Editors’ Blog
There’s a fairly anemic jobs report out today. The economy added 235,000 jobs in August. That’s just okay in normal times and pretty disappointing compared to recent months when closer to a million jobs were created. Commentary I’m seeing is pointing to a weaker than expected recovery. And that’s true as far as it goes. But what jumps out to me is that the dialog about the economy, the robustness and consistency of the recovery, hasn’t really caught up to the fact that COVID isn’t actually over.
Everything’s relative. We’re in a much better position than we were a year ago. Getting gravely ill from COVID is now mostly voluntary. But over 1500 people died in the US from COVID yesterday. Schools are opening but with various kinds of in-person mitigation. Most people I know are still not dining out or socializing or traveling in just the same way they did before the pandemic. More than a year ago, definitely. But not the same as two years ago. I’m not telling you anything more than we all know. My point is that we still appear to be operating in – or at least economics and politics talk seems to be operating in – this model of how quickly we’re bouncing back even though we’re still in it. So it’s not a huge surprise that we’re not bouncing back that quickly. Or that the bounce back is partial and limited.
Where Things Stand: Last We Checked, Ted Wasn’t Cool With States Regulating Reproductive Health 
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) put out a rather nebbishy statement today addressing the disastrous abortion ban that went into effect in his state this week, perhaps in part to cut through the curious silence on the part of GOP leadership on an issue it has campaigned on for decades.
So what’s Joe Manchin up to? I don’t know exactly. It certainly sounds like he is threatening to upend the Democrats entire legislative agenda and probably doom Biden’s presidency in a bid to dramatically scale back the budget reconciliation bill. How much lower than $3.5 trillion that means I have no idea. But it sounds like he means by a lot? Down to $2 trillion, $1.5 trillion? This is a positioning statement, like basically everything Manchin does, and subject to haggling and negotiation, like every position he stakes out. But certainly progressives will refuse to vote for his prized bipartisan mini-bill if this is what he plans to do. And they’ll be right to do so. There was a cross party deal: both factions support both bills. So no reconciliation bill, no bipartisan mini-bill. No nuthin.
SCOTUS Delenda Est
There’s nothing I can add to the overnight news out of the Supreme Court and Texas that we haven’t discussed previously: the Supreme Court is both corrupted and corrupt. One of the court’s nine members sits illegitimately. At least five of the current conservative majority have opted for a parodic version of what the judicial right once denounced as “judicial activism.” The conservative majority’s jurisprudence is a results-oriented approach abandoning both precedent and the more basic interpretive traditions to arrive at the preferred outcomes of either the Republican party or conservative ideology generally. A 6 to 3 Court doesn’t require extraordinary measures to overrule Roe. It seems prepped to do so next year in a case from Mississippi. The overnight decision – which rather overstates what the Court did – is another example of the injudicious exuberance to use the Court to remake the nation’s laws in ways that mere democracy will not allow.
The Court’s corrupt. The solution is to expand the number of justices on the high court to at least thirteen in order to break its power. I don’t know when this will be possible. We don’t know the future. But it is important to know what the correct and proper solution is.
For the immediate issue of reproductive rights the logical decision is to take the standing precedent of Roe and Casey and enact it into law right now. Given the aforementioned corruption I think it is quite likely the Court will strike such a law down, in whole or in part. If it does the Court will simply indict itself and I believe hasten the political will to break its power.
Watch The New Episode Of The Josh Marshall Podcast: Post-Roe Texas
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the Supreme Court’s action on a new Texas abortion ban and the conclusion of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.
Watch below and email us your questions for next week’s episode.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Where Things Stand: Pro-Choice When They Like Your Choice
Since the pandemic reached our shores last year, the right has been extremely vocal about its deeply held opposition to any type of government regulation that impacts personal health choices.
Taking Stock Of The Great and Cowardly Press Freakout Of August 2021
With the American war in Afghanistan and the American withdrawal from Afghanistan now definitively over, I’ve been trying to put the entirety of the last four weeks into some perspective. As you can see I’ve been fairly dug in on the proposition that the great majority of the criticism we’ve seen amounts to ignorance and deflection. Pulling the plug on a failed or misconceived mission isn’t pretty. But it is inevitable. The ugliness is built into the failure rather than a consequence of recognizing it. Most of what we’ve seen is an attempt to deny the failure (mostly hawks) or imagine that withdrawing would be orderly and free of consequences. But with all this reasoning, what parts were handled poorly? What could have been better organized or cleaner?
Perhaps this is only a matter of stepping back and with the benefit of clear eyes and more perspective and, well … agreeing with myself. But honestly, I think I really agree with myself. The airlift evacuation appears to have transported well over 110,000 people out of the country, an astonishing feat under any circumstances and probably unprecedented for a civilian airlift in a kinetic military context and in the context of state collapse.
All the latest on the new Texas anti-abortion law that went into effect at midnight.
Where Things Stand: Native Tribes Have Been Bucking Anti-Mask Rules For A While
We’ve watched and covered public school districts in red states around the U.S. defying Republican governors’ orders against universal masking in schools for the past several weeks. But as sovereign nations, many Native American tribes around the country have been taking school-related COVID mitigation measures into their own hands for some time.
Where Things Stand: Mississippi Guv Blames Everything And Everyone But Himself For Deadly COVID Spike
Back in April of this year, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) blamed the lackluster vaccination situation in the Magnolia State on “a very large African American population” and “a lot of rural people.”