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Truth on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being absolutely true and 0 being completely false.
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For those who believe Bill Clinton had it right on how our law, culture, and society should view abortion (“safe, legal, and rare”), Friday was a difficult day. At a time when 99% of the media, activists, and politicians feel compelled to further divide our nation in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, let us find common ground around efforts on ‘safe’ and ‘rare.’ Every governor should put the focus there in the immediate aftermath. Extend The Presumption of Grace to those with whom you disagree on the ruling.
-- Mark Halperin
Rating: 10
Note: How horrible it is that there is apparently little room on our national town square to search for unity even now when we most need it.
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We know that it’s chic these days to write off virtues like civility and decency and humility and grace. We believe those things are the only way forward. That the only alternative to violence is persuasion and argument.
-- Bari Weiss
Rating: 10
Note: Fully unsurprising that Ms. Weiss would have the courage and clarity to write this on such an occasion.
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By overturning Roe v. Wade and ending the guaranteed right to abortion nationwide, the court’s newly entrenched conservative bloc has set the country on a course toward legal and political warfare destined to last for years, a conflict perhaps even more intense than the one that has raged since Roe was decided in 1973.
-- Dan Balz
Rating: 10
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The implications of the court’s ruling are difficult to overstate and nearly impossible to predict….
This is moment that abortion opponents have long dreamed of and that abortion supporters have long dreaded. But neither can be certain of how this will ripple and spread in time. Predictions about the future come with big caveats.
-- Dan Balz
Rating: 10
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All of which is to say that any confident prediction about this ruling’s consequences is probably a foolish one. There can be no certainty about the future of abortion politics because for almost 50 years all policy debates have been overshadowed by judicial controversy, and only now are we about to find out what the contest really looks like. It’s merely the end of the beginning; the true end, in whatever settlement or victory, lies ahead.
-- Ross Douthat
Rating: 10
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It’s not clear whether Roe’s demise will give Biden a path to find his voice and re-energize his presidency, or will simply exacerbate the social divisions that have created such obstacles to governing.
Rating: 3
Note: Seems pretty clear.
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We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.
-- Chief Justice Roberts in 2016
Rating: 0
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While Republicans hope the midterm elections are a referendum on high inflation and ballooning gas prices, the Supreme Court’s decision gives Biden and his party a new target — a high court with an approval rating lower than the president’s that is widely seen by Biden’s base as a dangerous vestige of the Trump presidency.
Many Democrats have worried that simply attacking GOP “extremism” would not be enough to overcome voters’ anxiety about bread-and-butter issues in November. The abortion ruling, they hope, could change that, especially since it could signal the court’s willingness to take aim at rights like contraception and same-sex marriage.
“Can you run a day-to-day campaign against the Republican MAGA agenda when [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas said he wants to come for contraception next? Oh, yeah, you can,” said Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for the Obama White House. “For things to break through, there has to be a real and present threat on things that impact people’s lives. And they now have that in spades.”
Rating: 5
Note: This all will likely depend on the facts on the ground in individual states and how well each side tells the stories of the next few months locally and nationally about how the decision is impacting the real lives of real people before November; otherwise, the fallout will be much more abstract than the price of a four-pack of corn muffins.
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“I’m not saying it’s changing the political landscape wholesale but we’re going to see a lot of close races in November, and this is going to keep and put Democrats in office in some of those close races,” said John Anzalone, a pollster for President Biden. “Republicans are going to be on their heels defending this, because they’ve outlawed abortion even in the most extreme cases of rape and incest.”
Rating: 4
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“From the grass-roots perspective, there’s a lot of joy,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican who is a former top campaign aide to Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader. “This is why we fight. And at the same time, this election is going to be decided on a couple of issues: Joe Biden’s approval rating, inflation, the economy, crime, quality of life.”
Rating: 6 (points subtracted for misuse of “a couple”)
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“Economic issues are always going to outweigh abortion for a lot of voters,” said Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic strategist. “But it’s very, very important for Democrats — to win these swing voters — to make this a choice, not a referendum.” Abortion, she said, “is going to be a major factor in that, because it is a very clear distinction.”
Rating: 4
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It will take awhile, and more than one election, but we hope that eventually the public through its legislators will find a tolerable consensus, if not exactly common ground. That’s the best we can ask for in our imperfect republic, if we can keep it.
-- Wall Street Journal lead editorial
Rating: 8
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s new majority boldly signaled with twin rulings this week that public opinion would not interfere with conservative plans to shift the nation’s legal landscape.
The court rejected Roe v. Wade, a 49-year-old legal precedent that guaranteed the right to an abortion, after a string of national polls showed a clear majority of Americans wanted the opposite result. A similar court majority invalidated a 108-year-old New York state law restricting who can carry concealed guns that is supported by nearly 8 in 10 New Yorkers, according to a recent poll by Siena College.
Rather than ignore the dissonance, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority in the abortion decision, attacked the notion that the court should consider the public will. He quoted late chief justice William H. Rehnquist from a previous ruling: “The Judicial Branch derives its legitimacy, not from following public opinion, but from deciding by its best lights.”
-- Washington Post news analysis
Rating: 9
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When a draft copy of the decision leaked in May, Mr. Trump began telling friends and advisers that it would anger suburban women, a group who helped tilt the 2020 race to President Biden, and would lead to a backlash against Republicans in the November midterm elections.
In other conversations, Mr. Trump has told people that measures like the Texas state law banning most abortions after six weeks and allowing citizens to file lawsuits against people who enable abortions are “so stupid,” according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions. The Supreme Court let the measure stand in December 2021.
-- New York Times essential reading piece on Mr. Trump’s history and present regarding abortion
Rating: 10 (true that Trump said all this and that his analysis is correct)
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“Today’s decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation, along with other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said.
-- New York Times essential reading piece on Mr. Trump’s history and present regarding abortion
Rating: 9
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We’re in this dark moment because right-wing politicians and their allies have spent decades scheming to overrule a right many Americans considered sacrosanct. Passing state laws to restrict access to abortion care. Giving personhood rights to fertilized eggs. Threatening to criminalize in vitro fertilization. Offering bounties for reporting doctors who provide abortion services. Abusing the filibuster and turning Congress into a broken institution. Advancing judicial nominees who claimed to be committed to protecting “settled law” while they winked at their Republican sponsors in the Senate. Stealing two seats on the Supreme Court.
-- New York Times op-ed piece by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith
Rating: 10
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The arrogance and unapologetic nature of the opinion are breathtaking.
-- Former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse in an op-ed piece for the paper
Rating: 10 (per Ruth Marcus)
Note: It is hard for the right not to notice the strong point of view of two writers who were previously the “objective” SCOTUS and White House reporters, respectively, for major newspapers.
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Although Justice Brett Kavanaugh proclaimed with evident relief in his concurring opinion that the court was now bowing out of the picture and “will no longer decide how to evaluate the interests of the pregnant woman and the interests in protecting fetal life throughout pregnancy,” that is not likely to be the case. Those pesky women will keep coming up with problems: What about pregnancy-related medical issues short of imminent death? Rape? Incest? Fetuses doomed to die in the womb or shortly after birth? Will young teens be forced to bear children? Will women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of a serious fetal anomaly be forced to bring a child into the world whom they can’t care for adequately and in whom the state has little postnatal interest? What happens when states start prosecuting not only doctors but women?
-- Greenhouse
Rating: 10
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The pro-life movement has spent half a century trying to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that was presumed to reflect the enlightened consensus of the modern age. It has worked against the public’s status quo bias, which made Roe v. Wade itself popular, even if the country remained conflicted about the underlying issue. Against the near-universal consensus of the media, academic and expert class. Against the desires of politicians who were nominally supportive of its cause, the preferences of substantial portions of American conservatism’s donor class.
Across all those years the pro-life cause also swam against the sociological and religious currents of American life, which have favored social liberalism and secularization. It found little vocal support among Hollywood’s culture-shapers and crusaders for social justice, or the corporate entities that have lately embraced so many progressive causes. It was hampered by the hiddenness of the injustice it opposed, the voicelessness of the constituency on whose behalf it tried to speak….
dAnd for all the contingency involved, future scholars of mass movements will find in the pro-life cause a remarkable example of sustained activism against substantial odds, of grass-roots mobilization in defiance of elite consensus — of “democratic virtues,” to borrow from the political scientist Jon Shields, that would be much more widely recognized and studied if they had not been exercised in a cause opposed by progressives and the left.
But the story doesn’t end here. While the pro-life movement has won the right to legislate against abortion, it has not yet proven that it can do so in a way that can command durable majority support. Its weaknesses will not disappear in victory. Its foes and critics have been radicalized by its judicial success. And the vicissitudes of politics and its own compromises have linked the anti-abortion cause to various toxic forces on the right — some libertine and hyperindividualist, others simply hostile to synthesis, conciliation and majoritarian politics.
-- Douthat
Rating: 9
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Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s sharp opinion revoking the constitutional right to abortion is virtually unchanged from his initial draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade compared to the final text of the decision handed down by the high court Friday morning.
Despite fierce lobbying from outside forces to pull back from the precipice of overturning Roe, Alito’s writing contains all 10 key passages POLITICO identified in early May as the critical pieces of the abortion ruling.
But Alito did add to his original opinion, with a fierce rebuttal of the court’s liberal dissenters, plus a direct shot at Chief Justice John Roberts in the final text. Roberts was the only conservative justice on the court to side with its three liberals, making the final vote 5-4 in the decision to strike down Roe and give states the green light to ban abortion.
-- Politico
Rating: 10
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Given their histories and orientations, there is an irony in the fact that Joe Biden (who was pro-life and now says he is pro-choice) and Donald Trump (who was pro-choice and now says he is pro-life) are truly in their hearts apparently out of step with their respective parties. Trump is attitudinally more pro-choice than Biden is, actually.
-- Mark Halperin
Rating: 7
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There’s been much talk of late about the downturn in former President Trump’s political fortunes. Two reasons are most often cited: (1) damage done by the testimony of Republican officials to the Committee on the January 6th insurrection, and (2) a recent poll showing Mr. Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tied among Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. (New Hampshire holds the first-in-the-nation presidential primary for both major political parties).
Yesterday’s ruling helps Trump in a number of ways. First: it changes the subject, something the Trump camp has been quite desperate to do since the Committee hearings began. Second, it reminds the Republican Party’s most important constituency — white evangelical Christians — just who made yesterday’s ruling possible. That would be, first and foremost, Donald Trump. Third, it requires all the other GOP candidates for the 2024 presidential nomination to acknowledge (and feign admiration for) Trump’s role in Roe’s reversal. This reinforces the perception that the Republican “field” of candidates is actually two fields: Trump and everybody else. Fourth, and this is always a consideration in Trump world, it enables an aggressive direct mail fund-raising campaign, asking small donors to express their appreciation for Trump’s role in the reversal of Roe by sending money to the coffers of what might be called the Trump Bank for Future Endeavors. Such an appeal will raise a lot of money.
All of which boosts Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and, at least to some degree, diminishes the campaigns of his would-be Republican challengers. This is not to suggest that yesterday’s ruling helps Trump’s 2024 general election prospects. It does not. If anything, it will likely drive his unfavorable rating with women a bit higher than it already is (which is high). But one doesn’t get to the general election without winning the nomination first.
The political power of the Roe reversal in GOP politics was evident in the reaction of the 2024 Mike Pence for President campaign. The former vice president’s base is the white evangelical community. He was chosen to be Trump’s running mate in 2016 and again in 2020 because of his appeal to (and respect for) that constituency. Sidelined by Trump’s starring role in transforming the Supreme Court, Pence risked being an afterthought (if that) in the wake of the Court’s decision to overturn Roe.
What to do?
Pence decided to swing for the fences, calling for a nationwide ban on abortion. Not even Justice Alito called for anything of the sort, but desperate times call for drastic actions. The desperation of the Pence campaign, which just recently looked like it might be grabbing some “market share,” reinforced the notion that yesterday was a good day for the Trump for President campaign and not so much for the others.
-- John Ellis
Rating: 9
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BIDEN AND TRUMP SCHEDULES
TODAY
8:30 AM THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks and signs into law S. 2938, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act
Roosevelt Room
Later Saturday, President Biden leaves for Germany and Spain through Thursday, when he is scheduled to have a press conference and then return to the U.S.
How he navigates the abortion decision aftermath from the continent will be as important as it is fascinating.
Some of the president’s base might wonder if he should stay home under the circumstances.