Following up on the post below about this Senate border bill. However this goes I suspect it will go quickly. No one in the Senate wants to get caught out on the losing side of it. With that in mind Politico’s Burgess Everett just reported that Sen. John Thune says he’s “still reviewing the text and I think James Lankford worked as hard as he could to get the best deal under the circumstances.”

I wouldn’t be so quick to assume Democrats got taken by working with Senate Republicans to put together this bipartisan border deal. There are a number of provisions in this deal which many Democrats won’t like at all just on the merits. That is an important question. But here I’m talking about the politics. It’s House Republicans who are in an awkward position now.

House Republicans are now clearly refusing to support provisions they’ve been demanding for years. Now they claim that they are refusing to support or even allow a vote on the deal because it doesn’t go far enough. But it’s a bit late for that since they were already pretty open about simply refusing to vote for anything until Trump becomes President again.

There was a helpful article in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend illustrating some of the actual situation in Israel-Palestine. It’s a profile of far-right Kahanist politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is one of the two ultra-far-right figures keeping Netanyahu in power. Through the article he pines for the return of Donald Trump who would, Ben-Gvir says, finally give Israel the free hand it needs to encourage the “voluntary” departure of the Gazan population and resettle the strip with Israel settlements.

“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir told the Journal. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”

I want to flag to your attention two interesting articles on the the shape of the 2024 election. The first one is from Nate Cohn of the Times and it is is on a topic that requires some background explanation.

There’s been a debate for the last year or so about two potential sources of insight into who has the advantage going into 2024. Camp one looks at polls which show Trump and Biden either roughly tied or Trump with a small but significant lead. But a lengthy list of special election outcomes tells a different story. It shows Democrats significantly and fairly consistently exceeding historical benchmarks and, often, polls. There are a lot more polls than special elections. But special elections aren’t estimates of election results. They are actual election results.

I can’t speak to the methodology. But a study just published in JAMA Internal Medicine calculated that from the time the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision (calculated from July 1st, 2022) and the end of 2023 64,000 pregnancies occurred as a result of rape in the 14 states that immediately implemented near total bans on abortion.

Of those 64,000, 5,500 rape-caused pregnancies took place in states with at least nominal exceptions for rape. As we know, those exceptions can be more nominal than real. But if those are excluded the number comes down to just under 59,000.

These are statistical estimates. So there’s probably some room for quibbling at the margins for the exact numbers. But the scale of pregnancies as a result of rape occurring with no recourse to abortion without traveling to another state is staggering.