The Dispatch Podcast - Passing the Buck on Abortion Law in Texas | Roundtable

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Dispatch Senior Editor John McCormack makes his Roundtable debut with Sarah, Steve, and Mike. They cover: —The Biden impeachment inquiry; —House Republicans and Donald Trump 2024; —The Haley-DeSantis war; —The Texas abortion controversy and Republicans' unwillingness to stake out a position; and —Proper karaoke etiquette. Show Notes: —Advisory Opinions on the Texas abortion case —The Texas Supreme Court ruling Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Save when you fuel up for your next road trip. Get up to 7 cents per liter in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada. That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-Dash Canada. Conditions apply. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger and I've got Steve Hayes, John McCormick, and Mike Warren for this pod.

It's going to be awesome. So we're just going to dive right in. John, where are we on Biden impeachment world? Biden impeachment world, I mean, I don't really know exactly where this is heading. Obviously, Hunter was supposed to testify. He skipped the testimony. The House Republicans are going to bring him up on contempt. after the holidays, and from there, I don't know exactly where this ends.

But right now, the focus is on this contempt. So I don't know exactly how that's going to end up. I assume that he is held in contempt, and I don't know where it goes from there. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the House has voted to pursue the impeachment inquiry, which I think Tom Emmer, one of the sort of leadership House members, sort of made this comment that a vote for House impeachment inquiry to let that go forward. It's not the same as voting for impeachment. But I think we, and I think he's right in a strict sense,

but at the same time, it does seem to be moving in the direction of a very partisan vote on impeachment. I do wonder if there are enough of those. We've talked about them a lot of the Biden district House Republicans. who view that they can get away with voting. This is a very partisan vote, strict party-line vote in the House, that they can get away with voting

to open the inquiry, to essentially move the investigation and the process forward, and then when the results show, which, you know, I'm not trying to sort of gainsay, what could be found out in this inquiry, not been impressed so far with what the impeachment team on the House Republican side has found so far. But if they do kind of continue to come up short, there's an out for these Republicans

say, look, we opened the investigation and we didn't see impeachable offenses, and so we'll vote against it. And there's also the possibility that they could find something or that Republicans stick together and vote to impeach him as well. We are in sort of unclear territory, but you tie the same with what John was talking about the holding Hunter Biden in contempt. And you can tell there was this sort of this feeling, this desire, this kind of pent-up desire to do something and move forward on Hunter and Joe Biden, and we got to show that they're corrupt. And so we have this kind of messy mess of House Republican activities.

Steve, I actually mean this question, which is Donald Trump and Joe Biden had quite a bit of smoke swirling around them. So on the one hand, I think it's easy to say, like, is this just what we're doing now? We're just impeaching all presidents from the opposing party because politics. But, like, isn't there an argument that maybe we just had two not great guys in a row? I mean, that's an argument I've made, actually, that we've had two not great guys in a row. But I think that the facts of these impeachment inquiries matter. I think if you go back and you look at the first Trump impeachment inquiry, in effect, what he was trying to do was leverage U.S. foreign policy to get Ukraine to investigate his political opponent. he was there was a phone call there was I think there was significant evidence that

Trump did what he was alleged to have done and to me that very easily cleared the bar of a move to impeach in the January 6th impeachment you know I think again had it been a blind vote you would have had a majority of Republicans who voted to impeach the president so obvious was was was was were the problems with his behavior in that context. With Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, I think it's fuzzier. There have been, I think, very clear indications that the Biden world, people speaking on behalf of Joe Biden, sometimes Hunter Biden himself, sometimes their paid spokesmen, sometimes their lawyers have not been honest about the relationship between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, about how much Joe Biden knew about

Hunter Biden's business activities, about the nature of those business activities in particular. there are lots of questions, or as you say, lots of smoke. I think the fundamental question, the biggest question is, is there enough to say, yes, we should impeach the President of the United States because of what we don't yet know? And that's the distinction I would make between what we saw under Trump, where we could point to, I think, mountains of evidence in each of these cases that he was guilty of what he was accused of doing. And in this instance, questions, very serious questions. I mean, I think I can't remember if it was John or Mike said, it's entirely possible that we

learn more that would have me enthusiastic about impeaching Joe Biden. I just don't think we're there yet. And as we've, we've said on this podcast before on a number of different occasions, House Republicans have been their own worst enemy on this. They keep making claims that don't stand, don't stand up to sort of basic scrutiny about what they have. Everything is a smoking gun all the time. And their rhetoric on this has been at 11 on a scale of 10. Their findings have not been consistent with their rhetoric. As I say, I think there are lots of questions to ask.

It is clear that in some instances, Biden himself has not been honest about this. But what that leads to is, I think, another question and still an open question. Am I going to come back to you about the Hunter Biden's role here and about the contempt vote? What can Congress actually do? Okay. So they hold them in contempt. Does he get a little certificate that says, you know, like you get it, you know, my son got at the doctor's office? He gets a certificate of bravery signed by the nurses.

Like, what can they actually do to Hunter? I mean, there are criminal, you know, consequences, right, for being held. Enforced by whom? Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's the issue. But wasn't, I mean, wasn't, so Steve Bannon was held in contempt of Congress, wasn't he? And then he faced some criminal consequences for that, if I'm not mistaken. So here's the thing with Hunter Biden.

He has now been indicted twice by the Department of Justice that is controlled at the top by, you know, by his father. I mean, he is the head of the executive branch in the Department of Justice has indicted Hunter Biden on now tax charges as well as the gun charges. I mean, Hunter Biden remains a problem. And there's a reason why the House Republicans keep kind of trying to get a bite at the apple there because Hunter Biden is problematic for Joe Biden. I think What Steve is getting at, though, is there are sort of over, Republicans are overshooting the claims that a Hunter Biden's, you know, willingness to use his father's name to drum up his business, the skeviness with which he sort of approached this kind of foreign influence business ideas that he had and the extent to the which Joe Biden sort of knew about this. it's all skeevy and it's all gross and he probably has a lot more to answer for

so look I think that there is going to be a there's going to be a compelling reason to get him in front of Congress as this impeachment inquiry moves forward and and I think there is a reason to think he has more to say I just I keep going back to the

overshooting the overpromise saying and under delivering of the House Republicans. And they're hanging a lot on, I don't know, Hunter Biden to sort of give it all up or to make a misstep in congressional testimony. When I see it, I'll believe it. To jump on my point on the overshooting, I mean, that's why I'm more interested in the politics of how this all plays out eventually. I mean, obviously it helps Bill Clinton to be impeached. His approval ratings went up. Trump narrow, narrowly lost after his impeachment, and obviously a lot of different issues going on. So I think this is one of the few things

that can really maybe change the trajectory for Biden next year. I think the conventional wisdom has gone from, you know, kind of being a little sort of sleepwalking towards the idea that, oh, this isn't really going to be, Trump really can't win again to now everyone's sort of thinking he's the odds on favorite. And there's just a lot of unknowns,

and this is one of the biggest ones. And so, I don't know. I mean, it hasn't worked out for, you know, the House in the past to, you know, to hurt the president of the opposing party by impeaching him. And Republicans seem to think maybe, maybe this time it'll be different like that. Yeah. And I think Republicans just lack credibility on this issue. I mean, I think House Republicans lack credibility on a lot of issues, unfortunately. But they really lack credibility on this issue. Troy Nell's a Republican representative from Texas was asked yesterday as he was

leaving the hill, why they're doing this, sort of what's the basis for this move to impeach Joe Biden? And he said something very close to Donald Trump, 2024, baby, or something like that. I mean, it's like, they're just being very open, like, hey, you did it to us, we're going to do it to you. That's been Trump's big argument, both in talking about, you know, wanting to go after his enemies, what he plans to do if he's reelected was, hey, they're doing it to me. I'm going do it back to them. I think that's an appealing argument for elements of the Republican base or some elements of the Republican base. But there's sort of hypocrisy all around this. I mean, you know, Hunter Biden made this decision or his team made this decision to go public and really push back,

really fight back against Republicans, apparently, or at least reportedly, against the wishes of the White House who preferred him to sort of lay low, not engage in a public back and forth with, with, with, Because it sort of elevates the issue, he says he wants to testify in public. Republicans are saying, no, no, we need to take, we need to do a deposition, a closed-door deposition first because, in effect, we need to respect the privacy of the institution. We need to conduct this in a serious way. But if Republicans conducted such a deposition in a serious way, it would be among the first serious things they've done in relation to this, or really in the past several years.

it doesn't pass the laugh test. Nobody thinks that why they want to do this privately first is because they want to respect the process. I mean, these are the same Republicans. So why do they want to do it privately? I think they want to put him on the spot, try to extract as much information as they can in private so that they can then publicly grill them, which has been a common tactic on investigative committees in the past. From their perspective, you can understand why it would make sense. But he prefers to answer the questions in public, I think, because he thinks he can outperform them or at least get, you know, if he gets into a big back and forth, he can give ammunition to the people who would defend him, perhaps.

But it's, it's, the whole thing is a mess. And, you know, again, I think even if there were a more convincing case at this moment that Joe Biden should be imposed. piece for his knowledge of or participation in some scheme to enrich his son, it is too often obscured by the kind of silliness that you get from House Republicans. And one final point, you know, Brett Baer, my former colleague at Fox News, played, had Mike Johnson, speaker Mike Johnson on his show the other night. And he played a clip of Mike Johnson at almost this exact time four years ago, a year out from the presidential election, lamenting Democrats' partisan impeachment of Donald Trump saying, in effect, you know, this needs to be something that's bipartisan. This is such a grave act.

We shouldn't be doing this, et cetera, et cetera. And Brett played the clip of Representative Johnson saying, in effect, making the argument that Democrats are making today. And Johnson really didn't have a good substantive response to why the situations are different. He said, no, those were sham impeachments, and this is a legitimate one. It doesn't really work. Well, also, John, speaking of Republicans trying to make the best of it, you've got Donald Trump, t'was ever thus, way, way ahead in the polls heading into both Iowa and New Hampshire.

I'm hearing all sorts of interesting arguments around this. Like, on the one hand, the Haley team wants DeSantis to drop out. The DeSantis team is pushing back privately, only quasi-privately, and saying, look, I wouldn't wish for that because our voters are not necessarily all coalescing around Nikki Haley, at that point, you know, it's going to be like half and half probably, maybe not even half, I mean, going to Donald Trump. So what you actually now want, if you think that there's some paths

to not nominating Donald Trump is DeSantis trying to win in Iowa and then Haley trying to win in New Hampshire and then, I don't know, like yada, yada, yada, we win Super Tuesday. I like there's a there's a lot of like dots there john what am i am i missing anything what's the plan here i mean i've said you know the haley desantis war you know you drop out no you drop out would make a whole lot more sense if donald trump were at say 38% in the national polling average instead of about 60% where he is you need to drive him down to have to coalesce the non-trump vote you have to have a non-trump vote that's bigger than 50% and right now we don't have that so obviously

you know, the glimmer of a hope, I think glimmer is possibly, a faint glimmer of a hope would still be that somehow somebody beats Trump in an early primary state, and that's the thing that makes, you know,

basically, if Trump's at 60%, if that's his vote share, one in five of his supporters, you know, one in four, somewhere in there, needs to abandon him for an alternative. And I think that, you know, there's been no,

evidence that anyone's trying to make that even happen. I think that, yeah, the DeSantis team has an argument. They've had the argument from the beginning that he was the only one who has ever shown the ability in the polling a long time ago back in the spring of being able to eat into Trump's vote share. I mean, there was a poll back in March showing that, you know, in a Trump DeSantis race, it was like 4540, and you throw DeSantis out of the race, and it's Trump 67 and Haley in the team or something. And so I think that that is, you know, know, but DeSantis hasn't been able to keep that up. So obviously he's down, you know, that was his real shot and he blew it, or you've blown it with little hope of, you know,

coming back in Iowa. I think that Iowa poll this week with, you know, Trump hitting 50 percent. That just shows the problem right there in the early state. There's not even the hope of really, I mean, there's, again, the faintest glimmer of a hope that somehow this poll is wrong and somebody, you know, consolidates in the last week. But it just, it doesn't seem like it's going to happen. And so the whole, the question I have is what exactly is the point of the Haley DeSantis fight at this point? Why are they fighting for a second place? Do you want to be, hopefully it sets you up in 2028, maybe it sets you up for a vice presidential job. I don't know at this point, but it sure doesn't seem like either of them has made a concerted effort to actually beat Trump.

And that's why the polls are the way they are. Okay, I hear you. But isn't the pushback that they would give you? going after Trump has proven time and again not to move these numbers. Like, what do you want our strategy to be? I hear what you don't want it to be. Like, but give me actual tactics

of like how you take those voters from Trump. Attacking Trump doesn't work. Do I have a time machine in this scenario or do not have a time machine? No time machine. Oh, I'm happy to give you a time machine to six months ago. How about that? Yeah, again, a time machine to six months ago.

I don't know, but it would have involved DeSantis. So, okay, DeSantis is, why was he popular in the first? place. You know, why was he running neck and neck or even beating? Why was he ahead of Trump and some of these early polls? I mean, what was it? It was obviously, you know, the results of the 2022 election. And, you know, the reason he was popular, too, is he picked all these fights with the media in which he was on the side, very popular with Republican voters and even actually on the right side with voters overall, you know, whether it was, you know, the Martha's Vineyard's

done. Say what you will about it. That happened right before the election. That was like his last good news cycle. That and winning the election was DeSantis' last good news cycle. Other than that, he's just been relitigating the past and trying to talk about COVID. When I think normal people don't want to think about COVID anymore. I mean, elections are always about the future. So, I mean, to have beaten Trump, it would have taken a singular political talent to dethrone the previous, you know, the party president, you know, whoever it is, you're going to have to be a rare political talent to beat them. and obviously DeSantis has not proven to be that.

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or go to explorevolvo.com. Mike, I have a different theory, which is that the reason that DeSantis was up might be for all the reasons John just said, but the reason that then that bottoms out, you know, could I give them, hindsight being 2020, Do I have some different tactics that I wish they tried? Sure, I do. But in the end, Donald Trump had largely disappeared from the conversation in the immediate aftermath of 2022. Once he came back and certainly once indictment started rolling in, people became defensive of Donald Trump. It was about Donald Trump. It was not about Ron DeSantis. What was DeSantis supposed to do at that point? Yeah, I mean, I've long said that Ronda Santis' strength was sort of derived from his ability to control the messaging.

And when it came to his support among Republicans, they had a direct pipeline, meaning the governor's office and I guess the campaign, the gubernatorial campaign of Ronda Santis, a direct line to like Fox News. I remember multiple times watching bill signings for maybe they were important bills, maybe they were important bills, maybe they were good bills. but it's like some small ball stuff from a national perspective that were held on, you know, live on Fox and Friends in 2021, 2022. He was controlling the story in his own story. And I think you are right that he lost control of the story and was unable, unwilling maybe, to try to take control back.

You know, I view the indictments as an externality, Like, I find it very difficult to get outraged that, oh, man, if only the indictments hadn't happened, then Trump would not be, you know, the leading candidate. I don't know that, but also it seems like a bad reason if you are, you know, let's set the Alvin Bragg indictment aside for, for argument's sake. But if you are a prosecutor who has evidence of that that is, you know, indictable, you know, that you should make those decisions, regardless of the politics of it. But I would say that it's an externality that none of the Republican field, Ron DeSantis, in sort of the lead of that, made any effort to respond to and tried to change strategies. strategy, try to change tactics. Yes, you know, going after Donald Trump is a loser in a Republican primary, I guess they didn't even really try. Chris Christie and God love him, Asa Hutchinson, you know, did. But like, maybe it's a collective action problem. Maybe it's a prisoner's dilemma. But like, imagine if they all made the decision independent of each other or dependent on each other, colluding with each other, to make hay of it and say, we're really going to renominate this guy? I know you love him, but he's a mess.

You know, like, they all say, they've all told me that doesn't fly. But I just find that, I find that kind of bogus if they didn't try. Yeah, so much if it depends on how they responded to these indictments. It's not just that they didn't use them and say, boy, this is really problematic behavior from somebody who also tried to upend or overturn the election that he lost. We should be alarmed by this, and maybe we should speak out and oppose it. It's not only that they failed to do that, it's that in response to these indictments, one after another, after another, they made Trump's argument for him.

They said, this is the weaponization of the Justice Department by Joe Biden. Trump could sit back with Trump made. the argument too. Trump could sit back and say, yeah, what Ron DeSantis said. Yeah, what these other candidates. Did you hear Vivek? They didn't even have to make the case. I mean, I think there was, look, it's too easy to say if they had only done this one thing that I wanted them to do at the time, everything would be different. There's good reason to believe that's not the case. But here's what we can say for certain right now as we sit here reporting this podcast. The stuff that they've done hasn't worked. It didn't work. It was not working. There was a time reflected in a number of

polls, both in Iowa and nationally, where you had a majority of the Republican Party who indicated a willingness to move on from Donald Trump. You had a quarter roughly who said, I don't want Donald Trump as the nominee. You had another 30% plus depending on how you count, depending on which poll it was, that said, yeah, I didn't really dislike the guy as a president. I thought he was reasonably effective, but boy, the Republican Party could use a new voice. In one of the Iowa polls, I think it was an Ann Seltzer poll who's regarded as sort of the gold standard pollster in Iowa, those numbers totaled something like 70 percent of the Iowa likely caucus goer Republican electorate who had indicated a willingness to vote for a candidate or support a candidate that was not Donald Trump.

you know, I remain baffled why none of the other candidates said, well, 70% seems like an opening, you know, and Ron DeSantis decided instead that he was going to cuddle with the sort of freaky fringe of the MAGA base in order to try to peel off 5% of Trump with the hope that everybody else would just follow in line. It still doesn't make sense to me, even if you allow that had they done all of these things, Donald Trump, still might be atop the Republican field. It seems to me that there was a case then, based on data, based on numbers, based on, I would argue, morals quaint as that might be. I would argue threats to the republic, much as that might make you sound like an alarmist, to go after Donald Trump, and they didn't do it.

All right. I want to make sure we leave enough time for this next topic because it's one that Both John McCormick has covered on the dispatch website and that David French and I have covered in our niche podcast advisory opinions, the flagship. I liked niche. That was better. Steve, you don't even know what I'm talking about. You've never heard of this podcast. It's weird that you can call it niche. Like you're unaware. I just wonder where are you spending your time? And then you give me something like this. And I'm like, okay, that might that might explain it. So obviously we covered the legal aspects of this story coming out of Texas, in which Texas, of course, has a strict anti-abortion law, which has an exception for life-threatening conditions or the impairment of a major bodily function for the mother. A woman for the first time sued for a temporary restraining order in Texas. She was 20 weeks pregnant.

her fetus had been diagnosed with trisomy 18, about over 90% of babies who are born with trisomy 18 do not make it through the first year. Most do not make it to birth. She said she wanted more kids. She already has two. And that carrying this child to term would make that less likely. And that would be the impairment of a major bodily function. The Texas Supreme Court, in their opinion, basically said, look, this is up to doctors. They have to exercise their reasonable medical judgment. But here the doctor didn't say she was exercising her reasonable medical judgment. She just said that she had a good faith belief that her patient met the statutory requirements,

which, by the way, the statutory requirements say the reasonable medical belief. So on the one hand, the Texas Supreme Court saying that they, clearly don't want these cases anymore, and it's up to doctors, but also saying if the doctor here had performed this abortion, that she could have been charged, obviously, by the Texas Attorney General who said that he would have charged this doctor, and that she would have faced life in prison if she had performed this abortion. So, again, set aside the legal aspects of this, but Steve, how politically is the pro-life movement supposed to make any political headway with this type of thing going on in the background heading into a presidential

election year? Well, I think it's hard. I think it's a hard case for Republicans to make. And it's a hard case in part because it's kind of reporting that we've seen on this topic. The way that you just walked us through the facts, probably somebody could quibble with one thing or another that you said, but was a pretty straight recitation of what the issues are. If you go read John's piece on our website, again, walks us through the facts, a pretty straight recitation of what the facts are, and then some, I would say, editorial commentary at the end about what they mean and what the implications are. Now, go read or watch the coverage elsewhere.

Most of it has been horrendous, hysterical, not sticking to the facts, extrapolating, recycling or amplifying the sort of most outrageous claims. In this case, I would say, on the, on the, what we want to call it, Roe Choice side. And it's hard for people to come to a decision on this. And it's hard for the country, I think, to have a serious debate about this. I will just say as an aside, in addition to commending both you and John for your walking us through what's a fraught issue.

we had something we have i think we're approaching 300 comments on john's piece and for the most part for an issue that is so fraught and difficult and challenging the back and forth there has been pretty darn civil and actually informative with people making arguments and following up and citing evidence and pushing back um so it's possible to have discussions like this uh that rely on the facts and then proceed from there. I think you've seen Republicans have a hard time talk about this. You haven't seen many Republicans, John, you can correct me if I'm wrong, including, I think, many of Texas' own representatives and senators

have sought to avoid commenting on this. I believe John Cornyn said that this was a federal issue or was not a federal issue, and he wasn't at least initially going to get involved. in Ted Cruz's office initially, at least declined to comment or Cruz declined to make a statement about this. If you are pro-life and you believe in the law and you want to make this case, you need to make the case. You want to persuade people, you have to be willing to make the case. And I think we've seen Republicans not make the case. So I think combine those two and inability or unwillingness on the part of pro-life legislators to make this case in a clear and

compelling way. And the eagerness and these could be very much related. And the inability or unwillingness of the media to cover such matters accurately, I think it does present real political challenges for Republicans in 2024. Yeah. I mean, John, for me, this just seems. Like as Steve said, if you want to defend this on pro-life grounds, defend it. I'm not seeing anyone defend it. I consider myself pro-life, and I think this is egregious. This idea that, I mean, how far, how life-threatening does it need to be? Or four visits to the emergency room, not enough.

The risk that a high-risk pregnancy like this would carry for having future children, again, none of us are doctors, but her doctor said this carried some risk that would impair her ability to have future children. There's then a temporary restraining order issued by the lower court

and then the Texas Supreme Court puts that on hold for a week when she's already 20 weeks pregnant and then says it's, you know, it's not our call. It's definitely the doctor's call, but also if the doctor had made this call, we would charge her with a crime?

Like, the Texas Supreme Court wasn't even willing to defend this. Yeah, to unpack that. I mean, this is obviously anytime, you know, a mother, this is very much a wanted baby. I mean, you look at the lawsuit itself, the Center for Reproductive Rights, says the baby. They use the term that Kay Cox wanted to use. Kate Cox is the mother. It's the mother. So obviously, anytime a diagnosis like this comes down, it's heartbreaking and tragic,

Many women with down syndrome diagnoses are pushed by their doctors towards abortion. Anyway, that's it related. The question is, again, about the law, what is, what ought to be, the political implications. And so you're right. So the Supreme Court itself did not weigh in on the actual merits of does this fall under the exception. They said, you tried to use this as a very complicated legal issue, a purely, a merely subjective thing rather than a reasonable judgment. You didn't even say this is any reasonable medical judgment. And if you want to look into the actual debate over whether this falls into it, you need to read, you know, the Attorney General's response, the original complaint.

And so there's been a lot of conflation in the media by Democratic politicians to say this was a life-threatening circumstance that a woman was about to die. That is just, it's false. This was an abortion that was sought because the child had triceney 18. A desire, as you said, with mother thinking this child is probably almost very unlikely to make it, although there are, again, as you said, 10% of cases where the children do live, Bella Santorum, who is Rick Santorum's daughter, is now 15. So you have to keep in mind the dignity of human beings with Down syndrome or Edward's syndrome, which is another name for Trism A18.

So the best case, so, yeah, so the best case argument that the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is the group that filed a lawsuit on Kate Cox's behalf made, was that she is likely to need a third C-section because she had two previous C-sections. That third C-section would increase the risk of an impairment to her reproductive system, and therefore that qualifies under the exception. Now, that is the best case argument.

I asked the Center for Reproductive Rights for Studies on how much of an increase is there in this risk, and they pointed me to an amicus brief, that was filed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. In that brief, the study from 2006 and ACOG, as it's known, their peer-reviewed journal, it did not show any increase in maternal death from a third C-section after the first two. It did show an increase in rates of hysterectomy. I don't think have the exact numbers met me, but it was something like 0.65% for the first C-section,

0.45% for the second, 0.9% for a third. John, look, I get it, but I'm going to interrupt you here for a second, which is whose call is this to make? Okay, you can have one more point. Yeah. And so, and I just, so again, on the question, I just need to add this in here because it's a very complicated story. You have a lot of politicians, you know, citing, well, she went to the emergency room,

therefore this is a life-threatening condition. If you read the complaint again, she went to the emergency room out of concern for her baby on November 17th. That's in the complaint itself. She went again on the 25th for cramping. It was on the 28th when the final results of the amniocentesis came in showing that the baby had this fatal condition that the abortion was sought. So this is not a... What about the other two visits to the emergency room? I mean, right? Like, look, I get it. I do, I understand all of that. I've read every single thing in this case. But the point is pregnancies carry risk. Believe me. And carrying a baby to turn.

carries enormous risk. But who gets to decide? Is it Ken Paxton who gets to decide whether her life was at risk or her doctor? And according to Ken Paxton, it's Ken Paxton, right? He, his brief said that, you know, because she's only seeking this abortion once she found out the diagnosis for the child, it was not the pregnancy that she was afraid of. It was the child. That's a ridiculous argument, because the whole point is she wants to have a third child and high-risk pregnancies and tricycine-18 would be a high-risk pregnancy are going to carry additional risk

to her ability to have children in the future. And again, who then gets to make that decision? The argument that the pro-life movement has tried to make is that obviously doctors should get to make that decision. But when you hang life in prison over a doctor's head And then the Texas Supreme Court says, well, you didn't use the magic words. You said good faith belief, but you didn't say reasonable medical judgment. Do you really think doctors are going to err on the side of what's best for their patient?

Or do you think they're going to err on the side of not spending the rest of their lives away from their families in prison? I mean, Mike, just politically, this seems ridiculous for the pro-life movement to defend, which is why they're not defending it. Yeah, I mean, look, I do not, I do not pretend to know the ins and outs of all of these laws and all of these arguments to the extent that, that John does. I sort of bow down to his ability to sift through this and understand what the law is. And I do think it's important. But the politics. I will say, I do think it's important for facts to be, for everybody to be operating from the same set of facts. And that is very difficult to do in a political argument.

There's a lot of, you know, assumptions that people make. I do think politically this is very difficult for Republicans. And a lot of it comes from the fact that I think they pass in states. They pass laws that they don't entirely understand. They don't understand the implications of. And then they sort of clumsily without the expertise that I know, John has and that John employees defend laws that they didn't quite understand and that they and that they don't have the wherewithal or the ability to defend. And maybe if they did,

they would have, you know, if they did understand it, they might have passed a different law or laws with different strictures and exceptions and these sort of things. So I think what's going on here is a story that we've seen since the Dobbs decision, which is politically Republicans in office totally unprepared for defending their positions in and the laws that they are passing or the laws that they would like to pass, being almost caught flat-footed by the by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and sort of scrambling without any intelligence to respond. So I think it's a problem that they haven't figured out how to solve. I would just add to you, yeah, it is a disaster in that there was this separate case,

Zorozky v. Texas, where they're considering similar issues, and there was much hope from the pro-life side. I mean, pro-life activists were calling, you know, from the Susan the Amplas Research arm, Texas right to life, you know, efforts to stay from the beginning when Dobbs came down, all these conditions that are life-threatening. Yes, of course that's included. Of course that's included. This is reasonable medical judgment. The issue here is that groups like the Center for Reproductive Rights, the pro-choice movement, they want to punch a hole through the life of the mother exception so big that it could apply, as you said, to any pregnancy. Any pregnant,

every pregnancy carries some risk. So if the, if the risk of a third C-section justifies aborting a disabled baby, then that level of risk would qualify for aborting any child. So that's the issue here. There was a great hope. And the Supreme Court's decision, it spends, the Texas Supreme Court's decision, it spends the last few pages trying to offer some of that clarity, saying the threat to the mother's life does not need to be imminent, that you do not have to have unanimous agreement among the medical community. It says that the Texas Medical Board can, basically, it doesn't say should, but it says they have the authority to provide this guidance. And they haven't done yet, and it's inexplicable why, and it's outrageous that they haven't. And you've heard that

from testimony from one of one of these doctors for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the Susan Anthonyless arm. So it's terrible that there has been clarity, but that was the, that's the issue is that you want, if you want to rewrite the law to say that whether it should, on prudential grounds, or you actually believe on the merits that this should be an exception. Obviously, But if there's an exception for the life of the mother or for major bodily... Yeah, for a serious risk of substantial harm to a major bodily function. So the question is, what is it serious... No, no, no.

That's not what it says. Let me actually read what it says, because it's pretty funny, actually. It says you have to have a life-threatening physical condition that places the female at risk of death, which is the same thing as life-threatening. So that's, like, redundant. So, okay, a life-threatening physical condition that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.

But that's weird, right? So, like, it has to be life-threatening, but then there's the or... My understanding of either-or. But it's not written as an either-or. The point is, the statute itself is written very poorly. It says it has to be life-threatening, and then it has to either have the risk of death

or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function. That makes no sense. How could something... Like, if something has to be life, life-threatening, then you've gutted the risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function, right? They just didn't write this for people to actually be able to do it. They wrote it to intimidate, you know, to try to lower the number of abortions in the state without any regard to

how this actually works on the ground. And like, just to take a moment of personal privilege, and I've talked about this on advisory opinions, but in between my two sons, I had a miscarriage. and I haven't gone into this level of detail because it wasn't particularly relevant at the time. But when I first went in, they said they thought it was an ectopic pregnancy, but they couldn't be sure. And they wanted to wheel me into emergency surgery at that point.

Well, obviously, the point, you know, that you've made about this being a wanted child, I was like, no way. If we don't know whether it's ectopic, I don't want to go in, because first of all, talk about impairment of a major bodily function. That involves removing a fallopian tube.

Now, doesn't mean you can't, you got two, right? But like, first of all, so does that count? Does removing a fallopian tube count as impairment of a major bodily function when I've got a second one? And who gets to decide that? Second, what if they just think it might be an ectopic pregnancy? And I have then other symptoms of, you know, a high risk pregnancy, bleeding, cramping, all the things that she was going in with, by the way. You know, is that then enough?

And who gets to decide that? or do they need to know for sure that it's an ectopic pregnancy? Well, in my situation, when it ended up happening again, because this was a wanted child, I said I was not willing to go into the surgery until they were sure. And they said, okay, in that case, you have to have an on-call surgeon because you're going to have 30 minutes from the time that you feel this rupture, if it is ectopic, to get into the OR, to save your life. Who should get to make that decision?

surely it is me at that point. And I did decide to go home and to take that risk because I live 11 minutes from the hospital and you better believe I timed it at that point. Like this is the sort of stuff that clearly the state legislature didn't take seriously that clearly the pro-life movement, that's why they're not willing to go out there and defend it

because there simply was not enough thought to how this actually works. If there were, I hear you, John, that like you'd punch a huge hole through the whole statute if you simply say that, you know, all pregnancies have the potential to hurt future fertility. All of them carry some risk. Yes, you're right.

But which side are we going to err on? The doctor's getting to decide this or the legislature in Ken Paxton? On reasonable medical judgment, the whole point is that, yes, it is deferred to the doctors, but it needs to be reasonable. Everyone agrees that actopic pregnancy is a life-threatening condition. But my point is you don't know. If I can say add one point, reasonable medical judgment, the point is that that's the standard that doctors practice under all the time.

And this was in the law on the 20-week law. Before Dobbs happened, Texas had a law 20 weeks, and they had this reasonable medical judgment standard. There were no reports. But the doctor in this case said it was her good faith belief that her patient qualified under the statute. And the statute says it has to be in her reasonable medical judgment. So what? She didn't say the magic words. She didn't say, it's my good faith belief.

that in my reasonable medical judgment, my patient meets the standard of my reasonable medical judgment. Like, this is a ridiculous. But to John's point, Sarah, if you're talking about blowing a hole in the statute, I mean, what's to keep a doctor, what's to keep a strongly pro-choice doctor saying good faith belief in virtually any circumstance? That's right.

So we're going to have to make a decision. I think that's the problem with these statutes, right? Like, either you're going to have to actually, like, write out what you mean, but they don't want to do that because they think they'll be political blowback, or they leave it up to the doctors, but then when it's actually up to the doctors, they threaten them with life in prison and then say that, well. Fair point. I get it. But then you really are, I mean, you really are gutting the statute. I mean, then there's no consideration. Write a better statute.

Then there's no consideration for the life of the baby. If any doctor at any time can say, yeah, it's my good faith judgment. we should do this. I mean, it renders the law irrelevant, doesn't it? No, it's my reasonable, it's my good faith belief, then write a better law. I don't know what to tell you, but if you write a law that says that you have to have a good faith belief that in your reasonable medical judgment, that this could pose a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function, then yes, a lot of pregnancies are going to fall under that. But it's not my fault that they wrote a bad law. But any law that includes,

that would be would be flawed they could have written a detailed statute they didn't want to steve because then they'd have to take the political repercussions of actually writing out what they mean the pre-row laws were in effect for a century and did not have these this confusion that doctors knew what reasonable medical judgment was you didn't have a movement designed to create this confusion and i think that the fact that the confusion does the confusion shouldn't exist it does exist, it needs to be fixed. It needs to be fixed by the people in power. Who is in power? Greg Abbott's in power. He needs to be calling the Texas Medical Board today and to say, you can give guidance. It does not need to be imminent. It includes, but is not

limited to these 10 cases. We know that you have to leave it to reasonable medical judgment because there are cases. Things fall outside. You can't just have a list, but a list could help. A list could say, you know, pre-rubpture, pre-viable rupture membranes, which is a life-threatening condition. They pass the law. But, John, take my example. They cannot tell from the ultrasound whether it's an ectopic pregnancy. Let's say there's a 10% chance that it's an ectopic pregnancy. That's reasonable medical judgment.

What if it's a 1% chance that it's an ectopic pregnancy? An actomic pregnancy is a life-threatening condition. And, I don't, no one would question that people, there doesn't, that was in the Supreme Court decision as well. There does not need to be certainty. They said that explicitly in the Texas Supreme Court decision. There does not need to be medical certainty. Actobic pregnancy is a life-threatening condition.

Yes, a chance, a 1% chance of an acrobic pregnancy. The doctor, that would be reasonable for the doctor to act. And therefore, given that the fact that this confusion should not exist, it does exist. The Texas Medical Board, I mean, the fact that Ken Paxson put out this letter threatening saying this doesn't qualify, well, now give guidance about what does qualify. I mean, this is just a disaster. And, I mean, the fact, there's been a shoulder shrugging, a passing of the book among medical boards, medical societies, attorneys general at my former publication National Review. There are many editorials, which I may or may not have had a hand in calling on them to do this.

Some states have been better than others. Texas has not been good on this. Yeah, as a starting point, you need more clarity. As a starting point, because it is the case. can't have doctors who don't know what the implications of their of their judgments are to say nothing of their actions. And doctors aren't lawyers, so they're going to be relying on hospital lawyers, administrators. And I would say so. And most doctors aren't activists. Most doctors are just trying to like do the best by their patients, make a living and go home to their families and not have

a letter from Ken Paxton saying, if you err on the wrong side of this line, and I won't tell you what the line is. Like all of that's disappearing tomorrow. look, John, I 100% agree. I think this is a really productive conversation in the sense that I think it highlights how hard this is and why politically you don't see a lot of people wanting to hop in here

because it's a hot mess. And as you said, the Texas Supreme Court is also considering in the regular course of its business, this Zarevsky case, which will ask again for them to define what this medical exemption is and the limits of it, anything about it,

we'll see what the Texas Supreme Court decides. It was argued on November 28th. So we could have a few months, years. The Texas Supreme Court, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, doesn't sort of release stuff on a term basis. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business,

you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design.

You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments. directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay. So I realize this is going to be a bit of a weird segue, but we recently had the dispatch Christmas party. And one thing led to another. There was karaoke involved. And this is the very, very important question that Steve feels strongly about. That it's weird, but he does. Steve, what is the correct attitude when you take

the stage at a karaoke bar? Can I preface this with something? It's a weird change for me as somebody who's been in sort of opinion journalism for a better part of three decades, that in my twilight years, as I've gotten older, I have fewer and fewer strong opinions about anything. I feel like some days I wake up and I go on social media or I read an op-ed and I think, like, who has time to even care about these things? And I feel that about some public. policy decisions. I feel that about silly stuff. But it is the, I say, as a general proposition, I have very few strong opinions about a very small number of things. And while it's accurate, Sarah, based on our earlier conversation for you to say that I, that I expressed a strong

opinion about this. Let me be clear. This is not one of, you call me a loser, Steve. Well, that probably had a longer history than just this discussion. A more considered, a more considered judgment, Sarah. Let me just be clear that how people should approach karaoke is not one of the five things I have a very strong opinion about. Even if I did, even if I will concede that you accurately describe my expressing a strong opinion earlier. No.

Actual statement. Steve called me a loser. Like, here's the thing, if everybody who's ever been to karaoke, it's a lot of run up to this. I just want to be, you know, we believe in clarity at the dispatch. We believe in clarity in all manner of things. I want to be as clear as I can from the beginning. Everybody who's been to karaoke knows that there are certain types that show up, right? There's the super drunk person who insists he would never, ever do karaoke, but,

for the 18 Goldschlager shots he's done and then goes up and, you know, sloppily falls all over himself, doesn't know the words to the song, etc. There's also sort of that person's twin who insists, the person who's reluctant, no, no, I don't do care, okay,

I don't want to say, I don't want to say, but it's like, you know, putting his hand out to say stop and using the other hand to say, okay, I'm happy to go. because they want to be sort of pushed up to go on stage and sing and then have everybody say,

oh, wow, you have a great voice. I didn't know. Who knew? And you also have people who are very strong believers in their own karaoke abilities and they're totally mistaken because by definition, tone deaf people don't know that they're tone deaf.

And so they go up and sing the heck out of these songs and they're awful. They're terrible. and everybody else in there is either like fidgeting nervously or looking at the floor or and then there's a small table of their immediate friends who's like cheering them on so as to like not have them be crushed by the lack of reaction or maybe negative reaction everybody else and then there's the worst person the worst person to go to karaoke and that is the self-serious person who goes to karaoke with a bunch of people who are mostly there to like have a couple drinks and

not yet, you know, and not even think about it ever again for the rest of their lives. But who treats this as if it's a performance at Carnegie Hall and goes up and has a song, maybe they have a regular song that they do at every karaoke bar that they go to. And they perform this regular song and they have their own sort of approach to the song. You know how some singers feel like they have to put their own imprint on the national anthem. them. Also a very annoying thing. That might be one of my five annoying things, strong opinions. Just sing the song. But you have these karaoke singers who think they're professional singers and they go up and they do their own sort of vocal pirouettes to impress their friends. And they're so serious about it.

And you know that they're desperate for the approval of the crowd at the end of it. And I guess my view on that is even if they're really good unless it's like you're so caught up in the emotion of the moment because they're that good like what was the woman who was on the British voice who was like by all appearances the most unlikely spectacular vocal performer and she was do you remember who I'm talking about you're talking about Susan Boyle who says yeah Susan Boyle very good Mike um you know If you have a Susan Boyle, like if I had seen Susan Boyle in person, like you probably couldn't help but become sort of caught up in the moment because it was so incredible.

And by all means, give that person applause. But if it's somebody else who's just like a karaoke mope who's all self-serious and wants to be congratulated and fed it at this silly function, to hell with them, I say. But he doesn't feel strongly about it. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't feel strongly just went on for many, many minutes. So Steve's wrong about this, and I'm going to tell you all why.

And then John and Mike, you're our judges. The whole time she's answering, try to think about which category Sarah fits in. Because she fits into one for sure. Look, I think Steve thinks of karaoke all wrong. And what Steve's describing sounds fun is just different than, I think, a different version of karaoke. Steve's describing sort of like drunk people goofing around, you know, like getting up there so they can basically listen to their favorite songs and someone's like nominally singing along with them who like sucks at singing. That's fine. I'm not even like dogging that

as a possibility. But I don't think Steve understands that for there's a whole different genre of karaoke where yes, like non-professional but great singers do karaoke at a bar. So it's like live band karaoke for instance, Steve. Like you don't want someone getting up there and being crappy. they should be like they should be good they should take it seriously and i don't mean like self seriously that's different i mean do your best know the words be on the rhythm and don't sign up if you're going to be terrible at it because it's actually meant to be like cool music for everyone in the room and it's just not an actual band live band karaoke is a real thing it's very cool but you have to actually be good enough to sing with a real band and you kind of got already know

the words and like it's a whole different thing i and so i just think um you're totally wrong in excluding that type of karaoke i don't think we're disagreeing i that kind of karaoke is great that kind of karaoke is fine i think it's good that can be entertaining like if you have a good singer goes up does it seriously does it performs it in a way that is true to the music without being self-serious it's very telling to me just as a rhetorical device to point this out as a debate sarah that you took the category that I was criticizing and set it aside. We could replay the tape. You said, let's set aside the people who are self-serious.

My whole criticism was about the people who are self-serious. I love just general karaoke singers. I think you're defining self-serious as anyone who tries to be good at karaoke. No, it's not anyone who tries to be good. I think you should, look, I've done karaoke. I'm not great. I'd like to do as well as I can do when I sing karaoke. But I'm not the person who has played the song I'm going to do on repeat for the hour-long drive I have there and practiced in the shower and thought about the way that I can trill at certain moments to make people.

You are supposed to be performing for the group and maybe you should put some more time into, you know, making it worth. Now you're defending self-serious people. That's not self-serious. That's actually respecting your audience. All right, John and Mike, respect your audience or. vomit on stage. Which one do you think is good? This is a false choice, by the way. Oh, no, I don't know what you're talking about.

Respecting your audience or vomiting. That's a false choice right there. So first of all, can I just say, you guys are trying to make a rule for karaoke, which karaoke contains multitudes. There are so many different types of karaoke. There is the drunken bar karaoke. There is the live band karaoke. There is my favorite type of karaoke, which is run exclusively in establishments run by Asian Americans,

which are the little booths that you can rent out that contain, along with the songs that you choose from the book. There's a TV screen which has like vaguely soap opera-y, like very, attractive young people, in the ones that I have... Mike, what kinds of establishments are you going to? You might want to be a little careful, Mike. Everything's fuzzy. No, no, no, no, these little booths. And it's all really, like, silly and fun.

And you have, you know, you bring, like, you know, I think there was one year as like my wife and her cousins before we had kids. And we all went out there and just, like, sang ridiculous songs and laughed at the sort of over-dramatic videos, music videos that are playing as we're singing our songs. So there's all these different areas. Oh, and by the way, there's also your neighbor who has a karaoke machine that he wheels out for cul-de-sac, you know, block parties. And all of these are different situations for karaoke, and they all require kind of a different

attitude. I will say I agree with Steve on the self-seriousness of people who, again, they sort of view it as a chance to prove to their friends or their co-workers or their neighbors that I'm not like these other karaoke posers that I've got the pipes. And really, is karaoke the place to do that? Karaoke is about having fun. It's about laughing. It's about hearing a song you want to hear. and maybe your friend isn't that good at it. Maybe he's really good at it, but it's all about the communal activity

and not about being impressed by the person who's up there. So I land on the side of Steve. John. Well, I get to make my judgment based on actually being at the karaoke event last night. We went to the bar recessions, which is a DC dive. I was the self-appointed chaperone of the young folks. I got to tell them I'm so old, the last time I was here was the Great Recession. I don't know if they were born then.

I did not myself participate in karaoke, as I explained that in heaven, the blind will see, the deaf will hear, and I will be able to sing. So I did not inflict my voice on anyone last night. several dispatch employees saying last night and I can say I can report back to the whole world that Andrew Eger

absolutely crushed it he was saying somebody to love yeah and he put his heart and soul into it he was having fun and he was excellent and we had comments

from other bars about how the whole place just came much more alive and so he really crushed it that's the bad so he was not you wouldn't put him in the self-serious

not self-serious just great having fun and both. So basically I'm just judging on nails on a chalkboard bad to Andrew that spectrum. Everybody else, no one was bad from the dispatch group, but Andrew was really the only one who was, I would say, you know, a great music talent who sang last night. And it was the whole the whole bar got into it. People were dancing. We were getting compliments from the next door table. So yeah, self-serious is one thing. But excellence while having fun is really what you want to shoot for.

And with that, we hope you have some Christmas karaoke or just singing in your shower at home. But take it seriously. Take pride in your work. Steve clearly doesn't. Bye. You know,