Hello there,
Todayâs main event unfolds one block east of the Capitol on First Street Northeast, where the Supreme Court justices will hear arguments on the Mississippi abortion law, which will have them considering whether to overturn Roe v. Wade. People will be watching in particular to see what kinds of questions are asked by Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trumpâs three appointments to the court. The general betting Iâve seen is that if Roe is to survive, it will be because Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the courtâs three liberals because they werenât quite ready to undo a 50-year-old precedent that has the support of a very solid majority of Americans.
On that point: Gallupâs polling has basically been steady since 1989. Support for keeping Roe has ranged from the high 50s to the mid-60s, and support for overturning it has generally been in the high 20s to low 30s (the numbers from this June were 58 percent keep, 32 percent overturn). Everybody says that Roberts is a political animal and a poll reader and would not set the court against public opinion like that. I wonder if he has that kind of control over the three Trump appointees.
And if you read one opinion column today, by all means make it this one by Michele Goodwin, a law prof at the University of California, Irvine. Her father raped and impregnated her when she was just 12. Thatâs all Iâll say here. Itâs a harrowing tale and a reminder that the morality of abortion is something that assumes many forms and is far more complex than right-to-lifers allow.
A suspect was arrested Tuesday night in the Michigan high school shooting, a 15-year-old male sophomore at the school, where he killed three and injured several others. His name hasnât been released, and no motive is known. His weapon was a 9 mm Sig Sauer semiautomatic handgun that his father had bought four days earlier. Iâm interested in learning more about the circumstances under which Dad bought the gun, and why he thought it was a good idea to leave this weapon and a few 15-round magazines lying around the house unlocked.Â
On days of shootings like this, I always make it a point to check in on the NRA website, specifically its page that updates readers on âgun freedomâ developments across the various states. They never comment on these shootings, of course, or if they do, itâs to deflect blame elsewhere. But mostly youâll see, grimly, that theyâre bragging about various bills advancing in state legislaturesâand they have a lot to brag about.
Whatâs up with Kevin McCarthy and that nutty House Republican Caucus? The main takeaway of the last 24 hours is that Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a tweet calling her Republican colleague Nancy Mace âtrashâ because she supports a rape and incest exception on abortion and wants to see her primaried. Mace actually dropped the f-bomb to reporters talking about MTG. McCarthy is supposedly trying to smooth things over behind the scenes. This means, odds are, that heâll throw Mace overboard as he did Liz Cheney. Itâs a nuthouse. And yet Democrats canât seem to make any political hay out of it.
At NewRepublic.com, we give you a smart Alex Shephard take on Kyle Rittenhouseâs appalling victory/martyr tour. Rittenhouseâs point: âPeople should really be out marching for Kyle Rittenhouse, not victims of police brutality.â Daniel Strauss delivers some inside reporting on intra-Democratic debates about how they should sell Build Back Better (assuming it passes the Senate); be sure to read down to the quote thatâll make you spit out your coffee. Abdul El-Sayed explains how we can do better in response to omicron than we did delta. And Melody Schreiber speaks to a public health official in South Africa about how the omicron variant, and the Western response, look from there.
Thanks for reading, Michael Tomasky, editor |
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