So it looks like president Joe Biden may be budging somewhat on his stance
that he doesn't believe in reforming or
changing the filibuster rules in order to codify Roe V Wade.
Or make abortion rights into law across the land in the United States.
In fact, just this morning in Spain, I don't know what it was Spanish air,
the water,
the pressure from the international community from developed nations that
do have better abortion rights than the United States at this point.
But Biden is now backtracking on that statement and saying no,
he's now willing to advocate for amending changing suspending.
The filibuster as they did for again, remember the federal budget with
a giant deficit to do that in the case of Roe V Wade.
So he put out this tweet after the statement saying,
we have to codify Roe v Wade into law and as I said this morning,
if the filibuster gets in the way, then we need to make an exception to get it done.
Remember it was the second time that Biden has ever advocated for
reforming the filibuster.
He urged Congress to scrap its rules requiring a 60-vote threshold in
the Senate to pass a specific piece of legislation in January.
He called on lawmakers to make an exception to the rules to pass
legislation to add voting rights protections and how'd that work out.
So at least in theory he is down for it in practice of course
we still have senators Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema.
Who who knows where they stand, but
Erin what do you think of this step forward potentially for
a democratic strategy to combat what the Supreme Court has done.
>> I think I'm not just speaking for myself here when I say I'm a little
bit gobsmacked at the lack of plan, this seems like so reactive.
And we knew this was coming we when the when the Dobbs opinion leaked
back in April, we knew that this was coming.
So I don't understand why we weren't spending the last three months in a full
court press or two months in a full court press,
like figuring out what we're gonna do when this happens.
>> Yeah. >> And instead it's like where our
leadership, democratic leadership is acting like this is some kind of
a surprise and what are we supposed to do now?
And it's like you had two months, you had more than two months,
you had from the moment that Joe Biden took office.
And we had the senate and we had the house of representatives,
we had time to strategize about what we would do.
I am so tired of a party that is just reacting to things that activist judges do
rather than anticipating things that activist judges might do.
We could have gotten out ahead of this and it's so frustrating, it's so
frustrating to see such a lack of urgency from the president on this.
Now, I will caveat by saying that this is better than nothing,
which is what we were getting before.
So I will take anything that is not nothing.
And but there's also this Francesca, like the filibuster it is so
silly and the more I learn about it, the more I'm like,
so they can just ignore it sometimes whenever,
why were we just doing this march?
Like why aren't we just trying to actually lead with the power that we have?
It's very, very frustrating, but I'm glad that the president has
decided that he wants to end the filibuster on this,
if this is all we get it is certainly not enough, but it's something.
>> Right exactly, I will see and we're gonna talk a little bit about later
whether it's enough to bring people out to the polls in the midterm elections
which seems to be the main strategy here, but I think you're absolutely right.
Earlier in the week we looked at vice president Harris response to this and
it's like you're talking to a friend,
like that's how I feel like she's like speaking with the leadership of my friend.
Who's going like God, you know, it's really different when it actually happens
versus like I knew it was gonna happen, but like when it happened,
that was literally her response and the moment that Donald Trump got elected.
The reason there was a massive millions of people on the streets was because
we all saw this coming, right in 2016.
And so the first chance that a Democrat gets into office,
they better Trump proof or republican Christian nationalist extremist
proof the government and he didn't in so many different ways.
And I know the pandemic, we're always in a crisis when Obama came into office.
You had eight years of Bush, you had then a financial crisis.
There's someone who also for going back further in history did not choose to
codify Roe v Wade either passed the freedom, the freedom of choice.
Excuse me yeah, so, but it seems like maybe some
pressure from other Democrats inside the senate inside Congress are working.
More than 30 Senate Democrats signed a letter to Biden urging him to fight back,
take bold action and lead a national response to this devastating decision
after the court overturned the right to abortion.
Now there's some other things that apparently are in the works.
It's not just this supposedly we'll see the White House plans according to
Reuters to include a range of executive actions in the coming days.
As well as promising to protect women who cross state lines for
abortions and support for medical abortion.
Cool, so there's like, I remember earlier before the filibuster part,
the only thing they had was we protect the right to travel.
>> Yeah doesn't the constitution already do that,
like that's that's like we can do that.
It's really weird that there's sort of like,
we're gonna make sure that you have a right that you already have.
Yeah, we do have that, right, thank you.
But another thing, why wasn't this just at the ready?
Why wasn't this just ready for when Dobbs came down?
They should have had somebody one aide whose only job was to just clutch
a press release, holding all of these points and run it to the press.
The second jobs hit.
>> Yes. >> And they didn't because that would have
at least made me feel as someone who voted for Joe Biden in the election in 2020.
Like my needs were in some way being prioritized and
the needs of more than half of Joe Biden's voters were being prioritized.
It just seems like such an own goal.
I mean, I don't like to talk about this politically because this is people's
lives, we're talking about this is millions and millions and
millions of people's lives and personhood that we're talking about.
But like politically, like if that's why what is it, what is he doing?
I don't understand.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm baffled.
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