The
following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
The race for the White House takes flight.
Welcome to the first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign live
at Pfizer Forum in Milwaukee.
The first Republican presidential primary debate
takes the Milwaukee stage, while extreme heat
leads to school closures.
I'm Frederica Freiber.
Tonight, I'm here and now, a rundown
of the first standoff between GOP presidential hopefuls
with reflections from voters and our political panels,
Bill McCossham and Scott Ross, plus our last and our abortion
series looks at the medical perspective.
It's here and now for August 25.
Funding for Here and Now is provided by the Focus Fund
for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
The heat was on in Milwaukee this week with eight candidates
appearing for their first debate Wednesday night.
As Stephen Potter reports, voters got a look
at the Republican slate of presidential hopefuls
for the upcoming 2024 election.
As a voter, I didn't walk away completely sold
or completely put off by anyone, really.
That's despite the eight candidates trying to make their mark.
There's a difference between you and me.
I'm not a professional politician.
That's the difference you can answer a question.
It was comical at a point.
And I've seen aspects of some of the competitors
that I hadn't heard before.
Political scientist Mordecai Lee says
Republicans have an impressively deep bench.
With Wisconsin being 49.9% Democratic
and 49.9% Republicans, I think for the Democrats
who are watching the moral of the story is be afraid.
Be very afraid.
While former President Donald Trump wasn't there,
his presence was felt.
Well, he was in the room even though he wasn't in the room.
And certainly a little disappointed that he didn't show up,
although I think we did a different president.
I am leaning towards Trump, but without him here,
I thought it'd be a good time to hear loudly
from the other candidates.
One of the most disagreeable topics of the night was abortion.
I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.
Let's treat this like a respectful issue that it is
and humanize the situation and stop demonizing the situation.
Consensus is the opposite of leadership.
When the Supreme Court returned this question
to the American people, they didn't just send it
to the states only.
It's not a state's only issue.
It's a moral issue.
Another hot button issue, climate change.
The climate change again is a hoax.
First of all, yes, is climate change real?
Yes, it is.
But if you want to go and really change the environment,
then we need to start telling China and India
that they have to lower their emissions.
The candidates were also asked if they would still support
Republican front-runner Donald Trump,
despite the felony charges stacking up against him.
Someone's got to stop normalizing this conduct, OK?
Now, and now whether or not, whether or not,
you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong.
The conduct is beneath the office of president
of the United States.
President Trump, I believe, was the best president
of the 21st century.
It's a fact.
Not surprisingly, Democrats weren't impressed.
A group of people that really didn't
seem to recognize why Republicans lost in 2020 and 2022,
and especially this spring in Wisconsin
in the Supreme Court election.
The public doesn't like this kind of extremism.
For his part, Mordecai Lisa's debates
like this give voters the chance to choose
their top tier candidates.
So if you've got three that you like in a certain priority,
there's a decent chance that at least one of them
will be standing and still in the race
by the time April comes around.
Reporting from Milwaukee, for here and now,
I'm Stephen Potter.
For their take on the Republican presidential primary debate,
two veteran politicals, our political panelists,
Republican Bill McCostran, and Democrat Scott Ross.
And thanks for being here, guys.
Thanks for having us.
So first to you, Bill, what was your take of the debate?
I liked it.
So as a former hockey coach, I like the fact
that they competed for the nomination.
You can't teach kids to compete.
And six of them, I think, brought their A game.
I didn't think Hutchinson or Tim Scott did,
but the other six really competed
to try and get this nomination.
My ranking of the debate the other night
would have been Donald Trump number one.
He didn't get hit at all the whole night.
Ron DeSantis number two.
I would have had Vivek, Rama Swami number three,
and Nikki Haley number four, and Mike Pence number five.
There's a couple problems with a few of them.
One was Trump.
He wasn't there, right?
So we'll see over time whether or not
this hurts his big lead nationally and in the key states.
I think it will.
Number two, Rama Swami.
He tried to fill the outsider lane,
which Trump has fully filled, right?
And the one thing that the moderators didn't ask
Rama Swami was when he said Donald Trump
was the best president in the 21st century,
the follow up should have been, he's in this race.
So what are you doing in this race?
Exactly.
Nobody asked him that, right?
And the final one is Mike Pence.
There's, Scott Ross has more chance
of getting the Republican nomination than Mike Pence does.
The MAGA voters will never allow him to be the nominee.
So I think it's time for the former VP to exit stage left.
What do you think about that?
Well, if this is just an excuse trying to get me
to go to Milwaukee next year,
that's not the way to do it.
I saw, you know, what I saw was what the American people saw,
which is agreeing with Bill on the fact that Donald Trump,
you know, came in second,
Joe Biden came in first in that debate
because what you saw was a group of people
trying to clamor for Donald Trump's approval
while issuing opinions that are just so
beyond what the American people are supporting right now.
The American people do support abortion rights.
The Republicans will have a nationwide abortion ban.
The Republican Party opposes climate change.
It doesn't believe it exists.
We saw that in the just terrible lack of raising hands
and, you know, that sort of thing.
Overall, I think, you know, the big news there
was that Ron DeSantis turned out to be exactly
the paper tiger that Donald Trump said that he was
because he had absolutely no impact in that debate
other than letting us know that any single time
he's asked a question,
he's going to answer it in a very surly, snarly way.
And I will say the thing about, you know, Ramiswami,
when you get me to root for Mike Pence during a debate
because you're being so irritating,
like I think that's a feat, a feat well done.
Scott, I want to ask you this.
Mordecai Lee just said in the report that we had
on the debate that Republicans have a deep bench
of impressive presidential hopefuls to the extent
he said that Democrats should be very, very afraid.
What's your response to that?
The Democrats have Joe Biden to run this time.
He is the incumbent president.
He has created 13 million jobs.
He has helped build an economy from the ground up
and from the middle out that is helping all of Americans
to try and thrive in this, in these trying times.
I mean, the fact is, is that Democrats don't need
a good bench right now in 2024
because they'll be running in 2028
with a whole new candidate.
Joe Biden is 106 years old.
I mean, you have no bench at this point in time.
I agree with Mordecai on this.
The one actually who impressed me the most
but probably won't last much longer
was North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
I thought he was authentic.
I thought he had really smooth answers.
The reality is he probably won't meet the thresholds
for the debate in California in September.
So Bill, how does Donald Trump maintain such a commanding lead
even as he turns himself in for a rest
on his latest indictment?
There's too many candidates in this field.
The reality is those that did not qualify
for the Milwaukee debate should already be out of this race.
Those who do not qualify for California
when the standards get raised should also drop out.
The notion that this will get decided
in New Hampshire or South Carolina
or on Super Tuesday is nonsense in this cycle.
This cycle is moving faster than any in our lifetime.
Those who want another alternative
other than Donald Trump to be the nominee
of the Republican Party,
if you are supporting someone other than Ron DeSantis
or Nikki Haley at this point,
you are wasting your time and your money.
The others need to get out
so that we can consolidate this race.
What do you say about Donald Trump
having this commanding lead?
Well, it shows that the Republican party has lost its mind
because this guy was unfit in 2016.
He was unfit in 2020 and he remains unfit
and indicted in 2024.
And the thing about the debate the other night
that you noticed is whenever, from my perspective,
any of those candidates tried to articulate a position
that seemed even reasonable,
they disqualified themselves from winning the actual primary.
The thing that Nikki Haley said about how she was trying
to talk about abortion and talk process on it
and why it might not be able to be possible
and Chris Christie and the things he said,
they can't win the nomination now.
You're gonna see Nikki Haley's numbers move with women.
She moved my wife.
She had the right answer on abortion on that debate stage
and the other seven boys on that stage
ought to pay attention to what she said if they wanna win.
She had an absolute minority opinion.
70% of Americans support abortion rights.
She may have had an effect on some women
in the Republican Party, but the fact is the vast majority
of Americans who are voters support abortion rights.
Bill, I wanna ask you this.
Speaking of indictments as we just were,
Wisconsin's false electors and the architects of that effort
figured prominently in the Georgia indictment,
can Wisconsin retreat from the madness of all of this
this time around?
Well, we're still scheduled to be one
of the five key swing states next year,
but that could change.
I'm not totally convinced Donald Trump
could be competitive here.
There's no evidence to suggest that he's grown
his coalition if he is in fact the nominee
for the Republican Party.
Moreover, his style, the sledgehammer style
of literally smashing his opponents
within the Republican Party is so against
Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment, it does not play here.
We may not be Minnesota nice, but we're fair here
and Republicans will not respond well
if Trump destroys DeSantis or Haley personally.
Scott, can Wisconsin retreat from the madness?
I don't see how because Republicans are hell bent
on keeping whatever power they have
and gaining whatever power they need to gain
and we've seen that across the board.
I don't see how with the way the Republican media machine
works in terms of articulating these things
that seem, the Democrats aren't just wrong
on issues, they're evil and that's a problem
and that's not going to stop and Donald Trump
certainly at the top of the ticket
for as long as he is at the top of the ticket
is not going to change that unfortunately
for all of us, for democracy.
It is kind of true, people aren't just wrong,
they're evil, right?
Well, Republicans have to get away
from the notion of owning lives.
Let's sell an agenda.
I mean, you want to bring people to your side.
Ultimately campaigns, winning campaigns
are all about addition, not subtraction.
All right, we need to leave it there.
Bill McCauson, Scott Ross, thank you.
Thank you.
Turning to our abortion series,
the Wisconsin laws relating to abortion
are unconstitutionally vague,
according to three physician interveners
named in the complex lawsuit
challenging Wisconsin's 1849 law on abortion.
The lawsuit initially brought by state Attorney General
Josh Call last year names three district attorneys
as defendants because there were planned
parenthood clinics performing abortions
in their counties.
They are Dane County, DA, Ishmael Ozan,
Milwaukee County, DA, John Chisholm,
and Sheboygan County, DA, Joel Ermansky.
Of the three only Sheboygan County, DA Ermansky
has previously stated he would prosecute physicians
in violation of the law.
The lawsuit alleges the physicians fear criminal charges
and thus have had to alter how care is provided
to their patients.
In court filings, DA Ermansky argues
the lawsuit is an attempt to obtain from this court
what the legislature has refused to do.
And also says, although the interveners raise concerns
regarding how the 1849 law may apply to abortions
they may need to perform as part of their care
of pregnant patients, they cannot meet their burden
of demonstrating that the 1849 law cannot
constitutionally be applied to any abortion.
One could, for example, apply the 1849 law
to prohibit an elective abortion on a healthy mother
of a six to eight week old unborn child
without implicating any of the intervener's concerns
in their complaint.
Neither DA Ermansky nor his attorney
responded to our request for an interview.
Continuing our series on abortion,
tonight we hear from the medical perspective.
Marissa Wochik has this story.
When I got the results, I knew what I wanted to do.
It was really hard emotionally.
I was devastated.
I wanted that baby and I wanted everything to be fine.
I wanted her to be healthy, but she wasn't.
And I knew that if I carried that pregnancy to term
I was putting my own health at risk.
And I also knew that my baby,
if she survived to term, would only suffer.
And I didn't want that.
So I was very confident
that I was making the right decision for my family.
Jen Volstead made her decision
while abortion was still legal.
The cascade of events following the US Supreme Court's ruling
on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization
hit states like Wisconsin, the hardest,
creating a near total abortion ban in the state one year ago.
We have yet to see what systemic consequences
this law will have.
We're already seeing it.
We're seeing it at all levels.
Wisconsin healthcare providers found themselves
in legal limbo as a number of dated and conflicting laws
remain in state statute.
The default legal standing fell back to one law from 1849.
It says destroying the life of an unborn child is a felony
except to save the life of the mother.
We didn't even know that germs caused disease in 1849.
This was 70 years before women even had the right to vote.
You didn't even often know you were pregnant
until you actually could feel fetal movement.
We are in a situation where that interpretation
of a law from 1849 is really a gray area.
Now we're operating this narrow channel
of providing the best care, not committing malpractice
and being careful not to break a law.
And so you think about things
that you never had to think about before.
Following the Dobbs decision,
doctors Kristen Lierley, Christopher Ford,
and Jen Jury McIntosh put themselves forward
as interveners in a lawsuit filed by State Attorney General
Josh Call, challenging the 1849 law.
Prior to Dobbs, Dr. Lierley counseled patients
at the Sheboygan Planned Parenthood clinic,
one of a small number of Planned Parenthoods
in the state that provided abortions.
To know that there's a place where you can go
where someone will listen to you and hear you
and help you make the decision that you need to make
within the context of your life,
that was what we were doing in Sheboygan
and I was really proud of it.
Dr. McIntosh works in maternal fetal medicine,
teaches at the Medical College of Wisconsin
and conducts research on preeclampsia,
a serious condition she sees in many of her patients.
Those of us in maternal fetal medicine
highlight our subset of obstetrics
as kind of the highest of highs
and some of the lowest of lows
because when we have really great outcomes,
it's super rewarding, but at the same time,
we help families through tragic outcomes as well.
These pregnant people either have high risk conditions
themselves, so medical complications,
but on the flip side, we also take care of fetuses.
So get the most family centered outcome that we can.
Dr. Ford works in emergency medicine
with experience practicing in rural and urban settings.
As an emergency medicine provider,
I see women that are pregnant
when things are going wrong most of the time.
We are mandated as emergency providers
to provide the most salient care as we can
to protect the lives of the patients in front of us.
And so inherent in that were
capabilities of performing medical abortion,
surgical abortions, if that is required
in the instance of instability of the patient
for the life of the patient as well.
Jen Volstead worked as a labor and delivery nurse.
I really discovered during my career
that those patients that were going through difficult times
were my favorite patients to take care of
because they felt like I made the most impact as a nurse
and what their experience looked like.
Prior to the Dobbs ruling,
Wisconsin patients and physicians had more options
when it came to making decisions
about reproductive health care.
We would have conversations about what all their options were.
We would talk about everything.
Sometimes we would connect them with prenatal care.
Sometimes we would connect them with adoption services.
Sometimes they would go home and think about it
and they just wouldn't return for that second visit.
But often they did.
And it wasn't unusual for people to thank us.
It was full scope care based on
what the families and patients wanted.
Sometimes a different understanding emerged
and families that never saw themselves doing that
couldn't reconcile sort of what the after looked like
and I would choose to interrupt the pregnancy
and have an abortion.
And those were always hard cases.
Patients that we cried with
that I would go home and cry about.
Now they're managing realities much different than before.
We still provide the same information
and similar counseling.
If it becomes clear that they're leaning towards
a termination, I have to say,
unfortunately this is illegal in the state of Wisconsin.
And if this is what you choose to pursue,
then we'll have to give you information
on how to pursue this out of state.
And it feels like I'm abandoning my patients and saying that.
Today I am not working in Wisconsin
because of the lawsuit,
because of the threat of criminalization
for providing my patients with standard of care medicine.
So I have the joy of working in rural Minnesota
and Northern Arizona on the Navajo reservation.
So in a way, it's very satisfying.
But the truth is, I wanna be home.
It's become a huge distance, a huge, huge problem.
It's not the situation that any of us want.
A central issue physicians must now navigate
is the exception to save the life of the mother.
The law as written in the state of Wisconsin
is still very great.
The next presentation of that patient
may be in full-blown substance
and it may be something that is threatening
for the life of the mother.
We've heard reports in other states
that have very strict abortion bans
like we do here in Wisconsin,
in which we've had patients that have been told
to wait in the car until they become even more unstable
in order to present to the emergency department.
So at that point in time, they can do something about it.
Now, of course, that's an egregious example
and that's something that we don't aspire to.
However, that is someone's interpretation of the law
in states that have stricter abortion laws
such as Wisconsin.
We see morbidity and mortality,
specifically mortality go up by 60% plus
for mothers as well as for their infants.
It's intrinsically vague,
which then causes physicians to potentially second gas.
Like, is this risky enough?
Because everyone who practices medicine knows
that it can be very gray for a while
and then become very black and white.
And the longer you wait to intervene,
the worse outcomes are in general.
There was a time when I was in Minnesota
where someone presented in an emergency
on an ambulance, she was bleeding.
She was 21 weeks pregnant with a desired pregnancy,
but she was bleeding so much
that she had to go to the operating room right away.
And I had to perform an abortion.
And I couldn't help but to think to myself,
if this was happening to be in Wisconsin,
I would be terrified about what the next steps would be,
about what the implications for my future,
my career would be.
There will still always be some providers
who are very concerned about that
as they rightly so should be.
There's risk of prosecution up to six years,
as well as a $10,000 fine.
You know, there's things that will likely be
in the back of a lot of providers' minds,
especially those who are practicing
in more rural locations.
For Jen Volstead, having the procedure done
without any additional barriers
made all the difference.
Dealing with the grief and the stress.
To have to jump through those extra hoops
while also dealing with that,
I honestly don't know how I would navigate it.
So now when I look back,
I feel so recovered and healed.
I also wouldn't have my son
if I didn't have the abortion
because of the timing if I had to carry to term Julian.
He is, he just turned six
and he is one of the most
joyful and curious people I've ever met.
He just, he's kind of a ball of energy.
He comes in here and runs and jumps over my couch
and is very snugly and tells me all the time
how much he loves me.
The more we try to focus on,
is that right or wrong or is that okay?
The more we're focused on making choices
for other people when we're not involved
in their healthcare and we're not medical professionals.
Physicians worry not only about the consequences today,
but those yet to come.
There's certainly a domino effect.
And what I'm seeing over and over and over again
is this getting worse over time.
On a lot of it has to do with the access of healthcare,
with the access of care to obsession and gynecology.
A lot of these women in these areas rely on their OB guides
as primary care, to be honest with you.
And a lot of that mortality increase that we're seeing
is the lack of the ability to have follow up.
Not only, as we said before,
we're creating those healthcare deserts in rural settings.
We're doing that in inner city settings too,
which are already having a lot of issues inherent
to access of care in general as well as healthcare outcomes.
And so those are the things that for me personally,
I take much stake in.
I is something that I will continue to fight
for these patients because they need a voice.
Everybody needs a voice in this fight.
And a lot of the voices that are at the table right now
don't see these patients
and they don't have any medical background,
but they're making these decisions.
I talk to recruiters all the time
who are looking for doctors in states like Texas
and it's nearly impossible to find doctors
who are willing to go to the states
that have such hostile bans.
So yeah, I think this is the tip of the iceberg.
And if we can't turn the ship around,
this dire physician shortage that we are already experiencing
is going to get much worse.
Not just OBGYN doctors, but family medicine doctors
who are the safety net in rural Wisconsin
where people are already suffering.
Most of all, these healthcare providers want to go back to the law
as it stood in Wisconsin prior to the Dobbs ruling.
I just want to do my job.
So the fact that politics are trying to be present
in my exam room, present in the back of my mind
as I'm looking at a patient and talking to her
to that patient and their family,
that it's impacting that it all feels crazy to me
because really we should just be providing
the best evidence-based medical care that we can
that's right for that patient and right for their family.
Reporting for Here and Now, I'm Marissa Wojczyk.
As to the lawsuit challenging the Wisconsin abortion ban,
Attorney General Call is seeking to expedite an injunction
related to a recent circuit court decision in the case.
The case is expected to end up before the State Supreme Court.
For more on this and our previous reporting on abortion
in Wisconsin, including hearing from women
who have had an abortion and pregnancy resource centers
that discourage them, visit our website
at pbswisconsin.org and then click on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight.
I'm Frederica Freiberg.
Have a good weekend.
Funding for Here and Now is provided by the Focus Fund
for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.