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Day number 152.
All right, day 152, we will never forget stabbed in the back, abandoned by Joe Biden after pledging not to.
This is probably today the single worst day, and there's not been one good day that I can name for the Biden administration.
It is a disaster.
The United States Supreme Court has now blocked Biden's vaccine mandate.
Linda, when he gave that speech on this radio program, what was the first thing I said immediately after he said it?
You said that there would be an onslaught of lawsuits and we should all stand by and watch because it was going to be mind-numbing.
Correct.
And again, I believe the worst day in the Biden presidency so far.
The Supreme Court has overturned the president's mask mandate, the vaccine mandate.
The stunning defeat came only hours after Kristen Sinema confirmed her stance against Biden's plan to change the filibuster rules, ending any hopes that the White House had on passing their insane voting reform law.
The Supreme Court 6-3 decision, it went exactly as we predicted it would go.
What did I say?
I said they're going to split the baby here.
Anyway, they blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the sweeping vaccine or test requirements for large private companies of 100 employees or more.
And by the way, the ruling came three days after OSHA's emergency measures started to take effect.
So OSHA, which policies, you know, they tried to lean on.
They knew that they were just using OSHA.
And watch what they do next.
They think they're going to be clever.
They're just going to find another little wiggle room rule to stick it back in anyway.
But anyway, the court's 6-3 decision expressed deep skepticism about the federal government's move in this regard.
And the Biden administration argued before the high court that it was necessary to address the grave danger posed by COVID.
How about you produce testing and you produce therapeutics and antivirals?
Now that we have everything's a breakthrough case, vaccinated, fully vaccinated, vaccinated boostered, vaccinated boostered, and natural immunity people are still getting it.
Anyway, this came on the heels of what was, what, 27 states with Republican attorneys generals and governors and private businesses and religious groups.
We'll have Jay Secular weigh in on this coming up moments from now.
This is really a big deal.
This could end up as the worst day of the Biden presidency.
Remember, these rules, they were counting on it.
With vaccines failing to contain COVID spread, now the CDC is recommending N95 masks.
It changes every day.
There's not one person that I know that is supporting and listening to the likes of Dr. Fauci anymore.
They're not listening.
And I got to tell you why, because they shouldn't be listening.
I don't trust these people.
There's a poll out.
My buddy Sean Compton sent it to me earlier today.
Who do you, wait a minute, who is trusted for COVID?
Who do you trust most for COVID information?
63.25% say you're a doctor.
What have I been saying?
Do your own research.
Take into account your medical history, your current condition, lots of research.
Talk to your doctor, doctors.
I believe in freedom, medical privacy, and doctor-patient confidentiality.
Then, you know, who do you not trust?
Well, only 16% trust Joe Biden.
I don't even know how Fauci got 31%.
The NCAA today updated the definition of fully vaccinated now to include natural immunity.
Good for them.
And on every single level, you know, this is bad.
Now, let me, you know, oh, one other thing that happened today.
Well, it came out CNN's ratings.
Get this.
Nobody's paying attention to it.
I read it every day, but anyway, that has taken a 90% nosedive.
I've never seen this.
And I'm in my 26th year in cable news.
And there's ups and downs and cycles to news stories, et cetera.
And they're, you know, usually, for example, this past year, 2021, was a post-presidential election year.
So my ratings dip like 20% at the end of the year.
And now we're in election season.
You know, by the time this thing heats up in March, April, or May, they will go up again.
It's predictable as the day is long.
Anyway, CNN has the biggest drop I've ever seen.
And I can't even believe 90% reduction.
The RNC today did something that I've been saying they should have done a long time ago.
And that is they are, you know, they've been conned by this Presidential Debate Commission.
Now the RNC has finally come to their senses.
They pulled the plug on any debate participation by a candidate that they support.
And further, they are preparing to change the rules to require that any presidential candidate not participate in any debates run by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Now, why did they do that?
Because they always pick liberals to moderate the debates.
And that makes them unfair.
So good for them.
They're saying, nope, we're not going to get suckered by you anymore.
We're done.
I have some other bad news.
Washington Examiner, mortgage rates have now jumped to their highest level in nearly two years.
What have I been telling you?
We're going to get four rate hikes this year.
This is, you know, now we're headed to number one.
And it's now 3.5% for a 30-year fixed rate.
Still a low rate.
But comparatively, about, let's see, a year ago, that same mortgage was 2.79%.
You know what that means?
That means tens of thousands of extra dollars over the course of your loan.
The rate for a 15-year fixed mortgage is 2.62%.
That's also up from the preceding week.
Grocery store change, what do we call it?
Empty Shelves Biden or Biden's Shelves Biden, bear shelves Biden.
Bear Shelves Biden.
That's what it is.
By the way, everybody's sending me pictures or sending them a sweet baby James to be fully transparent.
And I mean, you can't get anything.
And you were telling me in your story, you can't get anything.
Yeah, it's terrible.
Bloomberg News pump prices are expected to soar.
We're now up to 85 bucks a barrel of oil.
That's like double, more than it was in the 20s under Donald Trump.
Now they're expecting, and there are projections that we may be paying $125 for a barrel of oil when it used to be $22.
It's ridiculous.
You know what that means for you?
That means everything you buy is going to cost more.
Filling up your gas tank, heating your home, cooling your home, everything you buy in every store you go to.
And what's Biden's answer to this?
This was in the Washington Times.
They have delivered another hit to domestic oil and gas production by reversing the Trump era move to open up millions of acres of drilling in Alaska.
The Bureau of Land Management announced Monday, we didn't see it till today, that it would shelve the Trump administration's 2020 plan to expand leasing in the Arctic, on the National Petroleum Reserve, rather, excuse me, in Alaska.
That will close off development to 7 million acres by reverting to the 2013 management plan.
So that means he's going to beg OPEC and get rejected by OPEC again.
Then we have other horrible news.
Record high job openings and extremely low employment have not stopped workers from losing ground due to inflation, real hourly wages.
You know, your dollar one year ago from today was worth seven cents more.
And jobless claims keep jumping as Biden's Omicron failure undermines economic growth.
That came out today as data released by the Labor Department showed 230,000 initial jobless claims for the week ending January 8th.
That's up from last week's 207,000 claims.
All of this is preventable and all of this, you know, we could stop.
Now, this is on top of now we had 7% inflation.
Remember, they said it was going to be transitory.
Nope, it rages on.
And the Federal Reserve Chief said the same on Tuesday.
He called inflation a severe threat to the economy.
Admits upward price pressures will persist well into the year because the cost of everything is going up.
It is the highest rate of inflation in 40 years, and it gets worse.
Wholesale prices are now soaring 9.7% in December.
We got that number today from the Labor Department.
Now, that measures inflation at the wholesale level before it reaches you, the consumer.
So guess who pays that increase?
You do.
In other words, 10% more than you were paying last year.
I mean, real wage contractions are killing everybody.
This didn't happen.
This was caused by their insane new Green Deal, radical energy and economic redistribution of wealth policies.
And, you know, sick employees, you know, they're trying to blame the meat industry, the trucking industry, et cetera, et cetera.
Democrats worry Biden could pay the political price for this inflation.
He should.
He's caused it.
You want to stop it?
Start drilling here and now, and we'll all save money.
It's unbelievable.
You know, bear-shelved Biden.
Good grief.
Yeah, he promised 7 million jobs by this point.
Yeah, not happening.
By the way, let's go Brandon zooms into a popular campaign ad.
Did you see that?
Just as a side note.
So Kristen Sinema put the final nail in the coffin of the one-time use of the filibuster for this insane voting rights bill.
She says there's no need for me to restate my long-standing support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation.
She said this one day after Biden announced his support for changing the filibuster rule to pass voting bills.
It is the view I continue to hold.
So, Kristen Cinema deals Joe Biden's presidency.
You know, that now, you check that power grab off the list.
Check the build back better madness off the list.
You know, check the court packing off the list.
That's not going to happen either because they need a change in the filibuster for that, too.
So, pretty much everything that on the agenda is now back to zero.
New poll shows voter oppose Biden's push to overturn the filibuster by 2 to 1.
Not good news for Joe Biden today on any level.
The RNC is warning against Democratic election reform.
Freedom to cheat will eviscerate voter ID laws.
And Schumer, apparently not aware of what's going on today, you know, he's preparing Democrats for the final phase of this year-long push.
It's not going to happen.
Thank God.
And I got to give credit to Kristen Cinema and Joe Manchin.
And I'll tell you, what they're doing is they're representing the people in their states.
Mark Kelly's not doing it out there in Arizona.
And I think he's probably going to lose to Bernovich.
I hope so.
Anyway, big blow to Joe Biden on every front today as the Supreme Court, as we predicted, in a 6'3 majority, gets rid of the vaccine mandate.
That's good news for businesses around the country.
Interest rates going.
I mean, this is a disastrous day for the Democrats.
Manchin and Cinema are no on changing and altering the filibuster.
The RNC warned about this.
Everybody's warmed about this.
Chuck seems to not face reality.
I thought one of the best moments I've ever seen in Congress was Senator Tom Cotton read Chuck Schumer's speech and then put up a big picture of him.
I mean, it was absolutely hilarious.
Honestly, Sean, can I chime in for a second?
That picture, when he pointed at it and he was like, ta-da!
I literally, I was like, I love this man.
It was hilarious.
It was so funny.
Anyway, so all of this.
And then you look at the economic news.
Mortgage rates now shoot up to the highest level in two years.
We got, you know, empty grocery stores everywhere.
Bare shelves, Biden.
You've got pump prices expected to go up dramatically again this summer.
We're looking at predictions now of $125 a barrel of oil.
We're near $100 a barrel now.
And then what does Biden do?
He escalates his war on energy production.
Then we get the Labor Department saying real wages plunged in December.
The dollar that you had last year is worth $0.07 less this year at the same time.
Jobless claims are up on top of that.
This is all on top of inflation, 7%, a 40-year record.
40-year record.
What are you going to blame Donald Trump for this too?
Just like you blame Donald Trump for running out of tests leading into the holidays when you know you're going to have a surge of COVID cases.
Then the producer price index, 9.7% in December.
You know what that is?
That measures inflation at the wholesale level before it reaches you, the consumer.
That means you're screwed.
You know, it's the average family now is because of Biden inflation is now paying five grand more per year.
That's how much it's costing us.
And it's who's it disproportionately impacting?
Not the rich, but the poor and the middle class in this country.
It's unbelievable.
We didn't have these problems under Donald Trump, did we?
We'll get a full complete analysis.
Jay Seculo.
How many Supreme Court cases did Jay win himself?
Like 20.
Anyway, very familiar with the court.
And in a private conversation, he predicted it accurately what would happen.
Anyway, that's coming up next and a lot more.
And Paul Manafort, straight ahead.
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All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
You got to hear this interview with Kamala Harris.
It was an unmitigated failure and a disaster.
By the way, she says, if you need to find a COVID test, go Google it.
She doubled down on stupid and said, I will not absolve senators for voting against voting rights bill.
Oh, okay.
Do they need your absolution?
On changing COVID strategy, it's time for us to do what we've been doing.
Running out of tests and monoclonal antibodies and antiviral medicines.
Oh, okay.
That's a great idea.
But 500 million tests are being sent out next week.
A little late, guys.
You missed the Christmas, the predictable Christmas increase in cases because you decided, according to Vanity Fair in October, to reject the plan to have 732 million tests a month.
The big news of the day is what I just told you.
The Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration, their vaccine mandate.
And this came only days after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's emergency measure started to take effect.
You know, I'm always cautious when you listen to oral arguments of the Supreme Court, but it was pretty clear in the questioning that, in fact, the conservative justices on the court, or moderate to conservative anyway, were very dubious of using OSHA.
It was John Roberts, the Chief Justice, who made the point that, yeah, I don't think OSHA had this in mind when they put this, when they were formed 50, 60 years ago, whatever it was.
Anyway, this was the result of a whole slew of lawsuits, as I predicted the day that Biden gave his vaccine mandate speech over 27 states, Republican attorneys generals, governors, private businesses, religious groups, national industry groups such as the National Retail Federation, the American Trucking Association, the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
Anyway, from the ACLJ, we have our friends Jay Seculo and his son Jordan Seculo, both attorneys.
Jay has won, I think, how many Supreme Court cases have you won?
Well, because of today.
Yeah.
Cases won would be, was it 221?
Yeah, 21 won.
I get it right.
Now, by the way, full disclosure, Jay Seculo has been my lead attorney now for many, many years.
Full disclosure for everybody.
All right, Jay, you predict, we've been talking about this this week.
You predicted exactly what would happen.
Now, they did, just for clarity, as it relates to the other states.
I'm sorry, if you get monies from Medicaid or from Medicare, that is not included in this stay.
Go ahead.
Right.
So there's two cases that were, two issues that were involved, and they were two separate cases.
The case we represented that the ACLJ, American Center for Law and Justice, represented the Heritage Foundation in was a challenge to what's called the employee-employer mandate.
That is, if you have more than 100 employees, you had to either require your employees to be vaccinated or tested weekly.
And of course, the problem with that was the testing wasn't available.
But there was another problem, and this was the problem that we argued.
We didn't get into the weeds on the science and all of that.
I've said before, I'm pro-vax.
I've been vaccinated.
I've been boosted.
What we got into was, does the government have the authority to do this through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration?
In other words, is there statutory authority for them to do this?
And six justices of the Supreme Court specifically said no.
Jordan has a lot of the language that they actually utilize where the court said the statutory authority doesn't exist.
Yeah, I think, Sean, I mean, what's clear for people is that the court sees COVID exactly how we all see it.
It's a danger we all face in every aspect of our life.
We face it at home.
Our kids go to school.
We go out to get groceries.
We've got to live.
And yes, part of that is going to work, but it's not workplace-specific.
And that's what the Supreme Court focused on.
If we allow OSHA to have this kind of power and claim this in an emergency way, which means they don't have to go through the normal rulemaking process, their power comes to no end.
They have endless authority to regulate what is the same.
All right, but let me ask both of you something.
You're right, and you're right on the law, and your arguments were dead on accurate.
And I understand how they split the baby, so to speak, and the decision, so to speak.
They allowed similar requirements to stand for medical facilities that take Medicare and Medicaid payments because it's directly impactful to those specific hospitals.
Now, my question is this.
The cynical side of me, and Jordan will give you first crack of this, tells me that, oh, okay, they're just going to push aside OSHA and find some other means or loophole, if you will, to thread the needle and try and bypass Congress and do it the right way.
Am I wrong?
I don't think that for the majority of the American workforce, if you take this nine-page opinion, which allows the state to go back into effect, there's no wiggle room.
So there's not a way around going through a normal workplace.
So they say, hey, listen, if OSHA came and said this is a specific issue we see in meat packing plans, we're going to go through the rulemaking process and allow comments from the meat packing industry to allow them to weigh in and then issue a rule.
That's one thing.
We're not going to allow what they call a blunt instrument approach.
That's what they called this mandate, a blunt instrument approach to public health, which is not outside of OSHA.
So again, you could come see different ways.
What the court really wanted to prevent here, Sean, was the opportunity for the federal government to regulate every aspect of our life.
And that's what this would have opened up the door for OSHA to do.
And, Sean, the court said specifically, under the law as it stands today, and they're talking about Supreme Court precedent, statutory construction, the power rests with the states and Congress, not with OSHA.
And that was, in other words, that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration never had the authority.
So this was their workaround.
That workaround, as Chief Justice Roberts asked multiple times during that oral argument, was closed today.
And it was the right decision for three reasons primarily.
Number one, there was a complete lack of statutory authority.
Number two, the federal government itself has recognized that this is COVID is not going to be solved by the federal government, but rather by the states.
That was President Biden who said that himself on a call with governors who are the ones who have to recognize and deal with this.
And third, and I think I call it the doctrine of legal impossibility.
It was not possible for individuals to comply with the testing mandate when Dr. Fauci himself, as well as the CDC, said we do not have adequate testing.
So the testing option was no option at all.
So when you put all of that together, the court says this, the act plainly authorizes.
The question is whether the act plainly authorizes the secretary's mandate.
Is what the court said?
It does not.
That act empowers the secretary to set, as Jordan said, workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures.
So this is a big one.
Now, this has not been a good day for the Biden administration on any level.
Mortgage rates shooting up to the highest level that we've had in two years.
Grocery stores are really struggling.
Lots of empty shelves all over the country and food supply shortages.
We now have oil headed towards $100 a barrel, which means that the price of a gallon of gasoline is going to go up dramatically.
And the cost to heat your home in the winter and cool it in the summer is going to cost more.
Every item we buy at every store is going to cost more.
Biden's answer to this is he put even more restrictions on energy production in Alaska.
Real wages plunged in December.
We had a record, 40-year record on inflation.
The very same dollar we have in our pocket today is worth seven cents less than it was at this time last year.
Producer prices, they went up 9.7%.
That came out today.
And that measures inflation on the wholesale level before it reaches we, the consumer, the average family now, as a result of all of this inflation, because of Biden's policies.
That's costing about the average family over $5,000 a year.
I think there's going to be a big political price.
And Kristen Cinema could not have been any more clear that, in fact, she's not going to support this one-time use of the filibuster to get their voting rights bill passed.
I would say this is a disastrous day politically for Joe Biden, probably the worst day of his presidency, Jay Seculo.
Well, look, they've had a bad day.
I mean, cinema was very clear.
I mean, we talked about this on our broadcast today, too.
I mean, there's no question that they're putting a lot of pressure on cinema, Kelly, also on Manchin and Tester.
But, you know, we have a theory about this.
And Sean, while we're optimistic right now, Jordan is very concerned and has been concerned that they will try to do workarounds congressionally on this with specific, like they were going to do here, where they were going to use what's called a shell.
They were going to strip an existing bill of its language and stick all this in.
Yeah, so our guard says to me up because they're going to constantly try and use any avenue of the federal government.
The bureaucracy is on their side to gain power.
So if they can't do it legislatively, which it looks like that's a real trouble for them now, they're going to put all the pressure back on Biden to say, issue executive orders and then we'll go defend them in court.
So we'll see how much we can put pressure on.
And you talked about the employment, all these numbers.
This mandate was directly related to that, but I actually like what the Supreme Court did in the right way.
They actually said at the end of this opinion, it's not our job to look at that policy.
We're not policymakers.
So don't come to us with the argument over what it costs, but also what it's going to do to COVID.
That's not our role.
It's whether or not the government had the authority, whether this specific agency had the authority.
It just shows the Biden team, like him getting up there, which was the opening of our brief saying this is not going to be solved by the federal government.
It has to be called by the states.
They are not on message.
That does hurt them in court.
The greatest evidence that they will try a workaround, and there is evidence and precedence for this.
Remember when they were trying to do their Build Back Better New Green Deal socialism, they tried on four or five separate occasions to stick amnesty into the bill, only to be rejected every time by the Senate parliamentarian because they were using the reconciliation process, Jay.
Yes, and that's why we're saying, while we're pleased with what Senator Sinema said and what Joe Manchin has indicated, although he's got his own version of this bill, so you've got to watch out for that.
We've got to keep our guards up.
Now, I think that what Jordan said is right.
What they'll do is they'll, they failed in court today at the Supreme Court of the United States in a big way.
They're going to fail, it looks like, on their breaking the filibuster.
It looks like it's going to fail.
Watch out, buckle up for executive action.
And we know what that can mean.
I mean, it can do a lot of executive orders can do a lot of things.
Look, this thing was an emergency ETS that was the basis of this Supreme Court case.
It was never a formal action.
There was no notice and comment from Occupational Health and Safety Administration from OSHA.
They just did it through executive fiat.
So I think we've got to be cautious and maintain and keep our guard up.
But look, this was a good day for freedom.
It was a good day for the Constitution, both what happened with what Senator Sinema said and what the Supreme Court did today.
It was a good day for statutory construction, the basic kind of fundamental aspect of statutory analysis.
Does the agency have the authority?
Quote, it does not.
And by the way, in our brief, we basically took 20 pages to say it does not.
We did not get into the science.
We thought that was a big mistake, and I thought that was a problem in the oral arguments, honestly.
It got everybody into other areas.
In fact, in the first half hour of the argument, everybody thought we were going to lose because they got so tied up in the science.
It was a disaster.
You're right.
And by the way, I don't mean to pick on poor Justice Sotomayor and Justice Pryor, but neither one of them seemed to have a clue about science and COVID.
The statement by Justice Pryor, we just had another 750 million cases.
And Justice Sotomayor is saying, oh, 100,000 children are now struggling with this.
And I'm like, okay, why are you not up to speed on this?
Why were they even discussing it?
I mean, that's a better question.
Either the Constitution, but if you don't have to go to the Constitution, you go to the statute first.
It's called Constitutional Avoidance Doctrine.
If you could decide it on the statute, decide on the statute.
Why is it that they just bent everybody, including the justices, just stick with the question, is there statutory authority or not and where does it rest?
And that answered the question.
And it answered in a six-to-three way, which, by the way, tells you something else.
Elections for president matter, because I could think maybe four years ago, it may not have come out this way.
I think that's a good point.
Anyway, Jay Seculo and Jordan Seculo, thank you both for being with us.
Thanks, John.
American Center for Law and Justice, the ACLJ.
Go to their website if you want to see their arguments.
They represented the Heritage Foundation and put their brief in as well.
All right, big news today.
Kristen Sinema deals a blow to the end of the filibuster and the Supreme Court decision that we were just discussing at length.
Yes, the Supreme Court 6-3 blocks the Biden vaccine mandate for businesses, and we'll have full coverage of that coming up later in the program.
When we come back, by the way, we've got updates on proactive medicine for COVID and Paul Manafort.
Oh, I have another minute.
Yeah, you need to fix your potato clock.
We have some time left.
Well, I'm sorry.
I didn't know I had another minute.
Anyway, back to the cinema issue.
So for all the focus on Joe Manchin, it looks like it's Kristen Sinema that drove the final nail into Joe Biden's dream.
Now, one thing that Jordan and Jay were both saying, that they're going to find a workaround, a sneaky backdoor way, you know, to try and get all of this done.
And this is where we all have to be vigilant because now that they don't have Buildback Better, thanks to Joe Manchin, they're not going to get this insane, let's get rid of voter ID voting rights bill passed because they don't have enough votes that will blow up the filibuster.
And she said she will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying division, the disease of division.
And there's no reason for me to restate my views because I tell you every day.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
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