UNBIASED - June 17, 2024: Multiple Judges Block Biden's New Title IX Restrictions, Senate GOP Blocks IVF Bill, Exclusive Reuters Report Uncovers Pentagon Operation During Pandemic, and More.

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

1. Senate GOP Blocks IVF Bill; Introduces New IVF Bill (0:32)2. Reuters Report Uncovers Pentagon COVID Operation in Philippines (5:20)3. Multiple Judges Block Biden's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Title IX Restrictions From Taking Effect (7:43)4. Quick Hitters: Hunter Biden's Attorneys File and Withdraw Motion for New Trial, Maryland Governor Pardons 175,000 Marijuana Convictions, New Jersey AG Indicts George Norcross, and DOJ Not Prosecuting AG Garland After Contempt Referral (12:20)Support ‘UNBIASED’ on Patreon.Watch this episode on YouTube.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Monday, June 17th, and this is your daily news rundown. As always, if you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides and you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen, share the show with your friends, and of course, if you're watching on YouTube, hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel. All of those things really help me out. So thank you in advance. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. We're going to spend honestly the majority of this episode on stories from

late last week and this weekend. And then I have one story from today as well as some quick hitters. So starting with a story from Thursday about Senate Republicans blocking the IVF bill. I wasn't able to cover this one because my Thursday episode went out earlier than usual. And then I, of course, don't release episodes on Friday. So let's just talk about it real quick and clarify a little bit about what happened. This was a bill called the Right to IVF Act, and as the name implies, it would have not only ensured a federally protected right to in vitro fertilization, but it also would have established a federal right for providers to offer IVF services, for insurers to cover IVF services,

it would have extended fertility treatments and counseling to members of the military as well as veterans, regardless of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, infertility diagnosis, or marital status. It gave the Secretary of Defense, acting through the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the role of establishing fertility preservation procedures following any illness or injury of a military member, and a lot more. A large portion of the bill actually dealt with the military. The vast majority of it dealt with the military. So yes, federal protections for average everyday citizens was in there, but it really dealt a lot with the military. So the argument from the Democrats who introduced the bill was that we need to federally protect IVF because we've already seen a few states try to come after it. The Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade. There are threats to the IVF process.

Countless Americans rely on it to reproduce. So that's the argument from one side. If the bill would have passed, again, it would have created this federal right to IVF that neither the Supreme Court nor states could interfere with. The Republicans, on the other hand, contested the bill. And their argument was, one, this is all political. It's an election year. This is a political issue. And this is just an attempt from the Democrats to try to instill fear in the American people. Two, the bill is too broad. It goes too far. And three, those Republicans that stand by that life begins a conception argument, take issue with what happens to embryos, you know,

when they're unusable, like currently in the IVF process that are discarded and thrown out. And some Republicans have an issue with this because they see this as manslaughter. So anyway, when it came time for a vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer forced to vote on the bill on Thursday. It ended in a 48 to 47 vote to block it. Two Democrats joined all Republicans to pass it, but it wasn't enough. Following the vote, all 50 GOP senators wrote a joint letter saying, quote, Senate Democrats have embraced a summer of scare tactics, a partisan campaign of false fear mongering intended to mislead and confuse the American people. In vitro fertilization is legal and available in every state across our nation. We strongly support continued nationwide access to IVF, which has allowed millions of

aspiring parents to start and grow their families. End quote. Now, I do want to note that Republicans introduced their own IVF bill, Republican senators specifically. So they introduced this IVF bill. It's much shorter. It cannot prohibit IVF services, and they must ensure that no unit of local government within their state prohibits such services either. So that was the Republicans' way of saying, look, we're willing to protect IVF, but we're not going to go as far as the Right to IVF Act did. Democrats, though, like Senator Patty Murray, say that this Republican legislation is just an attempt to address the problem but doesn't actually solve the problem. There's too many loopholes. It purposefully ignores what happens to unused embryos. It would do nothing to stop fetal personhood laws from upending IVF care.

Of course, personhood laws are those that would classify embryos as a person and therefore potentially carry a manslaughter charge if discarded or damaged. So some Democrats are not on board with the Republican legislation. They say it doesn't go far enough, just like some Republicans are not on board with the Democrat legislation saying it goes too far. That's the IVF fight in a nutshell. Hopefully that cleared up any of your questions from last week. Sorry, I couldn't cover it. I do, of course, have both the Democrats IVF bill and the Republicans IVF bill in the sources section of this episode if you want to read them. Those sources can always be found in each episode description. There's always a hyperlink there, as well as on my website, jordanismylawyer.com. Another piece of news from this weekend, or actually Friday, according to a new exclusive Reuters report, which was released on Friday, the United States military launched a secret campaign at the height of the pandemic to deter Filipinos from getting the COVID vaccine, but the undercover operation has not been reported on until now. But apparently the Pentagon's aim was to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine that

was being supplied by China. Now, just to give a little background, both the Philippines and Taiwan are off the coast of China in the Pacific Ocean, and the United States government has taken on this role of protecting mainly Taiwan, but also other regions in the Indo-Pacific from China's control and dominance. So it's a little bit, a little bit of backstory about the relationship there. So as part of this report that was put out by Reuters, Reuters contacted many people, but one of those people being a senior defense department official who acknowledged that the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda

to disparage China's vaccine in the developing world, but didn't give anything more than that, declined to, you know, go into further detail. Reuters says military officials here in the United States would essentially use these fake media, social media accounts that had tens of thousands of followers to impersonate Filipinos and then post things like, and I'm going to translate here, quote, hashtag China is the virus. Do you want that? COVID came from China and vaccines come from China, end quote. Another post read, quote, COVID came from China and the vaccine also came from China. Don't trust China, end quote. So his messages along those lines. Now, it's nearly impossible to determine how widely the material was spread in the Philippines or to what extent the posts may have prevented

Filipinos from getting vaccinated. But as of June 2021, only 2.1 million of the Philippines, 114 million citizens had been fully vaccinated. This actually ultimately led the president of the Philippines to threaten jail time if citizens didn't get vaccinated, which of course increased the number of those vaccinated. So that's a little bit about what the government was up to during COVID. Again, that was an exclusive Reuters report. I do have it linked for you in the sources section. But with that story done, let's move on to some news from today. The next story is somewhat of an update to a story I covered last week. You may remember in Wednesday's episode in the quick hitters segment specifically, I talked about President Biden's new Title IX protections being struck down by a judge in Texas.

Well, today in a separate lawsuit, but over the same issue, a federal judge in Kentucky blocked Biden's new Title IX rule across six more states. This is yet another case in the Title IX debate, so let's backtrack a little bit because it'll all make a little more sense if we do that. In 2020, the Supreme Court held that federal law, which bans workplace sex discrimination, extended protections to LGBTQ workers. Following that decision, the education department then said, well, that same logic applies to education law too. So the education department then went ahead and issued guidance that said schools cannot discriminate against students based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Then this past April, the administration

went ahead and issued a final rule saying the same thing. So the difference between guidance and a final rule is that guidance is just that. It's mere guidance. It's just a suggestion to act in some way, whereas a final rule is a formal and binding regulation that says schools must act in a certain way, otherwise they can lose their federal funding. So following the guidance issuance back in 2021, there were multiple lawsuits filed by various states, which are still playing out. But then following the final rule issuance this past April, much more recent, even more lawsuits were filed, and some by some of the same states that sued over the guidance in 2021. So a lot of lawsuits at play here, but just know

that some are over the 2021 guidance, and others are over the newer final rule. There were two different decisions last week over the guidance, including one from an appellate court and then the most recent ruling came today and that ruling dealt with the actual final rule but rather than going through each case and confusing you you know by whether the case is over the guidance or the final rule i'll just say this because they have a lot in common one each decision that has come out in the last week or so because there's been multiple which we'll go over in a second regardless of whether the case deals with the guidance or the final rule has been against the Biden administration. Now, the other thing is that none of these rulings from the courts have had anything to do with the actual merits of the lawsuit. What do I mean by that? Well, remember those preliminary injunctions

that we talk about so much? That is what these rulings are. So regardless of whether states are suing over the guidance or the final rule, these states are asking for a preliminary injunction, which blocks this Title IX guidance from being enforced while these lawsuits are pending. With that said, so far, and again, we're going to go over the various decisions we've seen in the last week in a second, but there are roughly 35 states in which the administration cannot enforce either its 2021 guidance or its more recent final rule. And another just sort of caveat, that final rule actually doesn't take effect anyway until August when the school year starts. But regardless,

you get what I'm saying here. So let's run through some of these decisions we've seen in the last week. Last Wednesday, I covered the Texas judge who granted the preliminary injunction in Texas. On Thursday, the next day, a federal judge in Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction affecting not only Louisiana, but also Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho. On Friday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injunction affecting Tennessee and 19 other states. And today, most recently, a federal judge in Tennessee granted a preliminary injunction affecting Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and West Virginia. And just for clarity sake, the reason you're hearing some of those states mentioned twice, like Tennessee, is because

those are the states that are part of two different lawsuits, one dealing with the guidance, one dealing with the final rule. So the takeaway here is that the Biden administration's new Title IX definitions, which extend the ban on discrimination in schools to sexual orientation and gender identity, cannot be enforced in those 35 states. I'd imagine this is a case that the Supreme Court takes up at some point, but we would have to wait for the merits of at least one of these cases to be decided until that happens. At this point, none of these lawsuits have played out to the point where a court is actually making a decision based on the merits. So now let's finish with some quick hitters. We'll start with Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden may be seeking a new trial in his federal firearm case.

Earlier today, Hunter's attorneys filed a motion for a new trial based on lack of jurisdiction, but the filing was deleted just a few minutes later. Now, the filing very well could have been deleted because of a mistake that needs to be corrected. That's common, but it at least illustrates this narrative that that's the direction the legal team is headed in, right? If that refiling is ultimately re-uploaded, I'll go into more detail at that point as to what lack of jurisdiction means and how it's relevant to Hunter's case and what the argument is. In some other news, the governor of Maryland issued an executive order today pardoning more

than 175,000 marijuana convictions. The pardons will forgive low-level marijuana possession and certain paraphernalia charges, which will affect an estimated 100,000 people. But some people have more than one conviction, which is why the total number of convictions pardoned is higher than the number of people affected. The governor's action comes two years after Maryland voters approved a constitutional amendment legalizing recreational marijuana for those 21 and older. In some other state news, New Jersey's attorney general has charged Democratic power broker and former Democratic National Committee member George Norcross with racketeering and other charges in connection with government

issued tax credits. The indictment was unsealed today and says that Norcross and his associates quote, used their political influence to tailor New Jersey economic development legislation to their preferences. After the legislation was enacted in September 2013, members and associates of the Norcross enterprise conspired to and did extort and coerce others to obtain properties and property rights on the Camden, New Jersey waterfront and associated tax incentive credits. End quote. If you want to read that indictment, it can be found in the sources. And finally, the DOJ said on Friday that it would not be prosecuting Attorney General Merrick Garland after the House GOP sent it a contempt referral. I covered this story a little bit last week, but the House held

Attorney General Garland in contempt for failing to turn over the audiotapes of President Biden's interview as part of his classified documents investigation. Garland didn't turn over those audiotapes because President Biden had asserted executive privilege over them. Nonetheless, the House held Garland in contempt for failing to abide by the congressional subpoena, which triggered a contempt referral to the DOJ. So following a contempt referral, it's up to the DOJ whether to prosecute. And in this case, the DOJ said Garland did not commit a crime and therefore would not be prosecuting. Speaker Johnson has since said the House will move to enforce the subpoena in federal court. That is what I have for you today.

Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a great night. Mondays are always a little slow, so thank you for bearing with me today. And we'll be back tomorrow for another Daily news rundown.