 It's Wednesday to 11 o'clock. It's September the 8th, 2021. I'm Tim Appichelle, your host, and I'd like to welcome you to What Now America? Today's title is Stop Texas Abortion Law, Expand the Supreme Court. You know, last week we had going to effect Texas's abortion law, the new law, the law that says that women only have six months to know that they're pregnant and perform the abortion. Law that says we're gonna incentivize, we're gonna give a bounty to private citizens to sniff out rat and spy and basically prosecute anyone that's aided and abetted a woman to have an abortion in Texas. But the most grievous part of this new law is the fact that women will be forced as if it were the dark ages, the middle ages, force a woman to have a child when she's been raped or as equally as bad is pregnant as a result of incest. And for those that don't know what the word incest means, it means by a family member. You know, Governor Abbott was asked about this question about the provision of law about a woman being raped and or by a pregnant by a result of incest. And he said, well, you know, rapes a lot, rapes are crying and we're gonna do everything in Texas to get the would be rapers off the street. We're gonna put them behind bars. Well, no, if you think about that question for a moment, doesn't that mean you have to find out who the rapist is, prosecute them and jail them before they committed a crime? Governor Abbott, only in Texas. And with that, I go to my guests. Good morning, everyone. Today we have Jay Fiedel and we have Winston Welch joining us on What Now America? Good morning. Good morning. Jay, the title of this show is Stop Texas Abortion Law, Expand the Supreme Court. But before we get to that topic of the title, you know, there's so many different ways that this law could be challenged. I mean, it could be challenged by a lower court ruling. It could be challenged and maybe some kind of halted by the Department of Justice for not implementing current Roe v. Wade law that's been in the books for 50 years. It could be basically blunted by new legislation in Congress. There's so many different ways of trying to tackle this new abuse of law. What do you see as the most viable way to try to blunt it and or the most permanent way to stop this new law in Texas? Well, Department of Justice threatened to take criminal proceeding against anybody who became a vigilante on the basis that that was a violation of a statute passed by Congress in 1871. I'm not sure if that's going to work. I'm not sure that's going to work, but that's what they've said a couple of days ago. But what happened yesterday was even more remarkable. Remarkable, gentlemen, remarkable. So there's a bar in Massachusetts I guess it's near Harvard. And it's called Grinnell's Den. Grinnell's Den has been there 50 years. And Grinnell was originally a restaurant. But then they decided to be a bar in the early 70s, I guess. And they applied for a liquor license. And there was a church immediately behind them or blocked behind them that opposed the liquor license. Now, that opposition in most states would be just one of many. But in the state of Massachusetts, the law said that a church, specifically, a church could not only object, it could stop the application for a legal license. All it had to do was say no. Its decision was binding. And when you think about it, that is exactly the same situation as we have in Texas. Any person can make the decision that there was a violation of the Texas law, that there was a illegal abortion, if you will, and take Madison to his own hands and become a vigilante. It's the same thing here with the church, maybe even worse. The church could decide that it was not a good idea to have a bar and make a decision and act. The discretion of the state was essentially delegated to the church. And this case went to the Supreme Court and guess who handled it on behalf of Grinnell Sudden? It was Lawrence Tribe, Lawrence Tribe, never him out of Harvard, the constitutional lawyer. And he won in a decision of eight to one, eight to one. And that president had never been reversed, it's still the law. And it stands for a number of things. Number one is the Supreme Court we have today. It ain't no Supreme Court like there was then. And they didn't do their homework. All those clerks that we pay all that money to, they didn't find this case. In Lawrence Tribe's view of it, and he wrote an op-ed and appeared on national media, this was not rocket science, this was reported in the Supreme Court report, easy to find. And it is dead on. You can't delegate the powers of the state to vigilantes. So, and I have some optimism about that. There are possibilities to distinguish that case, of course, but the Supreme Court is gonna have trouble wrestling with A, the case, and B, the fact they never cited the case or referred to it in any way, even though it is very close on precedent. Are they obligated to? I don't know. But I think that the legal community is saying, what happened here? Here's a case that was so close that it addresses the same issue. Constitutional interpretation case, and they didn't talk about it. It really sounds like they didn't know about it. They didn't know about it. They didn't do their homework about it. What kind of a Supreme Court do we have here anywhere? This is likely to come up in a substantive evaluation review of that Texas statute. So I hold some optimism up on that. I'm Rachel Maddow, the one who revealed it nationally on media, and you gotta give her credit for being perspicacious. And you gotta give Lawrence Tribe credit for handling the case first place and renewing his comments about it now. So, but the answer is, we're in terrible shape on Roe v. Wade because you know what the Supreme Court wants to do. They still hold the sixth to three majority, and they're, you know, they're, or even a five to four, you know, take Roberts out. So we have a problem with Roe v. Wade, and it's the top of the iceberg in terms of the Supreme Court's ability to muck things up. They've been mucking things up for a while, and there's no surprise here, and they'll do it again and again. So if you look at the dysfunctional elements, you know, of our government, you get Congress essentially dysfunctional, and you know, talk about making bets Winston, I'd like to make you a side bet on whether infrastructure ever gets through, on whether voting rights ever get through, on whether immigration reform, gun control, post office, you name it, ever gets through. All of Biden's agenda is somehow stuck and it shows. So bottom line is Congress is, you know, also ineffectual. The executive is made ineffectual by the filibuster and other considerations and the fact that he doesn't hold a real healthy majority. So where are we? Do we have any branch of government, you know, left? And this is all in the face of the election of 2022. Okay, thank you, Jay. Hey, Winston, I'm gonna stay on the same question. You know, there's, like I said, there's all sorts of angles to attack this new law, but I think the biggest, the most permanent one would be for Joe Biden to look at the possibility of expanding the number of seats on the bench of the Supreme Court. Does this Texas law give new life to those discussions that took place just before the election? Well, it seems to be a sort of make your own rules, make your own constitution time in America now. So I suppose he could, but he's not going to. The country's so divided, so fractured. So, and you're right, Jay. I think the, you know, an abortion, when you talk about Roevers' way, I mean, from all I can understand, the court seemed to have got ahead of itself when the original ruling was made years ago. And the public has been divided about it, although majorities are in, you know, in favor of a woman's right to have an abortion. There has been always a significant minority that has said otherwise. But if you really break it down, you know, there's, and look at it, there's some, a lot of nuances in there, but this one in Texas, where I think even the most die-hard folks are, I won't say that, but most people, even if they're against almost all abortion, they would have some cut out for rape, incest, and the life of a woman. You would think that that would have made it in there just as a pro forma thing. I think the Supreme Court not taking this up, you know, they don't have an army. They don't have anything except the goodwill of the public and that the public trusts them to make the right decisions and to step in and say, hey, you know, we can't really be having this vigilante justice because what's next is California. You're gonna propose a law that we have to, you have to give up all your guns and imagine something like that. I mean, what other rights might be infringed on here? So there's a lot that's at stake here in this. It's a complicated issue. It's a very emotional and passionate issue for most people that have an opinion on it. But, you know, the solid majorities of Americans do believe that a woman has a right to control her body and have an abortion. And that may vary as to within means, but like I said, there's a big portion who have never gone along with Roe vs. Wade. And I think that that, especially in these states, has always been of a high appeal. So this is how this thing flew through so easily. And it's really amazing in this day, but as I predicted a year ago, Roe vs. Wade is out the window. It's going. So at this point, it's gonna be how do the states adjust? How do we adjust as a nation? How do we prevent this sort of absence of rule of law as we understand it from taking hold? But my prediction would be that you're going to end up with patch quilt of different abortion laws across the nation that are sort of reflective of the communities in which they take place. Now you have a state of Texas where you have how many tens of millions of people living there that obviously this reflect half of those folks, but hey, they got through the voting rights, evisceration law, they got through gun control. There is no more gun control in Texas. You can go off the street and buy a gun without any background check now. The laws that are being pushed through, like you said, what branch of government is functioning? I don't know. We have a great nation capable of doing great things, but right now it looks like the house is on fire. Let me follow up on something. Number, I'm gonna give you three points and I'm starting to do it and I hope I don't confuse you on this. But isn't it one, just as an observation, isn't it interesting that as of yesterday, Mexico just decriminalized abortion? Number one. So how convenient would that be for someone just to cross the border and obtain an abortion in Mexico? What does this do? I mean, if other states replicate the exact law that Texas just asked and now is implemented, particularly regarding the rape and incest provision of this new law, what does that say to the GOP move forward for the 22 election? I mean, isn't this so extreme and so onerous and torturous to women that even women who supported reversing Roe v. Wade but having the rape provision in it, that's even a bridge too far for those women. What does this say, has the GOP, if they replicate all these in all of the red states, have they put themselves in a corner and basically sealed their fate for the 2022 election? Winston. You know, I think even polls inside of die hard, I would call it formerly known as Republicans or those that identify as Republican, women do support those basic protections, even if they're generally anti-abortion. So I think you've got these Republican governors out there that are just trying harder to be Trump than Trump, whether it's in Florida or Texas or Kristi Nome, whoever's just trying to make a stab at the future, they may very well come back and see, you see that DeSantis' performance in Florida, he's underwater there. I think Abbott is the same way that they've realized that this may be too far, not just this, it's everything, it's everything. This is just sort of just sprung upon us, but there's a lot more coming down the pike and it's just something that we gotta see. Jay, we'll go to you to the same question, has the GOP painted themselves in a corner and the other red states copy word for word this law, will they paint themselves in a corner for the 2022 election? No, to answer, no. No. There's a lot of time left, there's a lot of issues yet, there's a lot of Republican wins happening right now. I don't think so, but I do have some thoughts based on discussion so far and that's this. There seems to be chaos, countries and chaos, I think you'll agree. And it's more that way every day. And you say, is this the Republican strategy to create chaos? What kind of a strategy is that? It's stupid, but there is one person who benefits by this. There is one person who we know does have a strategy of chaos and that's Vladimir Putin. If you guys watched 60 Minutes Last Sunday, they did a segment, I think it was something they did before about retired KGB officers living in this country who described the ascendancy of the internet research agency and Vladimir Putin's early days and current days on how you create chaos and how you divide people. And one of the most chilling points of that segment was a set of competing demonstrations in a southern city, I think it might have been Atlanta, now, now over something that you really can't get too excited about. It was masks, I think, maybe vaccines, I think it was masks. And one side of the street, these people were carrying signs and shaking their fists. They were vibrating with anger. They were spitting anger. The other side of the street, the same thing. These people were so incredibly angry over an issue which was really not that emotional. Okay? Okay, so then come to find our intelligence agencies reported that both sides of the street were fomented by the intelligence research agency that sent out social media creating each of the demonstrations and fomenting all of that anger and hatred. And so you can take a point of, that's the style of it. You can take a point of vulnerability and you can work that point in this country. And there were a lot of people who go along with it and they fall on one side or the other. Vladimir Putin is doing that for a long time. And certainly one of the biggest points is Roe v. Wade. But if he could do it with masks, you know, last week in Atlanta, then he easily could do it with a religious type division, Roe v. Wade. So I think Roe v. Wade is dead, but I think the divisiveness is just happening. And I think we have to watch everything in that context. It's not something that just happened. Do our security agencies have a obligation to let us know that so that the media can report on it and so that we not fall on those traps? They did, it did, but maybe not enough. You know, it was this whole priorities thing. What is the media going to report about now? So during Afghanistan, everything else is forced off the stage. The only oxygen goes to Afghanistan. And, you know, then there'll be COVID one week. It's like this one new story a week that is, you know, prevails and it's very hard to let the intelligence guys in and have them explain the realities. And bottom line too is that the, we have a generation of quote American citizens and the quote who were not educated and don't care to be educated. They're looking at social media. They're not getting enough information and the right information. They've been separated from the right information. So what we have is Vladimir Putin running our sensibilities, running these divisive things. And the country is in chaos and he can turn it any way he wants and he has done that in other countries in the past. So I think this is something that the people and us guys here on, you know, what now America should look at. Okay. Thank you, Jay. Hey, switching gears. Winston, President Biden went to the states of New Jersey and New York yesterday and he spoke at length about the damage that the flooding that has occurred. And I think quite well he tied it into two things. One was that the reality of climate change is here and now and we may be past the point of no return on some of these storms that we're going to experience year after year. But also he, I thought he did a fairly good job of tying that into the 3.5 or excuse me, the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and stating, you know, the build back better concept. Did you notice that? And two is, was he effective? And will he, did he hit the mark on those points? Well, you know, the oxygens being sucked out of the room for Joe Biden right now. He, it doesn't matter which way he turns. It just gets worse all around him. And he's a victim of circumstance in all of this. He's not causing any of this. He didn't cause climate change. He's not, he's like the West is on fire. The East is flooding. You know, the South is flooded. You've got, you know, the Texas just every, every which way you, you've got COVID absolutely crazy. Even to the point we're here in Hawaii where the governor signed an order and Idaho, they moved to crisis care or what do they call it? Where there's, there's Rationing, they're rationing here. I would rationing is a euphemism. They're coming in and they're saying, okay, you go to the left and you go to the right. And basically that's what they're, they're having to do because there's one nurse for six ICU patients. You know, I can tell you right now that they're not performing CPR, you know, cold blue. They're just not doing it. It's dangerous for the staff and they don't have a staff. Oh, and wherever Joe, infrastructure, Jay, when you were talking, what the rattling off those things, voting rights infrastructure, you might as well have been speaking Greek honestly because the country is just so on fire. You don't know which way to turn. You just want to grab the kids and the pets and the birth certificates and get out of the house. But you know, where are you going to go? It doesn't matter. And it is, and all of it is like the bellows on social media and media itself. It's like a bellows on every single issue. So that they're, even if you agree on, on climate change, what you're not going to agree on gun rights or abortion or an infrastructure bill, people don't even know what that means. Joe Manchin, I was reading the other day, why is he hanging this up? There was an article that says something that he has profited out of the coal industry. So again, maybe we need to just say, if you just off to the side of infrastructure, literally a golden toilet for everybody in West Virginia. As a nation, we need to just completely buy every person in West Virginia, a nice house, give them a subsidy so that he can vote the way that he needs to vote. If he's not voting in the interest of, if there's any self-interest there that he has that is preventing him from doing that. And Kirsten's system from, I don't know what, what she's thinking either, but we desperately need so many of these things. If the United States doesn't lead on climate change as we're moving into, you know, this meeting that's happening, I think it's in Scotland coming up here. The rest of the world's just gonna say, what are you even talking about? You can't get it together in your country and it's on fire, it's drowning and you can't even spend a dime on this. You're not even making the right noises. So, you know, we need to regain that. We need to regain our position to world leadership. I thought there was an interesting comic in the, not comic editorial cartoon where they had the US leaving Afghanistan and on one side was Taiwan, on the other side was South Korea and they were both like sweating bullets, right? And I think the same could be said of Ukraine or whatnot. So it may not just be the Russians, there may be others that are very strong vested interest in history divided. But on the bright side of things, as Kennedy Fair pointed yesterday. I'm leaning forward. I'm leaning forward because I wanna hear this very carefully, great D-2. There's a silver lining to it all day. And you know, it's so depressing. I don't know, this week is like hard, it's hard. You know, our optimist by the name of Winston Welch has left the building. I don't know where he went, but he'll be back. I know for a fact, he'll be back. Thank you, Winston. I gotta, I'm gonna go to Jay with the exact same question. Jay, to Winston's point, is climate change pretty much off the table? No one cares, it's being drowned out by all the other calamities that are taking place in this country. Does Biden get some traction in Scotland as he tries to address on a worldwide basis, the reduction of carbon in our atmosphere and try to do something about global warming, climate change, what do you think? The answer is yes. Can you throw me a lifeline here? Can you help me out here and expand that answer? Just a wee bit. The answer is yes, it's off the table. There are so many raw meat stories and social media tweets that come through that take all the oxygen out of everything and climate change can wait. I mean, that's been the perception of the scientific community, as you know from our movie that we made recently, that's how they feel about it and they're right. Climate change is the last thing anybody thinks about. Let me throw out a statistic. It's estimated that one third of all Americans have been adversely impacted by some kind of disaster event that directly correlates to our warming planet. Doesn't that make, doesn't that change things? If you've been personally affected? You know, the funny thing is, if you sit there and you watch it and you read about it, it's just hard to connect the dots. It's hard to bring that all together and say, hey, this is climate change and here's the action we need to take right now. It just doesn't come down that way. So here's a wildfire, here's a flood, here's a drought, here's a storm and on and on. But the public conversation does not seem to bring those points together into a need for governmental action. So I think the average person is just an observer, a wallflower, watching all of this, hey, it didn't happen in my neighborhood, I don't shop here, you know? This is a problem. But it is happening in their neighborhood. It is happening there. That was for some of them, some of them, not all of them. There's a lot of people in this country that the wildfires haven't reached, they don't care. So I mean, as it gets worse, Tim, I would say my answer will change. As the wildfire is spreading, as the droughts and the floods and the storms have more of an effect, people will be more conscious of it. But their first response is to respond. Their first response is to get the water out of the street in front of their house, to rebuild their house, to get power and water and sewage and have their community start up again. They're not thinking about global issues. They're thinking about, when will the tap work again? So, and that's the process that happens. That's the process that's happening now. And that's not the process that's happening in Congress. If you thought that somebody out there was listening to Biden in Congress or the Supreme Court or the state legislators, legislators, stop thinking that. They're really not doing much at all. And I think that means that the species in general is failing as against the most existential threat of all of them. Okay. I've just said I'm gonna change the name of this show. What now America to what now America hyphen, nothing. All right, Winston, we run out of time. Your last thoughts and comments about what's happened this week. And you feel free to talk about any of the calamities that we've touched upon here on the show today. Thoughts and comments, please. So basically, if you're watching this show right now, I just want you to know you are inside of a dream. You did take the blue pill. You didn't take the red pill. You will wake up from this at some time and you realize it was a bad dream. Sadly, for those of you who did, who took the red pill, it's not a dream. It's reality. It doesn't matter which way you point. At this point, we can't think about all, we can't think about all the big things, but you're gonna get overwhelmed and swamp yourself. Do what you can do. What you can do is wear your mask, get vaccinated. You can talk to your neighbor who isn't vaccinated on a human level. You can volunteer at your food bank. You can plant a tree. You can do what you can do. We all had this one right here if you have a certain age, right? You have a special mark there, Tim. The youngins don't have it. You know why? Because it worked. That's why the youngins don't have it. Explain it because you've implied something that they may not be aware of. Explain your answer there. We have this of a certain age. If you have a certain age, you got a smallpox mark. And as the comic said, mommy, what's that? She says, why don't I have one? She said, because it worked. Because we got a vaccine years ago. We're dealing with, as Jay was saying, who do we trust? We're dealing with the basic fundamental distrust of all levels of government, from the mayor to the governor, to the Congress, to the courts, to the president, to scientists. What's true? What's not true? It's just a really hard time now. Kind yourself. Be kind to everybody else. Start where you are. That's my optimistic point, because that's the thing you can really, can't control right now. It's just that. And even then, turn off the TV. This is the last TV you get for the week until you come back again for what's next, America hyphen. Nothing. I knew it would only be minutes before he returned. And that optimist within Winston Welch is back. Thank goodness. Thank you, Winston. Appreciate it, Jay. You get to wrap it up. You get the last word. You know, false suit. Be optimistic. Say something optimistic, please. And suppose I refuse. You know, that's part of the show, you're right. I never left the building. When I was a small child, my mother said to me, be thankful that you were born in America. This is the greatest country. And I have harbored that thought. I harbored it through all of my schooling, through law school, through the time I was, certainly the time I was in the service, but I no longer feel that way. And this is not the greatest country on earth. This country has lost ground. Let me say also that, you know, when you live in a world of seven billion people or a country of 330 million, that's very complex. It's a complex society. And in our lifetimes, it has become all the more complex with technology and telecommunications. And, you know, my God was surrounded with complexities and they include social complexities and they include social vulnerabilities. So if you wanted to, you know, look at the fragility of it, it's fragile. It's fragile all over the place. And Putin has a, what amounts to a historically brilliant plan of dividing us. So I think he's found the fragility. He is dividing us. And I don't know if Humpty can ever be put back together again. But right now, Humpty is falling off that wall. All right. You know, I suppose it's up to me at this point to leave our audience with an optimistic message. And that message is the following. What Now America will be back next Wednesday at 11 o'clock? And they, and guaranteed it will have J-Fy Dadell and Winston Welsh to join us. I'd like to thank you both very much for attending the show and adding to the conversation as bleak and dark as it was, but it's what it is. So I'd like to thank you. Join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock for What Now America. I'm Tim Appichell, your host. And until then, a little while.