Abortion in Trump's America
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It's Thursday, December 19th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What A Day, the show that is pleased to announce that America is finally free of the murder hornets, an extremely rare W over the insects for those of us in the human race. On today's show, Trump blows up a bill to fund the government, and it looks like we'll get to see that House Ethics Committee report on former Congressman Matt Gaetz after all. Let's get into it.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a case out of South Carolina. It's not directly about abortion, but it's also definitely about abortion. South Carolina is trying to defund Planned Parenthood, and it wants to do that by cutting off Medicaid funding for all of Planned Parenthood's health care services. Things like mammograms, birth control, STD testing, you know, health care. Some things to note here.

South Carolina has already banned most abortions, and Medicaid has for decades been barred from paying for them, except in cases of rape, incest, or when someone's life is at risk.

But this case is still about abortion. An attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative group representing South Carolina, said as much. In a statement, he said, quote, Pro-life states like South Carolina should be free to determine that Planned Parenthood and other entities that peddle abortion are not qualified to receive taxpayer funding through Medicaid. So here we are, again, with the very conservative Supreme Court set to hear another case that could affect how and where people get their reproductive care.

It's not going to stop. With President-elect Donald Trump heading back to the White House, he'll almost certainly appoint more federal judges that are sympathetic to these cases. And that will embolden conservative lawmakers to take more legal risks to limit access to reproductive care. For more on the state of abortion as we head into a second Trump term, I spoke with Mary Ziegler. She's a professor at UC Davis School of Law, and she's an expert on the history and politics of abortion in the U.S.,

Mary, welcome to Whataday. Thanks for having me. So let's start with this South Carolina case that aims to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. The case is actually about the kinds of non-abortion services Planned Parenthood provides. Can you tell us a little bit about what the justices will be deciding here? Yeah, so this is about Medicaid rules and whether Medicaid recipients have a right to choose their provider.

The backstory of this case begins a long time ago when Roe v. Wade was still around and states like South Carolina were primarily trying to defund Planned Parenthood. So the idea was to deny not just Planned Parenthood, but other organizations that combine services like family planning or breast cancer screening with abortion services to deny them Medicaid funding and family planning funding under state law.

And those clinics fired back saying Medicaid doesn't allow you to do that because the Medicaid statute says you have a right to pick your provider. And the lower courts, the circuit courts of appeal, which are the next step down from the U.S. Supreme Court, have disagreed about that in the years since. And that's what the Supreme Court is going to resolve. Also this week, Texas filed a lawsuit against a New York doctor who's been mailing abortion medication to people in states where it's banned.

What's the significance of the suit? Because it seems like an interstate commerce issue. Yeah, it's a big deal because it's a challenge to whether blue states and other states that have protections for reproductive rights can protect their own residents from either civil suits or prosecutions from out of state when they help patients from out of state. So Texas is going after a doctor who's mailing pills into Texas.

And claiming, you know, one, that she can be brought into Texas court, two, that Texas law, not New York law, should apply to the case. And three, that if Texas wins in Texas court, that New York should have to go after this doctor to actually get her to pay up. And this is the first real test we've seen of an interstate conflict of this kind come to fruition. How worried should we be about this case?

worried, right? And these are not real questions that have easy answers. There's a part of our constitution called the full faith and credit clause that says by and large, one state's courts have to honor judgments from another state's courts just for coordination and

reciprocity. It kind of makes sense, right? But there are exceptions to that principle for what are called penal judgments, right? So one state doesn't have to punish people on behalf of another state. And I think New York is going to say that's exactly what this is. This is not a prototypical lawsuit where somebody is mad at somebody else. This is the state of Texas trying to carry out policy. And that's not something that

we have to do under the full faith and credit clause, but that's going to go to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court, as you know, is very conservative and is in this case would be operating in a pretty big legal gray area. As we close out 2024, what does the legal landscape for abortion look like and how has it changed in the last year? It's still kind of a hodgepodge. There are protections on the books in a greater number of states. There were seven out of 10 states considering ballot initiatives.

This year that wrote reproductive rights into the Constitution, including a handful of places that had restricted or banned abortion altogether, like Missouri and Arizona. We've also seen since the start of 2024 other state bans come into effect.

for the first time in places like Florida. So it's kind of a mixed bag in terms of whether access has expanded or contracted. And of course, whatever's happening now may or may not change pretty profoundly when Donald Trump

takes office because if Trump does decide to either use executive power or if Congress decides to pass a ban, if there's some sort of national level restriction, that would take precedence over whatever states have done and whatever voters have done through direct democracy or at least

there will be a strong argument made in that vein. I think a lot of Democrats, I mean, I know I thought that abortion would be a major motivator for voters, especially women voters, that could help secure a win for Vice President Kamala Harris. I know losses have many fathers. It can happen. But why do you think that didn't work? I think, like you said, it was a combination of things. I think voters were

prioritizing, you know, inflation or the economy. But I think it was also a combination of the fact that Donald Trump convinced voters that he wasn't going to do anything to limit access to abortion or IVF or other services at the national level. And so I think voters felt they could split their votes, for example, between a ballot initiative for reproductive rights and Donald Trump.

And so the interesting question, I guess, is one, what Democrats do with that? Do they sort of look at this and say, well, abortion isn't a great issue for us, so we're going to go back to not talking about it? Do they wait and see what happens in the new year when there's going to be like an onslaught of weird lawsuits like that?

ones we're already seeing and see how voters react if their lives are impacted. And I think it's definitely too soon to say abortion wasn't the issue Kamala Harris thought it was. I don't know if Kamala Harris messaged it the way she needed to. And I think Donald Trump did a good job messaging it. I don't know if he can control reality in a way that will make this states' rights argument resonant for much longer.

Yeah, you know, talking about Trump, we've seen the effect his judicial picks have had on access to abortion. Hello, Dobbs. What could four more years of Trump mean?

Well, at a minimum, it's going to mean a lot more judges who are going to do a lot more things like Dobbs. There's no question that Trump is going to nominate people to the federal bench and probably to the U.S. Supreme Court who are at least as conservative as the current justices are on reproductive issues and probably more conservative. What else the Trump administration does is, I think, more ambiguous because

There are plans by anti-abortion groups for Trump, for example, to resurrect the Comstock Act, which is a 19th century obscenity law, and to kind of turn it into an abortion ban that it was never understood to be, to use it to restrict abortion.

The mailing not just of abortion pills, but abortion-related paraphernalia, that could happen under a Trump Justice Department. There are plans for FDA to, under a Trump administration, limit telehealth access to abortion pills, or even a secretary of HHS limiting access to

to telehealth without FDA going along. It's a little less clear how much of that is going to be a priority for Trump. We really won't know how much of his campaign messaging about states' rights is real until the moment arrives. So I think we won't really know if it's going to come just from the courts or the courts and the executive or even the courts, the executive and Congress until 2025 rolls around.

I think something that's been interesting to see is how as abortion restrictions have increased in a number of states, Americans are more likely to be pro-choice. Like that's what the polling shows. So where do you see the abortion debate heading in the next few years? Because clearly it's not going to go away.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a real risk that Republicans think they have a mandate on abortion rights that they don't really have. Because as much as people have been upset about Dobbs, they've also operated in a world where there were

ways around doves, particularly for people with resources, right? Like you could travel out of state, you could order pills online. Of course, those options were not available for people experiencing pregnancy complications in red states. They weren't available to people without resources. But for a lot of people, they just really weren't living in a reality that

that entirely felt like Roe was gone in the way it did for a lot of other people. And if that starts to change, I think the backlash will be much greater. There'll be many more people experiencing it. So I think the question is whether Republicans kind of read the room and don't push that far, and whether state-level Republicans who don't have to read the room in the same way because they have absolute political security have

don't care about throwing people in congressional races potentially under the bus by pursuing things that would be unpopular. Mary, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. That was my conversation with Mary Ziegler. She's a professor at UC Davis School of Law. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads.

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Go to rocketmoney.com slash whataday today. That's rocketmoney.com slash whataday. And now the news. Headlines. House Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made. House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt everyday Americans and

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed his disappointment in House Republicans after they torpedoed a spending bill to prevent a government shutdown. Why did they torpedo it? Because Trump says he hates it.

House Majority Leader Mike Johnson unveiled a bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government funded on Tuesday. And for a second, it looked like it was going to pass. But early Wednesday morning, Elon Musk threatened Congress, tweeting, quote, any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years.

His sentiments were echoed shortly thereafter by President-elect and soon-to-be poster-in-chief Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. They released a joint statement essentially calling for a government shutdown. Trump also wrote on Truth Social, quote, Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should and will be primaried. Congress has until Friday night to pass a funding package and avoid a shutdown. One bill that did pass Wednesday was the National Defense Authorization Act.

The defense funding bill passed despite the Democrats' disappointment with the inclusion of an amendment that takes away coverage for gender-affirming care for children of military members. The bill gives pay raises to junior enlisted service members and increases military spending to $895 billion. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said overall he's happy with the bill. Everyone knows this NDAA is not perfect.

but it still takes a strong stand against the Chinese Communist Party. These are things that I've pushed very hard for. It boosts the use of AI for our national defense, another thing I care a lot about, and expands tech innovation programs for communities across the country. At least Congress is passing something. In a stunning reversal, the House Ethics Committee voted to release its investigative report on former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.

The report details the committee's findings regarding Gates' alleged sexual misconduct, drug use, and other questionable behavior during his time in office. The panel initially voted to keep the report private in November, when Gates was still in the running to be president-elect Donald Trump's attorney general. But the ethics committee voted on the issue again behind closed doors earlier this month.

Gates responded to the news on Twitter. On Wednesday, he denied the claims made against him, saying, quote, House Republican colleagues also rushed to defend Gates on the Hill. Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee downplayed the report's significance on CNN. So you think this is revenge?

It's a revenge to her, and they're not winning because Matt's already got a new job, and he's doing well, and he's married to a beautiful woman. So it was wonderful, and I wish him well. He's married to a beautiful woman now, so it's okay. The report on Gates is expected to be released after this Congress adjourns this week. And a reminder, if you get up to alleged nonsense in your 30s, it still counts.

California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Wednesday to expedite the state's preparedness and response to bird flu. Newsom's emergency declaration follows the detection of bird flu in dairy cows in Southern California. The company there issued recalls in November after the virus was found in samples of its raw milk.

In related news, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday a person in Louisiana was hospitalized with a severe case of the H5N1 virus. However, this case was linked to a backyard flock, which means it was not transmitted by commercial poultry or dairy cows.

The CDC said it's, quote, the first instance of severe illness linked to the virus in the U.S. More than 60 human cases of bird flu have been reported in the U.S. since April, with over half in California. But the CDC says there has not been any person-to-person spread.

The story about hundreds of mystery drones, maybe, in the Northeast that nobody knows anything about just keeps getting weirder. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden addressed the phenomenon for the first time, telling reporters the drones are, quote, nothing nefarious, apparently. Also on Wednesday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have allowed local law enforcement to track the drones and give federal agencies the ability to address drone activity.

But in order to rush the bill through before Congress is off for the holidays, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer needed a unanimous vote. And Kentucky Republican Rand Paul objected, saying the bill infringed on civil liberties. Members of the House Intelligence Committee were given a closed-door briefing about the drones on Tuesday and quickly joined the White House in trying to reassure the public. At a Pentagon press briefing Wednesday, a reporter asked Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder why the House Intelligence briefing was classified.

I don't have the briefing in front of me, so I can't tell you specifically what aspects are classified or not. I can assure you, though, that, again, we are sharing as much information as we can based on what we know. Whatever is going on here seems super normal, and I, for one, will not be worrying about it at all. And that's the news.

One more thing. You know who Paris Hilton is. She's been a cultural icon since the early 2000s, with TV shows, fragrances, a music career, and even a catchphrase that was kind of unavoidable if you were watching TV in 2003. But she is also a survivor of an industry many people have never heard of, the so-called troubled teens industry.

Encompassing more than a thousand residential facilities, therapeutic boarding schools, and wilderness therapy programs with little to no oversight, the troubled teens industry, or TTI, is where thousands of kids are being sent every year, generally against their will. They include people living with severe mental illness, kids who may be acting out at school or at home, kids who happen to be LGBT and living in an unaccepting family, or kids like Paris, whose parents think they're partying too much.

Here's Paris talking to the New York Times about the day she was taken to one of these facilities. When I was 16 years old, two large men came into my room holding handcuffs and asked me if I wanted to go the easy way or the hard way. They took me to a place called a therapeutic boarding school. Hilton was sent to the Provo Canyon School in Provo, Utah for 11 months. There, she says she endured physical and sexual abuse from staff members and was placed in solitary confinement when the facility learned she wanted to run away.

She testified about her experiences before the House Ways and Means Committee in June of this year. These programs promised healing, growth, and support, but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely, or even look out a window for two years.

She wasn't alone. Since its beginnings in the early 1970s, the troubled teen industry has been rife with abuse and neglect. According to the New York Times, employees at these facilities receive minimal training, and there is markedly little oversight from state and federal authorities. According to the Government Accountability Office, 49 states reported in 2006 that they'd investigated allegations of abuse and neglect in these facilities.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's almost all the states. Hilton didn't speak out about her experiences for years. It wasn't until 2020, when she released a documentary about her life entitled This is Paris, that she decided to talk about the troubled teen industry. And she did more. She started lobbying members of Congress to push for more oversight of youth quote-unquote treatment centers. Starting in the early 2000s,

Starting in October 2021, she traveled to D.C. every six to ten months, meeting with a bipartisan list of lawmakers to talk about youth residential facilities and her own story. And on Wednesday, the House passed the Stop Institutionalized Child Abuse Act, which will require the creation of a federal workgroup on youth residential programs that will create recommendations to improve care at facilities like Provo Canyon. The bill passed the Senate last week and will head to President Biden's desk for signature.

In an interview with ABC News, Hilton said that the bill's passage was a milestone for her. I've never felt prouder in my life. This has been the most meaningful work of my life, and it's just been so emotional just to hear that our bill has passed. Congratulations, Paris Hilton. Helping vulnerable kids is actually incredibly hot.

Before we go, with the inauguration coming up, it's time to see how presidents peacefully transition power, and not by inciting an insurrection. On the newest subscriber-exclusive episode of Inside 2024, Dan Pfeiffer and Alyssa Mastromonaco break down the latest from President-elect Trump's transition committee and reflect on their experiences as new staffers in the 2008 Obama White House. To get access to this series, head to crooked.com slash friends now.

That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, answer my questions about the murder hornets, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just about how we actually know the murder hornets are gone, maybe they're hiding and plotting, always plotting, plotting for their eventual return for more murder, like me. Water Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and can someone just double check on the murder hornets for me?

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