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The Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to block the Texas abortion ban while a legal challenge plays out, providing Justice Samuel Alito with a very special opportunity to prove the critics wrong!
- It’s been a whiplash-inducing week in the courts for Texas’s unconstitutional abortion law, so here’s a quick review of how we got here: Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman granted the DOJ’s request to block enforcement of the law, writing that since it went into effect, “women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution.” Pitman’s order was in place for all of 48 hours before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most right-wing courts in the country, issued a temporary stay, which reinstated the law.
- On Thursday, the Fifth Circuit reaffirmed that decision, ruling 2-to-1 to let the abortion ban remain in effect while it considered a full appeal of the lower-court decision. In response, the Justice Department announced on Friday that it will ask the Supreme Court to step in and reinstate the injunction. It’s not clear exactly when it will file the emergency application, but once it does, the Court is likely to issue a decision in about a week.
- That decision still won’t be a final ruling on the law’s constitutionality, but the Court will be considering a different set of legal arguments from when it decided to throw vulnerable Texans to the wolves last month, so there’s some hope for a different outcome. The Biden administration has challenged the law’s enforcement structure that turns private citizens into bounty hunters in an attempt to thwart legal challenges, telling the Fifth Circuit, “if Texas’s scheme is permissible, no constitutional right is safe from state-sanctioned sabotage of this kind.”
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As S.B. 8 ping-pongs through the courts, it continues to take an immense toll on peoples’ lives.
- Earlier this week, Planned Parenthood filed a brief with the Fifth Circuit detailing the nightmares that Texans seeking abortions now face. The stories are nothing short of horrifying, from a young victim of sexual assault who was turned away from an out-of-state clinic, to a woman who was driving to Oklahoma for an abortion when a police officer pulled her over, made her Black boyfriend get out of the car, and interrogated her about why she was headed to a Planned Parenthood. Texas had about two dozen abortion clinics before the law took effect, but some are in danger of closing if the law stays in place much longer.
- Meanwhile, another major SCOTUS abortion case looms on the horizon. On December 1, the Court will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, over the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It’s possible that the Court will issue another decision on the Texas ban before Dobbs comes up, but however it rules, the conservative justices could wind up using the Mississippi case to either overturn Roe v. Wade or gut it like a jack-o’-lantern.
The good news is, the Biden administration is pulling no punches in its fight against the Texas abortion law. The stressful news is, the law’s immediate future will once again be up to the far-right ghoul brigade that allowed it to go into effect in the first place, and to truly protect Americans’ rights, Biden will have to ignore his own commission on reforming the Court that’s turned out to be more concerned with legitimizing it.
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It’s Edith Wilson’s birthday today! Is she historically a horrible person? Sure. But does her story make for a great narrative podcast? Definitely. You can listen to all eight episodes of QCODE and Crooked’s scripted series Edith! right now. Dive into the immersive work of First Lady Edith Wilson voiced by Rosamund Pike and written by Gonzalo Cordova and former Lovett or Leave It writer Travis Helwig. As Vulture puts it, “Edith! is a fiction podcast that stands as a really good time, minute to minute, and that’s no small feat.” Check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Capitol Police officer Michael Riley, a 25-year veteran of the force, has been charged with obstruction of justice for encouraging a January 6 rioter to cover his tracks. Riley was on duty but not in the Capitol on January 6, according to the indictment. The next day, he reached out to an unidentified insurrectionist and urged him to delete Facebook posts that showed him inside the Capitol during the attack. Riley then deleted his own messages with the man, whom he had never met but had bonded with over their shared love of fishing in the week before the insurrection (proving that even the most wholesome use of Facebook will eventually go wrong). Riley is the first Capitol Police officer known to be arrested in connection with the attack, and his charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
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- Booster Week continues: The FDA’s vaccine advisors have voted to recommend the Johnson & Johnson booster shot for emergency use authorization, but didn’t weigh in on the finding that a Moderna or Pfizer booster might work better for J&J recipients.
- Nikolas Cruz will plead guilty to all murder and attempted murder charges in the Parkland, FL, school shooting. Prosecutors said there have been no plea deal negotiations, and have previously vowed to pursue the death penalty.
- British lawmaker David Ames has died after being stabbed several times while meeting with constituents. Essex Police said they had a 25-year-old suspect in custody.
- Suicide bombers at a Shi’ite mosque in Kandahar Afghanistan killed at least 33 people and wounded 73 more, in the second attack targeting Shi’ite worshippers in a week.
- Ron “Q” Watkins has formally and derangedly announced his candidacy for Congress. :(
- Several members of President Biden’s Supreme Court reform commission are just as unsatisfied with the commission’s draft report as the rest of us.
- Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired hours before his retirement under corrupt pressure from then-President Trump, has settled a lawsuit with the Justice Department, which restored his pension.
- A Texas school administrator told teachers they would need to include “opposing” views of the Holocaust, in a cool new twist on Texas’s already terrible “critical race theory” law limiting how public schools can teach current events. The head of the school district apologized following a national uproar: “We recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust.”
- In other Texas triumphs, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) disabled a website with resources for LGBTQ youth after the guy primarying Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) took political shots at it.
- Donald Trump told a bunch of GOP donors, unprompted, that he’s not into getting peed on. “My ‘I’m Not Into Getting Peed On’ T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt,” and so on.
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A wildly shady pharmacy company received millions of dollars in loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, then turned around and gouged anti-vax telehealth patients for horse dewormer. Ahead of the pandemic, Alpesh and Manish Patel had a network of pharmacies that were buckling under mountains of debts and fraud lawsuits. But between an influx of taxpayer funds and a loosening of telehealth rules, they were able to rebrand one of their companies to the digital pharmacy Ravkoo, which filled at least 340,000 prescriptions between November 2020 and September 2021. Nearly half of those prescriptions were for ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine; another 30 percent were for other unproven COVID treatments. Ravkoo often charged sky-high prices for the drugs, which patients nearly always paid for out of pocket—and there’s no telling how many of them wound up in the hospital. The company hasn’t faced any consequences, and there’s nothing in particular stopping the Patels from rebranding once again. A perfect system, no notes!
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The Biden administration will donate an additional 17 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine to the African Union.
Four Senate Democrats in competitive reelection races have out-fundraised their GOP opponents by...quite a bit.
A Cambridge college will become the first U.K. institution to return a looted Benin Bronze to Nigeria, which is expected to set off a wave of repatriations.
A rare two-headed baby turtle named Mary-Kate and Ashley is doing great.
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