Olivia Rodrigo Is Angry
Why not become a voluntary paying subscriber to Wide World of News today?
If you don’t like this section of the newsletter, skim right by it!
But this is how I pay the bills — and how you are able to compensate me for my work.
If you want to kick in ANY lower amount than the formal subscription rates by check, send a simple email to markhalperintalk@gmail.com and ask how you can do that.
You can also contribute the amount of your choice via:
• PayPal. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
• Venmo. Mark-Halperin-4 (telephone number ends in x3226)
• Zelle. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
* Buying me a cocktail (at Gotham City prices….), tax and server tip included, by clicking here.
* Buying me a cup of coffee (or a week’s worth) by clicking here.
Thank you for your support.
Now, onto the news….
****
There are a lot of “newspaper” stories you can consume this morning about the legal, political, societal, medical, and cultural fallout from the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe.
There are some very good pieces, but nothing I would consider essential reading.
I’m paid to reach at least tentative conclusions about what happens next – and to share them with you.
I try hard not to get ahead of the evidence and the facts on the ground, both of which are still quite inconclusive.
And, as with the 1/6 hearings, the Dominant Media’s ingrained/embedded point of view on abortion is so completely slanted in one direction that gaining clarity through that prism is difficult.
Here’s the one big thing I think today that is different than what I thought yesterday:
If Republican politicians don’t have more to say directly about abortion that effectively reaches out to pro-choice women in a manner that is understanding and conciliatory, the negative impact on GOP prospects in the midterms could be substantial.
That is especially true if any or all of these things happen:
1. Republican candidates give poor answers in debates, interviews, and voter interactions to what their positions are on the tougher secondary questions (For example: Should women who seek abortions be prosecuted?).
2. There are local, state, and national examples of women impacted by the decision whose stories capture the public imagination.
3. Congressional Republicans continue to tout the prospects of more national laws restricting current rights.
I’m pretty sure that Mitch McConnell doesn’t know who Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen are.
But if he watches the clip above (as you should), he would perhaps come to believe that his Friday statement reacting to the Court’s actions is probably not going to calm the furious:
“Millions of Americans have spent half a century praying, marching, and working toward today’s historic victories. I have been proud to stand with them throughout our long journey and I share their joy today.”
President Trump’s riff on the decision at his Saturday night rally in Illinois was a pretty good indicator of what the Republican high command plans to say as of now – focus on the threats to the Supreme Court justices, on violent acts around the country, on those aspects of the left’s positions on abortion that in fact don’t have clear majority support (late-term abortions, government funding, parental notification/consent).
The group to watch now is any former Republican president, current congresspeople, senators, or governors, or 2022 candidates who
a. have had abortions
b. have spouses, siblings, offspring, or girlfriends (past or present) who have had abortions
It is not up to me to keep from you what Bette Midler tweeted to her two million followers.
Suffice to say that Ms. Rodrigo is not alone in saying, implicitly and expclitily, that the rules of engagement are going to change.
In fact, they are changing right before our eyes.
The political is the personal, the personal is the political, and we are about to see a real-time experiment in national destruction.
But/however it is too soon to say much of anything definitively about where this will go.
But it is….going….
****
We are now in our third news cycle devoid of a widespread Presumption of Grace or any public appeal by combined pro-life and pro-choice forces and voices for a united path forward.
To those who mock that aspiration, say it can’t happen, I say: It must.
Here’s a very sage reader email, words that are sensitive to the complexities of this matter and wise to the reality that neither party is actually in the right place on abortion:
There is in bringing new life a heavy responsibility. If the job is poorly done, the species perishes. The burden falls first on the mother, later on the parents, the community, and finally, in a modern society, on the State itself. Everyone has an interest. It is inherently contentious sorting out the particulars.
The honest fact is that abortions, among other things, kill fetuses. If I say this to most women I know, they will never speak to me again. They want nothing to do with the fact that abortions kill fetuses. Women have been made exceedingly defensive here by the clever Republican marketing line: “I am pro-life and you want to kill fetuses.” Women will do almost anything to avoid that label. I don’t blame them. But, first, it can’t be escaped. And second, in trying, all manner of bad things have happened. Pro-choice has become far too much so. Finding clever ways to deny abortions kill fetuses to win elections is an abomination.
That Democrats are fully aligned with this is political malpractice going back too far to correct easily. Yet, somewhere, somehow, Democrats have to declare no interest in this matter.
The other honest fact is that the State has no business trying to impose its power over the woman to protect the woman’s fetus until late term. It is too intrusive a power to cede to the State. Women should be the only ones to decide early on if their fetus, in the full context of its coming into being, should be killed or not. If I were a woman, I would insist on this agency and would allow judgement on my judgement to be made only by myself. I know no man different from me here.
Somewhere somehow, Republicans too have to declare no interest in this matter.
Arguments over when the power shifts from the woman to the State, or how to deal with non-adults, are of course necessary and appropriate.
That the Court has allowed Alito and Thomas to write what they have written has eviscerated our Constitution. Their “scholarly” pilpul about historic precedent, literalism, etc. have made the document so politically explicit that the Framers and John Marshall’s work creating the Court has been undone. The Court has thrown the Chief Justice aside and established itself in common cause with the autocratic wing of the Republican Party. It has chased and caught the far right’s locomotive.
It will somehow have to be brought back more to center sooner than later for the country to function.
An autocratic reaction from a progressive wing of the Democratic Party, a not impossible outcome, will be at least equal in ugliness and danger to what we are seeing now on the right.
Abortion is a disaster for both Parties.
****
After telling us Saturday that the abortion ruling helps Donald Trump’s 2024 prospects, today John Ellis explains (correctly) why the same decision makes Hillary Clinton 2024 even more likely.
If you think Joe Biden has a better chance than Hillary does to be the Democrats’ standard-bearer, I suggest you read this piece.
****
ESSENTIAL READING
A Biden administration policy that prioritized the arrest of undocumented immigrants who are considered a threat to public safety and national security has been suspended as of Saturday, rendering millions of people vulnerable to deportation.
A federal judge in Texas had ruled the prioritization policy illegal on June 10, a ruling that took effect late Friday after a federal appeals court failed to issue any decision blocking it. The Department of Homeland Security said it effectively had no discretion under the ruling to set priorities for how its agents enforced the nation’s immigrant-removal laws.
“While the department strongly disagrees with the Southern District of Texas’ court decision to vacate the guidelines, D.H.S. will abide by the court’s order as it continues to appeal it,” the department said in a statement.
****
