The Darrell McClain show
Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one Planet; nobody's leaving so let’s reason together!! Darrell McClain is a Military veteran with an abnormal interest in politics, economics, religion, philosophy, science, and literature. He's the author of Faith and the Ballot: A Christian's Guide to Voting, Unity, and Witness in Divided Times. He was born and raised in Jacksonville FL, and went to Edward H white High School,l where he wrestled under Coach Jermy Smith and The Late Brian Gilbert. He was a team wrestling captain, District champion, and an NHSCA All-American in freestyle Wrestling. He received a wrestling scholarship from Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. After a short period, he decided he no longer wanted to cut weight, effectively ending his college wrestling journey. Darrell McClain is an Ordained Pastor under the Universal Life Church and is still in good standing. He's a Believer in The Doctrines of Grace, Also Known as Calvinism. He joined the United States Navy in 2008 and was A Master at Arms (military police officer) He was awarded several awards while on active duty, including an expeditionary combat medal, a Global War on Terror medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korean Defense Medal, and multiple Navy achievement medals. While In the Navy, he was also the assistant wrestling coach at Robert E Lee High School. He's a Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under 6th-degree black belt Gustavo Machado, Darrell Trains At Gustavo Machado Norfolk under the 4th-degree black belt, and Former Marine Professor Mark Sausser. He went to school for psychology at American Military University and for criminal justice at ECPI University.
The Darrell McClain show
The Big Beautiful Bill Blues
The Senate faces a critical juncture as Republicans scramble to salvage President Trump's signature tax legislation after a devastating parliamentary setback. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth McDowell has rejected a key provision that would have capped healthcare provider taxes, eliminating approximately $250 billion in planned Medicaid spending cuts meant to offset permanent corporate tax reductions.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune insists they have backup plans, but several Republican senators including Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Josh Hawley had already expressed grave concerns about the potential impact on rural hospitals. The deadline pressure intensifies as President Trump publicly demands lawmakers skip their July 4th recess to complete the legislation, though many senators remain skeptical about staying in Washington without a clear timeline.
Beyond domestic policy struggles, the episode delves into growing tensions between the Trump administration and media outlets over reporting on recent strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth and other officials have launched unusually personal attacks against reporters from both CNN and Fox News who questioned the administration's claims about completely "obliterating" Iran's nuclear capabilities.
The show also examines the fragile state of LGBTQ rights ten years after the landmark Obergefell decision legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Despite record public approval, calls from conservative states and Supreme Court justices to reconsider the ruling have advocates concerned about its future, though the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act provides some protection against potential reversals.
What emerges is a portrait of Washington's deep partisan divides and the complex interplay between political ambitions, parliamentary procedures, and constitutional rights that continues to shape America's most consequential policy debates. Subscribe now to stay informed about these critical developments and what they mean for our shared future.
Welcome to the Darrell McClain Show independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one plan and nobody's leaving, so let us reason together. You have the pleasure to be joining me on episode 461. The Republicans are scrambling to save the president's big, beautiful bill. Senate Republicans are scrambling to resurrect President Trump's bill, which stalled Thursday after parliamentarian Elizabeth McDowell rejected one of the biggest cost-cutting provisions. Now the chamber's referee ruled that the Senate's proposed cap on health care providers' taxes violated the Byrd rule, which governs what legislation can pass with a simple majority and avoid a filibuster under the budget reconciliation rules. The provision would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in federal Medicaid spending. The Senate Majority Leader, john Thune, told reporters his leadership team has contingency plans to keep the bill moving forward, even though the key piece may fail and may fall out of the bill. Quote we have contingency plan B, plan C, he said as he walked into the Republican lunch meeting. Losing the Senate's proposal to deeply cut on federal Medicaid payments means Republican leaders need to come up with hundreds of billions in new savings to pay for the cost of making several corporate tax cuts permanent. The surprise decision was announced Thursday as Republican senators scrambling for way to pass the legislation by the 4th of July deadline set by the president. Quote we have no idea what's going to happen here. We got to work on some kind of fix, said Senator Josh Hawley. Hopefully they'll fix while solving, while involving protecting rural hospitals. So the Senator Josh Haw was one of several GOP senators, including Susan Collins, lisa Murkowski, jerry Moran and Tom Tillis, who expressed strong concerns that capping health care provider taxes could push scores of rural hospitals across the country into bankruptcy.
Speaker 1:Senate Democrats estimate that the parliamentarian have rejected approximately $250 billion worth of spending cuts from the Republican bill, giving the GOP leaders a huge task in finding new ways to offset the cost of corporate tax cuts. Offsetting the cost of the corporate tax breaks beyond a 10-year budget window is a critical element of Thune's and Senate Finance Committee Chairmen's Mike Croteau strategy, because they want to make them permanent. I think the monetary implications are fairly significant, said a Senate Republican who requested anonymity to discuss the parliamentarian's impact on the reconciliation package, as how long the bombshell ruling would delay the centerpiece of Trump's legislative agenda. Kroppel cooped sometimes between now and next March. I'm joking.
Speaker 1:Senator John Kennedy said the parliamentarian's ruling against the key sentencing bill cut the bill is going to be a major problem for Senate conservatives unless GOP leaders can find another way to fit additional deficit reduction measures into the bill. Quote I don't anticipate now us voting on the motion to proceed tomorrow more as a spending reduction bill than an extended tax cuts bill are probably going to be screaming like they're part of a prison riot because this substantially reduces savings. He said we don't know if we can save the Medicaid portion, he said. He also questioned whether Republican lawmakers would stay in town over the Fourth of July recess if no certain timeline for voting legislation was prepared. I'm prepared to stay the whole week but as a practical matter, a lot of people are running for an election. A lot of people have plans. One of John's challenges is going to be keeping people here. He said of the people saying well, when you're ready, call me, I'm going home. Trump on Tuesday urged lawmakers to stay in Washington and skip the upcoming 4th of July recess to finish the bill. To my friends in the Senate lock yourself in a room If you must, don't go home and get the deal done this week. Now that's what the president posted on social media.
Speaker 1:Senator Ron Johnson, a member of the finance committee, called the parliamentarians ruling a big old grenade that could blow up the bill. Johnson wants the GOP leaders to go back to the drawing board and come up with alternative spending cuts. He is proposing leaving Social Security, medicaid and Medicare alone, focusing instead on other majority spending. That, he says, has swelled the annual federal budget by more than $400 billion a year. Crapo said his staff would try to cut and work it out if they keep the bill on track. This is a regular process. Now we have the guidance. We will have to react to it, he said.
Speaker 1:Some Republicans say the language and the provisions to cap health care provider taxes, which states use to increase their shares of federal Medicaid funding, can be reworked to pass the parliamentarians review. We're going to have to keep working on it. It's a scam. It's a scam the states are using not to have to put money into Medicaid. Senator Rick Scott said I'm focusing on getting the deal done Now.
Speaker 1:The Senate Budget Committee Chair, lindsey Graham, announced on Thursday that he is working with Thune and Kropot to find a pathway toward rewarding the provider's tax ruling from the parliamentarian. The provider tax is one of the biggest scams I've ever seen in Washington and I'm hopeful we can find a way that to find a way forward. That is bird compliment. He said To find a way forward. That is Byrd compliment. He said no-transcript. He called the house language better. The rural hospitals would like to a few small tweaks to that, he said.
Speaker 1:He said trump suggested in recent conversation that senate negotiations returned to the house to uh be passed medicaid language. Uh. Josh hawley said trump told him wednesday that he doesn't want to build it become too focused on cutting Medicaid quote. I think he wants it done. But he wants it done. Well, he does not want this to be a Medicaid cuts bill. He said that very clear to me. This is a tax cut bill, it's not a Medicaid cut bill. I think he's tired of hearing all about these Medicaid cuts, as I am. Josh Hawley said that's because there are too many Medicaid cuts in this bill.
Speaker 2:If a global company is paying its full-time workers so little that they need federal benefits like Medicaid or food stamps, that's not a living wage and that company should lose eligibility for tax incentives. The government shouldn't give big tax breaks to big companies and then have to pay again to keep their employees from going hungry. That's double dipping. It makes the taxpayer pay twice for corporate greed and it's got to stop. And while we're talking about employers and employees, I've heard some people cast union labor as a problem or a roadblock to progress. Those folks are dead wrong. Unions were invented because of corporate exploitation and every worker in America should have the right to join a union if they want. It is not by accident that we're back in an era of increased interest in unions. Now our unions need to become more nimble. They can't live in the past. But if you're a large corporation worried about unionization, I suggest you focus a bit more on taking care of your workers with good wages and good benefits.
Speaker 1:Parliamentarian was actually busy. The Senate parliamentarian rejected a Republican attempt to exempt a small number of religious schools, including Hillsdale College, where many graduates go to careers in conservative politics, from an income tax on college endowments. Now, the GOP bill would have subsequently raised the tax on the returns of the wealthy college endowments, but it exempted Hillsdale, the Christian liberal arts school in Michigan, which hired a team of lobbyists to avoid getting hit by the tax. So the parliamentarian again, elizabeth McDowell, had also ruled against a section of the bill that removes regulations pertaining to gun silencers and easily concealable firearms under the National Firearms Act. The provisions were tucked into a massive budget reconciliation package that Senate Majority Leader John Thune hopes to pass by the 4th of July.
Speaker 1:The loosening of restrictions on gun silencers, or suppressors as they are also known, is a top priority of the gun industry and many firearms enthusiasts. The GOP proposal passed by the House would eliminate a $200 tax stamp and exchange background checks required to own a suppressor. Quote. We have been successful in removing part of this bill that hurts families and workers over, and the Democrats are continuing to make the case against every provision in this big, beautiful portrayal of a bill that violates Senate rules, said Senator Jeff Merkley, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee. Republicans are actively attempting to rewrite the major section of this bill to advance their family lose and billionaires win agenda. To advance their family lose and billionaires win agenda. But Democrats are scrutinizing all changes to ensure the rules reconciliation are enforced. He added.
Speaker 1:Senator Chris Murphy, an outspoken proponent of gun control measures, including the expanded background checks for firearm purchases, said getting rid of restrictions on suppressors would be a bad idea. Silencers aren't illegal in this country. The law has worked very well for years and religious schools and language to create a precertification process for demonstrating the ability of the eligibility for the earned income tax. The provision would require individuals who claim the credit to obtain a certificate that their child is eligible claim the credit to obtain a certificate that their child is eligible. Mcdowell released her most recent rulings late Thursday hours after rejecting the Republican proposal on cap states use of the health care provider tax to increase the share of federal Medicaid funding. Senate Democrats say the parliamentarian has ruled against proposing the bill that would have cut federal programs by spending by $250 billion, forcing Republicans to scramble to rewrite major parts of President Trump's big, beautiful bill. Democratic senators said they were left with questions Thursday about what was largely viewed as a successful strike in Iran, even as many caution.
Speaker 3:The damage done to the country's nuclear program may fall short of the Trump administration's claims. Cia Director John Ratcliffe and other top intelligence officials briefed lawmakers for the first time about the Saturday strike, a meeting held as Trump administration officials have worked overtime to push their argument that the attacks left Iran's nuclear facilities being obliterated. The point is we do not know, said Senator Richard Blumenthal, democrat from Connecticut. Anybody who says we know with certainty is making it up because we have no final battle damage assessment. Certainly this mission was successful insofar as it extensively destroyed and perhaps severely damaged and set back the Iranian nuclear arms program, but how long and how much really remains to be determined by the intelligence community itself. He added. Reports emerged Tuesday about a preliminary assessment said the US strikes may have set the Iranian nuclear efforts back for a few months. The administration has pushed back forcefully at those reports, including at a Pentagon briefing earlier Thursday. Some Democrats criticized Trump's assessment that the plants were obliterated, which they widely viewed as overzealous, especially after seeing the latest information in the classified setting. I hope that is the final assessment, said Senator Mark Warner, democrat from Virginia, the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee. But if not, does that end up providing a false sense of comfort for the American people?
Speaker 3:Senator Kevin Cramer, republican from North Dakota, said all of the descriptions of the damage to the program were fitting. Everybody's got their own words Set back, obliterated, destroyed, greatly diminished. It is all of those things, I would say. I think all those are accurate. It is all of those things, I would say. I think all those are accurate, depending on how you use any one of those terms", kramer said. But pressed to select his own term, kramer paused. I would say that it is severely set back, and not just because the bunker busters were so effective at Fordow and the other sites that got hit by the missiles. And just to build a building like that would take probably a year. Just to get some scientists up and running, it would take a long time to reestablish from scratch.
Speaker 3:Senator Mark Kelly, democrat from Arizona, faulted Trump for his glowing assessment of the mission before the planes had even returned. The way this should work is the president and the secretary of defense should have waited until they had an assessment in their hands and then figure out what they wanna share publicly about that assessment. That is not what happened in this case? Kelly said the president said something. The secretary of defense repeated it before they had anything from the dial. I think that is pretty clear to people. I mean he basically made his own assessment based on very limited information. The airplanes were not even back in Missouri by the time he is doing his own personal battle damage assessment. Kelly noted obliterated is not a military term of art but said there was much success to see in the operation. Nobody got shot down. Every tomahawk seemed to hit its target. Every one of those GBU-57s hit the target. A lot of that stuff's underground. It is going to take a long time to figure out exactly what the condition of these facilities are. He said this probably might go back and forth based on information that we have, but I think what is really fair to say is there has been a lot of damage done to the Iranians' ability to enrich uranium, been a lot of damage done to the Iranians' ability to enrich uranium and that has set them back if they wanted to develop a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3:Members were briefed by Ratcliffe, joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Kane, secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after questions surrounded who would be the ones delivering the classified information to lawmakers grounded. Who would be the ones delivering the classified information to lawmakers? Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was initially slated to appear alongside Ratcliffe and Kaine on Tuesday but was eventually pulled. Amide reports that she has been sidelined by the White House from recent meetings on Iran and Israel. We had questions. No one asked why she was not there, said Senator Tim Kine, democrat from Virginia. That she was sidelined and not invited is something that everyone has thoughts about.
Speaker 3:According to Kine, all four administration figures briefed members during the meeting, with none necessarily taking the lead. The briefing also came ahead of a vote that is expected in short order on Kind's war powers resolution. The measure attempts to block Trump from taking additional military actions against the Iranian Sands a green light from Congress. Senate Republicans are expected to side with the president on the measure, especially after he pushed for the ongoing ceasefire between Iran and Israel. Senator Rand Paul, republican from Kentucky, is the most likely of any Senate GOP member to side with Kine, who has been hoping to get more Republicans on board with his fellow Democrats. Many lawmakers left the meeting with the expectation they would get additional briefings. We do not have a complete assessment yet of the impact of the strikes of last week. Senator Chris Coons, democrat from Connecticut, said and when we do? I think that will answer a lot of currently unanswered questions lot of currently unanswered questions.
Speaker 1:The Supreme Court ruled that Planned Parenthood can be cut off from Medicaid. In a ruling made alongside ideological lines, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Medicaid beneficiaries do not have the right to sue to obtain a care provider of their choice, paving the way for South Carolina to block Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds. The law says any individual insured through Medicaid may obtain care from any qualified and any willing provider. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority that Medicaid recipients do not have the right to sue to enforce that provision. Medicaid is prohibited from paying for almost all abortions, but state wants to cut government funding from other services Planned Parenthood provides. This suit, supported by the Trump administration, was brought by South Carolina. This suit, supported by the Trump administration, was brought by South Carolina. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster praised the ruling Thursday, saying Seven years ago we took a stand to protect the sanctity of life and defend South Carolina's authority and values, and today we are finally victorious. The ruling has implications for other states at a time when red states across the country are looking for ways to deprive Planned Parenthood of funding Nationally. The Trump administration is withholding federal family planning grants from nine Planned Parenthood affiliates Texas, arkansas and Missouri already blocked Planned Parenthood from seeing Medicaid patients, and the organization has said it expected many other Republican led states to do the same if the Supreme Court sided with South Carolina. Today, the Supreme Court once again sided with politicians who believe they know better than you, who want to block you from seeing your trusted health care provider and making your own health care decisions. Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement and the consequences are not theoretical In South Carolina are other states with hostile legislators. Patients need access to birth control, cancer screening, sti testing and treatment, and more Roughly 72 million low-income Americans receive health insurance through Medicaid, according to the most recent enrollment numbers, and more than 1.3 million South Carolinians, or 20% of the state, are enrolled in the program, according to health policy nonprofit KFF. As extremists in every branch, our governments are targeting Planned Parenthood and attempting to strip millions of Americans of care. They're health center providers. This is nothing more than a politically motivated green light to anti-abortion politics. Abortion politics, reproductive Freedom Caucus co -chairs Rep Diane DeGette and Ayanna Pressley said in a statement Trump's attack on CNN and Fox News as well underscores the effort to stifle questions and put the media on the back foot.
Speaker 1:Trump administration is is calling out reporters by names as it seeks to push its narrative about the united states strikes on iran, seeking to put the media on defense while stifling any talk about intelligence reports that fall short of saying tyran's nuclear capabilities were obliterated. The attacks are targeting a broad swath of press that includes specific reporters and cable news outlets as different from CNN to Fox News. The Defense Secretary, pete Hex, and a former Fox News personality himself, from the Pentagon podium Thursday, said Jennifer, you have been about the worst. As part of a broad attack on the media, he was singling out Jennifer Griffin, a respected defense reporter, who asked if the department was certain that all of Iran's highly enriched uranium was at the Fordow nuclear facility. Secretary Carolyn Leavitt, from her own podium later Thursday, singled out CNN reporter Nathisha Bertrand, saying she had written a lie from the intelligence community to seek a narrative she wanted to prove.
Speaker 1:The personal attacks are unusual and they underscore the administration's determination to put the media on defense and win a public relations air war over the success of the attacks on Iran. The administration is confident of its success because it had worked before and because of the general distrust of the media. These people are never going to lose any polling points attacking the media. We know that for sure. One national political reporter told the Hill on Thursday. But this is getting pretty personal and it feels like it's getting more intense each day.
Speaker 1:President Trump also called out Bertrand by name Wednesday, demanding that the network fire her for her reporting on the intelligence and referencing her previous reporting relating to Hunter Biden, russia's influence in 2016 election and the coronavirus pandemic. Cnn issued a forceful statement later defending Bertrand. Cnn's reporting made it clear that this is an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence. A spokesperson from the network said we have extensively covered President Trump's own deep skepticism about it. That could change with additional intelligence. A spokesperson from the network said we have extensively covered President Trump's own deep skepticism about it. However, we do not believe it is responsible reasonable to criticize CNN's reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest. The network's top political anchor, jake Tapper, called Trump's attack preposterous and said what the president was doing was going after shooting the messengers in a increasingly ugly way. The New York Times, another target of the administration's hour, also issued a statement Wednesday defending its reporting on a leaked memo and vowing to continue to report fully on the administration's decision-making, including his disputes with the defense intelligence agencies.
Speaker 1:Exit, a former colleague of Griffin. Suggested a personal beef during his press conference Thursday. Suggested a personal beef during his press conference Thursday Jennifer, you have been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally the Defense Secretary, terence Griffin. After she asked if he was completely confident all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fort O'Mountain where the strikes had taken place, griffin was quick to defend herself. In fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. She shot back at the secretary. So I take issue with that. Minutes later, britt Hume, one of the longest serving political analysts, chastised Pete Hexick on Fox News' air over the outburst. Her professionalism, her knowledge, her experience at the Pentagon is unmatched, hume said, and I had a still and still have a great regard for her. The attack on her was unfair.
Speaker 1:Trump and his allies have repeatedly sought to discredit the leaked intelligence, saying the Iranian nuclear program has been totally obliterated and vowing to investigate the intelligence that was leaked to media outlets. Levitt suggested that whoever leaked the intelligence to media outlets should be in jail, while going after Bertrand. This is a reporter who has been used by people who dislike Donald Trump and the government to push fake and false narratives, she said. Now the intensifying rhetoric is raising concerns among press freedom groups and its calling to the to mind over the moves of the administration as taken to crack down on the media coverage it views as unsupportive of the president's agenda coverage it views as unsupportive of the president's agenda. Quote this is a familiar pattern by now. Journalists report something Trump doesn't like and he lashes out. He wants the press to pair his talking points and when they don't, he tries to bully them into submission, said Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders. That's why he is suing CBS, the Des Moines Register and the Pulitzer Prize Board. It is why he banned the Associated Press from the White House. He wants to pad the White House briefing room and his press pool with friendly right-wing voices.
Speaker 1:Tim Richardson, the program manager for journalism and disinformation at PEN America, told the Hill on Thursday the administration has tried to vilify journalists who accurately characterize that intelligence, rather than addressing the substance of his own administration's intelligence report in the fact-based reporting an emblem of harassment against journalism and, sorry, an emboldened harassment against journalism who asks hard questions, especially in times of international conflict, richardson added. In a statement on Thursday, the White House pushed back on assertions it was trying to stifle an independent press. Public trust in the media is at an all-time low because of biased reporters who push fake news for political purpose, says a White House spokesperson. Said Concerned journalists should look inward and encourage their colleagues to report objectively rather than push top-secret documents leaked illegally by bad actors to undermine the president. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Hesek appears to disdain the media. There is no question that the way he approaches this reflects a lot of his personal judgment and paranoia, very frankly, about the role of the press, panetta said, rather than trying to paint the press as coming from one direction or another, that's a trap. It's a trap because, frankly, we have press on all sides. We have press on the left, we have press on the right, we have press in the middle, all basically speaking to the truth. Seth Stern, director of the advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, added that the White House officials' response to leaked intelligence reporting shows that their crackdown on journalists and whistleblowers have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with saving themselves from embarrassment.
Speaker 1:Some argue that, while Trump might be winning the political points by attacking the press over the intel leak episode, he could also be taking a risk if the Iranian nuclear facilities are proven to not be completely obliterated. The irony is that Trump would get more credit if he weren't so relentlessly craven about claiming and over claiming. It's said Dale David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic political operative and Trump critic. He wrote that on the social media platform known as X platform known as X. It was cynical, even by Trump's standards, for him to suggest to that that the questions to the instant conclusive analysis he offered Americans in the hours after the B-2 mission was in any way attack on the brave men and women who carried it out. It was cowardly. Let's go to an opinion piece by Brooke Migdon which is 10 years after Obergefell.
Speaker 4:The gay marriage decision is facing growing threats from the courts 10 years after Obergefell, gay marriage faces growing threats by Brooke Migdon. Same-sex marriage equality has been the law of the land for ten years as of Thursday, but after a string of crushing losses for LGBTQ rights at the Supreme Court this term and calls for the court to revisit its decision in Obergefell v Hodges, including from its own justices, those involved in the fight wonder how long their victory may last. I certainly never thought that at the 10th anniversary of marriage equality, I would be worried about making it beyond 10 years, said lead plaintiff Jim Obergefell. Yet here we are. Obergefell sued the state of Ohio in 2013 over its refusal to recognize same-sex marriage on death certificates. His late husband, john Arthur James, whom he married in Maryland, died of complications from ALS or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Shortly before litigation began, john and I started something that was scary, something that was overwhelming, he said in a recent interview. But it was all for the right reason. We loved each other and we wanted to exist. We wanted to be seen by our state and we wanted John to die a married man, he said, and I wanted to be his widower in every sense of that term.
Speaker 4:Two years later, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. It truly changed, within the LGBTQ community, the feeling of equality, said Jason Mitchell Kahn, a New York wedding planner and author of we Do an inclusive guide when a traditional wedding will not cut it. Since that ruling, same-sex weddings have exploded beyond our wildest imagination, said Kahn, who is gay. I grew up never thinking that people like me would get married and so to now be working in it all the time. It is so special. Nearly 600,000 same-sex couples in the US have married since, boosting state and local economies by roughly $6 billion and generating an estimated $432 million in sales tax revenue. According to a report released this week by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. It has been good for people's families, good for the economy, good for society, released this week by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. It has been good for people's families, good for the economy, good for society, said Mary Bonato, senior Director of Civil Rights and Legal Strategies at GLAAD Law in Boston. Bonato, who argued the Obergefell case before the Supreme Court in 2015, said the ruling has been transformative for couples and for their families, the legal rights are enormously consequential, whether it is inheritance, family health insurance, the ability to file your taxes together, social security benefits when a spouse passes. She said Now people can count on their marriages day to day, as they are living their lives, raising their families, planning for their futures, buying homes together, building businesses. This is really so core to people's ability to be part of and function in society.
Speaker 4:Public opinion polling shows national support for same-sex marriage at record highs, hovering between 68 and 71 percent. In a May Gallup poll, however, republican support for marriage equality fell to 41 percent, the lowest in a decade. A survey released this week by a trio of polling firms painted a starkly different picture, with 56% of Republican respondents saying they support same-sex marriage. Kristen Soltes Anderson, a Republican pollster whose firm Echelon Insights helped conduct the survey, wrote in a New York Times op-ed this week that there is little political passion or momentum on the side of opposition to legal same-sex marriage. But Anderson cautioned that the live-and-let-live ethos does not extend to the entire LGBTQ community and Republican voters seem to have made a distinction between the LG B and the T, which stands for transgender.
Speaker 4:In recent years, the GOP has appeared more amenable to same-sex marriage. The party's 2024 platform scrapped longstanding language that explicitly opposed it. Though, recent efforts to undermine marriage equality or overturn the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell have been spearheaded by Republicans. In January, idaho's GOP-dominated House passed a resolution calling for the high court to reconsider its decision, which the justices cannot do unless they are presented with a case. The resolution, which is non-binding, expresses the legislature's collective opinion that the court's Ober Jeffel ruling is an illegitimate overreach and has caused collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty, including religious liberty. Republican lawmakers in at least five other states, including Democratic-controlled Michigan, have issued similar calls to the Supreme Court. None of the resolution's primary sponsors returned requests for comment or to be interviewed.
Speaker 4:At an annual meeting in Dallas this month, southern Baptists similarly voted overwhelmingly to endorse laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman. The sweeping resolution approved at the gathering of more than 10,000 church representatives says lawmakers have a responsibility to pass legislation reflecting the truth of more than 10,000 church representatives. Says lawmakers have a responsibility to pass legislation reflecting the truth of creation and natural law about marriage, sex, human life and family, and to oppose proposals that contradict what God has made plain through nature and scripture. The document calls for overturning laws and court rulings that defy God's design for marriage and family, which includes the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision. Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the church's resolution is a call for moral clarity At the individual level. We are trying to speak to individual consciences and tell them there is a better way to both think about marriage and participate in marriage than what they are seeing all around them in culture. Leatherwood said Some of the Supreme Court's own justices have also voiced concerns about whether the Obergefell decision infringes on religious freedom or misinterprets the Constitution.
Speaker 4:Infringes on religious freedom or misinterprets the Constitution. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, conservatives, who dissented from the court's majority opinion in 2015, wrote again in 2020 that the court, in siding with the Obergefell plaintiffs, read a right to same-sex marriage into the 14th Amendment, even though that right is found nowhere in the text. Last winter, in a five-page statement explaining the court's decision not to involve itself in a dispute between the Missouri Department of Corrections and jurors dismissed for disapproving of same-sex marriage on religious grounds, alito wrote that the conflict exemplifies the danger he anticipated in 2015, namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be labeled as bigots and treated as such by the government. He wrote In a concurring opinion to the Supreme Court's 2022 majority ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, in which the court overturned the constitutional right to abortion. Thomas said the justices should reconsider past decisions codifying rights to same-sex marriage, gay sex and access to contraception. Rulings, he said, were demonstrably erroneous. I think there are a number of reasons why people are concerned now, and I do not think that is unreasonable, said Bonato, the attorney who argued in favor of marriage equality in 2015. I will say, however, that overturning Obergefell would be undeniably awful, and Gladlaw and others of us are going to fight tooth and nail with everything we have to preserve it, and really we have some confidence that we will win.
Speaker 4:In late 2022, in large part because of Thomas' dissent in the Court's Dobbs decision, congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act codifying protections for same-sex and interracial married couples. The measure also formally repealed the Defense of Marriage Act D O Emma, a 1996 law that recognized marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman. The Supreme Court had already ruled a portion of that law unconstitutional in a decision handed down exactly two years before it ruled in Obergefell. We know in our nation that everything gets challenged eventually, said Bonato. But it is an extremely important recognition from the Congress that marriage is just too important to people to have it blink on and off when you cross state lines. The importance of the Respect for Marriage Act should not be understated right now. In particular, said Naomi Goldberg, executive director of the Movement Advancement Project, a non-profit think tank, that bill being passed by Congress really has changed the game. In more than half of states, statutes or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage remain on the books, though zombie laws against marriage equality are not enforceable because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell. The Respect for Marriage Act prevents those measures from being enforced on already married couples or couples married in states without a ban on same-sex marriage.
Speaker 4:The court's decision be overturned a significant shift from the pre-Obergefell landscape, where recognition of marriage depended entirely on zip code. When you look at the map of where we were in 2015 and anti-quality laws, it was quite a different country, said Goldberg. Families were making decisions about where to travel. Do we need to take a birth certificate or a will with us? The fact that those couples can marry in every place across the country and they can travel safely and not worry about being barred from a hospital room or not be able to make a decision for their child is remarkable.
Speaker 4:She added those really tangible things can get lost when we talk about these big concepts like the Constitution and protections for communities. Asked about the handful of resolutions asking for the Supreme Court to revisit its Obergefell decision, goldberg said more meaningful and legally binding action has taken place in states looking to bolster protections for same-sex couples. Voters in three progressive states California, Colorado and Hawaii passed ballot measures in November that struck language from their constitutions defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. Additional states are hoping to get similar proposals before voters in 2026. I firmly believe that it would take a lot for couples in this country to lose the right to marry, said Goldberg. That does not mean that having that language on the books is not symbolic and meaningful to those of us who live in states like that.
Speaker 1:Bill Moore's, a face of public TV and once a White House voice, has actually died at the age of 91. He was a renowned television correspondent and a commentator who had long ties with Lyndon B Johnson, including being his press secretary. Bill Morris, who served as the chief spokesman for President Lyndon Johnson during the American military buildup in Vietnam and then went on to have a long and celebrated career in broadcast journalism, now returning repeatedly to the subject of corruption of the American democracy by money and power, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was the son of William Coop Morris, confirmed deaf at the Memorial Sloan Keating Cancer Center, two Americans who grew up after the 1960s. Morris was known above all as an unusual breed of television correspondent and commentator. He was once described by Peter J Boyer, the journalist and author, as a rare and powerful voice of a kind of secular evangelist. But before that, moores was the President Johnson's closest aide, president on Air Force One in Dallas when Johnson took the oath of office after the assassination of John F Kennedy. Morris played a pivotal role in the inception of Johnson's Great Society programs and was the President's top administrative assistant and press secretary. When Johnson sent hundreds of thousands of troops to fight the war in Vietnam. Moores resigned from the administration in December of 1966 at the age of 32, finalizing an irreparable falling out between a hot-tempered, flamboyant Johnson, who demanded unwavering loyalty, and a cool, self-contained Moores, whom Johnson had denied several foreign policy positions. The two men never reconciled. In his 1971 memoir, the Vantage Point Perspectives of the Presidency from 1963 to 1969. Johnson mentioned Moores only fleetingly, reducing him to little more than a footnote.
Speaker 1:In his four decades as a television correspondent and a commentator, moores, who was an ordained Baptist minister, explored issues ranging from poverty to violence, income inequality and racial bigotry and the role of money in politics, threats to the Constitution and climate change. His documentaries and reports won him top prizes in television and journalism, more than 30 Emmy Awards and, in comparison to the late Edward R Morrow, his revered predecessor at CBS. In the age of broadcast blowhards, the soft-spoken Mr Mors applied his earnest deferential style to interviews with poets, philosophers, educators, often on subjects of values, ideas. His 1988 PBS series Joseph Cabwell and Campbell and the Power of Myth drew 30 million viewers posthumanously turned Mr Campbell at the time a little-known mythologist at the time a little-known mythologist into a broadcasting star and popularized the Campbell dicudictum. Follow your Bliss His sense of moral urgency. To admirers, many of them who were liberals, morris was the nation's conscience, bringing to his work one television critic called a sense of moral urgency and decency. Others, mostly conservative, found him to be sanctimonious and accused him of bias. In 2004, retrospective, the conservative website FrontPagecom called him a sweater-wearing pundit who delivered socialist and neo-Marxist propaganda with a soft Texas accent.
Speaker 1:Famously modest and self-deprecating, morris often invoked himself and his humble small-town roots in Marshall, texas. Yet he was ambitious, political, intense and shrewd. Political intents. And shrewd. His Rolodex was once said to contain the names of every important person who ever lived. But he emphasized the importance of speaking to, for and about regular people. He could draw out anyone from a psychiatrist's patients to a Supreme Court justice to a Supreme Court justice. But he resisted opening up about himself. He occasionally spoke about his Johnson years but never consented to be interviewed by Robert A Carroll, the Pusler Prize winning writer, who spent more than 40 years of his five volume Johnson documentary. By all accounts, despite his soft East Texas style, he is one of the most complicated men that politics or even the media ever produced. The journalist Ann Creeden wrote in a 1981 profile for Channels Magazine titled the Perplexing Mr Moyers.
Speaker 1:Bill Don Morris was born June the 5th of 1934 in Hugo, oklahoma, the younger of two sons, john and Ruby Johnson Morris. His father was a unskilled laborer. The family moved to Marshall, near the Louisiana border, when Bill was six months here. Six months old, tackling taking a summer job on a newspaper while still in school. Six months old, tackling taking a summer job on a newspaper while still in school, he sliced the Y off his byline describing the name sounded more dignified without it. His Baptist parents dreamed that he would become a minister. Our parents wanted so deeply for us to make some kind of mark. Morris brothers.
Speaker 1:James once said, but Morris took a different path. James once said, but Morris took a different path. He worked for Marshall News Messenger in high school and later created its publisher, michael Corp. With encouraging his interest in public affairs. He went on to study journalism, government history, theology and ethics and he said, deliberate preparation for a career in public service. So that was just kind of a short excerpt of a very lengthy article about Mr Morse in the New York Times. About a few more paragraphs left if you want to read it in its entirety and it will be again at the New York Times in the business and media section. I did watch the Bill Morse his show occasionally when I was growing up. I found him to be calm, collective but obviously still piercing with his questions. Piercing with his questions. So rest in peace to the longtime TV personality, the correspondent and commentator.
Speaker 3:Bill Moores. I never met Nato. I never met Nato. How do you feel about Nato? I never met Nato. I never met Nato. I don't know nothing about him. I don't talk about people. Nato is the North Atlantic Treaty. Oh, but you just said it. I thought you were talking about the guy. I know this guy that NATO, nato, jenkins.
Speaker 3:You have to know these things If you're running for public office. Do you know NATO Jenkins? Do you know NATO Jenkins? I know what NATO is. Do you know NATO Jenkins? I'm sorry, I haven't met the gentleman.
Speaker 1:That's what I said just a flash flashback to a funny movie Chris Rock and Bernie Mac did a few years ago, before Bernie Mac passed away, called Head of State, I think, and this was something comical. And they are saying this is basically how Ted Cruz looked when he was asked about Iranian population and culture makeup by Tucker Carlson. That's where we're going to end it, something light. Thank you for tuning in and I'll see you on the next episode.