Susan Collins

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and the rest of the bipartisan group of senators working on the passage of a same-sex marriage bill announced today that they’re going to table their efforts until after the election. Baldwin in a statement noted that she’s confident the group will get enough Republicans on board post-midterms for the bill to pass the Senate.

Some top Senate Democrats are reportedly considering weaving same-sex marriage legislation into a coming spending bill that would keep the government open past the end of the month.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said it himself upon unveiling a new, bipartisan bill that would, at the very least, codify the right to an abortion into federal law: it’s the bare minimum.

“What the four of us were trying to do was put a statutory minimum in place that replicated what the law was a day before Dobbs,” Kaine said of the Reproductive Freedom For All Act, which he introduced with Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) this afternoon.

The language of the law is a bare bones compromise, seemingly aimed at putting something on the books that would prevent red states from outright banning access to abortion, which we’ve seen proposed and passed in several states across the nation since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June. It could also help protect people living in states with old trigger laws on the books that are now going into effect post-Roe.