Does the new Texas abortion law have a loophole big enough for the federal government to drive a truck through?
Elie Mystal, editor-at-large at The Nation, explains to host Molly Jong-Fast on this episode of The New Abnormal that the Biden administration could actually send mobile abortion units to the Lone Star State to circumvent the new restrictions.
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“If Joe Biden via executive order established, let’s call it a federal privacy commission, and hired a bunch of doctors and empowered them to drive throughout the country in a truck or a van enforcing privacy rights, guess what? They’d be federal officials performing their duties and thus, through qualified immunity, immune from private civil actions,” he says.
Of course, there is the matter of the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funds from being used to provide abortions except to save a woman’s life.
That’s why, Elie says, real protection for abortion rights would have to come from court-packing—because the Supreme Court and the judges in the 5th Circuit who enabled this law to go forward are batshit “crazy” in his words.
Molly says what Texas has done is blatantly unconstitutional, but she also fears it’s just the beginning.
After Elie, U.S. veteran and Congressman Ruben Gallego came on to talk about Afghanistan and why he thinks President Biden made the right call to pull out.
“Had we found another justification for being there we would’ve stayed there longer. The Taliban would have started attacking and then we would have had to stay longer because you can’t leave while they’re attacking you,” he says.
And Molly tried really hard to push Gallego to say if he’d primary Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
Plus! He answers two bigger questions: Is Madison Cawthorn smart enough to lead a GOP revolution? And who is the best “Sex in the City” character?
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