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The Cruelty Is The Point

Published by digby on December 7, 2023

Forcing women to carry fetuses with fatal chromosomal disorders to term is a grotesque violation of human rights

Kate Cox, the mother of two whose request for an abortion was granted by a Texas judge, speaks out to NBC News after the ruling. “We’re going through the loss of a child,” Cox says of her grief. We have coverage of the landmark case on “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” 

By the way, here’s a look at what the anti-abortion zealots want Trump to do if he’s elected by Elaine Godfrey from the “If Trump Wins” issue of The Atlantic. Do you think that he wouldn’t do it once he’s back in the White House, burning with vengeance?

A federal ban, which would require 60 votes in the Senate, is unlikely. But some activists believe there’s a simpler way: the enforcement by a Trump Justice Department of a 150-year-old obscenity law.

The Comstock Act, originally passed in 1873 to combat vice and debauchery, prohibits the mailing of any “article or thing” that is “designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.” In the law’s first 100 years, a series of court cases narrowed its scope, and in 1971, Congress removed most of its restrictions on contraception. But the rest of the Comstock Act has remained on the books. The law has sat dormant, considered virtually unenforceable, since the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.

Following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022, the United States Postal Service asked the Justice Department for clarification: Could its workers legally transport abortion-inducing medications to states with bans? The DOJ replied by issuing a memo stipulating that abortion pills can be legally mailed as long as the sender does not intend for the drugs to be used unlawfully. And whether or not the drugs will be used within the bounds of state law, the memo notes, would be difficult for a sender to know (the pills have medical uses unrelated to abortion).

If Donald Trump is reelected president, many prominent opponents of abortion rights will demand that his DOJ issue its own memo, reinterpreting the law to mean the exact opposite: that Comstock is a de facto ban on shipping medication that could end a pregnancy, regardless of its intended use (this would apply to the USPS and to private carriers like UPS and FedEx). “The language is black-and-white. It should be enforced,” Steven H. Aden, the general counsel at Americans United for Life, told me. A broader interpretation of the Comstock Act might also mean that a person receiving abortion pills would be committing a federal crime and, if prosecuted, could face prison time. Federal prosecutors could bring charges against abortion-pill manufacturers, providers receiving pills in the mail, or even individuals.

The hopes of some activists go further. Their ultimate aim in reviving the Comstock Act is to use it to shut down every abortion facility “in all 50 states,” Mark Lee Dickson, a Texas pastor and anti-abortion advocate, told me. Taken literally, Comstock could be applied to prevent the transport of all supplies related to medical and surgical abortions, making it illegal to ship necessary tools and medications to hospitals and clinics, with no exceptions for other medical uses, such as miscarriage care. Conditions that are easily treatable with modern medicine could, without access to these supplies, become life-threatening.

Legal experts say that the activists’ strategy could, in theory, succeed—at least in bringing the issue to court. “It’s not hypothetical anymore,” Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the UC Davis School of Law, told me. “Because it’s already on the books, and it’s not ridiculous to interpret it this way, [the possibility] is not far-fetched at all.”

Eventually, the Supreme Court would likely face pressure to weigh in. Even though a majority of the Court’s justices have supported abortion restrictions and ruled to overturn Roe, it’s unclear how they’d rule on this particular case. If they were to uphold the broadest interpretation of the Comstock Act, doctors even in states without bans could struggle to legally obtain the supplies they need to provide abortions and perform other procedures.

This is what activists want. The question is whether Trump would accede to their demands. After years of championing the anti-abortion cause, the former president seemed to pivot when he blamed anti-abortion Republicans’ extremism for the party’s poor performance in the 2022 midterm elections (only a small fraction of Americans favors a complete abortion ban). Recently, he’s come across as more moderate on the issue than his primary opponents by condemning Florida’s six-week abortion ban and endorsing compromise with Democrats.

As president, Trump might choose not to enforce Comstock at all. Or he could order his DOJ to enforce it with discretion, promising to go after drug manufacturers and Planned Parenthood instead of individuals. It’s hard to be certain of any outcome: Trump has always been more interested in appeasing his base than reaching Americans in the ideological middle. He might well be in favor of aggressively enforcing the Comstock Act, in order to continue bragging, as he has in the past, that he is “the most pro-life president in American history.”

There is no reason to believe he won’t do it. He doesn’t care about the Republican party. He cares about revenge. And he is a true believing misogynist.

If you think it can’t get worse, think again.

Update:

Is The President A King?

Published by digby on December 7, 2023

The courts are going to decide that question. And it could come too late.

The January 6th case Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a ruling stating that Donald Trump is not immune from the rule of law because he was president. She famously wrote:

Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens … A former President’s exposure to federal criminal liability is essential to fulfilling our constitutional promise of equal justice under the law

This may seem obvious to all of us. If a president is immune from criminal liability when he is out of office he is a defacto dictator during his term and theoretically could use that status to ensure his term is endless. But according to the legal beagles, this is a n issue that will need to be decided by the appeals courts and probably the Supremes. Trump is undoubtedly hoping they decide to stay Chutkan’s ruling and leave the whole thing until after the election — at which point Trump would have legitimate presidential immunity if he wins.

The Washington Post has a good run down on this issue:

Donald Trump filed notice on Thursday saying he will appeal a D.C. judge’s ruling that he was not immune from being charged with federal crimes for his efforts to undo the outcome of the 2020 election, either by his former role as president or the Constitution’s rules for impeachment.

The notice is a minor procedural step. But it sets in motion one of the most potentially consequential parts of Trump’s legal saga as the first former president to be charged with crimes. How and when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the Supreme Court handle his appealcould have a huge impact on whether Trump — who is again running for president — goes on trial before voters go to the polls in 2024, or ever.

Trump’s legal team says the charges that he conspired to obstruct Joe Biden’s 2020 victory should be thrown out for two reasons. First, his lawyers contend that he had presidential immunity. Second, they argue that charging him with trying to block the election resultsviolates the legal principle of double jeopardy, because Trump was already acquitted at his congressional impeachment for his conduct leading up to the riot-marred Jan. 6, 2021 formal tabulation of electoral college votes.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s 48-page opinion last weekrejected those claims, as well as a different challenge that said the indictment never should have been filed because it improperly tries to criminalize Trump’s constitutionally protected rights to speech and advocacy as a political candidate.

Since a grand jury voted to bring the criminal charges this summer, prosecutors have sought to try Trump as quickly as possible. Trump’s lawyers have insistedtheir client needs and deserves more time, both as a defendant reviewing evidence and as a former president trying to win back the White House.

Appeals courts consider very few legal issues before a criminal case goes to trial and averdict is reached. But questions of immunity and double jeopardy are often among the exceptions, because if the defendant is right that they cannot be charged, courts have held that they should not be forced to go through a trial at all.

And since the Supreme Court has never grappled with some of the legal questions at issue in Trump’s claims — particularly whether a president is immune from indictment and criminal prosecution for actions undertaken while in office,even after he has left office — many lawyers say they believe the courts will have to wrestle with those aspects of the Trump case.

The key issue, according to legal experts, is how long will the higher courts consider that question. Trump is scheduled to go on trial in Washington, D.C., starting March 4, and potential jurors in the nation’s capital have received notices that they are being considered for a three-month trial to start on that date. It would be the first of four criminal trials Trump could face, including a federal case involving classified documents in southern Florida; a state-level election-obstruction case in Georgia; and a state-level business fraud case in New York.

Now that Trump has filed his notice of appeal on Chutkan’s immunity ruling, the case cannot proceed to trial while the appeals court takes up his claims, legal analysts said. That makes the question of timing especially critical, with the other trials looming and the campaign season soon to be in full swing.

[…]

One critical factor will be which three appellate judges end up hearing the case. If judges can agree on how quickly they want to move forward, such panels can issue decisions in under two months. Other cases, however, can take more than a year.

Last week, in a separate ruling issued hours before Chutkan denied Trump’s bid to dismiss the criminal case,the D.C. appeals court denied Trump’s claims of immunity from a civil lawsuit over his conduct leading up to Jan. 6. That decision took 20 months to reach.

“The D.C. Circuit can go really fast, I’ve learned that over 45 years of practice,” said Douglas N. Letter, who was House general counsel from 2018 to 2023 and before that was director of the Justice Department civil division’s appellate staff. “On the other hand, sometimes even when it rules in your favor it can wait 10 months to issue even a short opinion.”

I wish I had more faith in the appellate court to do the right thing. Maybe they will here:

Still, the high court has shown it can rapidly settle — or duck — complex and controversial cases. It quickly let stand a D.C. Circuit decision turning over Trump’s White House communications records to the House Jan. 6 committee in 2022. And the justices took only one day after oral arguments to issue a ruling that shut down vote-counting in the 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore.

“I could easily see the Supreme Court thinking, ‘We don’t want to get anywhere near this matter now; we’re going to deny review at this point and see what happens at trial,’” Letter said. After a trial, if Trump has been convicted and has not been reelected president, the court could take its time to issue a historic ruling on whether he should be immune from prosecution.

The bottom line is that both the appeals court and the Supreme Court would have to act swiftly to allow Trump’s trial to go forward next year.

And the question for the courts may ultimately be to decide whether under America’s system of democracy, Trump should face accountability at the ballot box, or a jury box —or whether U.S. citizens should cast their votes in the 2024 election without knowing if he is criminally culpable for trying to overturn the results in 2020.

Needless to say, Trump’s strategy regardless is to delay this trial as long as possible regardless. I’m trying to remain optimistic that this January 6th case will go to trial before the election but I don’t want to hope too much. I think there’s an excellent chance that none of the cases will, which would be horrible.

GOP Establishment Goes MAGA To Beat MAGA

Published by digby on December 7, 2023

The following statement isn’t from Vivek Ramaswamy or Alex Jones. It’s the NRSC, the most establishment GOP institution imaginable:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee on Wednesday took a swing at Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., following Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announcing he’ll be leaving Congress.

“A lot of people are starting to wonder if Matt Rosendale is a plant from the Democrats,” NRSC Communications Director Mike Berg said in a statement responding to McCarthy’s retirement. “He is benefitting from millions of dollars in television ads from a Chuck Schumer-aligned super PAC and has been a great ally to Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi in their efforts to take back the House.”

Rosendale was one of eight House Republicans who joined with Democrats to oust McCarthy as Speaker in October.

His departure will now leave Republicans with just a two seat majority in the House.

Rosendale is gearing up for a potential Senate run in Montana, which would pit him in a rematch against Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., after his Senate campaign failed in 2018.

They really don’t want this guy in the race, do they? It’s not because he’s a left wing plant, God knows. He’s as right wing as it comes. In fact, that’s the reason they don’t want him to run. They think they can pick up this seat and they know that he’s such a nut that if he wins the nomination, which he might because the base loves MAGA, that Tester could pull it off. They want Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and current CEO of Bridger Aerospace, and they are putting all their muscle behind him. But there are a couple of other candidates in the race too alone with, Rosendale if he decides to run. It’s already a free-for-all and Rosendale will make it even more chaotic.

Get out your popcorn. There’s a lot of this going on around the country and after 2022, they really want to avoid more Kari Lake and Mastriano situation. But they aren’t in the driver’s seat so …

What Is This Dictatorship You Speak Of?

Published by digby on December 7, 2023

According to Axios, JD Vance is on the Trump short list for Vice President.

For real:

According to Fox News, Vance is accusing Kagan of inciting “open rebellion” against the United States, for suggesting in his article, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending,” that Democratic-controlled states might resist federal power under a second Trump term should he move to enact his controversial plans to reshape the federal government to do his bidding.

“Resistance could come from the governors of predominantly Democratic states such as California and New York through a form of nullification,” wrote Kagan. “States with Democratic governors and statehouses could refuse to recognize the authority of a tyrannical federal government. That is always an option in our federal system,” he added that this sort of standoff is also possible from Republican-controlled states under a second Biden term.

In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Vance claimed that this amounts to inciting insurrection.

“As you know, prosecutors in the Department of Justice have embraced several stunningly broad interpretations of federal law in their bid to ensnare President Trump in criminal wrongdoing,” wrote Vance. “For example, prosecutors … argue that President Trump has conspired to ‘threaten’ or ‘intimidate’ one or more persons in their free exercise of the ‘right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.’ By that standard, I would like to know whether a supporter of President Trump might be ‘intimidate[d]’ into foregoing the right to vote after learning that Robert Kagan has encouraged large blue states to rebel against the United States if Trump is elected. If so, I wonder further whether the editors of The Washington Post, having put Kagan’s call to arms in print, might have conspired to suppress the vote.”

Columnists enjoy broad-based protection to engage in such hypothetical scenarios by virtue of the First Amendment.

However, Vance’s demand to prosecute an opinion columnist comes as allies of Trump are ramping up their threats to curtail press freedom under a second Trump term. Kash Patel, a top security official in the Trump administration, threatened that Trump will “come after” reporters and other “conspirators” in media who “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

Vance is being cutesy, of course. But don’t kid yourself. If Trump takes over the Justice Dept as he plans to do if he wins another term, this is exactly what they plan to do.

The GOP Play Date

Published by digby on December 7, 2023

I watched that stupid also-ran debate last night and honestly, I have nothing much to say about it. They’re calling Haley the “front-runner” which she isn’t and praising Chris Christie for defending her but that’s about it. And everyone acknowledges that DeSantis is weird and Ramaswamy is a complete asshole. A few highlights:

And DeSantis is obsessed with “child mutilation” words he used over and over again during the debate

I think that about covers it. These debates are pathetic. And yet CNN just announced that they are hosting two more of them in January. No, Trump won’t show up for them either.

By the way, according to Morning Joe, the ratings for the Newsom DeSantis debate were higher than for the Trump town hall with Hannity this week. I would guess it’s because a buch of Democrats tuned for the former but Trump has to be pissed anyway.

Leave Nothing On the Table

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 7, 2023

Forests and trees

You’ve seen it before. You’ll see it again.

Why do left-leaning independents in North Carolina’s bluest precincts turn out less than Democrats in their neighborhoods when independents statewide (including the Trumpiest counties) turn out more?

Perhaps because Democrats are policy liberals and campaign conservatives. Taking chances? Not when every damned election is “the most important of our lifetimes.” Throwing the long ball? They are more inclined to fall on it. “Leave it all on the field” remains aspirational.

What we’re getting at here is Democrats’ targeting of independents for turnout is too conservative. As Michah L. Sifry (The Connector) in July observed, “The Experience of Grassroots Leaders Working with the Democracy Party” report is sobering. Among the complaints (emphasis mine):

Most volunteer leaders see their state Democratic party’s efforts to organize outreach as “too little, too late.” One in four call their party unresponsive. A majority of respondents said the party does a terrible job targeting voters, saying that its lists are far too narrow.

That is what I find as well:

This is my focus right now. Independents (UNAffiliated voters in NC) are the largest bloc of registered voters in NC: 36% (2.6 million voters). But statewide they voted against Democrats here 58% of the time in the last two elections. Democrats cannot win without them, but their traditional tactics, as Pepper recognizes, focuses only on “the most frequent voters.” This tactic leaves many “removed from the political conversation” in what I’ve dubbed “No Voter’s Land.” These are voters campaigns are reluctant to contact (using the tactics of the last war, you might say) because computer scoring deems them not good bets.

Self-identified independents are also the largest tranche of voters in Arizona, with Republicans second and Democrats third. But we’ll come back to that. In North Carolina it’s 36% Independents, 33% Democrats and 30% Republicans.

A few more rough numbers. Independent registrants turn out statewide at 6.5% below Democrats. Horseshoes and hand grenades, if there are more independents than Democrats, and they vote 58% against Democrats, but turn out 6.5% less, we begin to see why results of statewide races, even with healthy Democratic turnout, are so narrow.

In North Carolina’s bluest precincts in its most urban counties, however, independents turn out at 12% less than Democrats. Why? Are the nonvoters less engaged than their voting independent neighbors? Or are Democrats not engaging them?

Well.

Can’t see the forest for the trees

Democrats’ principle targeting tool is NGP Van’s VoteBuilder database, another source of complaint among the campaignerati. Its very premise is microtargeting. Every voter gets assigned a support score based on a variety of factors. But when it comes to voter outreach targeting independent voters have three strikes (or more) against them.

Strike1: Not a registered Dem.
Strike2: Do they vote in R primaries (allowed in NC)? Looks like an R-leaner. Or they (the vast majority) don’t vote in Democratic primaries and are written off as potential R-leaners.
Strike3: Are they an irregular voter? Lowest priority for voter contact efforts.

When it comes to independent voters, VoteBuilder sees individual trees and misses the forest. The forests campaigns miss are those precincts where independents who turn out vote 60, 70, 80-90% with Democrats but turn out at 12% less than their Democrat neighbors, almost twice what it is in Trump-country counties.

I’ve calculated which precincts those are. VoteBuilder doesn’t. It’s not how it works, or at least it’s not how it’s used in the field. If we could coax those low-scoring independents in specific precincts off their couches, Democrats score. Birds of a feather. They’ll vote like their voting independent neighbors. If their turnout matched Democrats’ in those precincts (not likely), there are an additional 56k votes for Democrats. But if they simply matched independents’ statewide average turnout, we’re still talking an extra 25k.

Arizona Democrats could do the same since their voter rolls also have partisan registration. Likely, the pattern I see in NC is repeated there.

Well?

But What Can We Do?

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 7, 2023

Robert Kagan is back already

Robert Kagan’s doomsaying article about a Trump dictatorship and The Atlantic‘s“If Trump Wins” series sounded loud alarms. And then some. I cautioned Monday that overdoing the shock treatment can backfire. Along with the warnings people need hope and plans for action. Kagan got that message from his readers and is back today with an attempt at offering some, reluctantly. His heart isn’t in it.

It’s not that we didn’t know what to do, Kagan begins. It’s that we didn’t do it when chances were better for stopping Trump. He offers “several things people could do to save the country but almost certainly won’t do, because they selfishly refuse to put their own ambitions at risk to save our democracy.” Feeling hopey yet?

For one, Never-Trump forces could throw all their support behind Nikki Haley as the least odious Republican presidential candidate. Probably won’t work, but go for it, Kagan suggests. A majority of the GOP are committed cultists. A smaller faction wants Trump as their best chance of beating Joe Biden. A third group, about six percent, say they’ll support Trump unless he’s convicted. So good luck, Nikki.

The other option is less direct but has a better chance of success. Raise doubts about Trump’s electability. “The way to do that is to warn those Republicans still capable of listening that a Trump presidency really does pose a risk to our freedom and democracy and the Constitution.,” Kagan argues. That’s what he, The Atlantic, and “sleepwalking into dictatorship” Liz Cheney are doing.

Republicans own freedom. It is their worship word. Anat Shenker-Osorio argues that Democrats have to take it back. Freedom is a universal American value. Democrats have to run on it. The Lincoln Project needs to take up that message too. Which side are you on?

“In short, the way to beat Trump is to make him seem unelectable, and the way to make him seem unelectable is to show that he is unacceptable,” Kagan offers:

Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and open disdain for the Constitution can become his greatest vulnerabilities — they might be his only vulnerabilities — if sufficiently highlighted for the American voter, and he and his advisers likely know it. Trump’s bizarre assertion that he would be a dictator only on “Day One” of his presidency to “close the border” was, believe it or not, an attempt to deflect the charge. (But what if it takes two days?) Democrats have gotten mileage in downballot races by painting their Republican opponents as lawbreaking, MAGA radicals. Trump is aware that he needs to hold on to some normal, non-cultist Republicans — that is why he has taken a more moderate position on abortion than much of the rest of the party. Trump is nothing if not a shrewd politician (the people who persist in claiming he’s an idiot should have a talk with themselves), and he knows he cannot win the general election on cult votes alone.

When Trump refused to deny he would act as a dictator with Sean Hannity at his Fox News town hall, he did it deliberately with a “wry humor,” Adam Serwer told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Wednesday evening [timestamp 10:50], to both bait opponents and maintain a thin sliver of deniability. His Day One pronouncement was a signal to his base of authoritarian followers that he would indeed rule as dictator. But many of his close acolytes are less reserved and talk like “low-level technicians on the Death Star.” Their gleeful anticipation of a Trump dictatorship needs more disinfecting sunlight.

There are many Americans who would run from him if they see a hint of Trump ruling as a dictator, strategist David Plouffe told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Wednesday evening [timestamp 8:50]. People like Kash Patel are actively promising that a second Trump administration would investigate opponents and target the oppressed. Trump himself has said he would terminate provisions of the Constitution that did not serve his needs.

Taking a page from the dictator’s playbook, Kagan explains, Trump is already trying to inoculate himself against those charges with an “I know you are but what am I?” strategy of declaring Joe Biden the real dictator.

In time-honored fashion, Trump is going for the biggest lie. His goal is to delegitimize the trials and convince Republican voters that he is the victim of corruption and abuse of the judicial system. He has just begun making that case, but he is going to bang it like a bass drum for the next year.

Can he succeed in establishing this as the narrative? You bet he can, and for the reasons outlined in the previous essay: As he becomes the presumptive nominee, the vast Republican campaign apparatus will be at his disposal, putting out his line on an hourly basis.

What that six percent with Trump unless he’s convicted need to hear ahead of the primaries from Republicans still keeping the faith — and not from Democrats and Post columnists — is that they are right, Kagan believes, “that the Biden administration is not a dictatorship, that the trials are not an abuse of power, and that if Trump is convicted, justice will have been done,’ Kagan writes. That “would not take a lot of speeches, or well-placed interviews, or appearances on Sunday shows, by the right people to change the conversation.”

Imagine if the wing of the Republican Party that still believes in defending the Constitution identified itself that way, as “Constitutional Republicans” implacably opposed to the man who blatantly attempted to subvert the Constitution and has indicated his willingness to do so again as president.

But don’t hold your breath. It will require courage in short supply among Republicans.

Many people responded to my last essay by insisting that a majority of Americans oppose Trump, and they are right. But the way our system works today, that popular majority is prevented from coalescing. Many blame the electoral college or the two-party prejudice built into our system, and they might well be right. But, folks, are we going to fix these problems before November? The question is how best to bring this majority together in a coalition of Democrats and Constitutional Republicans to prevent a dictatorship this coming year. Afterward, we can look at reforming the system. First, the system has to survive.

And for that to happen Democrats have to deliver.

Two Terrible Stories On The Abortion Front

Published by digby on December 6, 2023

One that should make anyone say to themselves, “there but for the grace of God…” Another that should make anyone who lives in the real world see red.

Story #1:

A woman whose fetus has a fatal condition is petitioning a Texas court to let her override the state’s total abortion ban and terminate the pregnancy—the first such case since before Roe v. Wade.

Lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights filed suit on behalf of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old from Dallas-Fort Worth who learned last month that her fetus has Trisomy 18, a chromosomal anomaly that causes developmental delays so severe that most infants do not survive more than two weeks. Cox’s attorneys are seeking a temporary restraining order against Texas’ abortion bans to allow her to end the pregnancy without leaving the state.

Attorney Nick Kabat from the Center for Reproductive Rights said this is the first time a pregnant woman in a medical emergency has filed a lawsuit seeking access to abortion since Roe was decided more than 50 years ago.

“It’s a statement of where we are that what this case is about is a medical emergency,” he said. “This is not Jane Roe. Kate Cox is in the middle of a medical crisis.”

“You can just imagine how crazy it is that in the middle of a medical crisis, she has to reach out to lawyers, run to court, and try to get a court order, he added. “It’s really heartbreaking that this is where we are historically.”

The mother of two learned she was pregnant with a third child in August, but soon received devastating news from her doctors, according to the suit. Ultrasounds in October revealed the fetus had an umbilical hernia, a twisted spine likely due to spina bifida, a neural tube defect, clubbed feet, irregular skull and heart development, and other serious medical conditions. An amniocentesis in November showed the fetus had what doctors had feared: full Trisomy 18, an almost always fatal condition.

The diagnosis meant Cox’s fetus is unlikely to survive past birth or much longer, according to the suit. It also poses threats to her own health; because she previously gave birth twice by C-section, inducing labor early carries a “serious risk of uterine rupture,” while having a full-term C-section would make subsequent pregnancies higher risk, the suit states. Cox has already been to the hospital twice during her pregnancy, once for days of severe cramping and diarrhea and again for leaking amniotic fluid.

Doctors advised Cox that the safest option would be a dilation and evacuation abortion, the suit states. But Texas has barred abortion since shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe last year, except in narrow circumstances when it is necessary to save the life of a pregnant patient.

Texas wants to make this woman carry this doomed fetus for the next four months and go through childbirth, risking her own physical health in the process and almost certainly damaging her mental health and her family’s well being. What kind of monster would force her and her family to go through that? It’s sick.

Meanwhile, here is where these monsters are going in New Hampshire:

NEW HAMPSHIRE IS a state that puts a lot of stock in the concept of freedom. “Live Free or Die” is stamped on its license plates; it’s home to the libertarian-bating “Free State Project”; and just a few weeks ago, the governor celebrated its ranking as the “freest state” in the country, according to the Cato Institute. 

But that embrace of freedom apparently only extends so far. A group of Republicans from both the state House and Senate have announced plans to introduce a bill that would ban almost all abortions after just 15 days gestation.

The bill is effectively a total ban on abortion. The absolute earliest a woman can confirm she is pregnant is with a blood test 10 days after ovulation. But this proposed law does not ban abortion 15 days after ovulation — it bans abortion at 15 days gestation, counted from the first day of a woman’s last menstrual cycle… which means it would ban abortion before some woman have even had conceived. The only proposed exception to the law is for a medical emergency.

If passed, it would be among the most restrictive in the country.

Abortion is currently legal through 24 weeks gestation in New Hampshire; medical professionals who provide abortions after that point face both civil and criminal penalties. (Earlier this year, members of both the Republican and Democratic House caucuses sought to remove criminal and civil penalties associated with that ban, but the effort failed in Senate.)

Republicans currently hold a trifecta in New Hampshire, with GOP majorities in the House and Senate and a Republican occupying the governor’s mansion. But control of the House — the largest in the country with 400 members — sits on a knife’s edge. There are 198 Republicans and 195 Democrats, three independents, and four vacant seats. 

You can imagine what these people will define as a medical emergency. It appears that these people in red states are just barreling ahead with their dystopian agenda.

It would be nice to think these GOP candidates for president (other than Donald Trump) would be questioned about this in tonight’s debate but I wouldn’t count on it. Nikki Haley has said she’d sign the most conservative “pro-life” bill that would hit her desk. Maybe they could ask her if she would sign this one if she were governor of New Hampshire. She’s said she’d sign a 6 week ban. Why not this?

GOP Senators Turn Feral

Published by digby on December 6, 2023

They’re now holding the kind of Fox News hissy fits we’ve come to expect from the Freedom Caucus types in the House.

It’d a good thing everyone is dressed in a suit or someone might think they are playing undignified childish games:

 A classified briefing for senators on the White House‘s request for aid for Israel and Ukraine became “heated” Tuesday, with Republican members storming out of the meeting.

The briefing, led by the secretaries of defense and state, as well as the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was held behind closed doors to allow all 100 senators to ask questions about the administration’s funding request.

But it fell apart, senators from both parties said, after Republicans began asking about the border. GOP members in both chambers have demanded serious changes to immigration policy to address rising migrant crossings in exchange for passing new aid for Ukraine.

They didn’t like what they heard.

“People got up and walked out, because this is a waste of time,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told reporters.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called it “the most heated briefing in the SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility] I’ve seen.”

“What most, or many, Republican senators want to talk about here is the border, and Sen. Schumer would prefer not to do that in this venue; obviously, there’s nobody there to talk about the border,” Hawley continued, referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “So that was a point of some heated disagreement.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said: “It started off pretty bad … a lot of tension in the room because nobody talked about the border. In case you don’t have a television or you’ve been living in a cave, you would know that most Republicans feel like we need to address the broken border.”

This was a classified briefing by foreign policy and defense experts. Why would it be necessary to have a briefing in an SCIF with border experts? It’s a domestic issue.

Obviously, it isn’t. It’s the Republicans putting on a show for their MAGA constituents over the border which they consider to be their best issue going into the election.