GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, June 4, 2019

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] in the news.

[0:00:07 Speaker 1] Howdy. I’m Professor Shaw,

[0:00:08 Speaker 0] and I’m Professor McDaniel. Welcome to in the news for introduction to American Government

[0:00:12 Speaker 1] Week number one. Right. Alright. So I think we’ve got five of these that we’re going to fire up throughout the course of the session. Uh, this is our initial foray into this territory. So hopefully you guys air excited about the course? I know we are. Ah, a couple things we want to mention at the outset to surveys on the same page. First of all, and this is our default response to almost anything you guys Alaska’s over the course of the semester. When it comes to logistics or kind of mechanics of the course, please refer to the syllabus. So when it comes to your assignments due dates, evaluations and materials, office hours, consult the syllabus. If, after reading the syllabus, you have questions, feel free to email Professor McDaniel or myself or the t A s. We have to ta is associated with the course, and they’re crackerjack, so Ah, we should be able to communicate any kind of information. That is not clear. A soon as you send us an email. Little bit of caveat here. Please don’t use canvas to email us the canvas communication systems. A little kind of hinky. Anyway, um, and the emails in particular are difficult. Sometimes you hit reply. It doesn’t go to the correct address Where you guys don’t check the canvas box. Just don’t just email us directly or u t mail addresses to other things real briefly, with respect to housekeeping, please, we encourage if you haven’t already signed up for Proctor, you with the really nice things about this course, is that you can basically access it anywhere. The flip side to that is when it comes to the evaluations we have to use Proctor, you we don’t have to, but it is easily the most convenient way to make sure that everybody can take the exam where they happen to be. So we’re using Proctor. You police sign up for Proctor, you and then finally, if any of you require SST accommodations, please contact us. The t A’s as soon as possible so we can set something up for you. All right, so with that, I think that’s kind of the gamut here. Yes. All right. So we’re gonna get right into the substance. We use these in the news segments, as it’s described in the syllabus, to talk about what’s going on currently in American politics or sometimes world politics, and hopefully to connect what’s in the news today with what you guys were reading, what you guys were reading and listening to in viewing in our modules in our lecture assignments. So this is in the news Number one. We’re gonna be Ah, you know, doing this while you guys air reading information, listening to information, viewing information on the Constitution, federalism. You know, the relationship between Congress and the presidency and how the framers kind of set this bizarre experiment we call American government out. So we’re not going to talk about a few things that occurred in the news this week, but to try to bring them directly back to some of the core concepts that we’re exploring in the lecture material. So with that, we’re gonna have three big topics today. We’re going to talk about the President and Congress, Donald Trump in the Congress and some things that are going on right now, we’re gonna talk about trade wars, tariffs and regulating tech briefly again with the an eye towards some of these institutional relationships in American government. And then finally, we’re going to talk a little bit about some of the abortion controversy. So we’re not going. We want to make sure for those of you, this is one of those topics that could warrant a trigger warning. We’re not going to you get into the details of abortions, Certainly. But we are going to talk about kind of the law with respect to abortion and the relationship between the Supreme Court and the Congress and the States and the federal government. So that would be the last topic. We’re gonna hit all three. And with that, let me toss it to Fester McDaniel. Now you have some thoughts on the Congress and the President.

[0:04:01 Speaker 0] All right? Yes. So I guess we have good news and kind of bad news will be started with good news. One of things that’s important to note is that while President Trump has had some on adversarial relationship of Congress, even when the Republicans had control of both the House and Senate, it’s kind of intensified now that the Democrats have control of the House that they were able to pass the natural disaster bill, and so this is something that’s been delayed by quite a bit. But this will provide resources to Puerto Rico. Also states areas affected by hurricanes on the fall of 2018 but also to the Midwestern states in the plain states that have been affected by by flooding. So this is a sign of some success in terms of the president being able to work with Congress. You could argue that in regards to relief of Puerto Rico, it took too long. But this is a sign of success, and some action being taken, But we do have are some, uh, we do have some problems in particular. We find that President Trump has had a hard time working with Congress. He had a hard time working with Congress even when the Republicans were in control of the House and the Senate. But now the Democrats are in control. It’s of the house. They are kind of ramping up. Ah, lot of kind of animosity or antagonism towards President Trump. So you have the various investigations. You can look at the various hearings they’ve had with members of his of his cabinet, and so This is really increasing eyes, really increasing some level of antagonism between him and the House. The Senate, not so much, but the House of Representatives has really been using their power to hold hearings to bring in question to bring many of the tactics of President Trump as well as members of his administration under question. So you can think of the the interview with with Secretary of Education, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. You think of Secretary of Education Betsy two bosses testimonies. You can think of the number of testimonies regarding the mule report. So what we have here is, ah, problem where Congress, or at least the House representatives, is been someone antagonistic toward the president. The president vice versa, and it’s going to be difficult to see if anything gets through S O, much like we saw a kind of in the past couple years of Obama’s administration, where he and the House, particularly the House representatives on something with Senate, were kind of antagonistic with each other, using the same thing going on with President Trump within his first term on. So why was Rocky when Republicans had control? It’s even worse now that Democrats have controlled the House and so would be interested to see what comes forward specifically with increased increased costs. Were impeachment with increased costs for for investigations. Ah, and basically a kind of really openly questioning the ethics of the president, but also whether not he’s been engaging in certain legal activities. One thing Congress is trying to do, at least the houses try to do is sued to stop certain levels of funding going towards the border wall. A judge struck down that suit just the other day, and so there are a lot of things going on where you’re seeing, really the two branches, not not working together. And again, What’s important to note is we’re deal with Congress dealing with House and the Senate, and some of the Senate may be on your side for certain things. So that’s why he’s going to get judicial confirmations. That’s been very helpful for him. The House, when he wants to get certain bills through what’s gonna budget through, he has to be able to work with the house, and the house has been antagonistic towards him. So it’s gonna be interesting to see how this takes shape. Given that, you know, you have really these increased calls for impeachment, these increased costs, um, or investigations. And so you should expect an increasing antagonistic relationship between President Trump and specifically the House. It has not boiled over to the Senate. The Senate, for the most part, has worked well with President Trump. But as long as the Democrats control the House, you should expect an antagonistic relationship.

[0:08:18 Speaker 1] Well, let’s see. I want Oh, make a couple points, uh, reference to this. So the big picture question is, you know, the current relationship between the president of the United States and the Congress. But, you know, you all are reading about constitutional design and checks and balances, So a couple of things that are relevant here it is. The case is Professor McDaniel mentioned that legislation has been passed in the last. Not only you know, when President Trump had a Republican House and Senate, but since he’s had a Democratic house, you know, stuff does get done. And you know, we have a professor here. Alison Craig, who studies to Congress, actually worked in Congress, is a staff person for a long time, and she was having conversation with us, and she

[0:09:02 Speaker 0] said, Basically, there’s a

[0:09:02 Speaker 1] lot of stuff that gets done. You know, we focus on areas where there is an impasse or their problems, but so you guys were sitting out there kind of. I think you read the headlines and you wonder, Gosh, I mean, does the federal government work at all? Well, there is some evidence that they do pass pieces of legislation. We just tend to emphasize those areas where there’s most the most amount of conflict. Okay, so that’s sort of 0.1. But the second point I would raise is that there is a distinction here between institutional tension and partisan tension. Any Congress is going to have some problems with the president because there’s always a question about who has the most power who ought to be acting under certain circumstances. We’ll talk about this a little bit when we talk about economic policy in a few minutes, right? So even if you have a Republican Congress and a Republican president or Democratic congressman, Democratic president, they don’t always see eye to eye because the president wants to do certain things in the Congress, wants to do certain things, so that’s an institutional tension. There’s also a partisan tension layered on top of that right now. So you know, one thing you notice in the current situation is that because the Democrats controlled the House, they not only want to do certain things because you know they’re members of the House and think they ought to be in charge of certain aspects of public policy. But they also a very different idea in partisan and ideological terms than the president. So there is a partisan tension Democrat Republican, on top of the institutional tension. And But I should specify. Of course, what you have now is a situation of a divided government. Any time that one party controls, I should say, Let’s put it the let’s put in the negative sense when mawr that when one party doesn’t control all three elements the two chambers of the House, House and Senate to chambers of Congress and the presidency, unless you’re three for three, unless your party controls the presidency, the House and the Senate, that’s unified government. But if that’s not the case, it’s divided government. So right now, Republicans control the presidency in the Senate, not the house. The Democrats control the house. By definition, that’s divided government. So any time you’re not three for three, you have divided government. It is the case. That stuff gets done when they’re under conditions of divided government. But it does seem to be a little tougher. So I wanted to say, you know, we talked about a couple of elements of this, but I want to say, if you think specifically about, um, the tension rising, possibly to the point of impeachment. And we’re reading the Constitution right now. And we’re considering the debates that took place in Philadelphia, the constitutional convention about how to structure American government And one thing, All right, so I’m in the minority on this ball. Lay this out there for you Right now. We’re talking about the possible that the House of Representatives would impeach President Trump. I actually think this is something if you if you go back and you look at, um uh the debates that occurred in Philadelphia, the Constitutional Convention, it’s pretty clear that the framers of the Constitution thought impeachment wouldn’t be that unusual, that it was simply a power that Congress could wield to rein in the president. Now, impeachment, by the way, just mechanically, the House of Representatives has the power to impeach the president. That simply means that they refer the president’s case to the Senate. The Senate, by constitutional definition, gets to vote on whether to remove the president from office. So if the House votes to impeach, the case goes to the Senate and the Senate, with the chief justice of the Supreme Court presiding over the Senate votes whether to remove the president from office. So it’s a two step. It’s pretty cool in Texas right now. As I said, I’m in the minority, which is I’m I don’t think that impeachment and out What are the grounds for impeachment? Basically, if you read the text, the Constitution, it says high crimes and misdemeanors. That’s a specific phrase. What are high crimes and misdemeanors? Famous phrase from Gerald Ford. When Gerald Ford was a member of the House back in the early seventies, Gerald Ford said, Whatever the House of Representatives says it is, it’s so right now. You have this investigation. Have this concluded investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign. Robert Mueller basically said, Well, you know, there’s not enough evidence to necessarily recommend prosecution. He also said the Justice Department doesn’t provide grounds for prosecution of a sitting president, which is, by the way, is an interesting question about whether you can indict a sitting president will set that aside. But Mueller basically threw it into the lap of the Department of Justice, and the Department of Justice said, You know, we’re not gonna move forward with this. You know, it doesn’t seem to be strong evidence, right? That’s what they did. But the House of Representatives can take any information from the Moeller report or any other source of information that they want. And they could, if they so choose, vote to impeach President Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors. By their definition. As I said, I just don’t think impeachment is necessarily that big a deal. If this were to happen now, I understand practically it’s a big deal. But constitutionally, it’s not, You know, something that seems to be thought of as unusual or particularly damning for the president. How would this play out if the Democrats in the House decided to impeach the president now? The case would go to the Senate, and the Senate would almost certainly not vote to remove the president from office. Right? So this is what happened with Bill Clinton. The House of Representatives voted to impeach Bill Clinton. It went to the Senate in the Senate, said. It does not rise to a level that we think you should remove the president from office. So, you know, this has happened a couple times in American history. Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton. Richard Nixon, by the way, was not impeached. He resigned before the articles were voted on by the House of Representatives. So we’re kind of talking about these things right now. That’s a long winded. I want to talk about kind of the mechanics of impeachment, because I think that’s important right now. This is an issue that’s going to continue throughout this semester and probably deep into the summer. But it’s a great time to connect that information that news with what were, you know, reading and what we’re experiencing in the beginning of this class, right? So take a look at your Constitution, you know, look at the powers of the Congress, reference of the powers of the president this process by which Presidents Air impeached on and you ask yourself, What do you think of what’s going on right now? I mean, right now we’re considering whether possibly obstruction of justice, that is. Presidents Trump President Trump’s kind of lack of willingness to go along with the Moeller investigation, lack of willingness to have members of the administration testify in front of Congress. Is that obstruction of justice such that you think you would vote to impeach the president if you were sitting in the Congress? And if you know yes, what about in the Senate? If you were in the Senate, would you say, Yeah, this came to me. I think he should be removed of office because of the particular nature of what Trump has done right, all of those air, relevant questions. We want you guys thinking about those things because that’s what makes a class like this fun, right. Putting yourself in the position of power, thinking about what the’s actors air doing and why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know, beyond the question of whether you think it’s correct for Congress to impeach. If you were Nancy Pelosi shoes to speaker of the house, the Democratic leader of the House. Would you do it politically? Is it a smart political move prior to the 2020 Elections? Right, so all of this comes in, I’ll get out of this topic now. We got to other things we want to cover. We’re not moving very quickly right now. I want a glacial pace right now. Wolf speeded up to the next to. But this is what we want you to do this semester and with the in the news assignments. This is what we want you to consider, right? We’ll ask you questions about this, hopefully directly connecting some of the materials. You’re going over with what’s happening in the news today. So let’s let’s move away from this Congress president relationship. Right now. Let’s talk about tariffs, Trade wars. I want to see just a couple things about regulating tech that’s been in the news the last couple of days. So first McDaniel, your public policy guy, tell a lot about trade and tariffs.

[0:17:01 Speaker 0] So one of things. What I don’t understand tariffs is that it’s an additional fee that’s given to some type of imported items. So what you might find is that if you’re trying to protect a certain industry within the U. S. So this Sabbath, the automobile industry, If you want to protect US automobile industry, what you will do is assess an additional fee on vehicles that are brought in from overseas. This is a kind of a classic example of terrors on, so terrace arm, in many ways used to try to increase the price of a certain good with the belief being that the price goes up. The demand will go down on furthermore, that the demand for that product will go down and that the individual demand a product from that is a domestic product. So they will be less likely demanding international product more likely to demand a American American made American made product. Eso You can think about this in terms off avocados. All right, so you get once from Colorado, Colorado, California or you get once in Mexico. The idea is if there’s a tear, if the once in Mexico will be a little more expensive than one from California on. So this is how this all works in terms off affecting trade between between countries, sometimes because you want to protect domestic institutions. And so one the ways you protect domestic institutions is by increasing the price on products from outside. Eso, for instance, one of the reasons why there was a push for Hawaii to become a state is because they didn’t want to pay the tariff associate with sugar there is being made in Hawaii. So the Americans that were in Hawaii making sugar didn’t like the tariff. So they said, we make Hawaii s state, the tariff goes away. And so tariffs are really a way of trying to adjust the how trade takes place in the demand for certain products. And so you’re trying to increase demand for domestic products while decreasing demand for international products and one of the ways just by applying tariffs. As we knows price increases demand decreases. Now, President Trump is applied this because he is really made the argument that the U. S. Is in kind of upside down in some of the trade deals on specifically regards that China is a racer, tariffs, This is actually lead to increase price for like one thing, particular solar panels. And so you find that people were in the solar panel industry have actually been hurt by this, but also by farmers. And so there have been a couple bills passed the bailout farmers because of the tariffs that President Trump has passed, mainly because President Trump has passed these tariffs the countries and respond past other tariffs, which means that products that are being imported from the U. S. Are now costs more bits of the countries, which means there’s a decreased demand, which means people in the US have lost. I have lost buyers, so the producers have lost consumers. So you see President Trump and with multiple bills trying to bail out farmers who are beginning part of his base. But in doing these tariffs, he’s made How about one part of his base but heard another part of his base? Ah, and again this has created some level of complication. But get President Trump is maybe maybe argument that he’s going to try to create better trade deals, which makes us look better. I know he’s repackaged some A lot of people have argued that he’s basically done the same thing as others just renamed it, uh, and it’s not that different from what others had in the past. But right now, with threats of terrace with Mexico, there is a concern that you know you’re seeing bipartisan voices in Congress expressing concern that tariffs against Mexico will basically tear apart a new trade deal between can between Canada, US and Mexico. And again, it’s gonna be important to see how this plays out, how this affects the economy in the long run, because again it effects the products being brought in. So that means the price is gonna go up for what we purchase, but also because we create these tears. Other nations create tariffs, which means that there may be less consumption of U. S. Goods. So the the price to go up for the goods that we buy and there may be less buyers for the profit of products that we supply. And this becomes a tenuous situation where it could lead to some type of economic downfall. I’m not I don’t think that that’s actually gonna happen like very quick. All of a sudden, the economy is bottoms out running in a great Depression for 20 years, and I’m not saying that, But there are clear consequences for these decisions. So what President Trump saying is in the short term, this may be painful with long term. We benefit from it on. We want to see how that works out.

[0:21:50 Speaker 1] Yeah, I’ll be real brief on this. I think what I’d like to emphasize is you guys again or kind of looking at the Constitution and trying to get a sense of, you know, based on the original text and the original conversations that occurred in Philadelphia. The relative power is allocated to the different players within the federal government and then between the federal government. The state’s What’s interesting here, I think, is the president’s dominance over economic policy. If you read Article two, uh, it’s not clear why it is that, you know, the president would be in charge of, you know, sort of formulating tariff policy and getting care of policy, you know, passed into, um, he doesn’t get it passed into law. President just sort of sets these tariffs. Congress is sort of missing in action here, which I think is really interesting, right, Uh, and so if if you’re reading the Constitution and then you’re you’re looking at the headlines today and you’re seeing Trump conducts trade war with China Trump Conduct trade war with Mexico. You would be forgiven if you were to be at a loss to explain. How is it that the President actually kind of does all this? Isn’t this Congress is province? You notice we don’t conduct these policies via treaty with the advice and consent of the Senate. It seems to be kind of the president’s personal playground. I don’t mean that demeaning way. I just mean it’s interesting the way public policy has evolved over time. I would also point out that one of the reasons for establishing a stronger federal government back in the late 17 hundreds was to conduct trade into developing national economy instead of having 13 states that were loosely Confederate and negotiating their own deals with different countries. Yeah, it was thought they would be much smarter, much stronger, would facilitate. Much greater economic development of the United States was acting according to a single voice, and we still see that today. So, you know, Hamilton and others who advocated strongly for you know, the new constitution, Madison, John J. Etcetera. They did so primarily on the basis of economic reality. And this resonates today. You know the president conducting these things and trying to set the tone. I also want to point out just this isn’t so much a trade war thing, but in the news headlines, it’s last week where the notion that the Justice Department was going to be considering anti monopoly or antitrust legislation or action, I should say, not legislation against tech giants like Amazon and Apple. And this is a nothing I’ll just throw out there for you guys to consider. You look at the Constitution. It’s interesting to kind of ponder what constitutional, what legal justification. The United States government has to go after large businesses or large corporations for monopolistic practices, but I’m not suggesting they don’t have that right. That right has evolved over time, however, there were no businesses of anything like this kind of magnitude in 17 89. There were certainly no corporations back in the day. But over the course of US history, you know whether it’s the steel companies of the rail companies really had the railroads in particular. You had the development of these monopolies, and there’s been a kind of a long standing question about the extent to which the federal government can act to regulate, let alone to break up, but even to regulate these large corporations and businesses. So I’ll just put that out there and get that on your radar screen as well. Thinking about you know, what is the justification for the federal government to regulate the practices of these large corporations? Is it a good thing? Do you think it is constitutional? Okay.

[0:25:27 Speaker 0] And I think one of things is important. Note is, if you look at the late 19th century, the railroad railing, the railroad industry was a big thing. And I think, uh, you go further along. And Professor Charles, discussion of parties. He talks about the party coalitions. That would be a big thing about how do we regulate the railroads on? And I think for us to understand how we might deal with these big companies now, we may want to see how we handle the railroads more than 100 years ago on it’s important. Not that not only is the U. S concerned about this, but you’re seeing thing companies such as Google and others and European courts being found of violating antitrust laws. And so it may just be with the U. S. Is following the trend that other countries have followed in terms of these tech giants, with the idea that they may have sucked up so much, they’ve kind of cut out competition, and this may be a bad this many.

[0:26:25 Speaker 1] That’s the key, the notion that they stifle competition. When we say a monopoly, when we say a cartel, we’re talking about corporations. They’re so large that they completely dominate a sector of the economy and that that’s a bad thing. So back in the railroad days, you know what happened? Was there certain railroads that dominate everything and they just set the rates and they set them as high as they wanted on day were so dominant, so stifling on the economy that pressure on the federal government to act was extreme. Have we reached that point today with with Amazon with Apple, right? Are they are they so dominant that we think the federal government needs to step in? And if so, what is the constitutional basis for the government to

[0:27:05 Speaker 0] act A visa backs with Microsoft? Smith is Microsoft Explorer that I guess the browsers, certain things like that where they’ve kind of uh, set things up to take prevent any type of competition. And so it’s gonna be interesting to see how this takes a because this is the new big boom industry. Eso you think railroads think about the steel companies announced its that companies.

[0:27:29 Speaker 1] Well, then there’s even softer questions like social media. So you have a company like Facebook. Well, Facebook is so dominant in that area that there are people who think that the Federal Communications Commission ought to regulate content on Facebook. The way that the FCC regulates broadcast airwaves at the notion is their public airwaves. The federal government has the right to, you know, monitor them and to set certain terms in order to get a license to use those areas. Well, we don’t do that with social media, should we? Right? And that that would. It’s a very interesting question, at least, so let’s move to our third and final topic can get you guys out of here for the week. We’re gonna talk about abortion, and we’re going to talk about in particular. Recently, abortion has been in the news because several states have passed very restrictive laws on abortion, most notably Alabama Georgia has a restrictive law. At the other end of the spectrum you have. They had legislation pending in Virginia and in New York, and I said the other end of the spectrum because they, you know, sort of really codified, not simply woman’s right to choose, which is constitutionally established, but the right to carry and carry a pregnancy all the way to term, and then protecting the women’s right with her doctor to choose up to the moment of birth, sort of whether a pregnancy would be terminated. So that’s got a bit one into the specter and then the Alabama and Georgia laws, or at the other end, where a woman’s right to choose is effectively curtailed after conception. What are we doing here? And I thought, you know, I thought Roe v. Wade established this right now that that’s all really interesting public policy. Professor Daniel, I want talk about kind of, you know, that the federal government in the state government and the court’s role here. So, you know, we

[0:29:19 Speaker 0] thought this was important. Notice the Alabama law has been signed.

[0:29:22 Speaker 1] A Georgia law has not been so. It’s still pending, right, and we should point out, So let’s set the table here real briefly. Roe versus Wade, The landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion basically said that the states do not have the right to undercut a woman’s right to an abortion. That is a matter of that is constitutionally protected now. You might be saying, Well, where in the Constitution is that right? The court said. There is a implicit right to privacy embodied by the Constitution and the other rights in the Bill of Rights and beyond. So even though there’s no explicit right to privacy, say that way, there’s a right to free speech. You can’t have these other rights, the court said, Without the right to privacy, being assumed in that right to privacy protects a woman’s right to choose. That’s the basis. So because of that, you do not have any congressional legislation establishing a woman’s right to choose. And so the Congress hasn’t acted to protect us because they don’t have to. Those states, however, have essentially kind of nibbled away some pro some con on this notion of a woman’s right to choose, and that’s where we are right now. So you know the question then, or the question will pose to you all is how do you feel if if the court were to and it’s a more conservative court now, if the court were to overturn Roe v way to say that not the previous courts were wrong, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution. Therefore, now I sort of point out what would happen in that case. Well, what would happen is the legislatures would need to get involved both the national legislature of the Congress, which could immediately, if they so choose, passed a law protecting a woman’s right to choose Right. That’s one option the states could and almost certainly would get in on the act. That is, they would more forcefully determine the right of a woman Teoh to choose or to restrict a woman’s right to choose in different states. So, you know, if this tow us is fascinating from a political science point of view, because it involves questions of the court really back in the 19 7 with road decision stepping in and making a very, very important public policy decision right instead of, you know, the legislative bodies and the legislative body has kind of taken a back seat, although now the Legislature’s at the state level. Here’s where federalism comes in have begun to kind of really chip away at that. So what do we dio now? By the way, that the dynamic here is that the state legislatures, you could argue, have strategically passed very restrictive abortion laws in order to get sued in order to get the case to the Supreme Court in order to press the issue on the court. Possibly revisiting Rovers is wade, right? So, you know, you could argue that some of the legislation is actually, in fact designed to trigger the court to reconsider is now the court seems to be completely uninterested in taking this unless it absolutely has to. Uh, this is just kind of my insight. I don’t think John Roberts, you know, we talk about the court leaning conservative now with more Republican appointees and Democratic. On the other hand, there’s an institutional interest that the court has in not doing things that are very controversial, that are going to antagonize a large portion of the population and erode the kind of credibility of the court. So I don’t think the court really wants to take these sorts of cases, but they may have to

[0:32:50 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, if you think about the the, um, but Bush v. Gore decision, citizens united the decision regarding the A c A gay marriage

[0:33:02 Speaker 1] through the Affordable Care Act. Obama

[0:33:04 Speaker 0] here that the court and put in this situation than you saw individuals really take a very strong sense of how we have these unelected individuals making these decisions on. So you see the court being attacked when it’s not making decisions that were taken aside on a controversial decision. And I think what’s important to note is the court again has stayed away from certain things on the court did allow. There’s one state that required that after the abortion, the body must be buried or cremated. And so the court allowed that loud that to stay the court has kind of pushed back on on certain ones. But one thing’s will notice. If that Roe v. Wade is struck down, we should expect to basically have two Americas in regards to abortion rights. Now, some states have even try to go as far saying that if you get an abortion in another state and come back, you can be prosecuted. I think that will run into some problems. That again. That’s Tim to challenge the court. But it’s gonna be interesting to see how this plays out on Get. Abortion has been around for years hundreds of thousands of years, but as far as a hot button political issue is really taking shape, really kind of mid seventies pearly. But past 48 50 years, it’s really taken kind of a center stage in terms of understanding the cleavages in society, in the partisan cleavages. And

[0:34:27 Speaker 1] it’s become it’s become a linchpin issue as the religious right has has risen. That’s not to say it wasn’t controversial, was Professor McDaniel said. A lot of a lot of countries, for a lot of you know, contemporary history is a contemporary going back a couple 1000 years. It’s been sort of an accepted practice, but things have changed. That’s not to defend it or to attack. Its things have changed and you know, clearly, right now, restaurant Daniel and I made the case early in the class that Congress seems to be able to in some instances legislate right despite the partisan differences that air so much of play these days if Roe v. Wade were overturned, the ability of the federal Congress, the US Congress to act to step into that vacuum and pass a law of some sort, you know, defining abortion rights in the United States. That one. I’m not so sure how that works out or if they could. And if they don’t, if they were not able to, then you have this what we call patchwork quilt of laws existing, driven by state legislative decisions in politics. And you know, first, McDaniel says, it says it bluntly, right that you could have two Americas right where states, like they’re more conservative, like Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia would have one set of abortion laws in New York and California would have others. And that’s that’s a distinct possibility, which is another reason why I think the court is very sensitive to this and I think would be very reluctant to go full force after Roe v. Wade. But I’ve been wrong so many times on this stuff. I hesitate to predict anything you know, but any rate. So again we understand that for some sister a sensitive kind of conversation, but uh, it’s it’s important, right? That this is a classic government. And, you know, we think there gonna be a lot of issues not necessary that will discuss but a lot of issues that come up in the context of American politics. Where there are questions of federalism, there are questions of the appropriate branch of government setting out public policies that the court is that the president, the congressman, we want to emphasize those things. So when you guys take a look at what’s on the news feed, you know, you can have hopefully kind of a deeper appreciation for these issues, as opposed to, you know, just the particular information you get on a given day. Yes. Yeah. So with that, uh, are we good? Yeah. Great. All right. We got one in the can. We will see you next week on in the news

[0:36:57 Speaker 0] government. 3 10 in the news podcast is hosted by doctors Darren Shaw and Eric McDaniel and is produced by the liberal Arts TS Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin