Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Thousands of hours of new race-related content pop up every day on cable news, talk radio, podcasts, newsletters, and YouTube. If you’re tired of hearing partisan left-right talking head punditry, the digital democratization of the media has made pretty much any point of view on race in America—from the benign to the malignant—available to you, if you do a little digging.
On The Glenn Show, I often say things that I nevertheless categorize as “unsayable.” But I haven’t been booted off Twitter (at least not yet). I haven’t been fired or jailed for anything I’ve said. People have gotten mad and said disparaging things about me in public, but that’s their right. So why does it feel like there are certain things “one can’t say” about race?
Violating the progressive line on race can have less easily definable social and professional costs than a Twitter ban or the FBI knocking on your door. As John McWhorter points out in the following excerpt from our recent live event at the Comedy Store, simply stating the facts about crime and racial disparities can lead people to look askance at you or cut you off entirely, to regard you as politically untrustworthy or disreputable. To insist, as I do below, that the out-of-wedlock birthrate among black Americans is a scandal can invite the same response.
There is every reason in the world to ignore an unpopular argument...
In America this minute leftists can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. They are pushing an agenda that is evil. They are hellbent on accomplishing it and they are saying so publicly.
The late Charles Krauthammer was the person credited for the intriguing binary observation that “conservatives view the left as stupid,” but that “liberals view conservatives as evil.”
We see evidence of that second part constantly. The vehement hatred of those who support America First is proven every day. The hatred burns so deeply in fact that they seek out ways to create out of whole cloth imaginative conspiracies of Trump working with Russia and double impeachments based on literally no evidence.
They justify the advancement of ludicrous stories of deranged presidents lurching at steering wheels—even when one or more secret service personnel were present and are able to testify to the opposite.
They claim pro-lifers hate women. They claim that parents who don’t want drag queens in their kids’ schools are bigots. And they especially despise people who are faithful to God, family, and nation.
Nope, there exists plenty of evidence that the second part of Krauthammer’s theory is true.
So what about the first half? Should conservatives any longer give the left the benefit of the doubt as to their policies? Should we innocently believe they are simply misinformed as opposed to radically devoted agents to an agenda that is not only anti-American but that in fact is… evil?
New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz my long time friend and weekly guest on my show has consistently chided me on the air to take Krauthammer’s observation as true. Because I believe Karol to be immensely insightful and one of the most important voices of common sense in America—I usually try.
Yet with apologies to Charles and Karol, I can no longer.
Maya Angelou is famous for saying, “When a person shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Well this week (and honestly for the duration of their term in office) the Biden *Administration has been and is telling us exactly who they are.
When asked directly by a CNN anchor on live camera, “What do you say to a family who can’t afford $4.85 a gallon for months, much less years?”
Brian Deese a top economic advisor to *President Biden responded in essence by saying that the “stakes are too high” and that this is about “the future of the liberal world order,” and that they’d “have to stand firm.”
In other words families who can’t afford to pay double or triple for the energy they need to merely survive must absorb the punch to the face and make the sacrifice for the greater good. And if we can’t do so, tough bananas our sacrifice will have been worth it all.
He’s not lying or shading the message - he means exactly what he said and they are standing firm.
They are willing to impose suffering onto the people they work for in order to bring about their newly enlightened, “we know better than you,” reality. This is Hitler gassing humans, Thanos snapping his finger, Stalin executing dissidents, and Bin Ladin toppling buildings—all for some greater good.
And it’s not just energy, this group doesn’t care if babies have formula, your family has food, or if women bleed out from their monthly cycles.
They don’t care if a boy exposes his penis to your daughter in her locker room, or if cashless bail states release criminals that just tried to rape or assault her.
They accept all forms of racism so long as God fearing men ultimately get blamed for everything. They despise police—who are here to slow or stop evil in progress. And they help elect prosecutors who will refuse to hold evil people accountable.
This is what the liberal world order looks like.
But in order for them to bring it about they must starve the serfs and take away any resource that would prevent them doing rebelling. Hence no money or guns for you and me.
Nope Charles and Karol, I’m taking a rare step in disagreeing with both of you.
The left is evil—full stop.
They are willing to kill, maim, bleed, assault, and starve you until you comply.
And I think it’s time we take Ms. Angelou’s observation, call it what it is, and stop them.
They are showing us who they are!
To see what is in front of our noses is a constant challenge, and perhaps never more so in a time of such awful post-truth polarization. But what happened in the January 6 hearings this past week will, in my view, be seen one day as a watershed moment either in the history of this country’s revival as a liberal democracy or in this republic’s rapid collapse.
Two women, Liz Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson, went back and forth, asking and answering questions, slowly, calmly, and methodically laying out a story of an actual attempt by a president of the United States to rally and lead an armed mob to assault the Congress to overturn an election. Yes, I just wrote that sentence.
Hutchinson’s testimony added critical facts to the record: that Trump knew full well what the mob was intending to do in advance; and knew that they were armed: “You know, I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not there to hurt me.” He knew what he was attempting was criminal; tried physically to lead the mob in their rampage; and when he was foiled, egged on the attack, and refused to quiet or quell the mob for hours — even as it threatened to kill his own vice president. There is no way now to deny that Trump was behind all of it, uniquely responsible.
In the face of this, so many Republican men have kept quiet, caved, slunk away, equivocated, or changed the subject. So many, like Tucker Carlson, have responded with smears and foul lies. So many have refused to testify, or dodged subpoenas. These sickening cowards wouldn’t vote to impeach after the grossest attack on the Constitution in history; and wouldn’t cooperate with the committee.
But two Republican women faced our hideous reality this week — even if it meant the obliteration of their careers, and being subject to real threats of violence. And let us pause to note just how Republican these two women are. Cheney is the daughter of the former vice president, a man who once defined Republicanism; she represents Wyoming, the most Republican state out of 50; she’s pro-life, defended torture, never saw a war she didn’t want to start; opposed even her own sister’s same-sex marriage; and voted with Trump 93 percent of the time, more than the woman who ousted her from House leadership, Elise Stefanik.
Hutchinson, for her part, was at the heart of the Trump world. She ascended from mere intern — working in the offices of both Ted Cruz and the House minority whip — to become the primary assistant to Trump’s chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows. If she dyed her hair blonde, she could read the news on Fox.
Hutchinson had a lot to lose by testifying — as women seem to in general compared to men:
[T]here is evidence that women suffer more direct retaliation as whistleblowers. One study in 2008 found that women who reported wrongdoing within their organizations experienced more retaliation than men who did the same. And, while higher-ranking men who reported wrongdoing experienced less retaliation, higher-ranking women were not as insulated.
And notice the tone of the exchange between the two women. In a world of hyperbolic, pontificating males, Cheney asked clear, direct, empirical questions, and Hutchinson replied with the same attention to detail, the same surety of voice, the same care not to exaggerate, and to get things right. Yes, some of it was hearsay — but Hutchinson herself took pains to note when it was. And both, it seemed to me, understood their grave responsibility.
This is the Republican Party I used to respect. This is the conservatism I believe in. A conservatism whose first tasks are the defense of the Constitution, the rule of law, and a belief in objective truth.
Like Margaret Thatcher in her day, Liz Cheney has a steel stronger than most men, and similar courage. In her superb speech at the Reagan Library this week, Cheney also emphasized the feminine qualities that made this week historic:
I come to this choice [between Trump and the Constitution] as a mother, committed to ensuring that my children and their children can continue to live in an America where the peaceful transfer of power is guaranteed.
And she paid tribute to the women, often low on the DC totem pole, who rose to the challenge of citizenship, when so many powerful men failed:
I’ve been incredibly moved by young women who have come forward to testify, some who worked on the Trump campaign, some who worked in the Trump White House, some who worked in offices on Capitol Hill, all of whom knew immediately that what had happened must never happen again … Little girls across the country are seeing what it really means to love your country, what it really means to be a patriot. And so I want to speak to every young girl who may be watching tonight. The power is yours and so is the responsibility.
For 120 days in summer 2020, violent protesters destroyed some $2 billion in property and injured 1,500 police officers in riots that led to over 35 deaths.
Because blue-state mayors and governors saw BLM and Antifa instigators as useful street soldiers, most of those arrested were never tried in court. Street thugs paid no price for declaring themselves de facto owners of downtown areas of Seattle, which police themselves conceded were no-go zones. Why did public officials in blue states ignore the violence? They were certain that it enjoyed majority support among their leftwing constituencies.
Indeed, some leftist icons cheered on the violence. Well after the failed attempt to storm the White House grounds, in June 2020, the Democratic candidate for vice president Kamala Harris warned us that protestors were “not going to let up, and they should not.” What did Harris mean by “should not?”—when she knew numerous protests that summer had ended in terrible violence? Was she reckless in the manner Trump was said to be by encouraging a demonstration on January 6?
The architect of the “1619 Project” Nikole Hannah-Jones assured the nation that vast destruction of (someone else’s property) was not a real crime. CNN’s Chris Cuomo gushed that violent demonstrations and riots were American traditions. Were these national voices urging calm during weeks of violent rioting and looting?
There were no investigations, no congressional committees, and no voices of outrage from the left-wing establishment over months of such carnage. Indeed, much of the organization of the violent protests was facilitated by social media that was apparently unbothered that the medium under their stewardship was used to torch and loot...
On abortion, climate change, guns and much more, two Americas — one liberal, one conservative — are moving in opposite directions.
Pressed by Supreme Court decisions diminishing rights that liberals hold dear and expanding those cherished by conservatives, the United States appears to be drifting apart into separate nations, with diametrically opposed social, environmental and health policies.
Call these the Disunited States.
The most immediate breaking point is on abortion, as about half the country will soon limit or ban the procedure while the other half expands or reinforces access to reproductive rights. But the ideological fault lines extend far beyond that one topic, to climate change, gun control and L.G.B.T.Q. and voting rights.
On each of those issues, the country’s Northeast and West Coast are moving in the opposite direction from its midsection and Southeast — with a few exceptions, like the islands of liberalism in Illinois and Colorado, and New Hampshire’s streak of conservatism.
Even where public opinion is more mixed, like in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, the Republican grip on state legislatures has ensured that policies in those states conform with those of the reddest states in the union, rather than strike a middle ground.
The tearing at the seams has been accelerated by the six-vote conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which has embraced a muscular states-rights federalism. In the past 10 days the court has erased the constitutional right to an abortion, narrowed the federal government’s ability to regulate climate-warming pollution and blocked liberal states and cities from barring most of their citizens from carrying concealed guns outside of their homes.
“They’ve produced this Balkanized house divided, and we’re only beginning to see how bad that will be,” said David Blight, a Yale historian who specializes in the era of American history that led to the Civil War.
Historians have struggled to find a parallel moment, raising the 19th-century fracturing over slavery; the clashes between the executive branch and the Supreme Court in the New Deal era of the 1930s; the fierce battles over civil rights during Reconstruction and in the 1950s and early 1960s; and the rise of armed, violent groups like the Weather Underground in the late ’60s.
For some people, the divides have grown so deep and so personal that they have felt compelled to pick up and move from one America to the other.
Many conservatives have taken to social media to express thanks over leaving high-tax, highly regulated blue states for red states with smaller government and, now, laws prohibiting abortion.
Others have transited the American rift in the opposite direction.
“I did everything I could to put my mouth where my money was, to bridge the divide with my own actions,” said Howard Garrett, a Black, gay 29-year-old from Franklin, Tenn., who ran for alderman in recent years, organized the town’s first Juneteenth celebration and worked on L.G.B.T.Q. outreach to local schools, only to be greeted with harassment and death threats.
Mr. Garrett moved to Washington, D.C., last year. “People were just sick in their heart,” he said, “and that was something you can’t change.”
On abortion, history seems to be riffing on itself.
Both supporters and opponents of abortion rights see a parallel to the abolition of slavery.
As states like Illinois and Colorado vow to become “safe harbors” for women in surrounding states seeking to end their pregnancies, abortion rights advocates see an echo of past efforts by antislavery states in the North. But abortion opponents see themselves as emancipating the unborn, and often compare the Roe decision’s treatment of the fetus to the Dred Scott ruling in 1857 that denied Black people the rights of American citizenship.
Conservatives are not resting on their victories: The anti-abortion movement, long predicated on returning the issue of reproductive rights to elected representatives in the states, talks now about putting a national abortion ban before Congress.
Roger Severino, a leading social conservative and senior official in the Trump administration, invoked the struggle of Black Americans for equality, saying the 10 years that passed between the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision ending “separate but equal” segregation and Congress’s passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 mirrored the struggle ahead on abortion.
“I cannot see us living in two Americas where we have two classes of human beings in this country: some protected fully in law, some who are not protected at all,” said Mr. Severino, now the vice president for domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank...
Not sure how long she'd make on The View, though. The women on the show who've held the "conservative seat" previously --- Abbey Huntsman, Jedediah Bila, and Meghan McCain, for example --- have quit after having enough of Joy, Sunny, Whoopie, and the other left-wing nut-job on the panel. (*Eye-roll*.)
Out of touch in putting it mildly, on Twitter below.
Americans should be enjoy the blessings and bounties of the country today, not worrying whether they can afford a couple of pounds of ground beef. It's ridiculous.
The average cost of a summer cookout rose 17% from last year, according to a survey, prompting some Americans to dial back their festivities.
As the price of food continues to climb with the Fourth of July approaching, Jayne Crucius had to decide whether she would grill her traditional beef tenderloin.
When Ms. Crucius saw that a five-pound beef tenderloin would set her back about $135, she decided to skip it. Instead, she’s serving chicken and pork ribs at a Fourth of July party at her cottage in Atkinson, N.H.
“We can eat a lot of chicken for that kind of money,” said Ms. Crucius, who is 74 years old.
Consumers across the U.S. are choosing between dialing back on their Independence Day celebrations or accepting the higher costs at the grocery store. The average cost of a summer cookout for 10 people this year is $69.68, a 17% increase from last year, according to a survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, an advocacy group that represents farmers.
The rise hit most Fourth of July staples, including hamburgers, pork chops, potato salad and ice cream, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. The price of ground beef is up 36%, vanilla ice cream jumped 10% The AFBF attributes the price increases to continuing supply-chain disruptions, inflation and the war in Ukraine. The supply-chain problems and inflation have also increased the costs of farm supplies, putting the squeeze on farmers, according to the federation.
Beer lovers are also going to pay more this year if they want to sip their lagers and ales while enjoying the fireworks. Beer prices are up nearly 25% for the year to date, according to an analysis by Wells Fargo, while wine prices have risen about 6%.
U.S. consumer inflation rose by 8.6% in May, its highest jump since December 1981, according to the Labor Department. Increases in energy prices and a nearly 12% rise in grocery costs drove May’s inflation jump, the department said.
There doesn’t appear to be any relief on the horizon for consumers. Some of the nation’s biggest food suppliers have said they would continue to raise prices as they face higher costs for labor, packaging, ingredients and transportation. The increase in fuel costs is also making it more expensive to produce and sell food.
Rising gas prices are hurting consumers too. With less disposable income, more shoppers are searching for ways to stretch their dollars.
Susan Doherty, who is semiretired and lives in Windham, N.H., said she and her husband are eating more chicken and pork for dinner because beef has gotten so expensive.
Ms. Doherty said she typically serves marinated sirloin steak tips for her Fourth of July party. But this year, she plans on buying fewer steak tips and will supplement the beef with marinated chicken, she said...
Ms. Maxwell, who was convicted of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom and abuse underage girls, will spend much of the rest of her life in prison.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the former socialite who conspired with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually exploit underage girls, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday by a judge who said she played a pivotal role in facilitating a horrific scheme that spanned continents and years.
Ms. Maxwell, 60, the daughter of the British media magnate Robert Maxwell, was convicted on Dec. 29 of sex trafficking and other counts after a monthlong trial during which the government presented testimony and evidence depicting Ms. Maxwell as a sophisticated predator who groomed vulnerable young women and girls as young as 14 years old for abuse by Mr. Epstein.
Her sentencing, which drew throngs of onlookers and journalists to a Lower Manhattan courthouse, brought a measure of resolution to a lurid case whose primary actor eluded justice by suicide.
The case against Ms. Maxwell showed how she and Mr. Epstein, her longtime companion, used wealth and status to exploit and abuse the vulnerable. The trial afforded a gaze into a world where the patina of glamour hid the routine infliction of intimate, life-changing cruelty.
“The damage done to these young girls was incalculable,” said Judge Alison J. Nathan of Federal District Court in Manhattan before imposing the sentence on Tuesday.
The prison term was shorter than the government had recommended — federal prosecutors in Manhattan had asked the judge to impose at least 30 years. If the conviction is upheld, Ms. Maxwell, with potential credit for good behavior and the two years she has spent in jail, could leave prison in her 70s.
Throughout the trial, Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys sought to discredit her accusers’ accounts and argued that the government was trying her for Mr. Epstein’s crimes. In court on Tuesday, one of those lawyers, Bobbi C. Sternheim, described the way Ms. Maxwell’s life had been clouded by two men: her “narcissistic, brutish” father and the “controlling, demanding, manipulative” Mr. Epstein.
Ms. Maxwell herself spoke in court on Tuesday — her first public remarks since her July 2020 arrest. Standing at the lectern in blue prison scrubs, her ankles shackled, she acknowledged “the pain and anguish” of the victimized women who had addressed the court before her. But she stopped short of apologizing or accepting responsibility for her crimes.
“It is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Maxwell said. “Jeffrey Epstein should have been here before all of you.”
Ms. Maxwell’s trial and conviction were widely seen as the legal reckoning that Mr. Epstein, 66, never had. The disgraced financier hanged himself in his Manhattan jail cell one month after his July 2019 arrest as he awaited his own trial on sex trafficking charges...
In 1992, while the ascendant evangelical Right was pushing to roll back abortion rights as part of its “family values” platform, the Democratic party stumbled on a pro-choice message that would not only win the presidency but also define the party’s position for years to come. It consisted of three words, first spoken by then-presidential nominee Bill Clinton, and ultimately heard so often that they started to take on the air of catechism: an incantation whose mere utterance rendered a politician rhetorically bulletproof.
Safe. Legal. Rare.
For those whose interest in the American Left only goes back as far as the Obama administration, it’s hard to explain what a triumph this was. Not only did the phrase create a big tent under which even people who felt morally ambivalent about abortion could comfortably gather, it also forced Republicans into insane, reactionary counter-positions. As well as safe and legal abortions, the Democrats were promoting comprehensive sex education and contraceptive access, which would help prevent unwanted pregnancies from happening in the first place — and Republicans, rather than make common cause with their enemies, mostly opted to argue against these things.
And so, for a brief but magical moment, the Democrats could reasonably claim to be the party of fewer abortions and more shagging, while conservatives were left to take the deeply unpopular position that all non-procreative sex was bad, actually.
Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic has observed the remarkable staying power of “safe, legal, and rare”, which “translated into language the inchoate sentiments of millions of Americans so exactly that they had to hear it only once for it to become their firmly held position on abortion”. The message was so effective that Hillary Clinton even resurrected it in 2008 during her first (ultimately unsuccessful) play for the Democratic presidential nomination. Two years after that President Barack Obama explicitly identified the phrase as “the right formulation” when it came to discussing abortion.
And yet, in the past 10 years, “safe, legal and rare” has fallen out of favour, as arguments emerged in the more language-obsessed corners of the Left that the “rare” part was unduly stigmatising. “It posits that having an abortion is a bad decision and one that a pregnant person shouldn’t have to make”, one activist wrote last year, in an essay demanding the phrase be retired.
It’s hard to overstate the utter self-sabotaging lunacy of this argument, which not only undermined one of the most popular lines of party messaging in decades but is also farcically nonsensical: “safe, legal, and rare” are surely a solid and desirable set of criteria for any medical procedure that is both unpleasant and unplanned, as abortions (but not only abortions) invariably are. And yet, the argument prevailed: by the time Hillary ran for president in 2016, the word “rare” had been excised from the Democratic party platform.
In its place arose a variety of messages, none nearly as effective, and some deeply strange, even ghoulish. Among the most notable side effects of the argument that abortion need not be rare is an increasingly prevalent notion that perhaps pregnancy should be. In the days following the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision that ultimately overturned Roe v Wade, the very online Left traded horror stories about what it can do to your body. One much-shared Twitter thread from an obstetrician enumerated the risks of pregnancy like a carnival barker marketing a house of horrors: “Hemorrhage from miscarriage or ectopic, sepsis, blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, hyperemesis and intractable vomiting, increased domestic violence, exacerbations of heart disease, lupus and rheumatologic disease, hypertension, seizures, and mental illness, diabetes” — it’s all right here, folks, and that’s before we even get to the torn anal sphincter and urinary incontinence! Step right up, ladies!
The pro-choice press has only reinforced the horror, by giving us wall-to-wall coverage of the danger of pregnancy and childbirth. Here’s New York Times columnist Pamela Paul with a gut-twisting account of her emergency C-section, which culminated in “being held down by two doctors while my body parts were gathered and reinserted into my torso”. Here’s Kate Manning in the Washington Post talking about urine leakage, blood-covered bedsheets, “cracked nipples and infected breasts”. Here’s Scientific American warning us that “even a seemingly ‘safe’ pregnancy is not without significant risk”. Of course, the intention is only to emphasise that nobody should be forced to go through this — but you would be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that not only should abortion be available on demand, but that no woman in her right mind would ever carry a pregnancy to term unless she had some sort of death wish.
Gone are the days when the Left took pains to emphasise that it was not pro-abortion, but against unwanted pregnancy; instead, this moderate stance has metastasised into a demonisation of pregnancy in general. Some have framed this as a look-what-you-made-me-do position forced by the anti-choice Right: “If there was ever anything beautiful about pregnancy, the anti-abortion movement has devoured it, and spat up something hateful in its place. Pregnancy, for many, will now end dreams, alter futures, maybe even kill,” writes New York Magazine‘s Sarah Jones.
In a recent essay for The Bulwark, Mona Charen laments that “young women reading these stories may get the impression that pregnancy is a hellscape of pain, disfigurement, and degradation”. (I disagree with this argument not in substance but in scope: these stories are no less terrifying to women in middle age who, in their waning fertility, might have been on the fence about having kids and are now loathe to do so lest they turn into the Elephant Man.) But even if this type of rhetoric doesn’t ultimately put a dent in the birth rate, it seems to reflect a penchant on the Left for the opposite of coalition-building, for busting up the movement one taboo turn of phrase at a time. Goodbye, “rare”. Goodbye, “women”. Goodbye, “choice” — the beating heart of the movement, now categorised as “harmful language” — and goodbye to the allies who favoured these terms, now severed and drifting away from the movement like Inuit elders who have outlived their usefulness, cast onto an ice floe to die.
Most remarkable is that abortion access is, in fact, an issue with direct bearing on the lives of a vast majority of Americans — not only women, but any man in a heterosexual partnership with one — and yet some of the loudest voices on this issue insist on describing it as anything but. Consider the now-notorious tweet in which the ACLU listed all the groups most impacted by abortion bans. “The LGBTQ community” was second; “women” were not listed at all.
Such rhetoric is inevitably adopted in the name of inclusivity, which is funny, given how it not only sparks internecine infighting but also rules out virtually every position that might have had widespread resonance in the way that “safe, legal, and rare” once did...
To the evangelical leaders telling us we shouldn’t celebrate overturning Roe when we’re not doing enough for moms and children: you’re wrong.
For decades, Pro-lifers have been doing all the work you say needs to be done. You are welcome to get off the couch and join us. pic.twitter.com/8NMKCnLOzy
Let’s not kid ourselves. The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade, is going to be a catastrophe. There’s a German proverb that translates roughly as “the soup is never eaten as hot as it’s cooked,” meaning things won’t be as bad as you fear. Sometimes that’s true, but it wasn’t for the Germans, and it won’t be for us.
For years pro-choicers have warned that the right to abortion was at risk, only to be called Chicken Littles by pundits and politicos, usually men. Some thought returning abortion to the states would lead to a middle-of-the-road practical solution and, more important, take abortion out of politics. Ha! Others were sure no one wanted bans to happen: Republicans only used “cultural issues” to distract voters from the party’s real agenda, screwing the working class on behalf of corporations. Thomas Frank made himself famous with a book devoted to that thesis, What’s the Matter with Kansas? I hope he apologizes to the women of Kansas, because the fears he dismissed have come to pass.
What can be done? Abortion funds, which raise money for low-income patients’ procedures, are wonderful, and you should give them all your money now, but even before Dobbs, they couldn’t help everyone in need. Their work will be harder now. On Monday, abortion funds in Texas suspended operations because of laws criminalizing helping women seeking to end their pregnancies. If you thought, as many did, that abortion opponents would be satisfied with a return to pre-Roe hypocrisies, when millions of women got abortions while law enforcement mostly looked the other way, think again.
What about traveling to pro-choice states, some of which have recently strengthened protections for abortion rights? That’s not so easy, even for people with money, although it will be much harder for low-income patients. Most women who have abortions are mothers, after all; many have jobs that won’t allow them time off. They can’t just pick up and fly to New York City or Chicago, or drive all day and night to reach the nearest clinic. They’ll need help, and help is expensive. The Brigid Alliance, an abortion travel service which pays all costs—transportation, lodging, food, child care—spends about $1,000 per patient. The influx of patients from states with bans will affect care in the states they travel to. Clinics are already overscheduled. Soon they will be overwhelmed.
Ah, but there are abortion pills, some say, which make it possible to end pregnancies cheaply at home. Pills are crucial, but not a panacea. Yes, they are safe, unlike illegal abortions pre-Roe, but you have to know they exist, how to find them, how to take them, and what to say if you end up going to the ER so you don’t get arrested. You have to know how pregnant you are—they don’t work so well after 12 weeks. You have to avoid copycat anti-abortion websites. And around 5 percent of the time, they won’t work. Who knows how long it will be legal to send them, by mail or in person, to an abortion-ban state? Abortion opponents are already working on ways to criminalize pills and people who make it possible to acquire them. The latest: Facebook and Instagram are taking down information on how to obtain them. Remember when information wanted to be free?
So let’s face it. In half the country, women are fetal vessels now. Their lives, their physical and mental health, their education, their employment, their relationships, their ability to care for their other children, their hopes, ambitions and dreams—none of that matters. What matters is that they incubate a fertilized egg and deliver an infant—which, as Amy Coney Barrett suggested, they can always drop off at the nearest safe-haven baby box. The law may not come after you if you give a pregnant friend money for the procedure or drive her to a free state; anti-abortion activists might not track your pregnancy digitally, as Jia Tolentino warns, but then again, they might (memo to readers: Delete your period tracker now). The capacity exists: to know your online searches, your travel plans, your proximity to a clinic. Does a fetal vessel have rights? I wouldn’t count on it...
MADRID — President Biden said Thursday that the Supreme Court’s decision ending a constitutional right to abortion is “destabilizing” and that he supports changing Senate rules to codify nationwide abortion protections. He maintained the ruling does not affect U.S. standing on the world stage as he took credit for modernizing the NATO alliance to adapt to new threats from Russia and China.
Biden was speaking to reporters at the conclusion of a five-day foreign trip to huddle with North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Madrid and the leaders of the Group of 7 advanced democratic economies in the Bavarian Alps, which came as the nation was still grappling with the fallout from Friday’s Supreme Court decision.
“America is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been,” Biden said. “But one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of United States in overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy.”
He added: “I could understand why the American people are frustrated because of what the Supreme Court did.”
RiseupforAbortionRights rallies throughout downtown opposing the recent Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe v Wade.
Biden said he would support changing the Senate filibuster rules, which require 60 votes to pass most legislation, to allow a bill extending nationwide abortion protections to pass by simple majority, but he said it would likely require voters to send additional Democratic senators to Washington to get done...
Global markets closed out their most bruising first half of a year in decades, leaving investors bracing for the prospect of further losses.
Accelerating inflation and rising interest rates fueled a monthslong rout that left few markets unscathed. The S&P 500 fell 21% through Thursday, suffering its worst first half of a year since 1970, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Investment-grade bonds, as measured by the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond exchange-traded fund, lost 11%—posting their worst start to a year in history.
Stocks and bonds in emerging markets tumbled, hurt by slowing growth. And cryptocurrencies came crashing down, saddling individual investors and hedge funds alike with steep losses.
About the only thing that rose in the first half was commodities prices. Oil prices surged above $100 a barrel, and U.S. gas prices hit records after the Russia-Ukraine war upended imports from Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer.
Now, investors seem to be in agreement about only one thing: More volatility is ahead. That is because central banks from the U.S. to India and New Zealand plan to keep raising interest rates to try to rein in inflation. The moves will likely slow down growth, potentially tipping economies into recession and generating further tumult across markets.
“That’s the biggest risk right now—inflation and the Fed,” said Katie Nixon, chief investment officer for Northern Trust Wealth Management.
Ms. Nixon said she would be keeping a close eye on economic data to gauge how much rising interest rates are weighing on growth over the next few months. Her firm has kept money in U.S. stocks, wagering the economy will slow down but avoid a recession. It has also put money into companies focused on natural resources, a bet that should pay off if inflation persists for longer than it expects.
“You don’t want to be whipsawed by the markets,” she said.
The good news for investors is that markets haven’t always done poorly after suffering big losses in the first half of the year. In fact, history shows they have often done the opposite.
When the S&P 500 has fallen at least 15% the first six months of the year, as it did in 1932, 1939, 1940, 1962 and 1970, it has risen an average of 24% in the second half, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
One reason markets have often snapped back after big pullbacks: Investors have eventually stepped in, wagering prices have fallen too far. Fund managers currently have larger-than-average cash positions, smaller-than-average equities positions and a markedly high degree of pessimism about the economy, Bank of America found in its June survey of investors. Those factors, among others, make markets look “painfully oversold”—and thus potentially ripe for a rally, the bank’s strategists said in a separate report.
But even those finding buying opportunities these days say they are focusing on specific companies, instead of buying broadly. They concede that the current economic environment—in which inflation is high, borrowing costs are rising and growth is expected to slow—makes it difficult to be enthusiastic about many parts of the market.
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal in June said they saw a 44% probability of a recession in the U.S. in the next 12 months, compared with 18% in January.
History also has shown the Fed has seldom been able to pull off a “soft landing,” a scenario in which it slows the economy enough to rein in inflation but avoids tightening monetary policy to the point of causing a recession. The U.S. went into recession four of the last six times the Fed began raising interest rates, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that looked at monetary policy tightening cycles since the 1980s.
“The runway for the Fed to manage a soft landing is not only narrow but also winding and bumpy,” said Lauren Goodwin, economist and portfolio strategist at New York Life Investments...
High court says agency overstepped its authority in restricting greenhouse gas emissions in a ruling with ramifications for other regulators.
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that federal regulators exceeded their authority in seeking to limit emissions from coal plants in a decision that sharply curtails the executive branch’s authority to make policy actions on a range of issues without congressional direction.
In a blockbuster 6-3 decision penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped when it devised the Obama-era regulatory scheme, known as the Clean Power Plan. The plan had been challenged by West Virginia and others.
The court said that when federal agencies issue regulations with sweeping economic and political consequences—in this case, rules to address climate change—the regulations are presumptively invalid unless Congress has specifically authorized the action.
“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” the chief justice wrote, faulting the EPA for finding new powers in “the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute.”
Beyond the EPA, the decision is likely to rein in President Biden’s ability to use other departments and regulators such as the Treasury Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to address climate change, one of his signature policy initiatives.
Mr. Biden called the court’s ruling “a devastating decision that aims to take our country backwards.”
“I have directed my legal team to work with the Department of Justice and affected agencies to review this decision carefully and find ways that we can, under federal law, continue protecting Americans from harmful pollution, including pollution that causes climate change,” Mr. Biden said.
The principle articulated by the court, known as the “major questions doctrine,” was mentioned in earlier cases but is being recognized more explicitly now, said Gautam Hans, a law professor at Vanderbilt University.
“The court has now really explicitly relied on this doctrine to limit the EPA’s authority, and other regulatory agencies are going to be more cautious now that they have to navigate this,” Mr. Hans said.
With Congress often mired in gridlock, Mr. Biden and his Democratic predecessors have used regulation instead of legislation to advance their policy agendas, Mr. Hans said...In the case decided Thursday, West Virginia led a coalition of Republican-leaning states and coal producers that asked the Supreme Court to weigh in and clarify the limits of the EPA’s authority.
For half a century, the Clean Air Act has directed the EPA to regulate stationary sources of air pollution that endanger “public health or welfare.” The Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which never went into effect because it was blocked by the Supreme Court in an earlier case, extended that regulatory reach beyond the physical premises of a power plant to allow off-site methods to mitigate pollution.
The Trump administration in 2019 implemented a replacement rule that was more friendly to the coal industry. But in January 2021, on the last day of Mr. Trump’s presidency, a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia struck down the replacement rule, providing the Biden administration with a clean slate to work from in devising its own carbon-emissions rules.
Justice Elena Kagan said in a dissent on Thursday that the Obama-era EPA had exercised broad authority given to it by Congress, and that the Supreme Court keeps thwarting the agency’s lawful efforts to address a climate crisis.
Let's remind folks that these poor souls aren't just "migrants." They're illegal aliens under U.S. law. There's no excuse for their deaths. Our border should be secure.
Earlier this month Missouri Senator Roy Blunt spoke on the floor of the Senate slamming the Biden administration's border policies, noting that, "During President Biden's time in office, the Department of Homeland Security has encountered illegal immigrants crossing our border more than 2.8 million times. In not quite a year-and-a-half, 2.8 million people were encountered crossing the border."
That's the background for the horrible and tragic deaths of 51 illegal migrants at the outskirts of San Antonio yesterday.
As soon as the Supreme Court issued its ruling finally overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion decision that had so roiled the nation for nearly 50 years, Democrats and their allies who control corporate media began asserting it would be a political boon for their party.
“Democrats see abortion as a big base motivator and a potential winning issue with independents,” claimed Politico.
Democrats could certainly use some help. The party controls all of Washington, D.C. Voters have indicated they’re prepared to deliver large Republican gains in November in response to a series of Democrat policy failures leading to a looming recession, labor problems, supply chain disruptions, high gas prices, rising crime, another foreign war without a strategy for victory, and a completely out of control border.
But there are several problems for Democrats hoping to stem the losses, including that the general Democrat position of abortion on demand until the moment of birth is far too radical to gain politically in most areas of the country. Even CBS polling found that only 17 percent of Americans agree with such an extreme stance.
The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, despite the media disinformation, simply returns abortion law to the states, enabling citizens and their elected representatives to debate and set abortion laws and policies. Roe had falsely decreed that a right to abortion was in the Constitution, and therefore beyond public debate, a view the court flatly and finally rejected last week.
Abortion is a hotly debated topic, and neither those who oppose or support it are likely to be fully happy about public opinion. Most Americans strongly oppose abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, but most Americans also support some allowances for abortion at earlier stages in pregnancy. In May, a Gallup poll found that 63 percent of Americans support making abortion illegal or legal only in certain circumstances.
Mixed Bag Politically
While the decision may help Democrats hold onto a few suburban seats Republicans had hoped to wrestle back from the party in power, it is unlikely to help them in battleground states and districts where Republicans are experiencing dramatic gains...
Sure, abortion rights supporters are extremely passionate about the issue, but if you check the polls, Ms. Mollie's right: Bread-and-butter kitchen table issues dominate the list of most important problems facing the country. Inflation by itself will drag down Democratic numbers. They've already lost at least a million voters who've recently switched to the GOP, and along the border, Hispanic voters are abandoning Democrats faster than a racehorse under the whip.
We're a little more than 5 months out from the November midterms. Roe or no, the Dems are in big trouble.
On the campaign trail and throughout his tenure in the White House, President Joe Biden has repeatedly told the American people he "never" spoke to his son, Hunter Biden, about his shady foreign business dealings.
Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki repeated this claim during a number of briefings.
But a newly unearthed phone call from Biden to his son reveals he did in fact discuss the foreign deals and helped coach Hunter through media fallout.
The recording comes after reports revealed Hunter's business partners visited the White House a number of times when Biden was vice president.
"Hunter Biden's closest business partner made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015, including a sitdown with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing," the New York Post reported in April. "Visitor logs from the White House of former President Barack Obama reviewed by The Post cast further doubt over Joe Biden’s claims that he knew nothing of his son's dealings."
Hutchinson provided many bombshells. The shocking description of Trump wrestling the Secret Service for control of his car on Jan. 6 so he could go to the Capitol. Portraying Meadows, her former boss, as a man who abdicated responsibility to the nation and hoped to be pardoned. And saying Trump knew that his supporters had dangerous weapons when he asked them to march on Congress.
Cheney ended the hearing on a solemn note, saying that democracy is preserved by people “who know the fundamental difference between right and wrong.” People of high rank and power have refused to talk about that distinction with the committee, but Hutchinson, a low-ranking official, didn't shy from it today.
The White Houses's new regulations will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct.
Joe Biden has fulfilled one of the first promises he made upon becoming president. His administration has just announced a comprehensive set of regulations—701 pages worth—that will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct.
Apparently, Biden learned nothing from going through his own sexual assault accusation crucible.
During his vice presidency, Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point man for a major domestic initiative: ending sexual assault on campus. There is no question bad, sometimes criminal, sexual behavior occurs on campus. Eliminating it is a worthy, if elusive, goal. But the Obama-Biden mandate expanded the definition of sexual misconduct so broadly that jokes, flirting, or “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” could be punishable offenses.
The Obama administration set out to change campus culture, and it did. But in doing so, it undermined women, demonized men, and diverted vast resources away from education. Under rules promulgated by Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education under Trump, many of these policies were rolled back. The Biden administration now plans to restore much of this.
Male college students (the accusers were almost always female, the accused male) were subjected to quasi-criminal proceedings on campus in which many were never told explicitly what they had done wrong and were unable to mount a defense. An adverse finding could end an education and foreclose many career possibilities.
Biden traveled the country, describing campuses as places where male classmates put young women in relentless danger (“This is a toxin on college campuses”), and where indifferent campus officials disparaged the women willing to report assault. But Biden's portrait was at odds with the way the majority of such cases unfold—often beginning as consensual encounters, then later ending up in dispute, frequently due in part to alcohol, miscommunication, and hurt feelings.
In numerous college speeches, Biden declared alarming, inflammatory, and dubious statistics on the frequency of campus assault. Biden advocated that all sexual encounters on campus be governed by “affirmative consent.” This means that each touch, each time, even between established partners, requires explicit—preferably verbal, preferably enthusiastic—agreement. Affirmative consent was adopted widely on campuses, and became a law governing student behavior in California, Connecticut, and New York.
Then Donald Trump was elected president, and Betsy DeVos, decided to reform what the Obama administration had done. In one of the most uncharacteristic acts of that chaotic presidency, DeVos went through the lengthy and burdensome process of writing actual regulations (the Obama administration had only issued “guidance”). The rules she released were, on balance, careful and thorough, providing necessary protections for the rights of both accuser and accused. I spent several years reporting on what was unfolding on campuses, and I wrote at the time that the DeVos regulations were an example of an immoral administration doing the moral thing. (See, for example, here and here.)
The DeVos rules went into effect in August of 2020, in the midst of campus covid shutdowns, so they have hardly had a chance to be tested. Now they will be struck. They will be replaced by some of the most pernicious procedures of the Obama era. (These dueling Department of Education regulations come under the aegis of Title IX, the fifty-year old federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.)
The new rules recommend a return to a “single investigator” model that was barred under the DeVos reform. This means one administrator can act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury on a Title IX complaint. The new rules also undo many of the procedural protections for the accused—including the right to see all the evidence, inculpatory and exculpatory, gathered against him. “It’s an evisceration of the procedural protections given to the accused,” says historian KC Johnson, co-author of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities.
Under the DeVos rules, adjudication of a formal complaint required a live hearing be held that included cross examination. The Biden administration lifts this obligation. The Biden rules also call for a return to investigations initiated by third parties, even if based on rumors or misunderstandings, in which male students can be subjected to Title IX proceedings over the objection of their female partners. (Robby Soave at Reason has a good summary of the Biden proposals.)
“It’s a document that validates all of the concerns we had about due process and free speech being on the chopping block,” says Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He adds that the administration is giving schools the blessing of the Department of Education “to cut many corners that are essential for fundamental fairness.”
As vice president, Biden made clear that campuses were just the first stop in an effort to remake throughout society how males and females interact...
The Left has been tempting fate since January 2021—applying its nihilist medicine to America on the premise that such a rich patient can ride out any toxic shock.
Our elites assume that all our nation’s past violent protests, all its would-be revolutions, all its cultural upheavals, all its institutionalized lawlessness were predicated on one central truth—America’s central core is so strong, so rich, and so resilient that it can withstand almost any assault.
So, we can afford 120 days in 2020 of mass rioting, $2 billion in damage, some 35 killed, and 1,500 police injured.
We can easily survive an Afghanistan, and our utter and complete military humiliation. There was no problem in abandoning some $70-80 billion in military loot to terrorists. Who cares that we tossed off a billion-dollar new embassy, and jettisoned a $300-million refitted air base, as long as our pride flags were waving in Kabul?
Certainly, we can afford to restructure all our universities, eliminate free expression and speech, and institute Maoist cultural revolutionary fervor in our revered institutions of higher learning—once the world’s greatest levers of scientific advancement and technological progress.
We can jettison merit in every endeavor, from banning the world’s great books to grading math tests to running chemistry experiments. And still, a resilient America won’t notice.
We assumed that our foundational documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—our natural bounty in North America, our cherished rule of law, our legal immigration traditions that drew in the most audacious and hardworking on the planet, and our guarantees of personal freedom and liberty led to such staggering wealth and affluence that nothing much that this mediocre generation could do would ever endanger our resilience.
But such inheritances are not written in stone. America, as the world’s only successful multiracial democratic republic, was always fragile. It was and is always one generation away from disappearing—should any cohort become so foolish as to mock its past, dismantle its institutions, revert to tribalism, redistribute rather than create wealth, and consume rather than invest.
We are that generation. And we have an accounting with nature’s limitations, given there is always a corrective, not a nice one, but remediation nonetheless for every excess.
Our major cities are no longer safe. Somehow, the Left has nearly wrecked San Francisco in less than a decade. A once beautiful and vibrant city is lawless, dirty, toxic, often boarded up, and losing population. It has turned into a medieval keep of well-protected knights in secure fiefs while everyone else is engaged in a bellum omnium contra omnes.
But such inheritances are not written in stone. America, as the world’s only successful multiracial democratic republic, was always fragile. It was and is always one generation away from disappearing—should any cohort become so foolish as to mock its past, dismantle its institutions, revert to tribalism, redistribute rather than create wealth, and consume rather than invest.
We are that generation. And we have an accounting with nature’s limitations, given there is always a corrective, not a nice one, but remediation nonetheless for every excess.
Our major cities are no longer safe. Somehow, the Left has nearly wrecked San Francisco in less than a decade. A once beautiful and vibrant city is lawless, dirty, toxic, often boarded up, and losing population. It has turned into a medieval keep of well-protected knights in secure fiefs while everyone else is engaged in a bellum omnium contra omnes.
We know it is so because California public officials talk of anything and everything—Roe v. Wade, transitions to electric cars, hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID-19 relief for illegal aliens—to mask their utter impotence to address feces in the street, the random assaults on the vulnerable, and the inability to park a car and return to it intact.
Ditto the Dodge City downtowns of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, Washington, and a host of others. In just four or five years, they have given up on fully funding the police, aggressive prosecutors indicting the violent, and ubiquitous civil servants ensuring the streets are free of trash, vermin, flotsam, jetsam, and human excrement.
There are natural reactions to such excess. The most terrifying is that our once-great cities, especially their downtowns, will simply shrink into something like ghost towns—our versions of an out-West Bodie, or an abandoned Roman city in the sand like Leptis Magna, or a Chernobyl.
But the culprit will not be a played-out mine, or encroaching desert, or a nuclear meltdown, but the progressive leadership of a worn-out, bankrupt people who no longer possess the confidence to keep their urban civilization safe and viable. And so, they either fled, or joined the mob, or locked themselves up in fortified citadels, both in fear to go out and terrified of losing what they owned...
Here's Ms. Liz's emergency stream after the Court overruled Roe on Friday. She's positively giddy and takes the time to read the key quotes from the ruling, relishing every word and ridiculing sourpuss Nancy Pelosi almost a dozen times in the process.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson is a victory for the rule of law.
I’m not talking so much about the opinion itself. I’m talking about the Supreme Court majority’s demonstration that it will do what it thinks is right despite unprecedented pressure from the media, from Democrats in Congress, from “activist” groups and even from angry mobs and attempted assassins who show up at their homes.
This is a big deal. When, as reported by Jan Crawford, a coordinated bullying campaign flipped Chief Justice John Roberts’ position in NFIB v. Sebelius, the ObamaCare case from 2012, many observers, especially on the right, lost faith in the court’s independence. And the perception that the court could be bullied, naturally, was a guarantee that people would try bullying it again.
And they did, in spades. Activist groups sent mobs to protest at the homes of justices expected to vote to overturn Roe, even though that sort of pressure on federal judges is a crime. (Unsurprisingly, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice appears to have done nothing.) In an unprecedented breach of confidentiality, an insider at the court — we still don’t know who, for some reason — leaked a draft opinion that became a rallying point for Democrats and the left.
Extremist rhetoric — of the sort that’s called “hate” when it comes from the right and “passion for justice” when it comes from the left — raised the temperature to the point where a would-be assassin actually showed up at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a Glock, two magazines and pepper spray. He’s now awaiting trial. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) even threatened Kavanaugh and other conservative justices that they would “pay the price” for overturning Roe.
This deadly threat to a sitting Supreme Court justice drew an extremely muted reaction from pundits and Democratic politicians, though an politically motivated assassination to change a judicial opinion would be enormously destabilizing and destructive. On social media, people were openly wishing for the deaths of conservative justices. But the same people who decried the Jan, 6 protests — where only an unarmed protester was the victim of deadly violence — seemed unfazed by this.
Now leftists are promising a “Night of Rage” in response to Roe being overturned...
Something I noted last Friday on Twitter. If this is the most consequential Supreme Court ruling in 100 years, then doesn't that mean Donald Trump's the most consequential president as well?
WASHINGTON — President Biden rarely mentions his predecessor by name. But as he spoke to a nation processing a seismic shift in the rights of women, he couldn’t ignore Donald Trump’s legacy.
“It was three justices named by one president — Donald Trump — who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country,” Biden said Friday after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark ruling from 1973 that provided constitutional protections for women seeking abortions.
The abortion decision marked the apex in a week that reinforced the former president’s ongoing impact in Washington more than a year and a half after he exited the White House.
A court that includes three Trump-appointed conservatives also decided to weaken restrictions on gun ownership. And across the street at the Capitol, which was ravaged by a mob of Trump supporters in the final days of his presidency in 2021, new details surfaced of his gross violations of democratic norms. The House’s Jan. 6 committee used a public hearing last week to spotlight the intense pressure that Trump put on top Justice Department officials to overturn the 2020 election, along with discussions of blanket pardons for cooperative members of Congress.
The developments were a reminder of the awkward political bargain social conservatives embraced to achieve their grandest ambitions. In refusing to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee during the final year of his presidency, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ensured that the next president would be able to make his mark on the court. As Trump pledged to transform the Supreme Court’s ideological leanings — even providing a list of the judges he would choose from — reluctant conservative Republicans and evangelical Christians rallied behind Trump, a thrice-married man who had previously described himself as “very pro-choice.”
“When he ran in 2016, he promised that he would appoint conservative and pro-life judges to the federal courts starting with the U.S. Supreme Court. And he kept his word,” said Ralph Reed, an evangelical leader and chair of the the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who was criticized in some corners for his embrace of Trump. “Those in the faith community that felt it was worth taking a chance on Donald Trump in 2016 have been vindicated.”
The GOP is now at something of a turning point in its relationship with a man who has fundamentally transformed the party with his populist, “Make America Great Again” agenda and his fight against the establishment Republicans who used to control the party. There’s a growing debate within the party about whether Trump’s resonance is beginning to fade as lays the groundwork for a third presidential run in 2024.
Other leading Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence, and Trump’s former secretary of State, Michael R. Pompeo, are taking increasingly bold steps toward White House bids of their own. And many of Trump’s own supporters are eagerly embracing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as Trump’s natural successor as they look to the future.
Pence, Pompeo and DeSantis are among those who have made clear that a Trump candidacy would not influence their own decisions about whether to run. If they do run, they will all be competing for support from the same conservatives who fueled Trump’s rise.
Trump himself seems somewhat uncertain about how to navigate the political fallout from the past week, particularly the abortion ruling. He has privately expressed concern to aides that the decision could energize Democrats going into the November elections, the New York Times first reported.
Indeed, in a Fox News interview after the abortion opinion was released, Trump said that, “in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody.”
Asked about his own role in the eventual decision, Trump responded that, “God made the decision.”
Trump grew more emboldened as Friday unfolded, raising money off the court ruling and issuing a statement in which he took full credit for what he called “the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation.”
He said that it and “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. It was my great honor to do so!”
At a Saturday night rally, Trump took another victory lap to cheers from the crowd...
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