The President's Daily Brief - June 27th, 2022. Roe v. Wade Overturned. The Cost of Electric Vehicles Continues to Increase. Social Unrest Returning to France?

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

It’s June 27th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ First up, You’ve seen the headlines, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs. Wade. We’re going to talk about how we might handle what comes next — using an old experiment out of Colorado and a very personal story of mine as inspiration.  As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, if you’ve thought about buying an electric vehicle, I’ve got some bad news: they’re priced at a record high. We’ll discuss why that is. Second, the odds of social unrest just went up in France. We’ll talk about that, why it’s connected to Russia, and why you should care. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's June 27th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. The brief you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the President each day by the nation's spy masters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, you've seen the headlines The Supreme Court has overturned Roe versus Wade. We're going to talk about how we might handle what comes next, using an old experiment out of Colorado and a very personal story of mine as inspiration. As always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories.

Put these two on your radar. First, if you've thought about buying an electric vehicle, I've got some bad news. They're priced at a record high. We'll discuss why that is. Second, the odds of social unrest just went up in France. We'll talk about why that's happening, how it's connected to Russia, and why you should care. All up next on the President's Daily Brief.

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store today and we'll give you a better deal on the best network a better deal no surprises that's verizon best network based on route metrics best overall mobile network performance u.s second half 2025 all rights reserved must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person reading me the deal additional terms conditions and restrictions apply first up this morning on the pdb row versus wade has been overturned that's the big news that broke on friday now as most of us know that is the supreme court case that is the legalized abortions back in the 1970s, but on Friday, it was overturned by the current court. And that means that each state will now get to decide its own abortion policies. Today, I want to do something a little bit different, because each of us has our own views on

this ruling and on abortion more generally. What we should be thinking about is how a thoughtful president, mindful of that division, should craft our national response for the way forward. to do that, to start that conversation this morning, I'd like to actually start with a story of my grandmother and of a phone call that I got in college many years ago. And it was a call that started off with these words, and I will never forget them. Brian, she said, I have something to tell you. Now, before I share what she said, you need to understand the woman that was my grandmother and the era that she was raised in. You know, I had always known that her early life was difficult.

Her mother Ethel was a dancer in Minnesota's nightclubs in the 1920s, and later she danced in a carnival. Now, Ethel had her redeeming qualities, no doubt about that, but she was a troubled soul, and she battled a lifelong addiction to alcohol. In 1930, she gave birth to my grandmother, and Ethel never said who the father was. She didn't list it on the birth certificate either. Now, Ethel eventually married a fellow named William. and he was a carnival wrestler and he was a part-time cowboy.

And as you can probably imagine, a carnival family at that time, or really any time, has very little money, and they survived on the absolute leanest of budgets. I remember my granny telling me about the clapboard houses that they used to live in. They would pick up newspapers and glue them to the wall for insulation, but how that really didn't matter, it still got really cold in the wintertime. In other words, my granny and her family were absolutely dirt-poor. Now, later she married my grandfather, and they made a better life together, and that included three children, my father, an uncle, and an aunt.

But as my granny made that phone call to me, she told me the rest of her story. She said, I have another son. So here's what she explained. In 1949, my then very young and beautiful grandmother fell in love with the boy. He was a high school classmate of hers in rural Oregon. And as she said, he was a very handsome, athletic, and kind young man. He was also from a very proper and fairly wealthy family. As their young courtship progressed, they knew that it was best to wait until marriage to engage in acts of intimacy.

But then, as now, things happen. Or, as my grandmother would delicately say, sometimes the love bug just bites. So in the months of 1949, they got pregnant. Both were aware of the social expectations at that time. A baby meant marriage. And so he promised her that he would make it right. He would marry her. But unfortunately for my grandmother, his family did not approve.

She was a poor girl from a poor family on the wrong side of the tracks. And the boy's mother was absolutely firm in that decision. He would never get to see my grandmother again and would never acknowledge paternity. and that is exactly what he did. He abandoned my granny, his promised bride, along with his baby. He left her absolutely alone with an alcoholic mother, a dirt poor father, and living in a clapboard house. Now, in the 1940s, women largely had three choices when faced with such a predicament.

They could keep the child as a single parent, they could have an illegal abortion, or they could choose adoption. But adoption in that era came with its own complications. especially in rural communities like ours. Unwad mothers faced terrible shame by their families, people in town, and oftentimes people in their own church. But that's what she chose to do. She chose adoption. And then came the sacrifices. My grandmother quit high school and moved several hundred miles away to avoid that social shame. She put herself in what she called a house for wayward girls. It was operated by the Salvation Army. And that is where the baby grew.

Many months later, she gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby boy, and she named him Brett Douglas. Not long after, an infertile couple took that child and his name away, and she was heartbroken. But in the midst of her heartbreak, something unexpected happened. A different young man from her high school began riding her. He was stationed at a military base pretty far away, it was during the time of World War II, but even still, he had heard of her predicament. But he also fancied her, and so quite improbably he started to court her through letters, letters of encouragement or a few dollars of support when he could.

Now, his service ended around the time that she gave birth. And so when he came home, he asked her out on a date and eventually for her hand in marriage, and she accepted. That young man became my grandfather. My grandparents later moved to his family farm, and they built a life and a family of their own. Their union lasted 61 years, and ended in April of 2011, when cancer took my grandfather home. Now, you can imagine me listening as my grandmother finished telling me this story, her story. I was at a loss for words. I knew none of it. I remember telling her how brave

she was, how impossible it must have felt at the time, and most importantly, how much I loved her. in these past few days her story has come back into my mind as i've wondered what the nation will do next or should do next about all sorts of issues related to abortion especially for young women like my grandmother who chose adoption so if i were briefing the president this morning i'd start this conversation with a proverb and that is this but for the grace of god go i it's a simple idea isn't it that we remind ourselves in difficult conversations and difficult times like now to temper our judgment because with different choices or different luck or without the grace and the mercy of God, we might suffer the same fate as someone else, someone like a poor, unwedded, pregnant girl,

left to stand on her own in rural America. My point here is that we need to base our conversations about this issue and the spirit of that proverb. to be humble and reserve judgment, to calm our passions, and perhaps above all, focus on solutions. So one of the first things that we might do is ask the nation with that grace-filled spirit, how do we better prevent unplanned pregnancies, ones like my grandmother had? Now, we all probably have passionately held beliefs on this, for example, chastity until marriage. And that should absolutely be part of the conversation and even the social expectation. but there's another interesting concept out of Colorado that warrants a closer look.

About 15 years ago, the state offered up free, long-acting, reversible contraceptive devices, implants or IUDs, in other words, all to young women who asked for them. What they found was that this program dropped teen pregnancies by 40%. The rate of abortions fell the same, and all of that according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Now, the state estimated that every dollar spent on this initiative ended up saving them $5.85 down the road. Plus, they had fewer people sign up for welfare. There are thoughtful reasons to object to ideas like this, mostly on religious grounds,

but the principle here is that whatever the possible solution, we should focus on smart, data-driven options to reduce unplanned pregnancies all while respecting people's faiths. But let's imagine that the prevention efforts fail. What happens if that unplanned pregnancy does occur to young women like my grandmother, no matter what we try to do? Well, there's an interesting approach from South Dakota on this, a fairly exhausted website called life.sd.gov. And it compiles most of the information that women in South Dakota would need to guide them in bringing their baby to term. From pregnancy to parenting, financial assistance, to adoption. Now, I think it's too early to say that this South Dakota approach.

is a model for the rest of the country, but it's a very helpful example of how a state's government might step up in this new era. So the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, is that our country is about to undergo a very big change on this issue. In fact, it's already started. And so my counsel to the president,

and my hope for all of us, is that we can use constructive, compassionate language as we focus first on ways to prevent unplanned pregnancies. A re-embrace of chastity is one possibility. the program in Colorado might be another. Meanwhile, there's an obligation, I think, to help young women and fathers throughout an unplanned pregnancy, especially if abortion is illegal in a particular state.

In South Dakota, which falls into that category, is a good example of how that might work. But whatever we do, let's recognize the magnitude of this moment. We have a once-and-a-generation chance to shape our country into a more perfect union. And for what it's worth, I think we can do it. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here.

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As always, I'm watching a few other stories this morning. Put these two on your radar. First, we got a new report on Friday confirming what car shoppers around the country already. know. The average price of an electric vehicle is up to a record-breaking $60,984. Now, part of that is being driven by the average cost of raw materials, including cobalt, nickel and lithium to make all the batteries. And those costs are up 140% since March of 2020. So all told, the cost in raw materials needed to produce an electric vehicle is now 125% greater as compared to the raw materials for a comparable gas-fueled vehicle. Now, that's a pretty incredible spread. So the bottom line here

is that going electric may be a political goal or an environmental mandate, but it's running into the harsh reality of lean pocketbooks of everyday Americans. We have been hit very hard by inflation, and as I briefed you on previously, we are increasingly using credit cards. We are increasingly using credit cards to pay our bills. So a $61,000 electric car just isn't in the mix. It's just a reality that's not fully understood, unfortunately, by our leaders in Washington, D.C. So regardless, as this debate heats up, I will keep you posted on the facts. Finally this morning, a major warning from energy companies in France that the natural gas wars in Europe could lead to social unrest. As a quick reminder, Russia is cutting off Europe from natural gas supplies. They're down 50 to 60 percent. And that's all because

of Europe's support for Ukraine and the sanctions related to the ongoing war between Moscow and Kiev. Now, France has been hit very hard by Russia's turning off of the gas spigot. There are reports now saying that the amount of Russian gas flowing to France is now at or near zero. So no surprise then that France's big three energy companies warned yesterday that the French people had to cut back their electricity usage immediately, and that the effort be, quote, collective and massive. Otherwise, they warned, there could very well be social unrest starting next winter when natural gas supplies would be exhausted. Meanwhile, in a related development, the French government and those same energy companies announced the emergency construction of a floating gas terminal. So the idea is that

liquefied natural gas from ships abroad, like here in the United States, would sail up to this terminal, unload the cargo and then obviously make up the difference that Russia is taking away. As I briefed you on previously, that is exactly the same thing that Germany is doing. So one final note here, and it's a reminder of why you should care. We export about $40 billion worth of goods and services to France each year. And that's actually a part of the one trillion in total trade that we do with the whole of Europe that I briefed you on previously as well. So that means that whatever happens there, like running out of electricity,

and an increase in social unrest, well, that's going to affect jobs here. As always, big story, I will keep you hosted. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world.

It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth. And the truth shall make you. free. Good day.