From the moment Justice Alito’s draft decision leaked in early May (and really much earlier) it’s been clear that the only path to restoring Roe‘s protections was to elect two more senators to pass a Roe bill and change the filibuster rules to allow an up or down vote. The current leadership on the Hill simply doesn’t grasp the necessity of firm pledges from all 48 Democratic senators besides Manchin and Sinema. 48 pledges are there. But as we’ve discussed a few will require some real pressure. That’s why getting all the other pledges banked is so key. Then you can narrow the pressure down on any hold outs.

From the outset I’ve figured that high on the list of potential foot-draggers are Sens. Feinstein, Casey and King.

Today I want to talk about Sen. Feinstein, because we’ve got some new information on that front.

From TPM Reader LE …

I’ve been thinking about this too, the ongoing, tiresome noise from those frustrated that Democratic leadership and politicos don’t have a magic bullet to fix everything. Take Roe, for example. Some on the left are upset, claiming Democrats and the party have done nothing over the years to protect reproductive freedom and other rights and liberties by, for example, ginning up interest in voting Democratic and for candidates who will protect those rights. But is their claim true? Seems to me the alarm has been sounded for years, just not with the volume and persistence that Republicans deploy to keep their base riled up and ready to fall in line.

From TPM Reader ES …

I don’t think it is only “left-wing wreckers trying to break things” who are feeling growing frustration with the Democratic party. There is opportunity cost when the Democratic party leads the opposition – they take space, they demobilize other efforts by the implicit or explicit “trust us” logic of vote us in again, etc. And their response to the clear and systematic dismantling of norms and laws since Gore’s acquiescence, through failure to hold anyone accountable for the Great Crash of 08-09, to the denial of Garland’s nomination, up through the expanding Koch-envisioned and Tea Party / Trumpian grassroots fueled widening institutional erosion and now full, brazen takeover of the Supreme Court…has been astoundingly… small, tepid, narrow. 

“At the same time, many are already voicing frustration with the Democratic nostrum ‘go vote’ when the party already controls Congress and the White House.” This is a sentence from an article TPM Reader EH sent me about Tim Ryan’s Senate campaign in Ohio, basically the very narrow path he has to tread to have a chance with Ohio’s increasingly Republican fundamentals. It’s from the Ohio Capital Journal. But I wanted to highlight this single sentence because it captures a good bit of what we discussed here yesterday, at once a sign of ignorance and bad faith and also simply a reality Democrats need to confront whatever mix of ignorance or bad faith is behind it in the given case.

You did it.

As you can see by the tracker below, at some point yesterday we hit our $200,000 goal for this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. We are all pretty pumped here at TPM. Happy. Relieved. Energized. This is the first of many “thank yous” you’re going to be hearing from us over the next few days.

As I said in one post during the drive I was skeptical that we’d be able to reach this goal. Or perhaps equivocal. Uncertain? I thought it would be a real challenge, even though that was really the minimum to put everything in a good place. It’s daunting to put the number out there, with a counter and everything. What if you don’t get there? And it’s out there in public for everyone to see! In the event we hit our goal in about three weeks. Which is amazing. Just shy of 2,500 TPM Readers (2,477) contributed. We really appreciate your generosity and your faith in our operation.

You can of course still contribute. But we’re closing the curtains on the hard sell phase of this year’s effort. Truly, we really appreciate it.

More to come!

The Supreme Court last month struck down a century-old New York state gun restriction, broadening the Second Amendment as the nation weathers a now-familiar spate of deadly mass shootings. It was the first major gun control ruling from the High Court in a decade, and a win for the gun lobby and gun rights groups.

Though the case before the Court was a challenge to New York’s laws, the ruling will impact several others states, many home to large, dense cities, that have similar laws on the books.

As I’ve pressed the case for centering the 2022 election around the House and Two More Senators (“Roe and Reform”), one of the most consistent rejoinders I get is, “What’s the point? The Court will just throw out the law.” Or, “There is no point unless you reform the Court at the same time.” These are reasonable questions. But they’re wrong both as politics and law.

Here’s the short version: The near-term threat of the Court rejecting such a Roe law is real but overstated. But “Roe and Reform” is the best strategy regardless of what the Court decides to do. The details — the long version — are important, though. So let’s go through them.

“If the Democrats hold the House and add two Senators in November I will vote to pass a law making Roe’s protections the law nationwide and change the filibuster rules to guarantee that bill gets an up or down vote. And I will do that in January 2023.”

I continue to believe — in fact it’s all but a certainty — that continued Democratic control of Congress and any near-term restoration of abortion rights across the country rests almost entirely on Democrats making a firm commitment to pass such a law in January 2023. It’s creeping forward. A handful of Senate Democrats who hadn’t committed before have now done so. President Biden has said he supports doing so — not relevant in any direct sense but a very important signal. But it needs to move quickly.

I want to again thank everyone who’s contributed in our TPM Journalism Fund drive over the last 48 hours. As I noted, the last leg of even a successful drive is always the hardest. But this latest push has gotten us within shooting distance of our goal. We’re just shy of $190,000. We might even get to $200,000 this weekend.

If you want to help us keep up this momentum, just click right here. We so appreciate it. You’ve put smiles on all of our faces.