Month: April 2022

It could be very bad…

This by Brian Beutler is the best thing I’ve read on the subject:

​Brace yourselves for a lot of words about Twitter. I hesitate to devote a whole newsletter to Twitter and Elon Musk and What It All Means, since most of you I’m guessing either don’t use Twitter or think Twitter is stupid or beyond redemption. On top of that I think there’s a decent chance that Musk, this whimsical imp, might back out of his deal when he realizes he’s done something stupid, or that making something successful (that is, profitable and durable) out of his impulsive decision will require immense effort, all in service of a tool that’s less useful to the world than clean cars, solar panels, and space rockets. A guy this horny for an edit button seems prone to backtracking.

But there’s an uncanny, panglossian quality to a lot of the elite commentary about Musk and Twitter—reminiscent of earlier panglossian commentary about, e.g., the Iraq war and Fox News and Donald Trump and COVID-19—so I want to balance out their arguments with a considered explanation of why it’s worth taking alarmist scenarios seriously, instead of telling various Cassandras, once again, to calm down. Not because the bad scenarios are inevitable, but because they’re highly plausible, and some of the worst, most passionately intense people on the planet will try to steer things in a dark direction.

① TWEET FROM THE CHAFF

Just to clear the air, my own Twitter experience has nothing to do with my concerns about Musk taking over the company. Honestly. There are people whose personal user experiences will be harmed by the new ownership, but I’m not one of them. There are systemic problems with Twitter that will probably get worse thanks to his interventions, but I doubt they’ll affect me any more in the future than they do today.

For people in the news gathering/reporting/analyzing business, Twitter is an immensely powerful, and in recent years indispensable, tool. I’ve been active on it in a professional capacity for over a decade and for most of that time, I’ve really had no choice in the matter. There are political journalists who are specialized or sinecured or behind-the-scenes enough to get by without ever logging on to Twitter, but I’ve never been one of them. For better or worse (spoiler: worse) my jobs have always required me to be current to the day, if not the hour, on political news, and completely fluent in the political discourse, and that’s nearly impossible in 2022 without at least lurking on the platform.

The thing that makes all of that tolerable is that among all the social networks, Twitter is perhaps the most customizable. So if you’re unusually media literate, have good mental habits, and at least some self control, you can use Twitter for almost exclusively edifying purposes. That’s even easier when you’re a white guy whose account isn’t constantly spammed by bigots and sexists, and even easier still when you have employers who aren’t likely to bend to online mobs ginned up in bad faith. I pick whom I follow, whom I interact with, and I do it all in chronological order rather than by “engagement,” so I don’t get bombarded with garbage and deception, and the relatively few trolls (including a handful of antisemites) who would like to ruin my experience are largely shouting into the void.

So in that sense I’m lucky. On the other hand, the inevitable consequence of this mandatory immersion experiment I’ve conducted on myself is addiction. It takes several days of real vacation before the nagging sense that I’m too far behind on the news ebbs enough for me to relax. I’m not addicted to retweets or clout, but to a sense that I have a current handle on what’s happening in the world, and I blame that as much on the design of Twitter as on the line of work I’ve chosen for myself. It wouldn’t be so bad (either for me or for the world) if Twitter just blinked out of existence one day. But it would require me to make much more use of different, older information tools (email, RSS), and then I’d just be chasing those dragons instead.

Naturally, I hope Musk doesn’t make this service, which I have no choice but to patronize, worse for me. I also recognize that would be a pretty selfish jumping off point for musing about the consequences of him taking the company private. And yet sadly I think a lot of the misguided commentary about Musk stems from that premise: What do I think of Twitter, and, given that assessment, do I imagine Musk will improve or degrade it?

And if that’s where you start, it makes perfect sense to shrug it all off and assume little will change, or that all the alarm is much ado about nothing, because from almost everyone’s personal perspective, very little will change. That may be so, but it’s also deeply myopic. It’s like observing that a typical, detached channel surfer won’t meaningfully change his media-consumption habits simply because Comcast adds Fox News to his cable package. Most Twitter users don’t use Twitter for news and politics; many of the people who DO use it for those purposes (and then write think pieces about Twitter) have well curated feeds and post vanilla posts about vanilla topics. This is not a dangerous moment for them.

I think better starting points are questions like: Why does Musk want to control Twitter? Why did he think controlling it was worth the GDP of Bahrain? And what will the aggregate effect of the likeliest changes be on big constructs like The Discourse, the political agenda, and society. To extend that last analogy, what’s important isn’t how having Fox News available to you affects your experience of cable television; what’s important is who owns Fox News, and the fact that it’s available to tens of millions of Americans.

② THE CODE TO HELL

If we assume Musk completes the purchase, and that his attentions don’t quickly wander, then I think two seminal episodes in the evolution of the modern right will prove to be instructive.

The first piece of history to remember is that the professional right wing spent decades trying to sow mass distrust in mainstream media. Many of the conservatives who participated in that subversion were intimately familiar with how news-gathering worked, because they were woven into the political information system that produced “news” for the whole country. They knew that national political journalism was not a party-aligned institution, but they also didn’t want their movement and their political leaders to be vulnerable to the scrutiny of mainstream news reporters. So they misled people into believing regular media was a propaganda system built and maintained by the Democratic Party. Then they claimed to be building a news-media platform that would strip out all the biases of “liberal media.” But what they actually did was create Fox News—an actual party propaganda channel.

A narrower episode to remember is the “IRS scandal” of several years back. There you had a situation where the IRS was doing its clumsy best, with limited resources, to make sure tax-exempt political nonprofits on the left and right weren’t advocating for or against candidates or parties. But of course conservatives weren’t interested in getting right with tax law, nor were they even seeking to create some false parity in enforcement between liberal and conservative nonprofits. What they wanted was to discredit the IRS and Barack Obama and tarnish any effort to make them follow the rules as illegitimate and Nixonian. Thus, for years, they insisted the IRS “targeted” conservatives for harassment; many of them said it so robotically and with such little regard for the facts that they probably, to this day, believe their own propaganda.

Why are these episodes key to understanding the future of Twitter?

First, conservatives are giddy with anticipation that Musk will publish Twitter’s algorithms, which they insist will contain smoking gun proof of SHADOW BANS and other forms of anti-Republican censorship. Some of these conservatives may be high on their own supply, others know they’re full of shit. But the lesson the above history teaches is that it doesn’t matter what the algorithms actually contain: they will insist it proves Twitter thumbed the scale for Democrats, no matter what.

There is about a zero percent chance that any of Twitter’s proprietary code has a “Democrats good, Republicans bad” intentionality written into it. What they may well find is that Twitter’s automated, neutral efforts to tamp down on incitement and disinformation hits the right harder than the left organically because conservatives are disproportionately the purveyors of that kind of swill. Like the IRS scandal they will allege a conspiracy anyhow. And then, as when they established Fox News, they will push Musk to build the punitive system that existed only in their fever dreams, but to aim it in reverse, at the left.

Through all that, I have little confidence that influential liberals will apply any kind of counter-pressure. They certainly didn’t through the IRS episode. But it should be commonplace for truth-telling people to observe that conservatives are more harmed by content moderation because they are more inclined to bad acting; that, in fact, bad acting is uniquely part of their value system. And we should also note that these content-moderation tools don’t exist because Twitter is “woke” or “biased.” Twitter built them reluctantly because it realized Nazis are bad for business, and incitement-to-violence is a huge liability risk for platforms that ignore it. Twitter didn’t eject the Nazis and Trump out of some sense of magnanimity but by a desire to diminish brand damage and, in Trump’s case, liability for ignoring further violence their own cyber-threat teams saw coming.

But note that even if conservatives fail to capture Twitter and turn it into a Fox News-style weapon against the left, even if we just take Musk at his word—that his Twitter will upset “the far right and the far left equally…”

…that would still a huge boon for the people in American politics who’ve embraced trolling, agit-prop, and Orwellian lies as tools for accumulating power. A gift to the far right.

③ MORE MUSK, MORE FUSS

It’s tempting to evaluate Musk’s intentions instrumentally. Maybe all of Twitter’s editorial choices are misguided, and the company can best be neutral by ditching algorithmic content preferences altogether, let Trump and the Nazis back on Twitter but without the benefit of computer programs that seek to boost or limit engagement. Maybe that’ll actually be good for the Democrats! Do Republicans really benefit from association with the alt-right and Trump’s unleashed Id?

But let’s be real. 1) That is not going to happen, in part because there’s no reason to think Musk wants it to or that he can make Twitter a “public square” or “right-size its influence” without bankrupting the company and losing a fortune.

It also just strikes me as a naive misreading of what Republicans value about their propaganda systems. If they were worried that Trump and Nazis posting more would hurt them, they wouldn’t have expressed much interest in the Musk v. Twitter fight. Instead they’ve been keenly interested; they’ve even picked a side, in their new fascistic way, by promising to take revenge against Twitter if it declined Musk’s bid. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) threatened to dump a million shares of Twitter stock from Florida’s pension fund if it sought to block the takeover. House Republicans threatened to investigate the company, should they hold the majority next year, if it didn’t accept Musk’s offer.

If you want to be a bit too cute you can theorize that DeSantis wanted Musk to buy Twitter, so that Trump would get his account back and damage himself. But the simpler explanation is that Republicans think the Twitter of 2016 was better for them than the Twitter of today is.

And though the N is small, they have a good reason to think that. The Twitter of 2016 was the one that existed right before Republicans won a governing trifecta in Washington. They like it when the dregs of the world smear and abuse their opponents, and run info ops against them. They like flooding the zone with shit.

I think that’s the new baseline we should expect if the deal sticks: More racist and sexist abuse than currently exists, more well-financed and government-directed campaigns to spread knowing lies, more incitement. In fact that already seems to be happening, just by dint of awareness that Twitter accepted Musk’s offer.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if, above and beyond that, Musk (this Musk) built the pro-Republican censorship and propaganda system the right so clearly hopes he will.

And from there it’s a short hop to slightly further-fetched but still easy-to-imagine scenarios. One way for Musk to come out ahead with Twitter is to turn Twitter profitable; another way is to use Twitter to help drive election outcomes that make him richer, even as Twitter itself serves as a twisted kind of loss-leader for him. The surest way for his fortune to grow would be for a Republican trifecta to come to power in 2025 and cut his taxes. Just five-and-a-half years ago the conditions for electing a Republican trifecta included more right-wing friendly social media, and also the disclosure of the private communications of prominent Democrats. Musk is about to gain the power to recreate both of those conditions. Would he make mischief like that in U.S. politics? Would he make mischief internationally? I have no idea, but I know he behaves like someone who believes the rules don’t apply to him, and I know just as certainly that other people of low character will descend on him like vultures asking him or bribing him or blackmailing him for favors. Trump already happily asks Vladimir Putin and other foreign leaders to smear his political enemies; why not Musk?

If the last several years have taught us anything it isn’t that the worst thing always happens, but that insufficient vigilance allows terrible things to happen quite often. With or without vigilance, it’s perfectly possible, maybe even likely, that Musk balks, or just gets bored with his toy, or that he turns it into some kind of unrecognizable crypto farm. But without vigilance—without appropriate scrutiny from Congress and regulators, and without deserved skepticism of other members of the political elite—we are more likely to be shocked, once again, by how depraved the schemes of greedy men can be, and how determined they are to see them through.  

By the way, the major stockholder in the new CNN is John Malone, right wing supporters of Donald Trump. In case you wondered what might be about to happen there after all their turmoil…

10 takes on the new HBO documentary

I haven’t seen it yet but I plan to. This is from One Global Activism:

1. The early days were really scary.

It’s easy to forget how uncertain the first days and months of the pandemic were, before we understood prevention methods and long before we had vaccines. The documentary transported us back to March 2020, with scenes of empty cities, endless Zoom calls and isolation, and stories of people losing their friends and family every day. Despite the sadness and occasional tears it brought us, it’s worth taking the time to remember just how much we’ve all been through over the past two years.

At that time, it truly felt like “the world as we knew it died.” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sums it up in one simple sentence: “We’re in the race of our lives.”

2. Vaccine manufacturers are heroes who worked tirelessly to find an exit strategy for COVID.

More than two years into the pandemic, vaccines and boosters are an accepted reality. But the documentary was an important reflection point to step back and remember to appreciate the scientists and doctors who lead the way out of the pandemic with their tireless work on safe and effective vaccines.

Scientists in the documentary explained how they set out to create vaccines in “Hollywood speed.” They knew tackling COVID-19 required developing vaccines “precisely, accurately, quickly” and they aimed to “remove dead space from the vaccine development process and engage vaccine manufacturers more.”

Important note: This didn’t involve cutting any corners. Instead, it involved a remarkable and heroic level of effort to develop and test vaccines.

3. Local activists were heroes too.

The documentary showed local activists going door-to-door to inform people about COVID and the vaccine. These activists deserve a huge amount of credit for helping communities find a way out of the pandemic, and it’s as inspiring as it is admirable. They were particularly crucial in tackling vaccine hesitancy and misinformation through localized efforts and taking time to reach people where they were with the information they needed.

Throughout COVID-19, we’ve highlighted the importance of local activism. Read more.

4. There was some global cooperation.

The need for global cooperation was clear from the start. And the world got a few things right: China shared information about the virus, which helped vaccine manufacturers around the world move quickly. There were vaccine trials in Brazil and manufacturing agreements in India. But overall, a truly coordinated global effort was missing. Cue the first waves of frustration.

5. But experts knew that global access was necessary from the start.

“We’re asking all countries to be part of a global effort to ensure some people are vaccinated in all countries, not all people in some countries,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The documentary reminded us that medical professionals understood from the start that the vaccine needed to have global reach if we wanted to end the pandemic. Sadly, reality has played out very differently. And knowing that made watching all the commentary early on about the need for global cooperation to tackle the pandemic frustrating, to say the least.

6. Many of us take vaccine access for granted. We shouldn’t.

News clips in the documentary reminded us of when vaccine trials were first announced and the small sense of hope we finally felt during the darkness of the pandemic. After watching the remarkable efforts on the vaccine unfold during the documentary, we got chills watching the first shipments going out. We all remember the coverage from the UK of the first non-trial vaccine recipient. Seeing that again brought back the hope we felt in early 2021 that we may finally return to some form of normal.

It’s important to remember how remarkable having the vaccine within a year was (thanks, science!) and that easy access to vaccines still isn’t a reality everywhere.

7. Vaccine inequity is linked to virus mutations.

The documentary illustrated this link excellently: where vaccination rates are low, clusters of the virus will continue to circulate and breakthrough into populations that are vaccinated. The virus will continue to mutate and new variants will continue to emerge in areas where vaccination rates are low.

And this doesn’t just impact areas of low vaccination rates. This increases the chances of a variant that could, regardless of where you live, make current vaccines ineffective.

8. Politics shouldn’t matter.

The documentary discusses the ongoing political climate throughout the first year of the pandemic in the US, Brazil, and elsewhere. We’ll keep our commentary on this short: In the face of a pandemic, politics shouldn’t matter. When lives are at stake, world leaders should put politics aside.

9. It’s OK to be frustrated.

Another takeaway from the documentary is that it is OK to be frustrated. There’s still a lot of uncertainty out there about how the pandemic will progress, and whether or not vaccines will get to vulnerable populations in time before a new variant arises. This is a frustrating time.

But if you want to ease some of that frustration, demand that leaders of rich countries get
vaccines to those who need them the most so we can finally end the pandemic. Add your name to our petition.

10. We’d like to grab a drink with Dr. Tedros and Dr. Fauci.

Both are in the documentary, including in casual encounters. Dr. Tedros chats to a journalist in the WHO headquarters, a stark difference from his typical media briefs. And Dr. Fauci is seen donning a sweatshirt, a far cry from his usual suit and tie, with a fresh glass of wine on his patio. We have a question or two we’d like to ask them over for happy hour one day.

What a great couple of guys

I’m sure you heard by now that Sean Hannity was happily taking orders and talking points from the White House during he election which isn’t a surprise, of course. I thought his texts on from late December and January were more interesting:

December 22, 2020

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsHey my friend. How are you doing?

Mark Meadows to Sean HannityFighting like crazy. Went to Cobb county to review process. Very tough days but I will keep fighting

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsYou fighting is fine. The fing lunatics is NOT fine. They are NOT helping him. I’m fed up with those people.

December 27, 2020

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsYou ok my friend?

Mark Meadows to Sean HannityI am doing fine. Eventful week or so. Thanks for all you do

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsNo worries. We have to avoid a shutdown and get a bill passed or Ga is gone imho. It’s already a heavy heavy lift. Talked to everyone at length today. Any Hope?

Mark Meadows to Sean HannityHe will sign it omnibus and Covid relief package today

December 31, 2020

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsWe can’t lose the entire WH counsels office. I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told. After the 6 th. He should announce will lead the nationwide effort to reform voting integrity. Go to Fl and watch Joe mess up daily. Stay engaged. When he speaks people will listen.

January 5, 2021

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsIm very worried about the next 48 hours

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsPence pressure. WH counsel will leave.

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsSorry, I can’t talk right now.

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsOn with boss

Mark Meadows to Sean HannityWe are going to lose both

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsYup

January 6, 2021

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsCan he make a statement. I saw the tweet. Ask people to peacefully leave the capital

Mark Meadows to Sean HannityOn it

Sean Hannity to Mark MeadowsWth is happening with VPOTUS

Sean Hannity to Mark Meadows:

January 10, 2021

Sean Hannity to Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan

Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days. He can’t mention the election again. Ever. I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I’m not sure what is left to do or say, and I don’t like not knowing if it’s truly understood. Ideas?

January 19, 2021

Sean Hannity to Mark Meadows

Sean Hannity to Mark Meadows

Well this is as bad as this can get

What a weasel.

But he sure does love Donald Trump. Why, I will never understand. But you can see that they all thought he’d gone too far on January 6th and today it’s like a badge of courage. Maybe that’s why they love him so much. He can get away with anything.

It’s not just Trump

Imagine the shit Newsom would take if he insulted Miami this way and said he didn’t want any Florida businesses to come to California.

I am very, very sick of this game that everyone — on the left too — plays in which it’s fine for conservatives to insult half the country in truly degrading ways and yet if anyone says something insulting about Republicans (like calling some of them a basket of deplorables) they are vilified by all sides for failing to be properly empathetic and caring toward their fellow citizens.

I don’t think acting in this juvenile manner is right. But when these hypocrites start calling for the smelling salts over alleged liberal misbehavior I don’t understand why this kind of thing isn’t thrown back in their faces and not just by the left or Democrats. The press should do it too. This is ridiculous.

Turns out people don’t think the government should punish employers for supporting a “woke” agenda

I don’t think Ron DeSantis cares about any of this because he believes he’s going to win Florida handily and that his job right now is to curry favor with the Trump cult nationally in anticipation of a 2024 or 2028 run. These guys know they don’t need a majority to be president anymore.

Still, in a real democracy this kind of result would be important to ambitious politicians like DeSantis:

A bipartisan majority of U.S. voters oppose politicians punishing companies over their stances on social issues, a cold reception for campaigns like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ against Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The two-day poll completed on Thursday showed that 62% of Americans – including 68% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans – said they were less likely to back a candidate who supports going after companies for their views.

DeSantis signed a bill last week that strips Disney of self-governing authority at its Orlando-area parks in retaliation for its opposition to a new Florida law that limits the teaching of LGBTQ issues in schools. read more

For DeSantis, a rising star in the Republican Party, it was an attempt to bolster his conservative credentials as a culture warrior ahead of a possible run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

But even when prompted along the lines of DeSantis’ own argument for his action – that laws should remove benefits of government tax breaks from corporations that push a “woke” agenda – 36% of Republicans nationally said they would be less likely to support a candidate with such a view.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll still showed that DeSantis, 43, is a potential force in national Republican politics.

Presented with a list of prominent politicians, a full 25% of Republican respondents said DeSantis best represents the values of their party, second only to former President Donald Trump who was favored by 40% of Republicans. Texas Governor Greg Abbott garnered 9%.

The only surprise there is that Trump is only at 40% among Republicans. Of course, that’s now. They’ll all eagerly vote for him when he wins the nomination, I’m sure.

Pay attention to your school board races, please

(h/t BE)

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Recognize the signs

Republicans have set about declaring anyone not members of their cult enemies of the People’s Temple.

No. Sorry. That was Rev. Jim Jones who had his People’s Temple security ambush a congressional delegation and press members at a Guyanan airstrip in 1978. Five died and five were seriously wounded.

Four people died in the Donald Trump-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Five other police officers who served at the Capitol that day died in the days and weeks after. Some by their own hands.

Yet Republicans have persisted in rhetoric pointing toward another People’s Temple-style massacre, only not in the Guyanan jungle. What exactly their nihilist cult believes is hard to define. Rachel Maddow took a shot at it on Thursday.

“So, if what you want to do is jail your political opposition or maybe have them killed….” We are supposed to feel fortunate that the right still feels the need to manufacture a pretext?

Recognize and call out the signs.

Maddow’s full six-minute-plus monologue is here.

Forewarned is forearmed. Does anyone use that expression anymore?

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Update — Awwwww:

It’s bad

How long before rape is decriminalized? After all, it’s really an opportunity:

That’s Ohio. In Oklahoma, 6 weeks means that most women won’t know if they are pregnant before it’s too late to get an abortion in Oklahoma:

Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma passed a bill on Thursday that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, typically around six weeks into pregnancy and before many even know they are pregnant.

The Oklahoma Heartbeat Act will take immediate effect as soon as Gov. Kevin Stitt signs the bill, which is expected as early as Friday. Stitt has committed to signing any anti-abortion legislation that comes across his desk and has previously described himself as America’s “most pro-life governor.”

Earlier this month, Oklahoma enacted a different bill that nearly totally bans abortion except in cases where the pregnant person’s life is endangered. Under that bill, anyone who performs an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and up to $100,000 in fines. It will take effect in August unless barred by the courts.

The new bill, which was passed without debate or any questions allowed, is modeled after a Texas law that went into effect last year. It has exceptions for cases where the pregnant person’s life is endangered, but not for cases of rape, incest, or fetal conditions that make life unsustainable after birth. It also imposes additional reporting requirements on physicians and allows private individuals to seek civil penalties, including at least $10,000 in damages, against anyone who aids in or performs an abortion after the six week term. That’s designed to circumvent current legal limitations on the government’s ability to go after abortion providers.

“It’s identical to the bill that was enacted by the Texas Legislature last year, and that bill has passed muster with the United States Supreme Court,” Tony Lauinger, the chairman of Oklahomans for Life, told the AP. (The Supreme Court, however, never held a full hearing on the bill and merely dismissed a case challenging the bill in a brief order without explaining its reasoning.)

“We are hopeful that this bill will save the lives of more unborn children here in Oklahoma as well,” Lauinger added.

Abortion advocates challenged the bill in the Oklahoma Supreme Court late Thursday, arguing that it prevents Oklahomans from accessing constitutionally protected abortion care.

“For those able to scrape together the necessary funds, [the bill] will force them to travel out of state to access abortion care. Others will attempt to self-manage their own abortions without medical supervision. And many Oklahomans will have no choice but to continue their pregnancies against their will,” they write in the lawsuit.

It’s the latest in a series of anti-abortion laws passed in Oklahoma and in several other GOP-controlled state legislatures that make it all but impossible to obtain an in-state physical abortion, even while the US Supreme Court’s precedent in its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade still stands.

The court will decide a case by early July in which it is expected to partially or completely overturn Roe, which recognized a pregnant person’s fundamental right to seek an abortion, but found that states could still impose restrictions on the procedure in the service of protecting the pregnant person’s health and the potential life of a fetus once it can survive outside the womb. But even if the court doesn’t overturn Roe, the latest Oklahoma bill will likely still stand given that legal challenges to the parallel law in Texas have failed.

Many Texans have flocked to Oklahoma abortion clinics after their state’s heartbeat act went into effect in September. There are just four such facilities across the entire state of Oklahoma, which have seen soaring demand in the months since.

It isn’t just abortion. Look how these laws are affecting the medical treatment of miscarriage:

An early draft of a Missouri bill seemed to outlaw treatment for an ectopic pregnancy, which happens when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus; it read:

The offense of trafficking abortion-inducing devices or drugs is a class A felony if: (1) The abortion was performed or induced or was attempted to be performed or induced on a woman carrying an unborn child of more than ten weeks gestational age; (2) The abortion was performed or induced or was attempted to be performed or induced on a woman who has an ectopic pregnancy.

According to the Mayo Clinic, “An ectopic pregnancy can’t proceed normally. The fertilized egg can’t survive, and the growing tissue may cause life-threatening bleeding, if left untreated.” The Missouri bill has since been amended, and though the bill’s author told The Columbia Missourian that the original text was misinterpreted, the “muddy” nature of the language in some of these documents is part of what concerns women’s health advocates.

“Make no mistake, these laws have a chilling effect on the ability to practice safe obstetrics,” said Dr. Courtney A. Schreiber, the chief of the division of family planning in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “These laws put physicians in an impossible position of having to balance regulations that don’t take into account the complexity of pregnancy and an actual person’s urgent need to sustain their health,” she told me. When these laws must be applied “in real life to real doctors taking care of real women, the language doesn’t translate, the sentiment doesn’t translate. The level of confusion and fear is intense for physicians practicing obstetrics in states with these restrictions,” she added.

As The Associated Press’s Lindsay Tanner noted, medical students are already being affected by anti-abortion legislation. Abortion training is not available at medical schools in Oklahoma, and “bills or laws seeking to limit abortion education have been proposed or enacted in at least eight states,” Tanner reports. Since the surgical procedure that’s performed to end a missed miscarriage is the same as the one that’s performed in an abortion, fewer doctors trained to do this procedure, known colloquially as a D. and C., will mean fewer options for miscarrying women.

The Texas law and laws like it set up a situation where “anybody who experiences a pregnancy loss that they can’t explain to the satisfaction of law enforcement becomes suspicious,” Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director at If/When/How, a legal organization that works for reproductive justice, told me.

“This is a lawyerly point, but the idea that if it is a crime to have done something to have ended that pregnancy, that becomes a jury question. You have to put a person through a trial to determine whether a loss was ‘innocent,’” she added.

Diaz-Tello mentioned the confusing case of Lizelle Herrera, a Texan who recently “was arrested and charged with murder — over what local authorities alleged was a ‘self-induced abortion,’” according to The Washington Post. Texas’ law “explicitly exempts a woman from a criminal homicide charge for aborting her pregnancy,” as The Post notes. The charges were ultimately dropped and the county district attorney apologized, The Post reports, but what is clear is that this woman was put through a painful and terrifying situation because of this new law.

I asked both Schreiber and Diaz-Tello what women who live in Texas and other states with restrictive abortion laws can do to protect themselves should they suffer a miscarriage. If you are fortunate enough to have a choice of obstetric providers, Schreiber recommended interviewing clinicians about how they handle miscarriages, and making sure to choose someone you feel could help you navigate the process in a way that respects your autonomy. Though no one wants to think about a wanted pregnancy ending in a loss, having as much information as possible, in advance, about what your treatment options might be is another important step.

But many women don’t have these resources — according to the March of Dimes, about 38 percent of rural counties and 58 percent of urban counties are considered “maternity care deserts,” which means they have no access to hospital-based obstetric services. Black women in rural areas are particularly vulnerable.

Diaz-Tello said that being informed about your rights is important. If you have, for example, taken pills to end a pregnancy when that is not legal, you are not required to tell a doctor that you have done so. If/When/How also has a free, confidential legal help line if you have questions about your rights.

It’s appalling to me that the onus should be on a woman who is experiencing a miscarriage to avoid potential prosecution, but that’s where we are. Politico recently published an article suggesting that many Americans are under-informed about the scope and speed of the changes already happening. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2022 legislative sessions, 33 abortion restrictions have been enacted in nine states, and a stunning 536 restrictions have been introduced in 42 states. A Democratic operative told Politico, “Most voters still haven’t connected the dots to the looming federal change and mistakenly think Roe is almost untouchable.” This misconception needs to be corrected right now.

Maybe the Democrat could say something about it? Just spit-balling here.

Who needs Rush Limbaugh?

He’s not Trump. He’s actually of a more ancient species — the nasty right wing talk radio asshole:

He was referred to yesterday as “America’s Governor.” He could easily become America’s president. And Rush Limbaugh will be smiling from the 6th circle of hell.