There's a certain enormous level of ego you have to have to be a talk radio host to think that literally an entire city should just listen to what you have to say for a full hour, and on top of that, also having a large ego to try to write for opinion journals, to think that the whole audience of that journal or the whole country maybe should listen to what you have to say. And perhaps the epitome of ego is to talk about something you wrote on your own radio show, And that is precisely what I'm
going to do. I had a piece published in National Review today about Pope Leo the fourteenth and the topic of AI, and I want to dig into this. So there's all kinds of news stories out there about Poplar on the fourteenth, everyone's trying to get to know him. But one of the few things that he's sort of directly confirmed is the fact that over the course of him being pope, he directly wants to touch on the
subject of AI. He wants to teach about talk about the subject of AI and talk about its implications for society and apply Christian teaching to it. So he himself confirmed this in an address he gave to the College of Cardinals, and then one of the other cardinals, one of the cardinals who elected him from Chile. He confirmed in an interview. Yeah, Leo's like really interested in this, He really wants to work on it and talk about it. He thinks it's a really significant thing. And it even
is reflected in his name. So Leo, this is Leo the fourteenth who just got elected last week. Leo the thirteenth was pope around the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, and Leo the thirteenth kicked off sort of the mod An era of Catholic social teaching with this piece that he wrote, this long sort of treatment he wrote about societal issues called reeroom novarrum. When a pope writes something, basically what he does is he writes a document and like the first two or three words
of the document, that's the title of the document. So the first two words were reyroom novarrum, which means about new matters, concerning new matters. And this was Leo the thirteenth writing in eighteen ninety one.
He writes reyroom navarrum. And what is he writing it about?
Well, he's writing it about the industrial revolution, the industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism, the rise of socialism, and how does the Catholic Church think about these things, interact with these things, what are some of the principles of justice?
Really?
A lot of what Leo was doing was talking about what is the nature of human beings and how do they fit in with these kinds of societies, how do we respect human nature in all these different contexts. Okay, so that's what Leo the thirteenth was doing, and it was this seismic intervention, this huge intervention in the political controversies that were rocking Europe and the whole world at
the time. Now, Leo the fourteenth seemed to have picked his name deliberately as an homage to Leo the thirteenth and Leo the thirteenth intervention in these grand political controversies. Leo the fourteenth has basically said he wants to talk about AI and the way in which it is interact. It's going to have an impact on labor, on society.
So I wrote a little.
Piece and National Review is very gracious to publish it about this, about why I think it's important. So why is it important? Well, for one thing, I think it's important because it's kind of allowing the Catholic Church to face a little bit more outward, in a bit more coherent of a fashion, and that hasn't really been the case for a lot of the Francis Pontificate. A lot
of the Francis Pontificate was dealing with internal fights. Now, Francis wrote some good stuff about evangelizing the world, but a lot of the external facing stuff that the Francis Pontificate was sort of known for, frankly.
Was I don't know there was.
Stuff in things that Pope Francis wrote about immigration. He would have different kinds of little interventions on immigration, including a letter to the United States regarding immigration stuff that
was released shortly after JD. Vance did his whole interview talking about the Order of Loves, the Ordo Amorris as he referred to it, that basically the United States has more obligations to its own citizenry than it has to other citizens of other countries, which is obviously true, but this letter from Poet Francis came to try to correct that.
I guess.
I don't think the core of what JD Vance said was wrong. Obviously countries have more of an obligation to their own citizens than to other citizens. The problem is, I think that the argument everyone's sort of talking past each other. Yes, countries have more of an obligation to
their own citizens than to non citizens. But the question that's actually being debated right now is, well, what obligation does the United States have to these people, these people who are coming to the United States making asylum claims
or you know, name your group of immigrants. That's the other problem is that I don't think every group of immigrants trying to get into the United States through legal means or otherwise, I don't think we need to treat them, or can treat them, or should treat them all the same. So the obligations we owe, the order of our love, the order of care that we have to lavish on people is different for different people. Now, a lot of Francis's outward facing teaching was he had one thing that
was sort of an environmental thing. But again it yes it was outward facing, Yes it was engaging with the world. I don't know how much of an impact it really had because it's sort of echoing what the dominant culture. A lot of dominant cultural forces were sort of saying already.
Although Francis did incorporate into it a greater a better anthropology, a better sense of respect for human life as being valuable parts of society, I don't know how well any of his specific messages on the environment were being heated or there was anything too much of a breakthrough, because at the end of the day, there's only so much. A lot of environmental activism is fact contingent as opposed
to ethics contingent. If human beings are genuinely destroying the environment in this way, this way, this way, then the policy solutions need to be this way, this way, this way. And it's a lot of scientific judgments where the Pope isn't necessarily a world expert. If so, now, if, on the other hand, we're talking about ethics as a principal question, if we're talking about ethics and justice and law as a principal question, that might be something much more in
the wheelhouse of the pope. And that's why I'm excited about the idea of the Pope tackling AI, because I feel like he's got more of a ground And I'm not saying everything Francis did on talking about the environment was bad I think if you actually read it more granularly, it's not as bad as sort of the media reporting on it was made to be. But I think Pope Leo will be in a better posture to teach about AI. So let's talk about some of the big issues of
justice that have to be dealt with with AI. Right, the World Bank estimates that there are about three point six nine billion workers on planet Earth, three point sixty nine billion people working. Goldman Sachs in twenty twenty three estimated that AI would replace three hundred million jobs. So that's over eight percent of all jobs in the world. That's a lot, Okay, So how do you handle it? How do you handle a new technology?
Which is great?
We love new technology. We love you know, making difficult work easier. That's great, that's wonderful. But eliminating eight percent of all jobs on planet Earth, that's a bad idea Like that that's going to be bad. So how do we deal with that? I think obviously there needs to be some sort of just sort of introduction of AI systems and a just way to help people transition to other kinds of productive work. And and that's this seems to be precisely where the Catholic Church could come in
with some wise teaching. This is not the first time in the history of a two thousand year old institution that a new technology has come along that made people lose their jobs. So I think that's one of the disruptive areas where an ethical guidance is really really necessary.
Another area.
We've seen with the proliferation of AI, with the proliferation of all these other kinds of technologies, we've seen how human relationships, human interactions have gotten worse, they've gotten more impersonal.
There was this story that came out about a week or so ago that Mark Zuckerberg was talking about how, you know, most human beings have about three friends, but human beings have a capacity for wanting to have a fifteen good friends, and his proposal to combat There're more and more statistics about human loneliness, and in fact, in the United States, there's a lot of statistics about the sharp increase in diagnoses of teenagers experiencing depression, anxiety, suicide,
suicidal ideation. This enormous jump that started in twenty twelve. Twenty twelve, which was pretty much the time, you know, the iPhone had been released, just a few years earlier. Twenty twelve was the point at which smartphone usage and social media became universal. So we're more and more and more engaged with people at an impersonal level. There's a
greater oddly enough social media. Forms of social media which are designed to help you connect with other people actually actually have an isolating of impact, to the point that it's led Mark Zuckerberg to say, oh, why don't we just create AI friends for people? Instead of having, you know, your group of three friends and say you could have fifteen friends, use AI to help you create friends. This
is an alienating, isolating and terrible thing. And maybe Pope Leo, I would hope Pope Leo could shed some I think really interesting and important.
Light on this whole thing.
Now, the last area I'm gonna sort of talk about where AI can have a real impact on ethics, and I hope Pop Leo talks about it.
I'm not sure if he's going to.
Is the area of bioethics. So you've got more and more and more this proliferation of i've yf to create babies, and more and more you're seeing developed this stuff called crisper gene editing, So gene editing is a way to help provide certain kinds of medical treatments to people by altering the genome. And it's it's got a lot of potential for good, but boy can have a lot of potential for bad.
It can have a potential.
For editing human beings to make them idealized and perfect. And especially in a world where you've got, you know, massive increases in the number of people utilizing IVF to create babies, where you already have sort of this eugenic approach to things, there are some people who are utilizing IVF in these kind of crassly eugenic ways.
They're recruiting. You know, you're buying eggs for IVF babies. I mean my wife.
I remember my wife saw these ads all the time when she was in college. You pay more for eggs from women who are Harvard graduates and supermodels than you do for anyone else's eggs. Paris Hilton talks very openly about the sex selection process she had where she destroyed gazillions of boy embryos so that she could finally get a girl embryo, or I forget if it was that,
or vice versa. Anyway, there are all kinds of accounts about wanting to utilize AI in conjunction with crisper gene editing to try to create idealized human beings, and I wonder if this is just going to lead to a insane commodification of human life, especially if it's done in the context of in virtual fertilization. So I am leery of all these kinds of developments, and I would hope that the Pope could maybe ably speak to those things.
Now when we return, I want to talk about why this would be sort of a shift from the controversies of the Francis papacy.
That is next on the John Girardi Show.
Pope Leo has announced he wants to discuss the topic of AI in his teaching over the course of his pontificate, and I think this could represent a real shift from Francis. All signs are kind of pointing to this. Francis sort of wanted to sort of be reaching out to the outside world, but a ton of the energy of his papacy was focused on internal questions.
And.
That I do sort of wonder if his sort of outward witness to the world was sort of undercut by the internal questions that royaled Catholicism. Now Pope Francis gets hit with this perception label of being liberal. Some of that is overstated. I do this to people I know, to people that Pope Francis is more conservative than Donald Trump on abortion, gay marriage, in virtual fertilization, enormous the role of women in society, like this enormous range of
issues where Pope France is actually more conservative than Donald Trump. Now, maybe it's a little bit apples to oranges, but it's a little overblown. Nonetheless, the thing about Francis is that he did permit a ton of debates to happen over a bunch of stuff that everybody had sort of thought by the end of Benedict's papacy in twenty thirteen, he just sort of allowed debate to just royal over things that everyone sort of thought by the end of Benedict's
papacy were pretty well settled. Questions of Catholic teaching. Can people who've been divorced and then gotten remarried without having their first marriage declared null within the Catholic Church, can
they receive communion? Everyone thought the answer to that was very clearly no. That was fairly well decided by John Paul the second consistent with prior teaching, and Francis opens that can of worms, and we have years long debate over the topic, ending with well maybe kind of sort of seems to maybe be permitted in one footnote, and people are still angry and arguing about it. Should priests
be allowed to celebrate the Mass in its older Latin form? Well, it seemed like for years it was yes, that's fine if your bishop allows it, and then Bennetett comes along and says, yeah, it's fine, just do it, and then Francis allows a big debate about it, and no, it's not okay, but it's kind of permitted. Catholics argued about that for about two and a half years, still arguing
about it, still not feeling great about it. A lot of bishops still uncomfortable, very uncomfortable with the rules that Francis put in place. Unclear why he decided to open that can of worms. Should we have female deacons? It seems like we've had commission after commission after commission studying this thing.
In Francis order is.
Another commission and another commission, another commission to study the question whether Catholic should have female deacons and The answer still seems to be, no, why are we still opening up this can of worms? What is the Catholic Church's
teaching on the death penalty? Francis gives a new sort of version of it, orders the old version of it, written by John Paul the Second to be thrown out of the Catechism, and it's like, well, the morality of the death penalty didn't change, Like, why are we reformulating it? Why are we reopening this can of worms? There were
should priests be allowed to get married? Or rather, should married men be allowed to enter the priesthood again, something that seemed fairly well settled again and again and again, and.
Oh of a sudden, we're having a big debate about it in twenty nineteen. If you look at the timeline of Francis's papacy, there was just constant controversy, controversy, controversy, controversy, controversy, controversy.
Much of it settled in a totally orthodox way. Some of it settled in a fairly ambiguous way that made a lot of conservatives pretty angry and upset, and conservatives and more moderate leaning bishops throughout the world, many of them were quite tired of this constant sort of and I don't know if it's just Francis's personality that he just liked people debating things and liked people talking about things, or if he permitted this debate or encouraged this debate,
whatever it was. Certainly in some instances he encouraged debate on it and then seemed to get mad when people criticized him too harshly on one side and fired people and made people lose their jobs. Certain cardinals who kind of got unceremoniously fired because they were critical, well.
Either because they were so critical or immediately after being so critical. So cause and effect. Clearly it was not something that was There was controversy after controversy after controversy, and it was all over internal stuff, and it sucked up a lot of the oxygen of the Francis papacy. And it seemed as though none of it was stuff
that needed to happen. It was all stuff that had felt pretty well that no one was really disputing by the time of Pope Benedict, and to reopen all these old wounds, it was happening again and again and again. My hope, my prayer, and I think a lot of internal signs are pointing to this is that pop Leio doesn't want to open those old controversies, that maybe he wants to resolve the controversies that are left dangling open
under answers and let sleeping dogs lie. A lot of initial indications are that he is not his hostile to the old Latin mess, that he was never too into any of anything about homosexuality or any sort of deviations from normal, boring, orthodox standard Christian morality. So I'm really encouraged by Pope Leo and I'm hoping we can kind of close the door on these internal controversies heal and resolve those and turn outward. And his desire to want to tackle AI I think is a good sign of that.
I'm really hopeful for him. And frankly, you know, he's elected at age sixty nine.
He could have a.
Good you know, God knows how long he'll live, but I mean, he could have a good twenty years as pope. So I'm praying for him. I hope he can tackle those things when we return. Gavin Newsom, unexpected hero of the pro life cause. Wow, he has really ticked off planned parenthood. You're gonna want to hear about this. This is the John Girardi Show. Gavin Newsom has bizarrely enraged the pro abortion crowd in California. You would never think it.
I mean, who has given them more dutiful, faithful service than Gavin Newsom.
Now I'm gonna talk about this.
We're gonna talk about it a little bit tomorrow on Right to Life Radio, but I want to give you a taste of it today just because I'm sure Newsom is about to poop his pants because of how this could impact his presidential ambition. So what is happening this week? Gavin Newsom gave what's called his May revise. Basically, he gives an initial proposal for the budget in January, and then in May he revises it based on new data about tax revenue coming in after April of after you know,
the April tax day. So here's Newsom facing at least a twelve billion dollar budget deficit. Not good governors can't just spend into the red. State governments can't just bend into the red the way that the federal government can.
He's got to do something about it. So Newsom.
The biggest thing that Newsom, the headline thing that Newsom is cutting back on is medical coverage for illegal aliens, and I think that's the start of this. So Planned Parenthood of California, they're five to one C four. It's led by this gal named Jody Hicks. So five on one C four is basically a five to one C three is UH doesn't pay taxes and donations to it are tax deductible. Five A one C four doesn't pay taxes, but donations to it are not tax deductible to the donor.
But a five A one C four can do more political stuff. So they can do an unlimited amount of issue advocacy, and they can do some direct candidate and party advocacy.
Okay, Now.
Jody Hicks comes out and says she is outraged, we are outraged, uses the word outraged at Gavin Newsom for his decision to cut a third, one third, five hundred million dollars worth of Planned Parenthood funding. Hmm, I say five hundred million. That's a lot for Planned Parenthood, certainly. Now, she doesn't sort of say how and doesn't talk about the specifics. She says cutting fully one third of Planned Parenthood's funding in California, she is outraged at it, and
the wording of it is like, who I mean. I've seen liberal groups get frustrated with Gavin Newsom before for stuff he has had to cut from prior state budgets when we've had deficits, and they say, you know, we are disappointed, but we are looking forward to working with Governor Newsom to maybe see if we can come to it.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
There are all kinds of ways that they will couch their language to try to you know, we can't totally burn this bridge.
We have to work with the governor, you know. Blah blah blah blah blah.
And No Planned Parented is saying we are outraged he has effectively defunded Planned Parenthood when Congressional Republicans are trying to do the same thing, and we are looking forward to working with members of the legislature to reinstate this funding with members of the legislator like, we're not even gonna bother working with Gavin Newsom on it, which I find to be wild. So they are so angry and
what are they angry about? Well, I think what they're angry about is Gavin Newsom's cutting medical funding for illegal aliens and let me let me just explain this whole thing. Okay, even before he added illegal aliens, medical was in trouble. Because here's here's the basic dynamic. Newsom comes in on his white horse in twenty eighteen running for governor and he says, I'm not gonna be like those other liberal politicians. I'm going to promote single payer healthcare. Single payer health care.
That's what I'm gonna do. Single payer healthcare. Every liberal politician says they're going to do it. And then when the going gets tough, if they just say, oh, it's not the right time, they kick the can down the road.
And that's not me. I'm blah blah blah blah bah. I'm Gavin Newso, big, tough.
Strong Goven news And then what happens, Well, he gets elected governor and he realizes it's not the right time. It would be too expensive, and he kicks the can
down the road. Because to actually do single payer health care, where basically you eliminate all other insurance options for anyone wanting health insurance in the state, and everyone is covered in one state run health insurance plan that is funded by the taxpayers, you would have to increase taxes massively, and Newsom finally got in office and realized he didn't
really want to do that, So no single pair. What Newsom did after talking this big game while running for governor is he sort of slide and.
Said, oh no, no, no, I wasn't I didn't really want single pair.
What I wanted was universal coverage. That's what I wanted. So how does he arriving in twenty eighteen, several years after the expansion of medical under Obamacare, how does he accomplish this? Well, just expanding medical eligibility. He just expands it and expands it and expands who is eligible for medical and the coup de gras is in twenty twenty four, where he expands medical eligibility to everybody. Everyone in California is covered, including people who are not supposed to be
in the country. So in twenty twenty four he extends medical eligibility to illegal aliens. And let's even go before that. Let's go before extending medical eligibility to illegal aliens. Medical was in an unsustainable financial mess. Basically, you add too many people not enough money. So again, how it works. I'm a patient covered by medical I go to a doctor. The doctor provides a service. The doctor bills medical. Medical
pays the doctor. The problem is that medical pays way less than normal private insurances do so at n Anthem, Blue Cross, Kaiser whatever. If I'm a Kaiser patient, or if I'm an Anthem Blue Cross patient, I go to a doctor, the doctor does a service, the doctor bills blue Cross, they Anthem whatever, They send the bill to the doctor. The doctor gets a lot of money. I'm a medical patient. I go to the doctor, the doctor does a service for me. The doctor bills medical. The
doctor gets a much smaller amount of money. Medical reimburses really poorly, and for certain kinds of services, certain kinds of areas of medicine. It's so much worse than private insurance that it leads more and more doctors to not want to care for those patients, especially obgyn care.
This is a huge problem.
So that was a big problem before we added illegal aliens to the roles of who is medical eligible. Where basically, again you have a ton of people on medical and the pool of money to pay for reimbursements for services for all those medical patients is not very big, or it's not big enough to give a good reimbursement to doctors. This leads to more and more doctors not wanting to
take medical patients. This leads to medical reimbursements not really covering the cost of care, and doctors losing money when they do take care.
Of medical patients.
Why did Maderia Community Hospital go under? There were a lot of reasons, but one of them was sixty percent of their patients were medical and they weren't making money off of them. It's hard to keep a hospital afloat when you're losing money or barely breaking even on sixty percent of your patients.
Now, they had other problems and other things, other big expenses, but that was one of the issues.
Now Gavin Newsom comes in and adds illegal aliens on top of all of this, and holy cow, it's way more expensive than he thought. In fact, the budget deficits about twelve billion dollars. There are ways to cut and slice it to realize.
The illegal alien medical care.
Basically constitutes the whole budget deficit that over two years, illegal aliens are costing the state about twenty three billion dollars, so it pretty much the whole budget deficit is explained by giving medical coverage to illegal aliens. So Newsom has to come up and go up there and shamefacedly, you know, hat in hand, because you know he is going to be the great Democrat leader. Giving healthcare coverage to everybody, has to roll it back, has to roll it back
for certain classes of illegal aliens. I think that is where the cuts to Planned Parenthood are happening. Let me explain, So how does Planned Parenthood where do they get their California state funding. There are various kinds of grants they get, I'm sure, and grants and this and that, but the vast bulk of state funding and of federal funding, by the way, that Planned Parenthood gets is from the Medicaid program,
the California iteration of which is called medical. So medical is funded partially with state dollars, partially with federal dollars, and that's the chief source of Planned Parenthood's got government revenue. They take patients who have medical coverage, and you know, planned parentoeds doing abortions, giving abortions to mostly lower income women. So in California, the huge majority I'm sure of Planned Parenthood's patients are on medical. So a medical patient goes
to Planned Parenthood, they have an abortion. Planned Parenthood bills medical for the abortion. Medical pays Planned Parenthood money. Now, the thing is they're not getting any federal money for that abortion because the federal government doesn't pay for abortions. The federal Medicaid program doesn't pay for abortions accept in cases of rape and incest.
So that's all.
California dollars going to fund abortion, going to pay the medical reimbursement to Planned Parenthood for performing an abortion. So I think what's happened is Newsome's gonna cut medical eligibility for illegal aliens, and that's going to result in Planned Parenthood losing out on five hundred million dollars. They're making five hundred million dollars providing quote services to illegal aliens. Now,
many of those services are giving birth control. Some of those services might be actual legitimate healthcare services like maybe papsmeters or something. But what does plan What is the dominant service Planned Parenthood does as far as generating revenue abortion? Abortion is the chief revenue generator for Planned Parenthoo, don't believe they're stupid stats where this are, oh.
Only three percent of all the services we do or abortions.
Yeah, but it's the lion's share of revenue they generate.
What are we talking about. That's ridiculous to.
Act like, oh, just barely any thing of what we do. No, it's the Lion's share of the revenue they generate. It's it's far and away their most revenue generative service. So I think just by cutting so they must have been doing.
So many abortions on so many illegal alien moms. I mean, it's insane that that much.
I think that must be what this is, because it's not like it's not like Newsom is going to directly cut out Planned Parenthood programs. He wouldn't do that for political reasons, and I'm going to talk about that in the next segment. But I think by cutting medical for eligibility for illegal aliens, he is cutting off a revenue stream to Planned Parenthood. When we return, I'm going to talk about what this could mean for Newsom politically. That's
next on John Girardi Show. Planned Parenthood is furious at Gavin Newsom because he is quote cutting five hundred million dollars of funding to Planned Parenthood in California through his May revision to the budget. I think actually what's happening is that Newsom's just cutting medical eligibility for illegal aliens.
And because of that, Planned Parenthood is going to miss out in about five hundred million dollars of revenue because they were providing so many abortions to so many illegal aliens. Now Newsom's Newsom is going to be standing at attention after this. Why well, Newsom needs Planned Parenthood. He wants them on that wall. You need me on that wall. He needs Planned Parenthood. Why well, some of you may have heard that Gavin Newsom is quite interested in running
for governor of this fine state. And how does he run for governor? Well, he needs money and the kinds of billionaire, gazillionaire donors that Gavin Newsom needs to court. What do they love? They love planned parenthood, they love abortion. And this is the dynamic in a lot of California politics. California politicians aren't so much afraid of Planned Parenthood itself. They are afraid of the donors who give to Planned Parenthood.
That's what they're afraid of. Like when Mackenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos's ex she gives a nine figure gift just all on her own, to Planned Parenthood. That's the kind of money that Democrats fear and respect and want to court, and Newsom wants to court those kinds of dollars for when he eventually runs for president.
That's what's going on. That's the situation.
So I'm very curious to see how Gavin Newsom is going to mend fences over what's going on here with Planned Parenthood being so mad at him for cutting off quote their funding when I think all he's doing is cutting off illegal alien eligibility for medical That'll do it, John Girlready show see you next time on Power Talk