Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

TV announcer:

The race for the White House takes flight. Welcome to the first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, live at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

Frederica Freyberg:

The first Republican presidential primary debate takes the Milwaukee stage, while extreme heat leads to school closures.

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” a run-down of the first standoff between GOP presidential hopefuls with reflections from voters, and our political panelists, Bill McCoshen and Scot Ross. Plus, our last in our abortion series looks at the medical perspective. It’s “Here & Now” for August 25.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

The heat was on in Milwaukee this week with eight candidates appearing for their first debate Wednesday night. As Steven Potter reports, voters got a look at the Republican slate of presidential hopefuls for the upcoming 2024 election.

Man:

As a voter, I didn’t walk away completely sold or completely put off by anyone, really.

Steven Potter:

That’s despite the eight candidates trying to make their mark.

Mike Pence:

That’s the difference between you and me.

Vivek Ramaswamy:

I’m not an actual politician, that’s the difference.

Timothy Sirois:

It was comical at a point. I’ve seen aspects of some of the competitors that I hadn’t heard before.

Steven Potter:

Political scientist Mordecai Lee says Republicans have an impressively deep bench.

Mordecai Lee:

With Wisconsin being 49.9% Democratic and 49.9% Republicans, I think for the Democrats who were watching, the moral of the story is be afraid. Be very afraid.

Steven Potter:

While former president Donald Trump wasn’t there, his presence was felt.

Group:

Trump! Trump! Trump!

Jesse Ehrenfeld:

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 need a different president.

Jan Conwell:

I am leaning towards Trump, but without him here, I thought it would be a good time to hear loudly from the other candidates.

Steven Potter:

One of the most disagreeable topics of the night was abortion.

Ron DeSantis:

I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.

Nikki Haley:

Let’s treat this like a respectful issue that it is and humanize the situation and stop demonizing the situation.

Mike Pence:

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 states-only issue. It’s a moral issue.

Steven Potter:

Another hot button issue, climate change.

Vivek Ramaswamy:

The climate change agenda is a hoax.

Nikki Haley:

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.

Steven Potter:

The candidates were also asked if they would still support Republican frontrunner Donald Trump despite the felony charges stacking up against him.

Chris Christie:

Someone’s got to stop normalizing this conduct. Okay? 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.

Vivek Ramaswamy:

President Trump, I believe, was the best president of 21st century.

Steven Potter:

Not surprisingly, Democrats weren’t impressed.

Ben Wikler:

A group of people that really didn’t seem to recognize why Republicans lost in 2020, in 2022, and especially this spring in Wisconsin in the Supreme Court election. The public doesn’t like this kind of extremism.

Steven Potter:

For his part, Mordecai Lee says debates like this give voters the chance to choose their top tier candidates.

Mordecai Lee:

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.

Steven Potter:

Reporting from Milwaukee for “Here & Now,” I’m Steven Potter.

Frederica Freyberg:

For their take on the Republican presidential primary debate, two veteran politicos. Our political panelists Republican Bill McCoshen and Democrat Scot Ross. Thanks for being here guys.

Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross:

Thanks for having us.

Frederica Freyberg:

First to you Bill, what was your take of the debate?

Bill McCoshen:

I liked it. 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 Ramaswamy 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? 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, Ramaswamy. He tried to fill the outsider lane which Trump has fully filled. The one thing the moderators didn’t ask Ramaswamy 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?

Frederica Freyberg:

Exactly.

Bill McCoshen:

Nobody asked him that. The final one is Mike Pence. Scot 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.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you think about that?

Scot Ross:

If this is just an excuse to try and get me to go to Milwaukee next year, that’s not the way to do it. 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 and doesn’t believe it exists. We saw that in the just terrible lack of raising hands and that sort of thing. Overall, I think the big news there was that Ron DeSantis turned out to be exactly the paper tiger that Donald Trump said 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. I will say the thing about Ramaswamy, when you get me to root for Mike Pence during a debate because you’re being so irritating, I think that’s a feat well done.

Frederica Freyberg:

Scot, 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?

Scot Ross:

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 these trying times. The fact is Democrats don’t need a good bench right now in 2024 because they’ll be running in 2028 with a whole new candidate.

Bill McCoshen:

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 debate in California in September.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Bill, how does Donald Trump maintain such a commanding lead even as he turns himself in for arrest on his latest indictment?

Bill McCoshen:

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. If 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.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you say about Donald Trump having this commanding lead?

Scot Ross:

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. 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, and Chris Christie, the things he said. They can’t win the nomination now.

Bill McCoshen:

You’re going to 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 want to win.

Scot Ross:

She had an absolutely 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.

Frederica Freyberg:

Bill, I want to 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?

Bill McCoshen:

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.

Frederica Freyberg:

Scot, can Wisconsin retreat from the madness?

Scot Ross:

I don’t see how because Republicans are hell bent on keeping whatever power they have and gaining whatever power they need to gain. 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. 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.

Frederica Freyberg:

It is kind of true, people aren’t just wrong, they’re evil. Right?

Bill McCoshen:

Republicans have to get away from the notion of owning the libs. 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.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross, thank you.

Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

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 Kaul last year names three district attorneys as defendants because there were Planned Parenthood clinics performing abortions in their counties. They are Dane County DA Ismael Ozanne, Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm and Sheboygan County DA Joel Urmanski. Of the three, only Sheboygan County DA Urmanski 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 Urmanski argues the lawsuit is an attempt to obtain from this court what the legislature has refused to do and also says, although the interveners raised 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 6- to 8-week-old unborn child without implicating any of the interveners’ concerns in their complaint. Neither DA Urmanski nor his attorney responded to our request for an interview.

Continuing our series on abortion, tonight, we hear from the medical perspective. Marisa Wojcik has this story.

Jenn Vollstedt:

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.

Marisa Wojcik:

Jenn Vollstedt made her decision, while abortion was still legal. The cascade of events following the U.S. 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.

Christopher Ford:

We have yet to see what systemic consequences this law will have.

Kristin Lyerly:

We’re already seeing it. We’re seeing it at all levels.

Marisa Wojcik:

Wisconsin health care 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.

Kristin Lyerly:

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.

Christopher Ford:

We are in a situation where that interpretation of a law from 1849 is really a gray area.

Jenn Jury McIntosh:

Now we’re operating this narrow channel of providing the best care and 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.

Marisa Wojcik:

Following the Dobbs decision, doctors Kristin Lyerly, Christopher Ford and Jenn Jury McIntosh put themselves forward as interveners in a lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Josh Kaul challenging the 1849 law. Prior to Dobbs, Dr. Lyerly counsel patients at the Sheboygan Planned Parenthood clinic, one of a small number of Planned Parenthoods in the state that provided abortions.

Kristin Lyerly:

To know that there’s a place where you can go where someone will listen to you and hear you and help you make a 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.

Marisa Wojcik:

Dr. McIntosh works in maternal fetal medicine, teaches at the Medical College of Wisconsin and conducts research on pre-eclampsia, a serious condition she sees in many of her patients.

Jenn Jury McIntosh:

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.

Marisa Wojcik:

Dr. Ford works in emergency medicine, with experience practicing in rural and urban settings.

Christopher Ford:

As an emergency medicine provider, I see women that are pregnant when, you know, things are going wrong most of the time. We are mandated as emergency providers to provide the most salient care we can to protect the lives of the patients in front of us. So inherent in that were capabilities of performing medical abortions, surgical abortions if that is required in the instance of instability of the patient for the life of the patient as well.

Marisa Wojcik:

Jenn Vollstedt worked as a labor and delivery nurse.

Jenn Vollstedt:

I really discovered during my career that those patients that were going through difficult times were my favorite patients to take care of because I felt like I made the most impact as a nurse on what their experience looked like.

Marisa Wojcik:

Prior to the Dobbs ruling, Wisconsin patients and physicians had more options when it came to making decisions about reproductive health care.

Kristin Lyerly:

We Kristin Lyerly 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.

Jenn Jury McIntosh:

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, which is 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.

Marisa Wojcik:

Now they’re managing realities much different than before.

Jenn Jury McIntosh:

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 in saying that.

Kristin Lyerly:

Today, I a Kristin Lyerly m not working in Wisconsin because of a 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 want to be home.

Man:

It’s become a huge distance, a huge problem. It’s not a situation that any of us want.

Marisa Wojcik:

A central issue physicians must now navigate is the exception to save the life of the mother.

Christopher Ford:

The law as written in the state of Wisconsin is still very gray. The next presentation of that patient may be in full-blown sepsis, 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 it’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.

Jenn Jury McIntosh:

It’s intrinsically vague, which then causes physicians to potentially second-guess, like is this risky enough because everyone who practices medicine knows it can be very gray for a while and then become very black and white, and the longer you wait to intervene, the worse the outcomes are in general.

Kristin Lyerly:

There was a time when I was in Minnesota where someone presented in an emergency in an ambulance. She was bleeding. She was 21 weeks pregnant with a desired pregnancy but she was bleeding so much, 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 me in Wisconsin, I would be terrified about what the next steps would be, about what the implications for my future, my career would be.

Christopher Ford:

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. 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.

Marisa Wojcik:

For Jenn Vollstedt having the procedure done without any additional barriers made all the difference.

Jenn Vollstedt:

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 this abortion because of the timing if I had to carry it 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 kind of is a ball of energy. He comes in here and runs and jumps over my couch and is very snuggly 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 health care and we’re not medical professionals.

Marisa Wojcik:

Physicians worry not only about the consequences today, but those yet to come.

Jenn Jury McIntosh:

There’s certainly a domino effect.

Christopher Ford:

And what I’m seeing over and over and over again is this getting worse over time, and a lot of that has to do with the access of health care, with the access of, you know, care to obstetrics and gynecology. A lot of these women in these areas rely on their OB/GYNs 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 are we creating those health care 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 health care outcomes, and so those are the things that for me personally, I take much stake in. It’s 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, and they’re making these decisions.

Jenn Jury McIntosh:

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 states that have such hostile bans. So, yeah, I think this is the tip of the iceberg, and if we can’t turn this ship around, this dire physician shortage that we are already experiencing is going to get much worse. Not just OB/GYN doctors but family medicine doctors, who are the safety net in rural Wisconsin, where people are already suffering.

Marisa Wojcik:

Most of all, these health care providers want to go back to the law as it stood in Wisconsin prior to the Dobbs ruling.

Jenn Jury McIntosh:

I just want to do my job. 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 at 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.

Marisa Wojcik:

Reporting for “Here & Now,” I’m Marisa Wojcik.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to the lawsuit challenging the Wisconsin abortion ban, Attorney General Kaul 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 Freyberg. Have a good weekend.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.