Watch All In With Chris Hayes Highlights: May 1

good evening from New York I'm Chris Hayes today one of the nation's most punishing and restrictive abortion bans went into effect in the third largest state in the Union in the State of Florida it is now a felony to quote perform or actively participate in an abortion after six weeks gestation that is just two weeks after a Miss period it's before many many women even know that they are pregnant the ban does at least statutorily provide exceptions for rape incest human trafficking up to 15 weeks of pregnancy and to save a woman's life or to prevent quote substantial and irreversible physical impairment but what we have learned from those exceptions in other states and what providers in Florida say is that they don't work that there will be very serious consequences a Florida doctor telling NBC News quote it's going to cause delays in care that are going to cost women significant health hazards or risks so as of today 17 States ban all or most abortions including the entire South that block there from Texas to Florida three more states banned the procedure after 12 or 15 weeks one of those three Arizona recently upheld a Civil War era law Banning nearly all abortions today just two Republicans in the entire State Senate joined all Democrats in the state senate to repeal the 1864 law it's still expected to go into effect for a limited period of time over the summer before reverting back to that 15 week weak bam in all in this country in 2024 as we head towards this election one in three women of reproductive age lives in a state with an abortion ban that's the reality in America and the man responsible who has a 50 chance of getting back in the white house next year believes he did the country a great service it was always the plan from the great legal Experts of this country and even the World they wanted to get abortion out of the federal government everybody wanted that that was uniform so what's happened is now the states decide and they going to votes in different states and it's been an amazing process but basically the states decide on abortion and people are absolutely thrilled with the way that's going on you can keep saying that but it's not going to make it true the majority of this country is not thrilled with what Donald Trump did to Reproductive Rights not thrilled with women having to bleed out in parking lots before they can get into hospitals being medevaced out of hospitals in States like Idaho they're not thrilled with that and he has not been getting anywhere near the level of blame that he deserves today in Florida vice president kamla Harris pointedly gave Trump full credit for the abortion bans at the stroke of midnight another Trump abortion ban went into effect here in Florida as of this morning four million women in this state woke up with fewer reproductive freedoms than they had last night this is the new reality under a trump abortion ban in a statement President Biden was even clear saying in part quote there is one person responsible for this nightmare Donald Trump and in politics uh people exaggerate all the time but on this it's just true there is no question about it Donald Trump is the man responsible for the abortion banss he's responsible for the banss in Florida and in Arizona and 18 other states he's responsible for every woman that has to suffer awaiting care they desperately need who's turned away in all the states restricting the rights and threatening the lives of millions of Americans eliminating the federal right to an abortion was Donald Trump's plan from the very beginning he ran for president the first time on appointing Supreme Court Justices that would overturn roie Wade in your selection as president what criteria would you use to pick some of pro lifee pro- lifee they'll be pro-life and we'll see what about overturning but they will be we will appoint I will appoint judges that will be pro-life do you want to see the court overturn well if we put another two or perhaps three justices on that's really what's going to be that's will happen and that'll happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life injustices on the court again there was lots of stuff that Donald Trump was real hazy about real foggy about there was a lot of misdirection even now this year there wasn't on this issue it was clear as day he said it over and over in fact he even released a list of the anti-abortion anti-road judges he would choose from the people on that list were chosen by conservative groups including the Federalist society and the Heritage Foundation now Donald Trump clearly had literally no idea who they were just they fulfilled the requirements of the anti-abortion far right so with the judges they were saying well what happens if he appoints the wrong judges and what we did and I I just have it um we just took a list of judges and uh I thought what I would do is put this forward and this would be the list that I would either choose from or pick people very close in terms of the the spirit and the meaning of what they represent and I uh came up with a list uh the Federalist Society was very much involved uh various people were involved it's gotten very good reviews from it immediate release it's gotten great reviews the people that have seen it have given it so if you want I will uh I will do it now if you'd like me to read them I can read them I I don't I hope your people aren't going to fall asleep as I read them he read the list of names I mean this was again this was a huge issue remember people thought Trump maybe wasn't a stal war conservative he had skepticism from evangelicals so the idea was just black and white like you're getting the judges and the justices that will overturn row he continued to add to the list and eventually again maybe the only promise the man has kept in his life I honestly mean that he did what he said he chose three names from the list they were all on the list Neil Gorsuch Brett Kavanaugh Amy Cony Barrett now at their confirmation hearings all three Trump appointees who were on the list who he said would overturn row rco when asked about how they would rule on abortion rights describing row as settled law Row versus Wade decided in 1973 as a president of the United States Supreme Court it has been reaffirmed I understand the importance of the precedent set forth in roie Wade I don't have any agenda I have no agenda to try to overrule Casey um I have an agenda to stick to the rule of law and decide cases as they come Amy Cody Baron got up there under oath and was like I have no agenda to overturn row sure right of course of course Donald Trump's aims and his intentions in nominating the three justices were always clear under my Administration we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence and that is the right to life a tremendous record including two great new Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh they'll be making tremendous and important decisions on abortion the President also is opposed to roie Wade that's on the ballot as well and the court in the court and so that's also at stake right now and so the election is already know it's the ballot why is it in the ballot because because why is it the it's not in the ballot it's on the ballot in I think so in the court there's nothing happening there there's nothing happening there Donald Trump 2020 nothing happening there the guy who told us all along like you're getting roie Wade overturned we're getting anti-abortion justices when he gets it all there what are you talking about nothing happened and then in the June of 2022 Donald Trump's six-year long plot succeeded his three justices who he had vetted who are on the list who guaranteed would overturn roie Wade overturn roie Wade eliminating the right to an abortion he brags about it now I want to thank the Supreme Court Justices for Having the courage Clarence Thomas Samuel Alo John Roberts Brett Kavanaugh Neil Gorsuch Amy Cony Barrett for the wisdom and the courage to do this but Donald Trump deserves all the credit he is the ultimate cause the man responsible for millions of American women living under dangerous Draconian abortion banss and if he's elected again it will only get worse in the spring of 1969 group of students at morous College historically back College in Atlanta were frustrated by what they said was the school's slow progress on civil rights and they' protested they've been rebuffed so they locked the college trustees in their office for two days and essentially held them hostage now one of the trustees was Martin Luther King senr father of the recently slain civil rights leader he began having chest pains and one of the students later said we let him out of there so we wouldn't be accused of murder that student and his classmates eventually gave up under a promise of amnesty from the college the college reneged and he was expelled it would be years before he was rehabilitated and decades before he became known the world over as actor Samuel L Jackson now I tell this story for two reasons one to remind us that college activism has long been a part of college education the another reason though is to get a sense of proportion which seems lacking today as we watch the disturbing imagery emerge from campuses at Colombia UCLA University of Texas University of South Florida so many others where cops or in some cases mobs uh took down Pro Palestinian student encampments and protests as well as professors and journalists and just random bystanders the cumulative effect of all this coverage along with some unverified assertions from police and politicians has been to drive home the idea that student protests are a basically a terrorist level threat that they had to be neutralized by battalions of cops armed like Soldiers with mraps and Sonic cannons the reason uh this seems to me a reaction that's out of proportion to the protest themselves seems especially true when you look at some other campuses like Brown University where administrators negotiated with student protesters who took down their encampment and Wesley University whose president said the protesting there was nonviolent and non-disruptive adding as long as it continues in this way the university will not attempt to clear the encampment now these universities crucially have reiterated their important existing rules against anti-semitic invective and harassment certainly while also protecting assembly which seems sensible also out of step with what you're seeing elsewhere because ever since October 7th when Hamas committed its atrocities in Israel there has been this obsessive media focus on college campuses and that's true partly because there are genuine issues worth debating including the degree to which universities are creating spaces that are that are hostile to pro-israel Jewish students where they feel under threat or universities the degree to which they're suppressing po pro Palestinian speech and those issues really do matter but the way that so many prominent voices have focused so exclusively on colleges feels honestly a bit decadent to me like we're doing a a paper doll version of the conflict because the actual reality of what's happening in Gaza is so horrific unceasing and high stakes it's more enjoyable to argue about what college kids are doing than to confront the human misery and destruction that's happening in the actual conflict that is of course the source of these protests what seems most worth debating isn't campus speech but whether the US government should continue to fund and support an Israeli War in Gaza that has pushed more than a million people to the brink of famine a war that has damaged half of the buildings in Gaza a war that has failed to bring home most of the hostages held by Hamas that has fact and led to the death of some of those hostages as well as the deaths of an estimated 34,000 Palestinians including roughly 10,000 women and ,000 children is that ongoing effort morally defensible is it strategically wise are we as a nation doing the right or wrong thing and continuing to support it now whenever that becomes a question it almost becomes reflexive to challenge the questioner and I can't help but think of the protests that marked the leadup to the Iraq War which were both widely attended and widely attacked and many many prominent War supporters including onetime student protester Christopher Hitchens blasted those demonstrations and he pointed to the fact that some of the people organizing the protest held genuinely odious and Fringe views for instance the view that North Korea is a workers's paradise and a great place that's a horrible view there were protest organizers with bad views lots of them there were people at the protest with terrible views there were people who thought 911 was an inside job I would argue with them myself at protests did that have anything to do at all with whether the war in Iraq was moral and prudent no the war in Iraq demonstrably was neither on that the protesters were right which brings us back to Columbia University where 56 years ago almost to the day student protesters took over the same building Hamilton Hall that was occupied earlier this week they too were forcibly removed and arrested many were bloodied and beaten for protesting among other things the University's involvement in the Vietnam War they believe the war was moral catastrophe and the US should stop waging it they were right and the fact that they were absolutely genuine extremists among those protesters in ' 68 again had no bearing on whether they were right or not about that what I find particularly maddening about our focused on the protesters of the conflict is that it's an invasion it avoids the difficult task of being universally empathetic to our fellow human beings and truly Reckoning with the scale of Devastation that that is wrought by our country in our names with our support in the aftermath of 911 we waged a global war on terror for two decades that killed an estimated 430,000 people many of them children women elderly Innocents in Vietnam we are estimated to have killed more than a million people huge swads of them civilians women children male now combatants old people and the like can you even make sense of those numbers I can't no one can it's hard to think of them to contend with them as actual real human beings who live lives before he took them who were people like you and I who were loved by the people in their lives it is much easier to get angry at the spoiled brats on college campuses why are they being so disruptive what are they so upset said about it if you feel that way which I can understand honestly I felt irritation and anger at protesters many times in my life even ones I was ostensively on the same side as broadly speaking if you feel that way just try recasting the question why are all these people so upset that we're helping a government wage a brutal War that's killed 13,000 children the question kind of answers itself to take seriously the scale of human suffering that's happening in Gaza doesn't mean you must come down the side of the protester certainly there are many people who think the war is a brutal but necessary campaign for Israel's defense what it does necessitate is that you weigh all the human suffering against the actual endgame of the conflict that is currently being waged and is unarticulated as of now a conflict the US continues to support our Humanity demands we focus on those questions first and last

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Id: BPpXHsUhGZQ

Length: 17min 4sec (1024 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2024