SHOW NOTES: Unanimity; IVF; The G-7 Meet
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Welcome! The United States Supreme Court has unanimously rejected a challenge to abortifacient drugs. The Justices agreed the party bringing the lawsuit did not have standing to bring the suit.
Also: The Justices unanimously sided with Starbucks against a federal judge who had sided with labor unions.
G-7: The Group of Seven are meeting in Italy and have agreed to finance Ukraine using seized Russian funds. The money will sent as a loan to Ukraine and repaid with interest earned on the Russian assets. The meeting is of deeply, deeply unpopular world leaders.
For My Friends, Anything. For My Enemies, the Law: New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg is moving to dismiss all felony charges against the antisemites to stormed into Columbia University buildings.
Meanwhile: Antisemitic protestors at Cal State have taken over a building, trapping the school’s president inside.
Good News?: Though the Fed chose not to cut interest rates, it is signaling that interest rate cuts are coming this year.
Fighting Back. J.D. Vance explains why he and other Republicans have decided to throw up more obstacles against Biden’s nomination. More here.
Must See TV. Here is the Chairman of the Texas Democratic Party praising the public school teachers of Texas. He went to a private school. He sends his children to private school. He does not want poor kids to go to school with his kids.
LOL Headline of the Day: Biden’s Israel policy may hasten Trump’s rise, US allies fear (Politico)
He Did It Again. An elderly man is lost and needs everyone else to direct him on where to go and how to get there. This is elder abuse.
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The IVF Debate
The Southern Baptist Convention has voted in opposition to in vitro fertilization. On the same day, all 49 Senate Republicans signed a statement supporting IVF. Nikki Haley tweeted her support of IVF and Donald Trump has told the GOP he supports IVF. Evangelical Christians, not just those in the Southern Baptist Convention, tend to oppose IVF.
If your argument is that life begins at conception, creating life and freezing it in test tubes until discarding it is hypocritical. If life begins at conception, it is logical and ethical to oppose the creation of life only to discard it later.
Making it easier to adopt embryos is a sound public policy. But ultimately, IVF could be the issue that causes the Christian and the pro-life political movement to split. Why? Good luck telling a mother she cannot have a biological child of her own.
The pro-life ethics of IVF collide with the desire of people to be fruitful and multiply with their own biological children. Telling a woman she cannot do that and must instead go through an adoption process of someone else’s child is terrible politics.
And at the end of the day, political parties are about politics, not necessarily policy. The situation is one ripe for exploitation by the left to drive wedges between Christians and the GOP. That’s just the reality.
The Deal Is Not Renewed
This is a bigger deal than most of you might realize. Fifty years ago, the Saudis agreed to do all oil exchanges in U.S. dollars. That made the dollar more competitive globally, it allowed the U.S. to track foreign exchanges, and it ratified the dollar as the chief standard for trade in the world.
The deal has expired, and thanks to Joe Biden bungling the relationship with Saudi Arabia, the deal will not be renewed. The Saudis will now conduct their foreign oil exchanges in several other currencies, including the Chinese. That means the U.S. will have a harder time tracking our rivals. It also means the dollar is not as dominant and gives greater credibility to China on the global stage.
This does not serve our national interests but is a logical outcome of Biden treating Saudi Arabia as badly as he has. The man who has been wrong about everything continues his streak.
The Houthi Rise
One of the first things Joe Biden did when he became President of the United States was abandon Donald Trump’s initiative to list the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a terrorist organization. Biden took them off the list, and now the Houthis are repaying the United States by attacking everything they can.
The Wall Street Journal has a pretty amazing story about just how widespread the path of destruction and disruptions to shipping lanes. From the Journal: