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PEAK ABORTION RIGHTS
The overwhelming support for abortion rights in a traditionally conservative state bolsters Democrats’ hopes that the historic Supreme Court ruling will animate their voters in an otherwise difficult election year for their party. The Kansas vote signals that abortion is an energizing issue that could affect turnout in the November midterms.
Consider far western Kansas, a rural region along the Colorado border that votes overwhelmingly Republican. In Hamilton County, which voted 81 percent for Mr. Trump in 2020, less than 56 percent chose the anti-abortion position on Tuesday (with about 90 percent of the vote counted there). In Greeley County, which voted more than 85 percent for Mr. Trump, only about 60 percent chose the anti-abortion position.
We can talk about the cities all day long, but Kansas is known as a rural Republican state for a reason: Rural Republican areas cover enough of the state that they can, and almost always do, outvote the cities. The rejection of the amendment has as much to do with lukewarm support in the reddest counties as it does with strong opposition in the bluest ones.
Peak Halperin: Deluded and dishonest pro-lifers will look for caveats, spin, and “ifs and buts”; however, as some of the tweets above make clear, clear-eyed anti-abortion folks will recognize three truths:
1. The public opinion polls are right -- America is a more a pro-choice than pro-life nation, and not just in Blue states.
2. While Americans generally favor some restrictions on abortion rights, if the question is cast in all-or-nothing terms, the pro-choice side wins.
3. The midterm trajectory is at least altered (and/but maybe in fact remade) by the Supreme Court ruling.
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PEAK VIN SCULLY, RIP
Peak Halperin: There are not many professions in which “the best that ever was” is so clear by consensus and acclimation.
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PEAK SPORT
Peak Halperin: I have watched this clip more than a dozen times already; you should watch it at least once!
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PEAK SPEAKER PELOSI
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meeting leaders in Taiwan despite warnings from China, said Wednesday that she and other members of Congress in a visiting delegation are showing they will not abandon their commitment to the self-governing island.
“Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy,” she said in a short speech during a meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. “America’s determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad….”
Pelosi is visiting a human rights museum in Taipei that details the history of the island’s martial law era later Wednesday before she departs for South Korea, the next stop on an Asia tour that also includes Singapore, Malaysia and Japan.
Pelosi, who is leading the trip with five other members of Congress, also met with representatives from Taiwan’s legislature.
Bonus Peak Wall Street Journal editorial praising Pelosi (with restraint) and saber rattling at the Chinese.
Peak Halperin: If all the Chinese do is their own saber rattling with some bellicose statements, some temporary economic sanctions, and a few military maneuvers, Pelosi’s trip will go down in history as anything from a nothing burger to a good idea. She will be off the island soon, without having said or done anything too provocative, as she herself pointed out. The ping pong ball is on Xi’s side of the table.
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PEAK BERNIE SANDERS
Peak Halperin: Add Bernie’s objections to the already-long list of ways the Schumer-Manchin deal can still go off the track, including the still-mostly-under-the-radar strategizing by lobbyists to make the package too big to succeed. The odds of final passage have just slipped from above 50% to about 47.8%
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PEAK DAVID IGNATIUS
Zawahiri must have worried that in his last decade, he was a forgotten man. But that wasn’t quite true. He remained a daily obsession for the counterterrorism specialists at the Pentagon and CIA. That’s a warning for the Russians, Chinese or anyone else who doubts U.S. staying power. Americans might look impatient and undependable. But they have long memories.
Peak Halperin: Despite the meaningful Ignatius take, the second-day analysis, columnizing, and punditry is much more of the on-the-one-hand-on-the-other hand variety. Safe to say that the killing of Zawahiri will not influence the midterms or President Biden’s approval ratings as much as it will Council on Foreign Relations pondering.
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PEAK TRUMP INVESTIGATIVE NOOSE TIGHTENS
Mr. Trump will face questions under oath about that pattern of embellishment in an investigation that may shape the future of his family real estate business. The former president and his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, are expected to be questioned later this month by the New York State attorney general’s office, which has been conducting a civil investigation into whether he and his company fraudulently inflated the value of his assets. His son, Donald Trump Jr., was interviewed last week, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The Pentagon erased a potential trove of material related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol from the phones of senior defense officials in the Trump administration, according to legal filings.
Court records published on the website of the watchdog group American Oversight indicate that the Pentagon “wiped” the government-issued phones of senior Defense Department and Army officials who were in charge of mobilizing the National Guard to respond to the Capitol attack, including then-acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. The erasing apparently was done in keeping with Defense Department and Army policy for departing employees, according to filings that state: “the text messages were not preserved.”
A federal grand jury has subpoenaed former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone in its investigation into the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election….
Peak Halperin: Investigations are not indictments, indictments are not convictions, and none of us have an exact count of how many of his nine lives Donald Trump has already used up. But the noose is now demonstrably tighter than it has ever been.
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PEAK TEAM DESANTIS
Peak Halperin: If Trump doesn’t run, the new Republican 2024 frontrunner will have a relationship with the Bos-Wash establishment that will make Trump look like Walter Isaacson.
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PEAK HOUSE DEMOCRATS WORRIED ABOUT JOE BIDEN ‘24
Peak Halperin: It remains inconceivable that Joe Biden will pull the plug on running for reelection just because some of his former congressional pals go public with their reservations and skepticism. It also remains inconceivable that Joe Biden will run for reelection.
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