On Tuesday’s The 11th Hour on MSNBC, host Stephanie Ruhle welcomed Georgetown Professor, former Solicitor General, and legal analyst Neal Katyal on to declare that overturning Roe v. Wade would be “the most radical decision in our lifetimes” and urge the Democrats to get rid of the filibuster because Mitch McConnell already did for Supreme Court justices.
Ruhle asked Katyal what the federal government could do to protect abortion if Roe does fall, “Neal, let's assume tomorrow's vote fails. Let's assume Roe gets overturned. What could the Justice Department do, especially if some states that are banning abortion are trying to prosecute women who want to travel to other states to get the procedure?”
Katyal began by not answering the question. After declaring he didn’t want to give up on Wednesday’s futile show vote, he proclaimed, “I think the Dems have not been particularly strong in—in-- calling for this vote tomorrow, as those clips you were showing shows. I think the case is two things.”
The first is that, “this draft opinion is the most radical decision in our lifetimes, it will set women back in ways that we've never seen in our lives. And, you know, Roe was a 7-to-2 decision, with five of the seven justices appointed by Republican presidents, so that's point one.”
Other cases that got seven votes include Dred Scott and Plessy. But, if weak arguments were not bad enough, Katyal then devolved into dishonest ones:
And point two is Republicans already nuked the filibuster, it's done. They did it for three Supreme Court justices which happened to be three of the five votes in that leaked draft opinion, it looks like. So if you can nuke the filibuster for the far greater thing of appointing the Supreme Court justices, you should be able to not use that for the more modest thing of just reversing one of the decisions that these three justices wrote... it's really ironic to me that Mitch McConnell, of all people is talking about 60 votes, since he's the one who got rid of the filibuster in the first place on the far greater thing of—of—of-- Supreme Court justices.
The judicial filibuster was eliminated by Harry Reid, but he left it in place for Supreme Court vacancies in an attempt to have it both ways.
Katyal then finally got around to answering Ruhle’s question, “You know, in a normal time, that would violate the constitution. There's an enumerated right to travel clause, right to travel that people think it's in the constitution, but the radicalism of that draft opinion last week, I think, would say that doesn't exist ... There’ll obviously be court cases as well and in a normal world those would be successful, but we’re not in a normal world.
For a man who describes himself in Twitter bio as a “extremist centrist” and who earlier attacked Democrats from the left, urging them to nuke the filibuster for something they don’t even have 50 votes for just might be peak MSNBC.
This segment was sponsored by Volvo.
Here is a transcript for the May 11 show:
The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle
5/10/2022
11:08 PM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: Neal, let's assume tomorrow's vote fails. Let's assume Roe gets overturned. What could the Justice Department do, especially if some states that are banning abortion are trying to prosecute women who want to travel to other states to get the procedure?
NEAL KATYAL: So, first, Steph, I—I—don’t wanna give up on tomorrow's vote. You know, I think the Dems have not been particularly strong in—in-- calling for this vote tomorrow, as those clips you were showing shows. I think the case is two things. Number one, this draft opinion is the most radical decision in our lifetimes, it will set women back in ways that we've never seen in our lives. And, you know, Roe was a 7-to-2 decision, with five of the seven justices appointed by Republican presidents, so that's point one.
And point two is Republicans already nuked the filibuster, it's done. They did it for three Supreme Court justices which happened to be three of the five votes in that leaked draft opinion, it looks like. So if you can nuke the filibuster for the far greater thing of appointing the Supreme Court justices, you should be able to not use that for the more modest thing of just reversing one of the decisions that these three justices wrote.
RUHLE: Neal
KATYAL: So the greater power includes, [unintelligible], it's really ironic to me that Mitch McConnell, of all people is talking about 60 votes, since he's the one who got rid of the filibuster in the first place on the far greater thing of—of—of-- Supreme Court justices.
Now, with respect your question about travel, yes, some states are contemplating laws that would ban their citizens from traveling across the border to get, cross state borders, to get an abortion in another state.
You know, in a normal time, that would violate the constitution. There's an enumerated right to travel clause, right to travel that people think it's in the constitution, but the radicalism of that draft opinion last week, I think, would say that doesn't exist. And so, you would need, I think, a federal law, or something like that, to try and sweep it away, preempt these state travel restrictions. There’ll obviously be court cases as well and in a normal world those would be successful, but we’re not in a normal world.
