Summary
Texas enacts a radical law to effectively end legal abortion. The bipartisan Select Committee told 35 private tech companies to preserve phone records, which may be relevant to its investigation. The American Medical Association calls for an immediate end to prescribing, dispensing, and using Ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19. There are basically four positions the modern Republican Party holds which is COVID, no restrictions on gun ownership, election security, a ban on abortions.
Transcript
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight, on ALL IN, Texas enacts a radical law to effectively end legal abortion. The Supreme Court lets it happen and Republicans can finally stop pretending.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I could not vote for a judge who had demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had no idea we`ll overturn Roe v. Wade.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- was nothing happening there.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Donald, can you just --
TRUMP: And you don`t know her view on Roe v. Wade.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Tonight, Dahlia Lithwick, Melissa Murray, Irin Carmon, and Elie Mystal all join me live.
Then, can lawmakers facing scrutiny over the Capitol attack threatened their way out of an investigation?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): These telecommunications companies, if they go along with this, they will be shut down. And that`s a promise.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And breaking news from the American Medical Association regarding doctors giving deworming medicine to COVID patients. My exclusive interview with the head of the AMA when ALL IN starts right now.
Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
As of today, Roe versus Wade is functionally dead in the state of Texas, third-largest state in the -- second largest state. The right to an abortion, as recognized by the Supreme Court in 1973, with decades of precedent reviewed and reviewed over and over, decades of jurisprudence, that right is effectively gone in the second most populous state in our union.
It did not come with some reason to pronouncement from the conservative six-three court as momentous decisions usually do with fanfare and coverage. Instead, it came with just total absence. Silence, as the court failed to rule on a request to block the new law passed by Texas Republicans and signed by Governor Greg Abbott.
And that law, Senate Bill Eight, went into effect today, banning all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. It also -- and this is key, allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else who helps a woman obtain an abortion, including those who give a woman a ride to a clinic or provide financial assistance in obtaining an abortion.
Now, the law is obviously unconstitutional under the court`s current jurisprudence. It goes against all the Supreme Court precedent, that precedent prohibits states from banning abortion before 22 or 24 weeks. You don`t need a law degree to see that. You don`t have to be some fancy pedigreed Supreme Court clerk to see that.
Now, the standard thing for the court to do when a law is clearly unconstitutional is to enjoy it, to prohibit it from being enforced, pending appeals and arguments. For instance, just a thought experiment here, if say the state of New York passed a law saying no one can carry a weapon of any kind outside of their home, and other people can sue you if you do, this Supreme Court would enjoy that before it ever went into practice, believe you me.
But in this case, with the radical Texas abortion law, they have not. It went into effect at midnight in the dead of night. It has been nearly 20 hours and so far, silence from the court. We don`t know what they`re thinking, what they`re doing, what`s going on. We`re not going to do anything to stop this from happening, that`s all we got.
And viewer, believe you me, this signal something ominous about the future of Roe and abortion rights and women`s rights in this country. That landmark case is already in the crosshairs, as you probably know. Mississippi, of course, has a law on the books banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The state is explicitly petitioning the Supreme Court to uphold those restrictions, and explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The court is expected to hear arguments, in that case, this fall, even granting cert on it is an honest sign. And, of course, the court now has a six-three conservative majority, thanks to three Trump appointees, and thanks to the multi-decade project of a see me partnership between the anti-abortion movement, conservative legal leads, and corporate America.
You got to remember how all this went down. Anti-abortion forces who are powerful and organized in this country, they saw how several previous Republican Supreme Court nominees turned out. Sandra Day O`Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, all essentially upholding abortion rights in this country, particularly in the cases where they mattered most, right? When they had the chance to get rid of Roe. And the anti-abortion forces in this country undertook an effort after that to make sure that no Republican president would ever, ever nominate a squish on abortion again. No Souters, no Kennedys, no O`Connors.
And so along with their partners in the right, they put into place an extreme vetting process, they cultivated and monitored anti-abortion legal minds, they mentored and nurtured them. People who would hue to hard-right jurisprudence on the main issue that they cared about in this grand coalition. Abortion, abortion rights. There are other issues too, but that wasn`t the one they were really focused on.
[20:05:04]
And this network that grew up, they -- it`s a real thing, right? They have elevated them through the Federalist Society, other various conservative networks. It was all done with the explicit intent of putting them on the court to get rid of abortion. This has been crystal clear for a very long time.
And what is so maddening and rage-inducing, is that they lied about it every step of the way, because they have to lie about it. Because scrapping Roe v. Wade is an unpopular position, 54 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a recent NBC News poll.
I believe abortion polling is all over the place, but that results is consistent over time. And so, the day that Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly in February 2016, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced a totally unprecedented blockade of any nominee to fill a seat, never been done before. And, of course, the sitting duly elected democratic president, Barack Obama still had nearly a year left in office.
Leader McConnell refused to even hold a hearing for Obama`s nominee, Merrick Garland. And the next year after Donald Trump wins with three million fewer votes, right, thanks the Electoral College, he appoints Neil Gorsuch. And the one of the first things McConnell does is blow up the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, which by the way was still in place, just destroyed it nuclear option, boom, done. And he cleared the way for Trump`s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, to take the seat that should have been Garland`s. And then Mitch McConnell pushed through the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, despite the indelible allegation of sexual misconduct.
And then to top it all off, McConnell ran through the last-minute election year confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. Now, you may remember the infamous COVID super spreader event at the White House, marking her nomination just days after Ruth Bader Ginsburg`s death before she was even buried.
Now, there are a lot of motivations for this -- for this obsession with the judiciary. The key one, the one that really mobilizes the base, the one that much of this project was organized around was getting rid of abortion rights.
And yet when you just confronted the right-wing about that, when you said the obvious thing, like, I know what you believe in this, obviously, they just lie. Abortion rights. No, nothing to see here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the likelihood of Roe v. Wade being overturned is very minimal. I don`t see that happening.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): This is not a referendum on Roe v. Wade.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I do not believe that Brett Kavanaugh will overturn Roe v. Wade.
MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I would never presume how Judge Amy Coney Barrett would rule on the Supreme Court of the United States.
BIDEN: The point is that the president also is opposed to Roe v. Wade. That`s on the ballot as well.
TRUMP: You don`t know what`s in the ballot. Why is it in the ballot? Why is it -- it`s not in the ballot. You don`t know her view on Roe v. Wade.
BIDEN: I don`t know --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Donald Trump, a stupid man in very many ways, but with pretty good political instincts, understanding that he doesn`t want Roe v. Wade on the ballot, right? You don`t know. Although remember that he pledged he would only appoint justices who oppose Roe v. Wade.
OK. So, the conservative court under Chief Justice John Roberts, one which according to polling liberals think highly of, which I find mind-blowing, that court has had a few main projects, one of them protecting corporations from government regulation, and that may mean rolling back the, sort of, jurisprudence around that to pre-New Deal era. They`ve been very invested in rolling back voting rights, laser-focused on that and making abortion more difficult.
They have been laser-focused on that agenda from the beginning. Do not believe anyone who tells you that is not what they are doing. They are either idiots or lying to you. Now, we have arrived at this moment in which the wolf is up the door. I mean, if you don`t like abortion rights, it`s not the wolf, it`s the president you`ve been praying for.
All the people warned about this court trying to overturn Roe, they were right. And the people said don`t worry, we`re wrong, catastrophically so. So, the remaining question is, how the majority of this country which supports a baseline of abortion rights is going to mobilize in response to this incredibly cowardly court and its actions, or in this case, lack thereof?
I want to bring in two people been closely tracking the Supreme Court on reproductive issues. Irin Carmon, senior correspondent of New York Magazine, whose latest piece is titled, The Supreme Court`s Stealth Attack on Abortion. And Melissa Murray, Professor of constitutional law at New York University. She clerked for Justice Sonia Sotomayor in the Second Circuit. She now co-hosts the Strict Scrutiny podcast along with, full disclosure, my wife, Kate Shaw.
Let`s start on the SCOTUS aspect, Melissa, with you, and then we`ll go to the Texas law then. So, Melissa, last night, I think a lot of people thought, well, there`s this emergency application. The law is going to go into effect at midnight. It pretty clearly violates current Supreme Court precedent. They`re going to say something, right? It`s going to be an order and then woke up this morning. I was like, still an order. And in the editorial meeting, I said, well, they`re going to have an order by the time we`re on the show tonight at 8:00, still no order, like, what`s going on?
[20:10:17]
MELISSA MURRAY, PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: OK. So, I`ll just note that we were in the same place last week where we were talking about the Remain in Mexico policy where the court seemed to move with a fair amount of alacrity to resolve that particular issue that also came up on its docket of emergency appeals.
Really interesting that it seems to have moved at a more leisurely pace in addressing this particular issue. Again, it was a procedural issue, but one that allowed a law that is patently unconstitutional to go into effect in Texas, essentially eviscerating abortion rights in that state, which is one of the largest states in the country with a serious population of persons of reproductive age. So, I mean, this is a consequential decision, and the Supreme Court`s silence on this issue really spoke volumes.
HAYES: So, let`s talk about the law for a second, Irin. You know, one of the kind of devious ways it was designed is this private enforcement provision, which is really creepy and dystopian. Maybe you can talk a little bit about it, and then we could talk about how that was, I think, designed to bring us to precisely this point, which is that there`s no one to enjoin, because it`s just your neighbor with the binoculars next door spying on you about whether you got an abortion.
IRIN CARMON, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Yes. Chris, it`s a catch 22, because if the law doesn`t go into effect, nobody can say that they were affected by it. No one can bring a lawsuit. Again, this is how it was designed. You didn`t mention that not only is the neighbor with your binoculars next door, there`s a financial incentive for individuals to report violations of this bill.
So, what is this law, it is a six-week ban on abortion. Now, most people don`t even know that they`re pregnant at this point. You know that this is actually two weeks into pregnancy, just a common way the doctors date pregnancies.
So, while individuals who happen to know that they`re pregnant and need an abortion up to six weeks, can still get an abortion in Texas. The rest of Texans woke up today -- not only fewer rights, and not only the right of their neighbors to spy on them for a bounty -- a literal bounty placed on their uterus, so to speak, but the Supreme Court didn`t even bother to leave a note.
The Supreme Court did not feel any urgency, did not explain anything about it. And I have to say that I`ve been covering this stuff for a long time. And I find it shocking, because they have a sample up late and write an explanation. The liberal certainly know how to dissent turning on a dime.
So, something else is going on here. I`m not sure if it`s an attempted negotiation or what. But they had several days to contemplate a lot that if you mentioned it to a previous iteration of court, it would be laughed out of court.
The die was cast when Anthony Kennedy retired. It was cast when Trump released a list of justices that were going to overturn Roe v Wade. And now every, Texan is empowered to spy on people who can be pregnant to see if they violated this law, the dystopia is here.
HAYES: I just want to just go through the provisions here, and again, part of the sort of deviousness here, I think is that since the state`s not enforcing it, the theory is that, like, well, you can`t enjoin the state from enforcing it, because they`re not enforcing anyway, and nothing`s actually been done yet. But you can -- you can -- four years to bring a case, private citizens enforced the bill, not the government, the award for successful case is not less than $10,000 in attorney`s fees.
So, there is a bounty on sniffing out an abortion. And if the defendant wins, if your case was wrong, they`re not allowed attorney`s fees, so they got to pay to defend themselves either way. So, obviously, the asymmetry is there.
And, Melissa, just to -- just to put a fine point on this, like, my understanding of the way this law is drafted, is that if a woman in Texas has a miscarriage, someone with a vendetta against her, an ex-boyfriend, for instance, could sue under this law, claiming an illegal abortion, and then she would have to like go to court and defend herself. If she wins, she`s out the money of that. And if she loses, she would then pay that person $10,000.
MURRAY: So, the lot targets providers and those who aid and abet providers and women or pregnant persons --
HAYES: All right. Sorry, not the woman. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
MURRAY: But she`s off the table. But again, the law has a couple of different purposes. One is obviously to isolate the pregnant person from any networks of support to make providers fear the prospect of actually performing these procedures for their patients. I`m not only is there the repercussions of actually being sued and possibly having to pay, not only the lawyers fee for the opponent, but also some particular fine. Any doctor who in the state of Texas who is subject to a lawsuit has to disclose that going forward for purposes of licensure.
[20:15:08]
So, there are a lot of different impacts here. And all of this is meant to deter what is a constitutional right currently recognized as a constitutional right. And to sow confusion in Texas about what the state of the law is actually permissible.
HAYES: Yes. And final to you, Irin, just to be clear, because I misspoke there. Yes, go ahead.
CARMON: The providers in Texas are already fighting against so much. So, the fact is, with the law in place, you know, they are afraid to even attempt to provide abortions here, that would then bring forward this kind of lawsuit, because they simply cannot afford $10,000 for every abortion, for every action, every person involved. The funds in Texas are already cash-strapped trying to get people to get to their abortions. So, this is, in effect, a way to shut down the process entirely and completely create a disincentive.
And I should add, actually, that the attorneys for the clinic have -- don`t accept that there, they can sue government officials on this. They are, in fact, arguing in front of the Supreme Court to say, in fact, government officials do have a role here. The Supreme Court can stop it, but if Texas prevails, that they will, in fact, have successfully erected this trap.
HAYES: Yes. And I should just note, just to reiterate what you both said that women are actually cut out of the whole thing as sort of moral agents and all things, so which is, sort of, consistent with the rhetoric from the anti-abortion crowd, but entirely to me, indefensible philosophically, because there are moral agents who control their own bodies, and yet not subjected this whole thing. Another bizarre sort of devious aspect of the law.
Irin Carmon and Melissa Murray, thank you both.
CARMON: Thank you.
HAYES: Now, I want to turn to Elie Mystal, justice correspondent of The Nation, author of "Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy`s Guide to the Constitution." And Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate. Her latest piece is titled, There Are Two Real Ways to Answer the Texas Abortion Law.
Let`s start with that, Dahlia, in terms of what the response here is, and should be. And, you know, this is a mystery what the court is doing because they said nothing. But what this means about the Robert`s court to you?
DAHLIA LITHWICK, SENIOR EDITOR AND LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, SLATE: I think the single most important thing that we should be talking about right now, and you flicked it in your intro first, but it`s worth, I think, really pressing on it. This is happening on the shadow docket, the so-called emergency docket, where, until very recently, only emergencies lived.
Suddenly in the age of COVID, in the age of voting rights, in the age of the death penalty, and presumably now in the age of unconstitutional abortion restrictions, everything is happening on the shadow docket, it`s happening in unbriefed, unargued cases. We have no idea whether the court is going to, as he said before, even issue an order, it could be a two- sentence order, there could be dissent.
We don`t actually know what we are waiting for at this point. We`re waiting for a thing that is going to happen in the middle of the night in a case that isn`t even about abortion, it`s about whether the court can hear the case about abortion. So, the level of secrecy and obfuscation here, I think, speaks volumes about where the John Roberts court is right now in reference to where the court has been historically.
HAYES: This is so important. It`s been a hard thing that I`ve struggled a little bit to explain on cable news. And I only sort of feel passionately about it because of my, you know, that I`m adjacent to Kate, who knows this stuff inside and out. Otherwise, I think I would just be like a shadow docket.
But, like, there`s real star chamber vibes here, like, you -- the court -- when we think of big cases, it`s like, you file briefs and everyone could read the briefs. And there`s, you know, amicus briefs and you can read those briefs and there`s oral arguments which we can now listen to. And then there`s a written opinion, those written opinions have citations, they have reasoning, they respond to each other. There`s a holding, like all of that is what law turns off. Like when you go back and read a case at Canon law. In England, it was written down with reasons, like, writing things down with reasons are what the law in our tradition is, Elie. And we now have law, without writing and without reasons, and that`s really perverse.
ELIE MYSTAL, JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT, THE NATION: Because the conservative Supreme Court is like, who`s going to check me boo? Like -- look, we can talk to the days long about the craven hypocrisy of Republicans. But at the end of the day, the Republicans promised to do this. John Roberts promised to do this. The -- Donald Trump promised to only nominate anti-abortion judges. Josh Hawley promised to only vote for anti -- they promised to do this.
Where are the Democrats? Where are the Democrats stopping them? Because this was not a surprise. The particular case, the peculiarities, sure, that`s a little weird, but where they were going, the destruction of a woman`s right to choose has always been the goal.
[20:20:09]
You want something that Democrats can do? I will tell you what the Democrats can do. Joe Biden, tonight, issued an executive order, establishing a privacy commission federal officials to go down to Texas under armed guard, if necessary, to provide and protect constitutional rights that have been stripped away by Texas. That quirk of the Texas law that like only private citizens can enforce it by suing, well, guess what, federal officials qualified immunity? I didn`t see that one coming, did you? Yes.
Federal officials will be under qualified immunity, and that`s protected from this very law if Joe Biden would but act. And the people at home are thinking like, oh, that sounds too extreme. Well, you can always expand the court. That`s there, too. But Joe Manchin is too powerful.
Look, I do not care anymore what the excuses are. Inaction is not an option, failure is not an option. Joe Biden took an oath to defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and Texan, and it`s time that he does it, now, tonight, today, this weekend now.
HAYES: Well, and I think I mean to -- the problem here, Elie, which I think your point, you`re right, it`s like, OK, so there`s -- you need procedural maximalism or legal maximalism with maximalism, right? You know, you expand the court. You announced, oh, tonight, I`m announcing three new Supreme Court nominees, right? You could do that. Or you could -- or you could do you do any number -- any number of things.
But there`s a political problem again, here. And this is one -- I mean, I`m speaking to you, the people watching this television program, Dahlia, which is like, if you look at the polling, it`s like liberals approve of the Roberts court more than Republicans do. There is like this idea of, like, it can`t get that bad and the rule of law and they`re the guardrails, and I think Roberts is very, very deft about cultivating that with the ACA case, and I think with the stuff they did in the election. And that, to me, is also part of it here in terms of just like legitimacy of the court and public opinion, even if that doesn`t actually like, you know, matter in a technical sense.
LITHWICK: No. I mean, you`ve identified the problem. The problem is that both Republicans and Democrats are colluding to tell a story about a very narrow, humble, minimalist Roberts court. We love the redemption story. Think of how many gazillion stories you heard at the end of the term about how surprisingly moderate the court was and doesn`t matter that they get away with what`s left of the Voting Rights Act and ended unions. What really matters is that a cheerleader gets this curse.
And so, we keep telling stories over and over again about this moderate Ford and amazing Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, they`re super centrist. And if you tell that story often enough, you get Gallup poll results. The ones we`re seeing where 51 percent of Democrats think the Roberts court is a centrist court.
So, in order to do the things that Elie`s describing, all of which by the way, need to be done yesterday, you need to get out of this, where you keep telling a story about a -- centrist court.
HAYES: Elie Mystal and Dahlia Lithwick -- Elie, I can`t wait to read your new book. I am very much looking forward to that. Great to have you both. Thank you very much.
LITHWICK: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: No one has done more to stop Congress from investigating the events of January 6 than Kevin McCarthy, first, by undermining his own proposal to form a 9/11 style inquiry in the Capitol riot, then by attempting to stack the Select Committee with material witnesses to the President`s involvement of the insurrection.
And now, as that committee takes investigatory steps towards finding the truth, Kevin McCarthy is melting down with wild threats. Tonight, the big question is, will McCarthy get away with it? That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:25:24]
HAYES: The committee that is investigating the insurrection and attack on the Capitol on January 6, wants the phone records from some pro- insurrectionists Republicans from that day. And now, Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, and fellow Republicans are lashing out.
Earlier this week, the bipartisan Select Committee told 35 private tech companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google, and the major cell phone carriers to preserve phone records, which may be relevant to its investigation.
In response, Kevin McCarthy issued a pretty transparent threat to punish those same companies, warning, quote, a Republican majority will not forget. And so, we are left with a scenario once Republicans don`t seem willing to argue the merits of the case. They, sort of, brush them aside, instead relying on this, frankly, thuggish rhetoric, throwing out even the pretense of reasonable discourse or debate about the law in favor of just sheer intimidation, politics.
Ian Bassin served as associate White House Counsel during President Barack Obama`s first term. He`s the co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Protect Democracy, which is working to combat the country slide towards authoritarianism. And he joins me now.
Ian, I have to say, I was -- even by the standards of our era, I was -- I was pretty shocked by that threat, that just explicit threat, in that Kevin McCarthy statement. There`s lots of folks saying that itself should trigger some kind of ethics investigation, that it itself violates certain codes of conduct. What was your reaction to seeing it?
IAN BASSIN, FORMER ASSOCIATE WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think it`s worse than an ethics violation. What McCarthy essentially did is something that I`ve been calling autocratic capture, which is when authoritarian government actors use government power to bully private businesses into being their political allies, or in this case, their political lackeys. It`s something the Mubarak regime did in Egypt for decades. It`s what Vladimir Putin does in Russia. It`s what Tucker Carlson`s hero of Viktor Orban does in Hungry.
It`s not a dynamic that any American CEO should want to take hold here. And if they give in to this behavior, they`re going to unbolted it. So, I think what the American private sector needs to be talking about is forming a NATO Article Five, like, mutual defense pact, that if autocratic, politicians are going to come after one of them, they`re going to come after all of them. Let McCarthy take on the entire American private sector.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, it`s -- it is interesting, because the private sector largely construed right now that the, you know, the major elements of it are hugely lobbying against the Biden reconciliation proposal. They have been very aligned with Mitch McConnell. They`ve been very aligned with the Republican Party in many respects. I mean, they get to both parties, of course.
But here`s -- I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene was on Tucker Carlson last night and goes even further. And I mean that, you know, McCarthy, Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are all just, sort of, the same on this. It`s sort of indistinguishable. Here she is saying that she`s going to -- she`s going to shut them down. This is her words. Take a listen.
[20:30:14]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR-GREENE (R-GA): These telecommunications companies, if they go along with this, they will be shut down, and that`s a promise.
TUCKER CARSON, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Good. I hope they`re afraid of you. They should be. They should be. They`re very short-sighted. They think Democrats are going to rule forever, but they should be afraid to wade into partisan politics like this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Again, those two are sort of two sides of -- two sides of the same coin there. But that is -- I mean, the explicitness here and the comfort with which people feel comfortable in in offering it to me is unnerving.
BASSIN: Yes. And I think it actually may send a different message than they intend to American companies, because CEOs are now faced with the choice. They can have a future in which they take direction from Donald Trump, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and Kevin McCarthy, where they can have a future in which they take direction from markets and customers and their bottom line.
And I think, for a long time, these CEOs have tried to stay on the sidelines or even handed, right? As you mentioned, they donate to both sides. They`ve tried to stay above what they consider the partisan fray because they don`t want to alienate their employees or customers. I think what McCarthy is basically making clear to them is they can stay above that fray no longer.
They need to double down on the rule of law and democracy if they want to actually operate in a free society in the future. Because if they try to avoid what they think of as the partisan trade, it`s going to come and find them at a time of its choosing, not theirs.
HAYES: It`s a great point. If you think -- if you think the sort of structures of liberal democracy are remote to your bottom line interest, you will be disabused of that at some point. Ian Bassin, thank you so much for your time tonight.
BASSIN: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Last night, on this program, we asked why doctors` groups aren`t doing more to police their own when it comes to physicians advocating prescribing unfounded COVID treatments like, for instance, Ivermectin. Tonight, the American Medical Association is answering that exact question with strict new guidance. And the President of the AMA joins me exclusively to explain next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:35:00]
HAYES: As we pointed out last night, there are fully credentialed doctors out there currently prescribing a deworming medication to COVID patients. There were nearly 90,000 prescriptions a week for Ivermectin from retail pharmacies by the middle of last month. You can see it`s exploding as the Delta variant spreads. And that`s even though the FDA says there`s no clear evidence or data it is effective at treating COVID.
Last night, we asked why professional medical groups weren`t doing more to police their members who are pushing the drug. And tonight, the largest Medical Association in the country, the American Medical Association, along with the American Pharmacists and the American Society of Health System Pharmacists just issued a new statement calling for "an immediate end to prescribing dispensing and use of Ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19 outside clinical trials."
And joining me now for an exclusive interview is the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Gerald Harmon. Dr. Hermon, great to have you on tonight. What is the guidance you`re issuing tonight and why did it come about?
DR. GERALD HARMON, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION: Chris, thanks for having me. You already identified our joint statement with the Pharmacist Association described. We`re asking that we cease prescribing Ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19 because it -- we allow it in a clinical trial, but we do not want to prescribe outside of an established clinical trial.
We can understand why folks are grasping at things such as these novel treatments for -- in the middle of a pandemic for which there`s not a whole lot of established effective treatments, in general, at least at the frontlines. And so, doctors should be cautious in their zeal to provide something for patients.
I understand it`s a laudable goal to try to help patients. But let`s stay within clinical guidelines. Let`s stay on the side of science and give safe, effective medications. And Ivermectin has not been shown to be one of those to be effective for the COVID-19 virus.
HAYES: The argument that I`ve seen from doctors who are doing this, and I think, you know, there`s -- I don`t want to -- I don`t know what people`s intentions are, I think some are probably grifters, some are very genuine in trying to help people, is look, we do off label prescribing all the time. It`s a free country. I`m seeing success. The FDA is behind the curve and been behind the curve the whole time. We`re the ones out here in the field, and you bureaucrats and professional associations don`t know what you`re talking about.
HARMON: We do see that. And again, I can understand the zeal because my patients are calling me even this week in the past weeks. They`re asking me to do things such as prescribed hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, or off- label use when they are diagnosed with COVID. I talked to them and I said, listen, right now the safest thing for you to do is take the current approved courses and that`s to monitor yourself. If you require more treatment, there are established safe, very well approved treatments by the FDA, the CDC, and the NIH that includes things such as monoclonal antibodies if you don`t have an oxygen deficit. If you have to be hospitalized, we`ll give you higher flow oxygen. We`ll even use steroids.
There are other specific treatments that we can use that are very well established and have safe parameters for them. Ivermectin, as you`re describing, is -- as you`re describing, it`s a deworming medicine. It`s also used for head lice and for rare skin conditions. It`s approved in very low doses for very established indications. What`s available now apparently over the Internet and various other prescriptive authorities is an overdose potential. This medicine even in use in standard guidelines, has some serious interactions with medications like drug thinners -- blood thinners, so it`s not to be used willy-nilly as it were.
What we need to do is stick with a science. If you happen to take an overdose of Ivermectin and even a higher than expected dose, you can get seizures, you can get coma, even death, nausea, dizziness. These are -- these are potentially serious medication with a very narrow band of indications for its use.
If we stick to the recommended science, we have a much broader opportunity to take care of our patients. If we`re going to be using this, I asked physicians, if you`re going to use it -- it`s still illegal to prescribe it, but if you`re going to use it, try to get within a clinical trial. Get within a documented evidence based clinical trial that monitors the patients, monitors the outcomes. And then we have data to make further decisions in the future.
[20:40:19]
HAYES: Yes, the clinical trial, we should note, there`s been this groundswell. You`ve got a doctor in Houston who`s telling Houston Chronicle that he`s used it for COVID patients since the start of the pandemic, a judge just recently ordered Ohio hospital to treat a patient with Ivermectin because, you know, doctors are encountering these demands for this.
And I understand the desperation of people. But one thing that`s -- well, there`s two things here. One is, I`m reminded of the hydroxychloroquine, you know, boom a year ago. And again, there was some early preprints that showed it might be effective. There were some doctors around the world who were trying different treatments. You know, we basically ran the data, and it turned out, not really that effective. You know, it seems to me that, you know, it`s an obvious point, but you can`t do medicine by anecdote is basically what it comes down to.
HARMON: You can`t -- you can`t do it by court-directed authority either. The court is well designed to identify and establish in a fair trial, criminal behavior. But AMA and all doctors should be very discomforted by the fact that a judge feels that they can order a non-clinical use of a non-approved medication for a patient. That`s way beyond. That`s a stretch. And that`s an egregious reaches a courtroom. We`re not happy at all about that.
We are asking patients to trust their doctors, we`re asking the doctors to step up and do the responsible thing and follow ethics, and follow established guidelines, and do the bright, safest thing they can for their patients and stay on the side of science here.
HAYES: All right, Dr. Gerald Harmon from the American Medical Association, I really appreciate you taking time tonight. Thank you.
HARMON: Thank you very much, Chris. It`s an honor. And I`m really in the midst of a heavy COVID load of patients. And I can tell you, I get asked a lot about these treatments. And I try to stay on top of it. But I do follow this science and I try to avoid the fact pollution that we might see sometimes. Thank you.
HAYES: All right, thank you, Doctor. Up next, the Republican agenda that is right now, frankly, killing its own voters. The staggering fatality rates in counties that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump right after this break.
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[20:45:00]
HAYES: There`s been a lot of anecdotal evidence and just the evidence of maps, if you look at them from the beginning of this latest Delta wave of COVID that it`s falling most heavily on Republican areas and Republican voters. Many look at this map of the outbreak. You can see how much worse it is in states across the south, states where Donald Trump won handily.
Now, we have concrete data that puts a fine point on how much this has become a pandemic of Republican areas. Christopher Ingram is a former data reporter for The Washington Post. He currently writes a newsletter but the data shaping and informing our lies. Yesterday, he published this piece titled GOP COVID policy is killing GOP voters.
Now, first, let me say for different reasons, including how they report data. That chart does not include Nebraska, Florida, Alaska or any counties with fewer than 10,000 people because that data can get very noisy. But it does account for about 87 percent of the total U.S. population.
Ingram found that since July 1st, about one this last wave began, in counties where Trump got less than 20 percent of the 2020 presidential vote. On average, there have been fewer than five COVID deaths for every 100,000 people. That`s that blue line there. In counties where Trump more - - won more of the vote but still lost, that number only takes up a little, so those are sort of deep blue and fairly blue areas.
As you get to county where Trump won a higher percentage of votes, the death toll also just gets higher and higher. Finally, in counties where nearly everyone voted for Trump, there were nearly 15 COVID deaths for every 100,000 people. That is more than three times as many people dying from COVID as in those most pro-Biden counties.
That chart brought me up short. It gives some real empirical weight to the evidence we`ve seen for months and months and months that the Delta wave is wreaking havoc disproportionately in red America. And again, this is largely -- not entirely, but largely preventable. It is happening because the agenda of the Trump MAGA Republican Party has been by and large to ignore the rest of COVID, refuse to protect yourself, others from it, and when people die, it was freedom or something, you know.
Now, there`s been really notable exceptions. We praise them on this show, the governor of Vermont, Governor of Ohio, and Republican officials up and down the chain. But tha3t general thrust of attitude has been the defining one in the heart of the Republican base. It`s one of the last four things the Republican Party is currently constituted and stands for now. We will talk about the other three next.
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[20:50:00]
HAYES: As far as I can tell, at this point, there are basically four positions the modern Republican Party holds, the position they truly believe. As I mentioned in the last segment, we know they firmly believe that COVID is nothing that government should be actively trying to fight. You know, again, with some very notable exceptions, the dominant rhetoric from Republicans closest to the heart of the party has been to just let it be, get out of the way, you know, what happens, happens.
The second belief is that there should be no restrictions on gun ownership whatsoever. All guns should be legal. No one should be prevented from having one. The third is what they dishonestly call election security. It`s belief that we Republicans can and should do whatever possible to change the basic rule of democracy to stop Democrats, our enemies, from winning elections.
And the final position is what we are seeing play out in Texas right now, a ban on abortions, opposition to abortion, a bill that Texas Governor Greg Abbott just signed. That is it. Those are the four pillars of the modern Republican Party. They are what is driving the agenda. There is no coherent vision as far as I can tell on any other matter outside of those four positions.
David Jolly is a former member of Congress in the state of Florida who left the Republican Party in 2018, also an MSNBC Political Analyst. Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist. She`s the policy editor for The Bulwark and host of Beg To Differ Podcasts. And they both join me now.
Mona, let me start with you on abortion because to me, it`s the one through line here. And I think it`s really central to the whole development. I mean, this is -- this is the one consistent hallmark of modern conservatism position wise in terms of focus and concentration basically since the last 20 or 30 years all the way back to Reagan really intensifying, and appears to be on the verge of success.
MONA CHAREN, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Yes. It`s funny because you hear people on the right now using the language that they use to mark on the left, namely my body, my choice. They`ve adopted that argument when it comes to taking vaccines. They don`t see the inconsistency that violates the view that they took on abortion, but nevermind.
Look, yes, they are now achieving something that a part of their base wants very badly. And we will see whether it turns out to be successful for them, because the Republican Party traditionally has had a very strong pro-life position, but not everybody in the party was actually hoping to see Roe v. Wade overturned. And so, it`ll be interesting to see how that plays out for them politically.
[20:55:50]
HAYES: I think this is a very important point, which is that in some ways, politically, the best of both worlds for them is for road to stand, and to have a very animated movement, activating working in the states to limit it. And to have both those things so you never have to --
CHAREN: Exactly.
HAYES: -- you`re not the dog that caught the car, and you know, your daughter comes back from freshman year of college, you know, maybe something has to -- you know, that kind of thing.
CHAREN: Yes, exactly.
HAYES: So, I think there`s a lot of that -- a lot of that personal hypocrisy. But the other thing to me, David, is on this election security thing, which isn`t even an issue. It`s an -- it`s not an issue. But I have noted that that is now an issue if you look at -- if you go on YouTube and you watch Republican candidates in 2022, that`s one of the three or four bullet points is election security.
DAVID JOLLY, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Chris, you have to think like a Republican, OK, for just a moment. Republicans don`t care about your public health, they don`t actually care about election integrity, they don`t actually care about the abortion issue. What they care about is winning elections. And what they know is that to win elections, you have to focus on wedge issues that we consider high intensity, low inflammation, right?
Elections are not going to be decided over the nuances of our policy in Afghanistan, over fuel standards for vehicles. They`re decided on these high intensity, low inflammation wedge issues. So, on abortion, Republicans don`t want you to have access to them. On guns, Republicans want you to have it. They`re going to tell you Democrats want to take it away.
On COVID, Republicans are for your freedom. And on elections, Republicans don`t want Black and Brown people voting because it hurts Republicans chances to win. And that`s it. That`s all they`re selling. And the thread that keeps all that together is the demonization of the left and that Democrats are the evil actors that are going to disrupt those wedge issues for you.
HAYES: But here`s what`s so fascinating to me is the -- to me the total retreat from political economy, the total retreat. I mean, you look at these ads and they`ll be a nod above socialism. I saw Rick Scott tried to get up and sort of demagogue on inflation. I thought, well, that`s a -- that`s a sort of like endearingly old school normal politics. Like, the cost of milk is up and oh, you know, too much government money.
And I thought, that`s fine. You can make that argument. That`s like -- that`s in the boundaries of normal politics, right? There`s no traction there, Mona, nothing. You can see that it does nothing. You can see that that`s not what the base cares about or where there`s that. Anything having to do with the broad spectrum of like the state and the market and all this stuff that used to make up, you know, (INAUDIBLE), the Milton Friedman, nothing, zero. There`s nothing.
CHAREN: I know. That that used to be the entire ballgame was arguments about the proper role of government. And should this be done at the federal level or perhaps it`d be better at the state level. That`s all gone now. It`s now all about fomenting grievance and a sense of victimization usually on the part of people who live in cities and look down on people like you is what they get told, and that they`re trying to replace you. They`re trying to bring in dark-skinned immigrants who had a heart -- you know, scary beliefs. That`s the sort of thing that gets traction with the base.
And they are all about clicks and money and pleasing their audience. Remember, when Trump got booed at his very own -- his very own rally for departing from the base, he quickly scurried back and say, well, OK, you know, you don`t have to take the vaccine. They`re in charge. The base is in charge.
HAYES: The tails -- quickly, David, the tails wagging the dog here, though, I think some of this stuff, in the COVID stuff, particularly, which is like, I don`t think corporate America is supporting Republicans wants another round of mass death from COVID because people don`t get vaccinated.
JOLLY: No. This is very much one of those chapters you see at the end of the McCain-Palin race. And frankly, your colleague, Nicole Wallace and others remember this very vividly when McCain and others realized, oh, look what we created. This is now Sarah Palin`s party. It`s not John McCain`s party. This is a different party than today`s Republican leaders know what they`ve got.
HAYES: Doctor -- David Jolly and Mona Charen, thank you both for joining me tonight. That is ALL IN on this Wednesday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Thank you, my friend. Much appreciated. And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour.