrote. Their bill would protect abortion on demand through fetal viability about 23 weeks. After that line, it would also guarantee abortion access whenever the pregnancy is a risk to the patient's health, which isn't defined and is also interpreted to include emotional factors. The bill appears to

protect sex-selective abortions if parents who wanted a boy decide they would prefer to terminate a girl. Republicans already had plenty of political ammunition, and signing on to Mr. Graham's bill leaves them open to charges of hypocrisy. After Roe v. Wade, conservatives spent five decades arguing that the Supreme Court had inflamed the country by nationalizing the debate on abortion, which is properly a state issue. This summer, the justices reversed that mistake in Dobbs, and the result has been hurly-burly Democratic arguments in state legislatures. There's no need to rennationalize the question, and it isn't clear Congress has the authority to do so, they said. By Mr. Graham's logic, if voters in Colorado, Pennsylvania, or Arizona think 15 weeks is too restrictive, they now have a reason to vote against those

GOP Senate candidates. Every Republican candidate will be asked to take a stance, and a Senate majority is made by swing states. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left says Graham's bill is extreme and dangerous. Many call out the Republicans' hypocrisy of a national ban after saying leave it to the states. Some say the bill would not make us more like Europe. Michelle Goldberg wrote about Lindsey Graham's unbelievably cruel abortion ban. Graham was making an argument, common in anti-abortion circles, that American abortion laws are unusually permissive and that banning abortion at 12 or 15 weeks would bring us in line with Europe, Goldberg said. France and

Spain, for example, both permit abortion for any reason through 14 weeks, and Germany through 12 weeks post-conception. If we adopted my bill, our bill, we would be in the mainstream of most everybody else in the world, said Graham. I think there are 47 of the 50 European countries have a ban on abortion from 12 to 15 weeks. This is, at best, a highly selective reading of European abortion laws. It ignores the fact that on most of the continent, abortion is state-subsidized and easily accessible early in pregnancy, so women aren't pushed into later terminations as they struggle to raise money. More significantly, the restrictions on later abortions have broad exceptions, she said. Take German abortion laws, which are, for Europe, quite stringent.

Until this summer, a Nazi-era ban on advertising abortion was still in effect, and abortion is still technically illegal, though it's been decriminalized during the first trimester. After that, abortion is allowed to protect a woman's physical or mental health, taking into account her present and future circumstances. For low-income women, abortion is publicly funded. The Washington Post editorial board called it hypocritical and dangerous. Only months ago, Senator Lindsey O. Graham wanted states to write their own abortion rules. Now, he has changed his mind. States should to write their own abortion rules. Now he has changed his mind. States should still write their own abortion rules,

but only if those rules are harshly restrictive, the board said. The hypocrisy is obvious coming from a legislator who insisted in May that the Supreme Court, when it handed down Roe v. Wade in 1973, committed a power grab by depriving local officials of the ability to decide when and whether abortion should be legal. Yet there was Mr. Graham on Tuesday announcing his desire for Congress to grab the power to set abortion policy from those very local officials. The science behind his arbitrary 15-week threshold is dubious. There's no consensus on when a fetus begins to experience pain, the point at which Mr. Graham says abortion should be restricted, and his assertion that 47 of the 50 European countries have similarly strict abortion rules is bogus.

These societies Mr. Graham apparently considers civilized may have strict gestational limits on paper, but in practice, most of their legal regimes governing pregnancy termination are forgiving. Generally, exceptions for things such as economic hardship and fetal abnormalities mean that women can get abortions after top-line time limits pass, so long as they surmount some bureaucratic obstacles. What's more, even if a hard and fast 15-week rule would align the United States with its pure democracies, Mr. Graham's bill would not impose a consistent nationwide policy. His legislation would allow conservative states to continue setting standards as draconian as they desire, which they've already started to do. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. In The Daily Beast, Aaron Gloria Ryan said the bill was bad policy and dumb politics. The question foremost in my mind was, who is this for? A nationwide abortion ban at a time like this is not only heartless policy, it's stupid politics, all wrapped up in a bumbling, tone-deaf presentation. Senator Graham's bizarre choice to announce his just-kidding,

Republicans-were-always-going-to-try-for-a-federal-ban strategy came as Republicans are on the ropes over this very issue, she wrote. The threat of banning abortion has galvanized voters from California to Kansas. Special elections that were supposed to be safely Republican, or at least a toss-up, have gone to Democratic candidates

by wider than expected margins. Polling looks bad for the party of Lincoln. Republicans know this, even the crazy ones. In Arizona, Senate candidate Blake Masters' website scrubbed mentions of his hardline abortion stance. He supports a federal personhood amendment that would declare all fertilized eggs to be persons from the moment of conception, a stance so extreme that Mississippi voters rejected it 10 years ago.

In Washington, Republican Senate hopeful Tiffany Smiley has tried to walk a fine line, both supporting the total abortion ban in Texas and promising voters that she thinks the decision should be left up to the states. The winning message for Democrats in the 2022 midterms is that a vote for a Republican, no matter where they are on the ballot and no matter what they say, is a vote for a rollback of abortion rights. rights. All right, that is it for the left and the rights take, which brings us to my take. So one of the most interesting pieces of commentary I've seen about this election cycle came from Republican Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies. He told Politico, There is a campaign about the economy, cost of living, crime, and border security,

and Republicans are winning this campaign. But there is a second campaign on abortion, democracy, and climate change, and Democrats are winning that campaign. This strikes me as pretty much right on the nose. And given that, what Graham did on the same day a very bad inflation report was released was rather stunning. When I saw him roll out a press conference to announce the bill and watch the immediate reaction of Republican politicians, strategists, commentators, and voters, I was just perplexed. Nobody really seemed to think this was a good idea. The immediate reaction on the right ranged from a collective, what the hell is he thinking, to conservative commentators accusing him of intentional sabotage. All the political news, for weeks, has been about the way the abortion fight is motivating

Democratic voters, giving them life in a midterm season when they were supposed to get washed out. To see Graham step forward and propose this bill was one thing. To watch the optics of the press conference was another. and proposed this bill was one thing. To watch the optics of the press conference was another. Graham came out surrounded by women, compared the U.S. to Iran, and was totally unprepared for a reporter's question on how the bill would avoid her own personal experience of being forced to deliver a non-viable pregnancy. All of the criticisms from the left seemed to come in unison because they were all so obvious. This was the opposite of what he said, that it should be left up to the states. It was stricter than previous legislation he had proposed,

which put a ban at about 20 weeks. And it was misleading about abortion access in many places in Europe, where it's often free and unlike his proposed bill, there are broad exceptions. I have written a lot about my position on abortion and talked about it a lot on this podcast. What I think Graham underestimated here is just how many horrifying stories have been percolating since Roe v. Wade was struck down and just how motivating the issue has become for the left. Many of them have been worse than the people like me predicted. Women in Louisiana being forced to deliver babies who cannot survive outside the womb. A 16-year-old in Florida who must carry her pregnancy to term because a judge says she is too immature to have an abortion, but apparently not

too immature to be a mother, a 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel across state lines to get an abortion, women facing dangerous, life-threatening ectopic pregnancies who can't get care. These stories are coming every day, shared widely across social media and in the pages of news outlets, and they are having a major impact defining the issue. Then in walks Graham with a national proposal that extends those draconian conditions to voters, even in states where abortion rights are still robust. I will say one thing, though, that I'm not seeing many people say.

Graham deserves credit for pursuing an anti-abortion position in earnest. I've excoriated him as one of the politicians, and there are many on both sides, who is so slippery and hypocritical and dishonest that he is never worth trusting. His flip-flop on this being a state issue is a good example, but at the same time, he's actually doing one of the logical things to do if you hold the position he says he holds. One thing I hear almost every time I talk to anyone in the pro-life movement is the idea that a lot of Republican politicians are pro-life for votes, i.e. publicly, but not in earnest. But the issue is not a strong conviction of theirs, just something they peddle during elections. In the eyes of those folks dedicated to ending abortion, there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of Republicans in office who trumpet anti-abortion rhetoric until it's time to actually do something.

For those voters, all the Republicans freaking out about Graham's proposal, which really isn't that restrictive in the context of most anti-abortion legislation, is a reminder of how many of them don't actually mean it. So while I agree with Graham's critics that this is bad policy, bad timing, and bad politics, I do think he deserves credit for at least putting his money where his mouth is. If you believe abortion is murder, then the logical thing to do is to propose a national ban to stop it. If anything, Graham's bill and the criticism from his purported pro-life Republican allies begs the question of what do they really believe? All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. Today's question is from Jeremy in Fort Worth, Texas. Jeremy said, you say the way Abbott and DeSantis are handling this, the moving of migrants north, is cruel. I feel like

the question of whether it's cruel has to be measured by the effect it has on the actual migrants. It seems like the question is whether the migrants were better off than if they had stayed put. In El Paso, this city is so overrun that migrants are literally sleeping on the streets. Are we going to argue that they are worse off in DC? I have a hard time swallowing the word cruel as an accurate description here. So Jeremy, I think this is actually a pretty compelling and reasonable way to frame the question. The definition of cruel, the dictionary definition, is quote willfully causing pain or suffering to others or feeling no concern about it. So it seems relevant whether these policies are actually causing pain or suffering, or whether the people involved care about whether they're causing pain or suffering.

At the very least, the raw outcome here is a complicating factor. The migrants who arrived in Martha's Vineyard, for instance, were showered with food and donations, then taken to a well-equipped facility at a military base in Cape Cod. Do I think they were worse off than the folks sleeping on the streets in El Paso, Texas, surrounded by a community who is probably exhausted by their presence? No, definitely not. So that's a good point on your part. Still, I think there are a few things worth considering here. First, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. are all gigantic cities whose public services are already stretched thin, not just by large homeless populations and the reality of millions of people living in one place,

but by the millions of unauthorized immigrants who are already living there. Remember, six in ten unauthorized immigrants live in just 20 cities. D.C., Chicago, and New York have three of the largest migrant populations on that list. Two, we now have hard proof that the migrants were misled. Yesterday, Popular Information published photos of the brochures given to migrants in order to get them to travel to Martha's Vineyard. They included claims they would receive eight months of cash assistance, job placement, shelter, food, and housing if they got on the plane. None of that was true. The brochures described health benefits available specifically and only to refugees who had been authorized by the UN to live in the US. Number three, we had reports that some of the migrants were left stranded thousands of miles away from court dates

or simply never got a chance to talk to an attorney or a caseworker before being put on a plane and sent north or east. This creates confusion and missed court dates. Number four, intent matters. What are DeSantis and Abbott trying to do? Is their goal to give the migrants a better shot at a job, a good life, citizenship, or asylum? Is that even their stated goal? Do you believe that's what they want? I think honestly reflecting on these questions gets you to a place where this policy veers into cruelty. Again, I've said from the beginning that some migrants may end up better off. When I first wrote about this, I said, quote, some very well may end up better off being sent

to Washington DC, New York, or Chicago instead of staying in Texas where resources are already strained and the welcomes they get may be much less friendly, end quote. I also said I don't mind this policy, in theory. In fact, I like it, for the very reasons you laid out. Many border towns are overrun, many migrants could use a new place to settle, and getting migrants moved around in an organized way where we can keep track of them and ensure they show up for court would be a good thing. But for all the reasons above, I still find what is happening here to be cruel. Alright, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section. The groundwork is being laid for a challenge to Biden's student loan forgiveness. In our addition on the legality of forgiveness, we noted that Republicans will need to find a

plaintiff to bring a legal challenge forward and will also need to decide on a clear angle. GOP state attorneys general, conservative groups, and federal lawmakers are now developing that strategy. They can't bring forward a legal challenge until the administration makes a formal move toward cancellation, but they are now preparing for that moment. The Wall Street Journal has the story on what's happening and there's a link to it in today's podcast description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 years old who now own a smartphone is 96%. The percentage of U.S. adults aged 65 and older who own a smartphone is 61%. Brian Kemp, the Republican's current lead over Stacey Abrams, the Democrat, in Georgia's

race for governor, is now 50.2% to 42.2% in the most recent polls. Herschel Walker, the Republican's current lead over Raphael Warnock, the Democrat in Georgia's race for the Senate, is now 45.8% to 44.2%. Finally, the global wealth increase last year was $41 trillion. All right, that is it for our numbers section. And last but not least, our have a nice day section. Carl Allenby had a dream of being a doctor since he was a kid. The 51-year-old auto mechanic just made that dream a reality.

Dr. Allenby opened his first auto shop at the age of 19, something he said he did out of necessity and desperation. He became a student at night while working his day job and then enrolled at Ursuline College in Ohio when he was 34. Initially, he went for a business degree, but a few years later he found himself in pre-med classes. For five years, he attended weekend, evening, and early morning classes until he could start medical school. Seven years after finishing, he got his first job as an attending physician in an emergency room. Fox News has the remarkable tale, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to

support our work, please go to readtangle.com slash membership. That's readtangle.com slash membership and become a subscriber. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. and become a subscriber. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Our script is edited by

Ari Weitzman, Sean Brady, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Bokova,

who designed our logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our website at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.