Editors’ Blog

Axios reports that after 18 hours to think over a highly credible report that the abortion restriction absolutist paid a girlfriend to get an abortion, they decided he’s good to go. After the same time to evaluate his son’s claims that he abandoned his family and repeatedly threatened to kill his him and his mother, Walker’s then-estranged and now-ex-wife, Republican powerbrokers similarly decided Herschel Walker is the man to make America great after all. So it’s full speed ahead. Prominent abortion groups have also reaffirmed their support for Walker. Ronna McDaniel, Rick Scott along with family men, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump are all vouching for Walker’s character and say it’s on to victory.

I’ve heard directly and indirectly over the last couple days from various campaigns , strategists, pols that abortion rights is the issue Democrats need to close on, how they’re shifting this or shifting that. Is it too late? I’m not sure. Of course, it’s not like abortion hasn’t figured prominently in this election cycle. But it certainly hasn’t been placed at the center of the campaign as it could have been, and perhaps still could.

It is such a breath of fresh air, seeing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson say from the bench what the 14th Amendment actually says. “It’s not a race-blind remedy,” she says, in something of an understatement. But we can actually go well beyond this since so much of modern jurisprudence, mostly but not only from the right, is based not only on ignoring the context and plain text of the 14th Amendment but pretending that the real Constitution — albeit with some additions and fresh paint jobs — is the one finalized in the first Congress as the first ten amendments. The Civil War amendments are not only not race-blind. They reflect a larger realization and aim: that the whole state thing just hadn’t worked out.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson brings a devastating “originalist” reading to the Civil War-era constitutional amendments during the ongoing oral arguments over Alabama’s redistricting plan. Our live coverage here.

Adam Serwer: “I mean she is correct as a matter of fact and history it’s just not something you hear a justice say.”

Legal affairs reporter Chris Geidner, on KBJ this morning: “She’s really incredible, right from the start of her time here. Unlike any new justice that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

It’s been an incredibly shameless pivot to the general election season for the current crop of Republican candidates hoping to secure wins in November. As they face the music on the electability of their extreme views, we’ve seen the candidates — some of whom have not only pushed Big Lie propaganda as policy positions, but have launched their entire political careers on the back of Trumpy election denialism — flail around, walking back or entirely reversing their stances on the 2020 election in recent weeks.

Desperate GOPers such as Blake Masters in Arizona have also attempted to completely re-write their views on abortion, as Roe’s overturning has turned out to be incredibly unpopular among Americans, and an energizing rallying cry for Democrats.

But Tudor Dixon’s recent spin might be among the most flagrant yet.

Big props to TPM’s Josh Kovensky. A few hours after TPM published his exclusive story on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals sitting on an appeal for nearly seven years without issuing a ruling, the court finally ruled in the case a few minutes ago. Here’s the latest.

Twitter has flagged as “sensitive content” an abortion ad from former Congressman Max Rose. (This means that if you’ve set the check box that you don’t want to see images of crime scenes and beheadings the ad won’t show up for you.) This is the always hotly contested Staten Island seat, currently held by Republican Nicole Malliotakis. The ad is about a woman dying after she was unable to receive an abortion when her life was in danger.

Here’s the video.

Yesterday I noticed the irrepressible Josh Kraushaar’s report on the Senate campaign. He’s one of the most notorious of DC reporters, now predictably working for Axios. He was positively giddy at newly good news for Republicans hoping to retake control of the Senate. But he’s not altogether wrong. Kraushaar focuses on two races — Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Democrats’ Mandela Barnes is now running behind Ron Johnson and John Fetterman’s once huge margin over Mehmet Oz has shrunk to mid- or low single digits. Kraushaar says Republicans are making gains by switching the discussion to crime. (Generally, he goes with his perennial hobbyhorse: Democrats are too liberal to win elections.) But I don’t think crime politics is precisely it.

I want to dig in a bit more on our exclusive this morning about the appeal before the 11th Circuit that has dragged on for nearly seven years since oral arguments with no decision from the court.

As I said earlier, it’s not clear WHY this is happening. But I don’t think we have to throw our hands up in the air in helplessness and lament another broken institution without accountability. It’s pretty clear where responsibility for this fiasco lies.

TPM’s Josh Kovensky has a new piece up on a bizarre case where a federal appeals court has simply failed to make a decision … for almost SEVEN years and counting.

The case was briefed, oral arguments were held (way back in February 2016), and despite entreaties from both parties the court has not issued a decision.

There are rumors and theories floating around for WHY no decision has been forthcoming, but nothing we could nail down or confirm. All we know is the court has abandoned its obligation to issue a ruling in anything approaching a timely fashion, circumstances legal experts describe to us as “extraordinary.”

Give it a read.