Greetings from Timothy Noah, and happy birthday to my wife, Sarah, born on this day sometime in the second half of the twentieth century.
But enough sentimental nonsense; you want the news. The big story is yesterdayâs oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Womenâs Health Organization, which we can now predict with some confidence will overturn 1973âs Roe v. Wade in part or in whole. Robert Barnes of The Washington Post wrote that the court âappeared likely to uphold a Mississippi law that violates one of the essential holdings of Roe v. Wadeâ in prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks. (Under Roe and 1992âs Planned Parenthood v. Casey, states may not prohibit abortions before fetal viability, which is around 23 weeks.)
The only real suspense, at this point, is whether the high court will toss out Roe completely and let individual states ban abortion outright. Chief Justice John Roberts, âoften the most moderate of the conservatives,â said the Mississippi law was not a âdramatic departure.â The courtâs other five conservatives, Barnes reports, âindicated they were open to simply getting rid of bothâ Roe and Planned Parenthood.
For the GOP, a pro-life victory in Dobbs could scramble next yearâs midterm elections, Carl Hulse writes in The New York Times, transforming abortion overnight from an issue that energizes Republicans to one that energizes Democrats. âIt will certainly motivate our baseâ if Roe is overturned, said Senator Gary Peters, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Already, abortion is a key issue in Nevada and New Hampshire, where two pro-choice incumbents, Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Maggie Hassan, are up for reelection. New Hampshire is a notably pro-choice state.
The other big story remains the omicron Covid-19 variant. The first known U.S. case showed up in San Francisco, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday, in the form of a resident of that city who recently visited South Africa. The patient is self-quarantined, The Wall Street Journal reports, with âmild Covid-19 symptoms that are improving.â All this personâs known contacts since returning have tested negative. The patient was twice-jabbed with the Moderna vaccine but had not received a booster.
President Joe Biden will announce today that insurers must reimburse policyholders for at-home Covid tests going forward and that international travelers to the United States will have to show a negative Covid test taken during the previous 24 hours. (Until now, 72 hours was sufficient.)
Republican politics remain all about Trump, but a rococo doctrinal dispute reminiscent of Stalinist Russia has emerged over whether attacking someone for disloyalty to Trump risks hurting Trump by repeating anti-Trump statements. Whatâs an apparatchik to do? Politicoâs Alex Isenstadt reports that Donald Trump asked David McIntosh, president of the libertarian Club for Growth, to take down TV ads showing Ohio Senate candidate J.D. âHillbilly Elegyâ Vance calling Trump an âidiot,â ânoxious,â and âoffensiveâ in 2016, when Vance was a Never Trumper. (Vance has since pledged eternal loyalty to the GOPâs Dear Father.) Trump told McIntosh the ads risked driving down his popularity in Ohio. McIntosh kept the ads on the air, even expanding the $1 million buy by $500,000, but sent Trump a memo reassuring him with poll numbers that the ads had no impact on Trumpâs support.
Here at NewRepublic.com, Sam Adler-Bell profiles the conservative âcounterrevolutionariesâ who seem sometimes to hold the conservative establishment in greater contempt than the liberal left. Theyâre young; theyâre mostly Catholic (converts greatly outnumber âCradle Catholicsâ); they gravitate to the Claremont Institute, a California think tank founded by Straussians; and, bizarrely, they donât talk much about electoral strategy. To them, Donald Trump is at worst a useful idiot. Alex Shephard writes that CNN waited too long to take Chris Cuomo off the air and, when it did, protested that he loved not wisely but too well. In fact, Shephard notes, âHe was using his perch as one of the most prominent news anchors in the country to smear victims and influence coverage of his even more powerful brother.â Grace Segers interviews Peter Welch, Vermontâs lone House member and a Democrat whoâs running to succeed retiring Senator Pat Leahy. Asked why Vermont has the highest vaccination rate in the country, Welch says: âWe, I think, have a citizenry that is respectful of others, where folks want to be safe and careful to protect themselves and their families.â What a bunch of weirdos! And Richard D. Kahlenberg delivers a rave review of Sheryll Cashinâs book White Space, Black Hood, observing that in the geographic isolation of low-income African Americans, âclass discrimination overlaps with and compounds racial segregation.â
Arrivederci,
Timothy Noah, staff writer |
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