Crooked Media - What A Day: Weapon of choice

As we hurdle towards the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, which stripped tens of millions of Americans of their right to abortion, the fight for abortion rights has changed dramatically, and in many ways that scares the anti-choice movement. 
 

• In post-Roe America, the anti-choice movement has successfully implemented heinous abortion bans across the country. But time and again, even in deep red states, when abortion access has been put on the ballot, voters have come out in droves to preserve it. Now, even some Republican legislators (mostly women, if you can believe it) are standing against some of these more obscenely restrictive bills. In Nebraska, a bill to ban abortion at six weeks fell one vote short of breaking a filibuster, and is unlikely to move forward this year despite backing from Gov. Jim Pillen (R-NE). This is a particularly interesting development in the hyper-conservative Cornhusker State, which was the first state in the country to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy in 2010. 
   

• In Lindsey Graham’s South Carolina, state lawmakers voted 22-21 to shelve a near-total abortion ban for the rest of the year. State-Sen. Sandy Senn (R-SC) criticized the chamber’s majority leader, Shane Massey, for repeatedly “taking us off a cliff on abortion.” She went on, “...you all, you men in the chamber, metaphorically keep slapping women,” by repeatedly raising abortion on stricter and stricter terms. The five women in the South Carolina Senate filibustered the bill, which would have banned abortion at conception with exceptions for rape and incest through only the first trimester, fatal fetal anomalies (required to be confirmed by two physicians), or to save the patient’s life. 
   

• State-Sen. Mia McLeod (I-SC), who shared her experience of having been raped during a previous floor debate on abortion, expressed her frustration that women must reveal their most intimate and traumatic experiences to “enlighten and engage” men. “Just as rape is about power and control, so is this total ban,” she said, “Those who continue to push legislation like this are raping us again with their indifference, violating us again with their righteous indignation, taunting us with their insatiable need to play God while passing laws that are ungodly.” By the skin of its teeth, abortion remains legal in South Carolina up to 22 weeks, and this marks the third time a near-total ban has failed in the GOP-led chamber since the Dobbs decision.

The hard-won victories of many activists and lawmakers have stemmed the rising tide of anti-choice legislation for now, but the fight to come will present many new challenges.
 

• You know how when Roe was first overturned, we kept hearing about trigger laws going into effect at the state level, some of which had been dormant on the books for a century or more? Well there’s unfortunately more where that came from. A 150-year-old Reconstruction-era federal law called the Comstock Act banned the posting of abortion supplies and was never fully repealed, and will therefore most likely be the next frontier for the abortion rights fight at the federal level. Medication abortions make up the majority of abortions in the U.S. today, and the Comstock Act has already  been weaponized by anti-abortion activists and judges to attack the availability of medication abortion. Taken to its furthest extent, it could even eliminate surgical abortions as well by restricting the shipment of medical instruments and supplies used in the procedure. 
   

• Tennessee’s abortion ban, one of the strictest in the nation, will now include an extremely narrow exception for doctors to use their “reasonable medical judgment” now that medical experts have convinced a growing number of Republican lawmakers that their draconian statutes fail to protect doctors and pregnant patients, as stories of pregnant patients being told to essentially wait until they start bleeding out before they will be admitted for the procedure become more and more frequent. Five Texas women are suing the state for denying them abortions when they faced complications during their pregnancies. One of the women called out anti-choice Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Cornyn (R-TX) by name, saying she nearly “died on their watch.” The Lone Star State’s ultra-strict six-week abortion ban has certain “medical emergency exceptions” but they’re so nebulous that many doctors are unwilling to take the risks associated with treating patients properly.

Supporters of maintaining and restoring the right to safe, legal abortion access have to keep ourselves acquainted with the ever-changing battlefield, and people who want to see abortion swept into the “ash heap of history” at all costs sure as hell are not backing down.

Crooked’s newest pod, Pod Save the UK is launching May 4th, and if you're interested in politics you're going to love this show. In a special bonus episode, the hosts of Pod Save America sat down with the Pod Save the UK hosts - Nish Kumar and Coco Khan - to tackle the really important issues like, what “chat shit, get banged” means, how to turn political outrage into action, and of course what really happened to the Queen’s corgis. 

For more of this crossover episode, watch now on the Pod Save the World Youtube or listen and subscribe to Pod Save The UK, wherever you get your podcasts to hear new episodes starting May 4th.

Rememberthe 2018 Senate investigation into now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that found there was “no evidence” to substantiate claims of sexual assault? That investigation? Well, according to new information obtained by The Guardian, it contained a number of “serious omissions.” Incredible surprise! The original report released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also contained an unfounded and unverified claim that one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, a Yale classmate of his named Deborah Ramirez, was “likely” mistaken when she alleged that he exposed himself to her at a dorm party, arguing that she was thinking of a member of Kavanaugh’s fraternity named Jack Maxey. Surprise! It turns out Maxey was not attending Yale at the time of the alleged incident. He was still a senior in high school. Another Yale graduate, Max Steir, reportedly wanted to go to the FBI anonymously during the confirmation process to attest that he had witnessed one of Brett’s buddies forcibly push Kavanaugh’s penis into the hand of a female classmate at a party, but when Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee got wind of this, they never interviewed Steir. Republican Senators protecting a Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual misconduct? Well now we’ve seen it all.

Whistleblower documents show that Chief Justice John Roberts’s wife, Jane Roberts, has made over $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms, and that at least one firm argued a case before the Court after paying her hundreds of thousands of dollars. Seems like there might be something going on with this Supreme Court?

A federal judge in Virginia rejected Google’s request to toss the federal government’s antitrust lawsuit against the company. 

The Federal Reserve said on Friday that Silicon Valley Bank failed because of a deadly combination of extremely poor bank management, weakened regulations, and lax government supervision. We could have told you that!

At a New Hampshire campaign stop, disgraced former president Donald Trump embraced a January 6 defendant who already served time for attacking the Capitol and said that she wanted former Vice President Mike Pence to be executed for treason. Obviously she is also a QAnon cultist. 

Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) signed four gun-control bills into law on Friday, months after a deadly shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs. 

Last year, liberal justices on the North Carolina State Supreme Court ruled that obviously-gerrymandered maps of the state’s legislative and congressional districts were illegal and must be redrawn. Today, with a newly-elected right-wing majority, the same court looked at the same case and reversed its decision, saying it has no authority to act to change the maps. Wouldn’t you know it, this allows the Republican-controlled General Assembly to call off the court-ordered State House, Senate, and congressional district boundaries that were used in the 2022 midterm elections. It’s just the latest instance of Republicans rigging their maps and state rules when they don’t get the results they want, and sure to be seen again in other red states across the country.

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Yesterday was Take Your Child to Work Day at the White House and the Secret Service agents were so CUTE. 

A new Fox News(!) poll shows that the overwhelming majority of voters prefer stricter gun control over arming citizens to reduce gun violence. The poll shows 80 percent support for an assault-weapons ban!!!

Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) signed bills into law on Thursday enshrining legal protections for people who travel to their states seeking abortions or gender-affirming health care. 

Ben & Jerry’s announced on Friday that the company has reached an agreement with workers at its flagship store in Burlington, VT, who have been seeking to unionize. Pints of Cherry Garcia and Phish Food for all!!