Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

… ’til your daddy takes the country away

I’ve long written that one of Trump’s great gift is that, for his followers, he makes politics fun. This NYT newsletter piece observes that phenomenon:

When Donald Trump was indicted on criminal charges in New York City two months ago, I tried to make sense of the political fallout with my colleague Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst. After poring over traditional markers about fund-raising and poll numbers, Nate mentioned another standard I’ve been thinking about over the past few days: Do Trump’s legal challenges make him more (or less) fun?

The question is awkward, as it suggests that the reasons some Americans are drawn to politicians are divorced from the seriousness of their office. But after Trump’s arraignment in federal court in Miami this week, I’m reminded of its importance. Nate wasn’t calling Trump fun as a self-evident fact, but rather identifying a set of voters who are attracted to showmanship and celebrity, are distinct from Trump’s base and follow politics only casually, if at all.

These voters matter for Trump’s 2024 campaign. Five percent of Trump’s voters in 2016 were disengaged from politics, a study by Democracy Fund, a pro-democracy group, found, and that is the type of margin that made a difference in such a close contest.

What distinguishes this group? Perhaps you have a friend who doesn’t care about politics, but can’t believe Trump said THAT. Or who recognizes the belittling nicknames he bestowed on Republicans in the 2016 primary, like “Little Marco” Rubio and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, monikers that have stuck beyond Republican circles.

Such awareness is part of the effect of Trump’s celebrity and ability to command attention in ways no other candidate can. When Trump was at his political peak, that quality extended beyond his most ardent supporters to political outsiders who were attracted to his style — or were at least entertained by it.

2024 challenge

Ahead of the 2024 election, though, Trump’s crusade for supporters is failing to live up to his 2016 effort. At both of Trump’s arraignments, the number of people who came to the courthouse to defend him was smaller than expected. I’ve heard from Republican leaders — on Capitol Hill and in early voting states like Iowa — who say they have gotten fewer calls defending Trump than they anticipated. Even his return to CNN, in a widely criticized town hall last month, fell short of the ratings that Trump once delivered for cable networks.

Perhaps most important, Trump himself looks miserable. Even as Republican voters have largely rallied behind him, and even as he remains the front-runner to secure the Republican nomination despite his cascading legal problems, he appears to be wrestling with the reality that his freedom is in jeopardy.

“Some birthday,” he grumbled in Miami this week, ignoring a clear attempt by supporters to cheer him up on the week he turned 77.

According to my colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman, who have closely followed Trump’s political career, his speech in New Jersey after his arraignment brought down the mood of the party instead of jump-starting it. Trump turned what was meant to be a moment of defiance into a familiar litany of grievances. He invoked the tone of personal victimhood that Republicans have told me cost them votes in the 2022 midterms, when Trump focused on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

It’s not just that the indictments distract Trump from laying out an affirmative vision for the country. They can also stop him from being the most free version of himself.

In a competitive Republican primary where another candidate can gain traction with the electorate (a possibility that remains to be seen), Trump’s inability to summon his freewheeling style is the type of difficult-to-quantify factor that can keep him from securing votes — and leave opportunities for opponents.

Trump can, of course, return anytime to the unconstrained approach that won him so much attention in 2016 and since. His Republican primary competitors are already dreading the amount of media coverage they will lose this summer to his indictments, my colleagues Jonathan Swan and Jonathan Weisman reported.

Yet these factors are part of the reason that many Democrats feel good about a potential matchup between President Biden and Trump. They argue that the electorate is simply exhausted with the chaos that he brought to national politics and that his legal troubles are a reminder of that aspect of his presidency. What was once fun (for some) no longer is.

I think this is an important factor. The Trump show has always been a huge part of his appeal. (God knows why…) If he gets too dour and too, dare I say, boring, there is a not negligible portion of his voters who may look elsewhere. Or, just as likely, not bother to vote. It’s not as if his rivals are Mr and Mrs excitement.

We’ll see. He may get his mojo back. But the only change he’s made to his act is to whine about his personal troubles and that may be getting old even for some of his ardent cult members. Self-pity isn’t a good look for anyone.

Get a load of the polling on Trump and the documents:

As the country reckons with an unprecedented federal indictment of a former president, one of the most significant hurdles to a public resolution is arriving at a shared set of basic facts and priorities. And that’s particularly a challenge with the American right.

Multiple polls focused on the Trump classified documents case suggest that many, if not most, Republicans don’t particularly appreciate the potential gravity of the situation or its details. And it can’t simply be explained by mere partisanship.

One of the inescapable facts of the situation is that Trump got himself in trouble not because he took the documents in the first place, but because he declined to return them. The indictment only charges conduct after the government subpoenaed Trump’s documents in May 2022. After that subpoena, Trump only returned some of his remaining classified documents before the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago turned up more. The Washington Post recapped how Trump’s fateful decision not to return the documents resulted from rejecting his lawyers’ advice.

But despite it being readily apparent that Trump didn’t do what the government asked, a new YouGov poll shows Republicans, by and large, maintain that he did. It shows 53 percent say Trump “cooperated in returning documents,” with just 15 percent saying he didn’t.

Perhaps as stunningly, YouGov back in January asked the same question about President Biden and former vice president Mike Pence, both of whom had a smaller number of classified documents. Despite there being no evidence either of them declined to turn over the documents, significantly more Republicans said Biden didn’t cooperate (38 percent) than said the same of Trump (17 percent). Just 22 percent of Republicans said Biden had cooperated.

And in case you think this just boils down to partisanship, it doesn’t. In contrast to Republicans’ views of Biden’s supposed lack of cooperation, Democrats recognized Pence’s cooperation by a 50-12 margin.

Related to the above are views of intentionality. There is no public evidence that Biden knew he had classified documents and held on to them, and plenty that Trump did. That evidence long predates last week’s indictment. But a February Quinnipiac poll showed just 48 percent of Republicans believed Trump intentionally held on to the documents, compared to 71 percent who said the same of Biden.

We see similar findings when it comes to the gravity of the situation.

One of the most serious allegations in the indictment is that Trump had information that pertained to nuclear secrets. It’s perhaps the definition of the kind of information you would want to protect. But after the indictment, YouGov asked people whether it would be a “national security risk” for Trump to have such documents in his home. And remarkably, Republicans said it would not be, 54-46.

Similarly, a Monmouth University poll in January found just 14 percent of Republicans said they would be “very concerned” if the documents Trump had “fell into the wrong hands.” But 62 percent said the same of Biden’s documents. This despite Biden’s documents being significantly less voluminous and including far fewer “top secret” documents.

(And again, in the most analogous case to Biden’s, the Pence case, Democrats didn’t return the partisan favor. Just 20 percent of them would be “very concerned” if Pence’s documents fell into the wrong hands.)

That certainly points back to the information gap here. Regardless of Trump’s guilt, the known facts make it clear there’s simply no real comparison between his and Biden’s documents cases. But Trump has inoculated himself over the years by drawing his supporters — with the help of a compliant and siloed conservative media ecosystem — into waving away virtually anything bad as the latest lie from the “deep state” and the “lamestream media.”

So even months after the Mar-a-Lago search turned up the latest of more than 300 classified and even “top secret” documents that had been in Trump’s possession, a poll showed 66 percent of Republicans believed Trump hadn’t possessed such documents.

It’s almost as if certain people are looking directly at classified documents and pretending they’re not there.

I’m pretty sure this is a characteristic of cult worship and brainwashing.

It’s very important to note the difference between how Democrats view these issues and Republicans and I wish the media would do more of it. It’s clear that much of the right is simply unable to believe their Dear Leader did anything wrong and the rest are in an information bubble. It’s a lethal combination and while it’s mostly due to the right wing media’s fealty to Trump it’s also due to the unwillingness of other GOP elected officials to tell the truth to their voters. It’s on them as much as it is on Trump.

Yeah, nobody got anything. Surprised?

Miami New Times reports:

Trump opted to decompress with a trip to Versailles in Little Havana. The iconic restaurant has long been a pit stop for politicians seeking to curry favor with Miami’s Cuban voters.

Trump and his entourage arrived at Versailles shortly after leaving the courthouse and made straight for the bakery.

The local press was on hand to capture footage of the large crowd milling outside to greet their man. Inside the bakery, Trump supporters fawned over their man, regaling the soon-to-turn-77-year-old with a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” a day early and holding a group prayer. Former MMA fighter Jorge Masvidal, sporting a University of Miami ball cap, hailed Trump as “everybody’s favorite president of all time” after embracing the former leader of the free world.

A glad-handing Trump was heard to declare, “Food for everyone!”

So, New Times wondered, did Trump — who famously fancies his chicken from KFC and his steaks well-done and slathered with ketchup but isn’t exactly known for picking up the check — treat his fan club to a spread of croquetas, pastelitos, and cubanos chased with cafecitos?

It turns out no one got anything. Not even a cafecito to-go.

A knowledgeable source assures New Times that Donald Trump’s stop at Versailles totaled about ten minutes, leaving no time for anyone to eat anything, much less place an order.

Trump reportedly had McDonalds on the plane.

I wrote about this a while back but since they seem determined to throw the election to Trump it’s worth reiterating. Here’s Rick Wilson on twitter:

Good morning.

If any of you are still bamboozled by Nancy Jacobsen and Mark Penn’s @NoLabelsOrg‘s actual intentions let me hook you up.

They claim to be moderate, centrist problem solvers who are running a 3rd part effort to “give Americans more choices.” 

Nancy is one of DC’s most powerful, influential, and connected players. A Swamp Empress. Richer than God.

She and Mark Penn are angry, though. Very, very angry. At whom, you ask?

Well, Democrats.

They were exiled from Clinton world. Obamas, same. 

They’ve been on a jihad ever since. Mark has dozens of Fox hits defending and praising Trump.

Their major donors are the EXACT same billionaires funding Ron DeSantis. (Yeah, Nancy hides her donors, but girl, your org leaks because your staff hates you.) 

They formed No Labels as a long con, a way to break the Democrats, get rich doing it (and again, they are VERY rich), and punish their imagined enemies.

They branded it as “centrist problem solvers” buy their plan to run a 3rd party candidate this year was anything but. 

They’re working to put a conservative Dem (Joe Manchin is their number one pony, but Sinema is also in the running if Joe falls off) on the ballot in key states to drain off votes from Biden.

Their math, maps, and polling are utter fantasy, an ever-changing target. 

@ThirdWayMattB at Third Way and @Philip_Germain at LP have more stats, data, and proof of fundamental mathematical and polling dishonesty than you can imagine. NL *makes up the polling numbers* to fit their narrative. 

When challenged how they’d get a candidate to 270, they argued their 3rd party goon could win in…Delaware. And Florida. And Washington State. And Utah. And um…well, you tell me if this is a serious map in your mind:

It’s all a fraud. They describe Joe Biden and Donald Trump as “equally unacceptable”…an assertion I’ll leave you to assess. The plan all along was to burn down Biden, and they’re getting on the ballot in key states to do just that. 

We know the why but what about the how? Getting on the ballot is hard, and NL is fraudulently representing its petitions in many states and changing voter registrations. They’re in trouble in Maine and AZ already, with more to come. 

But they’ll be on enough close states to drag off a % of conservative Dems and elect Trump or — and here’s the big reveal — they’ll drop out and not run a candidate if the Republican nominee is — wait for it — Ron DeSantis.

I’ll let you process that while I get coffee. 

From @politico, this week:

That’s right. Centrist, moderate, problem-solver, just trying-to-give-voters-a-choice @NoLabelsOrg gave away the entire game.

You know, Ron DeSantis, that noted moderate. You know, Smilin’ Ron, the nicest Republican. 

We’re on final now, so bear with me. Why would they say that? The answer is “Dallas” and the answer is “Manhattan.”

Nancy has raised something like $70 million dollars (as noted prior) from the EXACT SAME billionaires backing DeSantis. 

 This donor set (including Sugar Daddy Harlan Crow) cares about 3 things; lower taxes at the Mt. Everest end of the income scale, carried-interest deductions, and oil-and-gas subsidies/write-offs.

They’ll get them from Trump, but DeSantis has marginally better aesthetics. 

If they have to spend the $$$ to destroy Biden, they will…and @NoLabelsOrg is designed to be the vehicle for an ocean of dark GOP money dressed up as moderate do-gooderism.

They’re perfectly fine with Trump if it happens, and if it’s DeSantis they think it’s in the bag. 

I implore DC media types to stop referring to @NoLabelsOrg as “centrist” or “moderate” for they are neither.

It’s the most cynical ploy in service to Trump and the MAGA GOP one can imagine. 

Two other quick notes then I’ll let you get on with your day. The Ian Fleming Rule of Coincidences (look it up) of is always right.

Last week, NL heralded former NC Gov Pat McCrory as their new front man. Pat’s main advisor and close friend is Chris LaCivita. 

For you folks playing at home, Chris LaCivita is also the lead strategist to another candidate running in 2024.

That candidate is Donald Trump.

So endeth the lesson. 

They have been a blight on American politics since long before Trump. One of their founders is Joe Lieberman who started the group after Democrats hurt his feelings. Just like he tanked the public option in Obamacare because Democrats hurt his feelings. For Jacobson it’s money, for Penn it’s revenge and for Lieberman is about hurt feelings. There was a time when these people would just be useless (rich) gadflies. Today they are saboteurs.

It’s the only way to truly prove your devotion

The National Review agrees with Coulter.

Some people have been skeptical about the presence of motivational speaker/venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race. My colleague Charlie Cooke cruelly accused him of “not really running for president.” An even less reputable writer irresponsibly declared that he had “voluntarily enserfed himself” to Donald Trump, which is the sort of tasteless language that I’m glad National Review no longer tolerates.

And with good reason, because Vivek Ramaswamy has proven himself worthy of his candidacy with a truly selfless act: He has called upon all of Donald Trump’s other opponents to sign a promise to pardon Trump of all his crimes regardless of guilt or innocence if they win office. Some opponents of the former president might have taken a combative position in regard to his indictment on 37 counts of stealing and withholding national secrets and more; others might sit on the fence. Yet here Ramaswamy is, with such surpassing grace and magnanimity, asking the entire field to sign his petition to give Trump a blank check. You just have to tip your cap to such a classy opponent.

But only so far. My primary criticism of Ramaswamy here is that he lacked the courage to go further. Committing to pardoning Trump before the facts have even been litigated is easy; anybody can do that. Heck, look at Gerald Ford: He not only pardoned Nixon, he went on to beat some forgotten loser in his primary afterwards. Aren’t you a bolder patriot than that hack RINO swamp creature Gerald Ford? The lack of commitment is alarming. Are you really on the team, Vivek? Then you have to prove yourself. Charlie Kirk made a far braver appeal to the persuasive power of self-immolatory protest when he demanded that all candidates other than Donald Trump simply suspend their campaigns in solidarity with him.

Neither choice goes remotely far enough. Ann Coulter was definitely onto something when she suggested that all Republicans commit suicide to signal their devotion to the cause (“otherwise, we don’t have a country, folks”), but that’s a waste of manpower — look, the national vote was bad enough for Republicans in 2020, we don’t have much of a margin for error here. Instead, we should only cull what’s necessary to prove our superior virtue: The other Republican candidates must agree to ritually off themselves.

It’s the only answer that makes any sense. There can be only one, after all. And there’s no reason to not be creative about it, either — sorry, Chris Christie, you bought the ticket, and now you’re gonna have to take the ride. My first thought was something along the lines of a Mesoamerican blood-sacrifice ritual to appease the angry Deep State Gods (imagine Apocalypto, but with Alex Bruesewitz holding Mike Pence’s still-twitching heart aloft in his hands to get Judge Cannon to dismiss the Trump indictment). But there are even more-fitting historical antecedents out there: Goujian (496–465 b.c.) of the Yue kingdom in China used to intimidate opposing armies by having his front-line soldiers spontaneously behead themselves before battle as a demonstration of fearlessness. Why not draft the rest of the Republican presidential field into making a similarly heroic gesture? At the very least, we may end up learning something about the kind of man Doug Burgum is (was).

Give due credit to Coulter for “knowing what time it is” and immediately recognizing people such as Kirk and Ramaswamy for being insufficiently devoted to the cause. It’s up to the rest of us to prove ourselves worthy of the Trump 2024 campaign, however, and now it’s our turn to push to make Vivek’s dream a reality.

Bring out the Kool-Aid. It’s the only way.

Governance doesn’t bleed

It should be no surprise by now that the press covers the circus before it turning to boring non-nonsense. The former president’s performances fascinate (and draw eyeballs and clicks) in the way The Joker is an iconic Batman villain. His antics bleed and lead.

The challenge in how the news covers Donald Trump “news” is to cover what is news and not what is more Trumpish nonsense, suggests Brian Stelter, formerly of CNN. “Formerly,” because as a media critic he routinely “said the quiet part out loud” about the fecklessness of major news coverage. It got him cancelled.

My comment on @BBCNews about the Trump coverage conundrum: News outlets strive to relay true information, not nonsense and innuendo and disinfo pic.twitter.com/7VOgzaXq7t

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 15, 2023

News sources don’t like having their dirty laundry exposed in public.

Hmm… @foxnews cuts away from live coverage of the White House press briefing when a reporter asks about the network's use of a graphic calling @POTUS Biden a ‘wannabe dictator’ during a Tuesday night speech. Switched to someone who rescued a 10-foot crocodile from a pool.

— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) June 14, 2023

The problem for Democrats is that taking governing seriously is not headline news. If their daily activities are not as eye-catching as frontal nudity or AR-15 parades or street violence, it is easy to assume they are doing nothing. Just yesterday, an acquaintance on Twitter complained that as Republicans cheer Trump’s violations of law and civic norms, Democrats mostly stand by and do nothing.

Two impeachments? Nothing. Calling out MAGA Republicans in a major address as a threat to democracy? Nothing. Defeating the hyped “red wave”? Nothing. What have you done for me lately? Indict a former president?

In a Zoom call last night, a participant wondered what “we” were doing to address the new voter ID implementation in North Carolina ahead of 2024. If it’s not happening now, this minute, and on the front pages, nothing is happening. Just as with Jack Smith’s documents investigation, just because it’s not on the front pages does not mean Democrats are sitting on their hands.

It’s just that responsible governance is not headline-grabbing. Try to make a banner headline of calling voters to check that they have proper IDs for the 2024 primaries.

Even spicy comments like these don’t make headlines that compete with the Trump show.

Crockett: I am going to start with some nonsense she was trying to spew and unlike Ms. Boebert, I am legally trained and I also legislated before I got here pic.twitter.com/URin2mPmjW

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 14, 2023

“He’s scared s—less”

• Former President Donald Trump left the White House in January 2021 taking hundreds of highly sensitive national defense documents belonging to U.S. security agencies.
• Trump returned a few when asked, then willfully resisted a May 2022 subpoena and conspired to conceal a hundred others he retained until the FBI executed an August search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

That is why Trump, who pleaded not guilty this week, is under indictment on 37 federal felony charges. Not because he listens to idiots. Although, that is a factor, the Washington Post reveals:

One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department.

The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents.

Trump would not have it.

Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said.

Fitton holds a bachelor’s degree in English.

Fitton convinced Trump based on the “Clinton’s socks case” (that Judicial Watch lost!) that he could keep the documents. The argument is specious, but Trump liked the sound of it.

“President Trump has consistently been in full compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which is the only law that applies to Presidents and their records,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told the press.

Except Department of Defense and intelligence agency documents are not presidential records and that act is not the only law that applies to presidents. (Trump is charged under the Espionage Act.) It’s a dumb argument, but one the twice-impeached, twice-indicted huckster thinks the rubes will buy the way they believed he is a self-made business genius. So Trump is clinging to it like a life ring. His cult is repeating the nonsense at every chance hoping to convince the public Trump is being singled out for persecution.

Trump is being prosecuted for obstruction of justice (18 U.S.C. § 1512(k)) and for willful retention of national defense information (18 U.S.C. § 793(e)).

“There is not an Attorney General of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president,” tweeted retired Judge Michael Luttig, adding, “He has dared, taunted, provoked, and goaded DOJ to prosecute him from the moment it was learned that he had taken these national security documents.”

“If even half of [the indictment] is true, then he’s toast. It’s a very detailed indictment and it’s very damning,” former Trump attorney general William Barr told Fox News on Sunday.

But Trump is slippery. He has avoided jail his entire life by being rich and famous and litigious. Even now, the leading Republican candidate for president in 2024 is betting he can avoid jail at 77 years old.

From another Washington Post report:

“He’s scared s—less,” said John Kelly, his former chief of staff. “This is the way he compensates for that. He gives people the appearance he doesn’t care by doing this. For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable. Up until this point in his life, it’s like, I’m not going to pay you; take me to court. He’s never been held accountable before.”

Trump faces no charges for government documents he surrendered voluntarily.

Sarah Palin asked if Trump supporters are cult members: “No. The definition of a cult is a group of people who are excessively supporting one another and a cause, all about conformity and compliance, and intolerance of anyone who doesn’t agree with what their mission is.” pic.twitter.com/9oQPlwcSlD

— The Recount (@therecount) June 14, 2023

I know, I know …

More and more people want to keep it legal

The intensity around the abortion issue is actually growing. Gallup posted this:

-A record-high 69% say abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy. The prior high of 67% was recorded last May after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization draft was leaked, showing that the court planned to nullify constitutional protection for abortion.

-Most Americans oppose abortion later in pregnancy, but the 37% saying it should be legal in the second three months of pregnancy and 22% in the last three months of pregnancy are the highest Gallup has found in trends since 1996.

-Gallup’s oldest trend on the legality of abortion finds 34% of Americans believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances, nearly matching last year’s record-high 35% and above the 27% average since 1975. Another 51% currently say abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, while 13% (similar to the all-time low of 12%) want it illegal in all circumstances.

-Fifty-two percent of Americans say abortion is morally acceptable, matching last year’s all-time high. This is 10 percentage points above the historical average since 2001.

These findings align with Americans’ reaction to the Dobbs decision, which the Supreme Court handed down on June 24, 2022. A 61% majority of Americans think overturning Roe v. Wade, thus ending constitutional protection for abortion rights and returning the matter to the states, was a “bad thing,” while 38% consider it a “good thing.” Last year at this time, shortly after the Dobbs draft was leaked, 63% said overturning Roe v. Wade would be a bad thing and 32% a good thing.

As for whether or not there should be restrictions based upon the timing of gestation gestation, I invite you to read this incredible story by Jill Filipovic and tell me if it makes sense that this woman should not be allowed to have an abortion:

Terry and Eric’s nightmare began just a few days earlier at a 15-week ultrasound appointment. It had been a normal day, Terry says. She and Eric had gone out for breakfast in Round Rock, where the young couple lives, and planned to see a movie when the appointment was over. They thought they’d be learning the gender of the baby that day, and had picked out names in anticipation: Ren for a boy, Summer for a girl.

But at the appointment, Terry noticed that her OBGYN was getting quieter and quieter the longer that she looked at the ultrasound. The doctor left the room, and came back with a phone number, address, and instructions to make an appointment with a specialist immediately. 

It was at that point, Terry says, that she began to go numb. 

Just a few hours later, the couple were sitting in front of a maternal fetal specialist in Austin delivering unthinkable news: Terry’s fetus had not developed at all above the neck—there was no head.

It was a one-in-a-million abnormality, the specialist told them. And while the fetus obviously had no chance of survival, there was still heartbeat present. 

In Texas—which enacted a near-total abortion ban in 2021, and a total ban shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned—that was a problem. 

Texas’ abortion law doesn’t have an exception for fetal abnormalities, not even lethal ones. The state requires women to carry pregnancies even when the fetus has no chance of survival, a cruelty that Republican legislators don’t like to talk about. 

[…]

The couple had to process more than just the horrific news about the fetal abnormality: Terry, herself, was also very ill. And waiting for her pregnancy to end on its own carried a serious risk. She hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks—she had trouble keeping food down, and was often too tired to get out of bed. Terry figured it was just a difficult pregnancy. But lab work revealed issues with her kidneys and liver, and found that she was severely malnourished and had elevated blood pressure.

As sick as she was, Terry wasn’t at an ‘imminent’ risk of death—not yet, anyway—and Texas law requires the danger to a woman’s life be a “medical emergency” in order to qualify for an abortion. 

Because the deliberately vague language of the law isn’t medical terminology, doctors in the state have been left to struggle with just how close to death a patient needs to be in order for them to legally provide care. As a result, multiple Texas women have come close to dying after being denied abortions. (Fifteen of those patients are suing the state right now.)

And while Texas Governor Greg Abbott has claimed he wants to “clarify” the ban to “make sure that the lives of both the mother and the baby can be protected,” the state is actually suing the federal government in opposition to a rule that requires hospitals to give women life-saving emergency abortions. 

They had to scrape up 2000 to go to New Mexico for an abortion. They haven’t told anyone they know what happened because they are all anti-abortion. Apparently, they believe she should have delivered a headless baby (which her OB-Gyn told her she should go through childbirth in order to hold it once it was born. Imagine the horror…) Alternatively, she could have waited until she was almost dead and maybe then they would have consented to allow her to abort.

“As much as I wish I had the chance to hold my baby,” Terry said, “I don’t think anyone would want to see something that has no head.” What made Terry feel even worse was that her OBGYN pushed her to remain pregnant even as she explained the serious risks to her health.

“It felt like ‘does my life matter in this, or is this just about bringing a baby into the world for a moment’? It felt like my life didn’t matter, like I could just die and it would all be for nothing.”

Their ride home from New Mexico sounds terrifying too:

After the procedure, Terry had to stay in recovery longer than expected: there had been a bleed behind her placenta that wasn’t visible on the ultrasound, and so doctors kept her at the clinic for a few extra hours to ensure she was safe before leaving. By the time Terry was discharged, the couple realized they’d have to drive through the night to get home. 

“He did his best to make sure that I was comfortable,” Terry says. But it’s not so easy to drive for hours after such an emotionally and physically taxing experience.  Still—despite how scared Eric was of how poorly Terry looked in the car—they both say they made the right decision to drive all the way home without stopping at an emergency room in a conservative town. “We wanted to get as close to Austin as possible,” she says. 

When I pointed out that no one did anything illegal—people are allowed to travel out of the state for care—Terry responded with a sentiment that anyone who follows abortion news knows is true: What the law says and what the law does are two different things. 

“We’ve heard things about people getting reported and a whole investigation happening,” she said. Besides, Terry told me, she knows other states are considering the death penalty for abortion. What happens if Texas considers a law like that, and her name is on a list somewhere? She didn’t want to risk it. 

That’s also why, a few weeks after the abortion, the couple still hasn’t told anyone. It’s not only fear of their friends’ judgment—but the knowledge that someone could turn them both in. After all, the state’s so-called ‘bounty hunter’ law allows private citizens to sue anyone they suspect of being involved in an abortion (that’s doctors, nurses, even people who drove to the out-of-state clinic) for at least $10,000. 

I guess that’s the whole point. It’s not just the restrictions, it’s the intimidation. They want people like this to die for lack of abortion care. There is no other way to see it. It’s monstrous.

An expert in maternal health said what should be said:

Dr. Zera says that when it comes to pregnancy, there should be no government involvement. “The constellation of things that can go wrong in a pregnancy is so vast that you can never write legislation that captures the complexities of it,” she says. “It takes a real lack of humility to think that you could write a good law that could encompass all of that.”

From those jerks on the Supreme Court to the legislatures around the states which are filled with know-nothing cretins who have no qualifications to make these highly personal decision for other people, the suffering that’s been cause by this ruling is overwhelming.

Remember, these are just the stories we know about.

Eric says he tries to let himself feel all the grief and anger, but when he goes to work he has to push it all down. Terry, on the other hand, told me she just feels defeated. 

“I wish I could move past it. I’ve never felt defeated before in my life. I failed math tests, I’ve lost sports games, but I’ve never felt defeated. Not like this.”

It all just feels pointless, she says. The suffering, the guilt, the pain and the loneliness. She should have been able to have an abortion close to home, she says, so that she could heal and be in the comfort of her own bed instead of driving for hours, afraid.

And that’s what Terry wants people to understand about her experience and the Texas law: the pain that it caused her. The pain it still causes. “I want to force people to see what they’re doing,” she says.

“I want Greg Abbott or anyone who voted for this law to look me in the eye and tell me that I deserved what happened. That I deserve to be punished by the law for what I’ve gone through. I want them to look me in the eye.”

I wish I thought that would make a difference. But it’s pretty clear that even if they don’t think women deserve this hell, they really don’t care that they have to go through it. They just do not care.

As that graph shows, a tiny number people have abortions in the second and third trimesters. And they are always due to something happening that was unanticipated. In the final trimester is always because the fetus, the woman or both are in mortal danger. None of these yahoos in black robes or yammering the legislatures have any business getting involved in that. These people care more about the sanctity of their gun rights than the lives of women.

Right?

If you think this isn’t an assault on democracy and our system of government you would be wrong:

Florida GOP governor Ron DeSantis has plans to tear down and rebuild the Department of Justice and the FBI, even removing large parts of them and relocating FBI headquarters out of Washington D.C.

DeSantis has stated he will replace much of the personnel at the DOJ and its subsidiaries, and implement a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy so the Justice Department resembles what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.” . . .

“We’ve seen throughout this country that the DOJ and the FBI are controlled by one faction of our society,” DeSantis said, noting that the federal agencies were “going after pro-life activists,” investigating parents at school board meetings “who are concerned about things like critical race theory and forcing kids to wear masks,” and “colluding with tech companies to censor information such as what they did with the 2020 election.”

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Chip Roy (R-TX), both staunch conservatives, have discussed with DeSantis changes that need to be made, along with former assistant attorney general Steven Bradbury and Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution. Bradbury has urged DeSantis to use his prospective executive power to implement changes without waiting for Congress. He asserted that DeSantis could “relocate the FBI headquarters” himself and then consolidate the FBI’s general counsel, public affairs, and government relations offices with the DOJ, so the FBI’s capacity to interfere political affairs would be limited while it would “beef up and emphasize the field offices.”

“If you’re performing poorly, you should be fired,” DeSantis said, limning his perspective that it didn’t matter what the level of the position was when firing someone. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a bureaucrat, or if you’re a political appointee.” He stated he would fire any DOJ employee working on a grand jury investigation leaking information to the press. “If they’re leaking,” DeSantis said, “we’re going to fire people.”

DeSantis has said he would fire FBI director Christopher Wray if elected. He also said he would direct the DOJ to target and hold “accountable” progressive prosecutors around the country who “are not prosecuting cases against violent criminals.” He has not been reticent to implement a high-level firing; last year he sent law enforcement officials to remove woke State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit, who was backed by Democrat mega donor George Soros, from office. . .

DeSantis would revoke the security clearances of some former intelligence officials, mentioning the scores of former senior intelligence officials who signed a public letter saying the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. He called the letter “a lie.”

Those are fascist tactics. And it is arguably worse than what Trump would do. With the latter, it’s all about himself. DeSantis wants real power to implement an agenda. And it is not a democratic one.

It is unlikely this guy will be the presidential nominee in 2024. But you never know. Trump is the front runner and if he doesn’t drop dead on the golf course or literally find himself in jail before next spring he’s probably going to win. If he doesn’t, DeSantis is probably the fall-back simply because he’s the kind of asshole they love and he’s being very careful to stay on the cult’s good side. And because Trump is considered the shoo-in for the nomination, a Desantis loss probably won’t hinder him from running again in 2028. He’s unlikely to end up like Scott Walker who famously flamed out in 2016.