A Hard-Fought Victory

Hello! It's the weekend, this is The Weekender. ☕

While Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson celebrated a moment of America at its best — finally ending the 232-year drought of Black women serving on the Supreme Court — she invoked a reminder of America at its worst.

"Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave," she said, quoting Dr. Maya Angelou’s inimitable poem “And Still I Rise.”

Friday was, for Jackson and the countless Black girls and women watching, a day of triumph. But it was not presented unalloyed of the tribulations she and those who came before her suffered and survived.

While describing her confirmation hearings, President Joe Biden referred to certain lines of Republican questioning as “verbal abuse” and thundered that she withstood “the most vile, baseless assertions and accusations” with poise and grace.

“That strength lifted up millions of Americans who watched you, Judge Jackson, especially women and women of color who have had to run the gauntlet in their own lives,” he said.

Jackson reminded listeners that in one generation, her family had gone from segregation to seeing its member on the Supreme Court — both a terrifically inspiring line, and one that underscores the dark reality that the evils of state-sanctioned segregation existed in the very recent past.

Even Jackson’s elevation to the Court, a victory in making the historically nearly completely all-white, all-male body more representative, won’t change its fundamental ills. Five of the six conservatives comprising a supermajority poised to fundamentally alter American life were nominated by Presidents most people voted against.

And yet. And yet.

The refrain favored by prominent Black politicians from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) to members of the Black Congressional Caucus has been the same: “Nobody can steal our joy.”

Jackson’s elevation to the Supreme Court doesn’t fix the abundant problems with the body or the country. But it’s a moment of shining, hopeful progress in a country constantly at war between its demons and better angels.  

“This is not only a sunny day — I mean this from the bottom of my heart —  this is going to let so much sun shine on so many young women, so many young Black women, so many minorities,” Biden said, adding: “We will turn to our children and grandchildren and say: ‘I was there.’”

— Kate Riga

Who Are These Guys?

I’ve been following the arrest this week of Arian Taherzadeh and Haidar Ali, two D.C. Navy Yard residents who allegedly ran a two year-long scheme aimed at, federal prosecutors say, “ingratiat[ing]” themselves with the Secret Service. It’s becoming more and more clear that, while alarming, the details in this case may not be those of a well-orchestrated intelligence plot and instead something far more prosaic: two guys who liked guns and let their big mouths get ahead of them.

Federal prosecutors suggested as much at a court hearing on Friday. We reported that the two never paid rent on the apartments they leased, leading to eviction proceedings. That in itself, however, doesn’t rule out the possibility that they were up to something. It’s just still very unclear what that was. Part of me likes to think that they were, in fact, recruited by an intelligence agency, only to half-ass the operation itself while stashing whatever money they got elsewhere. Alternatively, records show that the pair set up a security company in an LLC. Was this all an effort to impress the real guys? People who might help eventually secure lucrative contracts, before all the lying blew up in Taherzadeh and Ali’s faces? 

— Josh Kovensky

Preparing For A Post-Roe America

It doesn't take much, if any, tea leaf reading to know where reproductive rights are headed in this country. And those who are in the position to decide the rights of millions have done little to hide the extent to which they are salivating as, it appears, their victory approaches.

When the conservative Supreme Court hands down its decision on Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban this summer, it seems, given the tenor of oral arguments in the case, that the justices may take on Roe directly – and, with it, the question of whether people have a federal right to have an abortion. Even if the Court sidesteps a ruling on Roe to uphold the 15-week ban, that in itself will suggest Roe has been de-facto overturned or significantly weakened. 

And this week we got a good read on what's to come in a post-Roe America – when one's right to an abortion is determined by where they live and which states are nearby. We've seen red states prepping for this moment for some time. Oklahoma's state legislature this week passed the most extreme abortion ban in the nation. The bill – which makes performing an abortion a felony, no matter how many weeks along the patient is – is on its way to the governor's desk. It won't become law until this summer, around the time when we know Roe's fate. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is planning ahead for a post-Roe Michigan. If the precedent established in the landmark case is overturned, abortion will become illegal in Michigan, due to a 1930s-era law still on the books in the state. It's almost identical to what Oklahoma Republicans just shoved through the state legislature. But Whitmer is preemptively pushing to find a way to ensure Michiganders' access to abortion care is not compromised, regardless of how things go this summer.

— Nicole Lafond

Anti-government extremist and Idaho gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy found himself getting hauled off to jail for a 10-day sentence on Thursday after a county judge found him in contempt of court.

Bundy was slapped with jail time for refusing to do the 40 hours of community service he’d been ordered to complete when he was convicted of trespassing last year in connection with his COVID protest at the Idaho State Capitol in 2020.

Except Bundy and his campaign insist that he totally did do community service by [checks notes] being on the campaign trail, which Bundy touts as a very educational experience for the Idaho communities he visits.

Bundy’s campaign decried the injustice of the judge’s sentence on Thursday, claiming that the candidate had gone “above and beyond” his obligation to serve the community by enlightening Idahoans on “their rights, the U.S. Constitution,” and “a host of other valuable bits of knowledge.”

“If this not-for-profit act isn’t considered a ‘service’ to the public, we don’t know what is,” the campaign declared.

— Cristina Cabrera

• Former President Trump’s attempt at launching a social media platform to circumvent his ban by tech giants has been, let’s just say, a train wreck. Read the timeline of glitchiness here. 
• Arizona's new voting law adds not only a documentary proof of citizenship requirement for voter registrations, but also a documentary proof of residence requirement as well. The predictable result: it'll be harder for marginalized groups to vote.
• On March 30, D.C. police made a jaw-dropping discovery inside the home of anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy: Five fetuses stored in her basement. Read our 5-points explainer on the absolutely bonkers story here.
• From TPM Cafe: The Stakes Are High For The EPA’s Newly Appointed Chemical Review Director.
• Donald Trump Jr. was texting Mark Meadows two days after the 2020 election, outlining in specific detail several avenues for overturning the will of the people in the election, including having several GOP-controlled legislatures approving slates of “Trump electors.” 

"If you are a bank robber, or you’re a jewelry store robber, and you go into Tiffany’s and you steal their diamonds and get caught, you have to give the diamonds back.”

– Trump during a Washington Post interview on Wednesday laying out the simple logic of flushing democracy down the toilet and having his henchmen in Congress reinstate him as president after losing the election.

— Cristina Cabrera