With Major Trans Rights And Abortion Decisions On The Horizon, The Culture War Commences

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear a major abortion case Tuesday, the next chapter in a case that the Supreme Court punted last term. 

In U.S. v. Idaho, Idaho wants its draconian abortion ban to supersede federal emergency room standards, letting the red state deny abortions to at least some women who arrive in medical crises. While the right-wing justices sounded ready to side with Idaho during oral arguments, they ultimately decided that they had interceded too early and booted the case back to the 9th Circuit. Some court watchers speculated that they were trying to keep abortion out of the headlines before the 2024 election (though some experts doubt that a more niche abortion fight would have triggered the same kind of tidal wave as Dobbs).

The case will likely get up to the high court again, as soon as the 9th Circuit is done with it. 

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is mulling a red-letter trans rights case, the first big culture war fight it heard this term. Trans rights supporters’ biggest hope rested with recreating the Bostock majority, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the liberals to rule that employers can’t discriminate against their employees on the basis of sexuality or gender identity. But Roberts sounded resolutely against upholding constitutional protections against Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban Wednesday. Gorsuch was the only justice who didn’t speak.

To the degree that the conservatives were incentivized to avoid ruling on politically salient issues before the election, that time has passed. Many have speculated that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (and maybe even Roberts too) may retire, clearing the way for much younger right-wing ideologues to take their place. Without dramatic Court reform, that would entrench the hard right majority for a generation. 

The Court is powerful, deeply partisan and unbound.

— Kate Riga

Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend

• Josh Kovensky checks in on the various Ukraine peace plans bouncing around Trumpworld and what they may really be about.
• Khaya Himmelman updates us on yet another Republican-led, pre-election lawsuit filed in a battleground state against voter roll maintenance practices that has been dismissed in court for lacking standing.
• Emine Yücel reviews the ways in which congressional Republicans are loudly shrugging off allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump’s pick for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

What Is Trump Going To Do About Ukraine?

It’s been a while since we wrote about Ukraine, and the status of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Unfortunately, things are not going well for the Ukrainians. Per some reports, they’re losing territory at a rate only matched by the first weeks of the war, when Russian forces were blocked outside of Kyiv but swept across the country’s southeast. Military analysts say that the Ukrainian army lacks the manpower to fully hold the roughly 600-mile frontline it faces against the Russian army. Ukraine has a third of Russia’s population and a relatively open political system where, unlike in Russia, people can register disapproval with conscription measures.

The country is in a precarious spot to an extent that, it seems, has not quite broken through in American media.

Understandably, to the extent that attention is on Ukraine at all, the focus is on the Trump administration’s declared intention to bring the conflict to an end and what steps it may take to effect that. There are several plans reportedly in play, none of which come from Trump himself. There’s a plan that Keith Kellogg, his recently-appointed point man on the conflict, proposed in April: the U.S. would “force” peace talks by curtailing weapons to Ukraine unless it enters into negotiations with Russia, and threatening Russia with boosted weapons to Ukraine if it fails to do the same. Moscow would be further coaxed in by taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table; territory would be frozen along current battle lines.

Reuters, which has been on top of the negotiations beat the past several months, ran a story citing an anonymous former Trump national security official as saying that the Kellogg plan, and plans attributed to Vice President-elect JD Vance and Ric Grenell, were all under discussion. All envision taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table. The person cited Vance telling a podcaster in September that DMZ could be established along current lines as a potential plan; Grenell’s remarks over the summer — that “autonomous zones” could be created in the regions that Russia has seized — also came up.

None of these plans, as articulated, seem to deal with the reality that Russia is gaining on the ground. Kremlin officials have said that freezing the conflict along current lines without a loss of Ukrainian sovereignty would be tantamount to a defeat for Russia.

It doesn’t require any real specialized knowledge to be very skeptical that these plans will bear any fruit (associated grifting is almost a given). But what’s more interesting to me is why we’re seeing them at all. It’s possible that incoming Trump officials are making opening volleys in what they expect to be a complex, long-term negotiation. They may sincerely believe that, for example, there are additional weapons and capabilities with which to flood Ukraine, giving it an advantage that would force the Russians to the table (I really doubt that).

But the problem is that the person who ultimately will make the decision — Trump — does not seem to be directly involved. He improvises; we all know that he’s unpredictable. We know that he has an animus towards Ukraine, and an affinity for authoritarians like Putin who interfered to help him in recent elections; he opposed the Ukraine aid supplemental earlier this year. So, what gives? In that light, the peace plans being floated start to seem more like a fig leaf for whatever course Trump eventually chooses. Total abandonment of Ukraine would not only result in a lot more death and destruction as the Russians move west, but it would likely stoke even more gargantuan refugee flows into Europe. It wouldn’t be pretty. It would constitute an incredible betrayal of a country that, in deed, is fighting for the values that supposedly lie at the core of America’s founding.

That being said, Zelensky and his team are, by all accounts, furiously trying to establish contacts with the Trump team and Republicans at large. Zelensky will be in Paris on Saturday for the reopening of Notre-Dame; Trump will be there as well. A top aide, Andriy Yermak, has reportedly been at Mar-a-Lago, holding talks with Trump and GOP officials.

I can’t tell you where this will all lead. I don’t think anybody can.

— Josh Kovensky

Yet Another GOP Voter Roll Challenge Is Dismissed

An Arizona federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed in June from the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, the president of the right-wing Arizona Free Enterprise Club and another Arizona Republican voter, who claimed that Arizona was in violation of federal law for its voter list maintenance practices. 

The lawsuit argued that the Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes failed to purge more than a million ineligible voters from the voter rolls, claiming state officials were in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. 

U.S. District Court Judge Dominic Lanza, however, concluded that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue in the first place. “The Court has little trouble concluding that Plaintiffs’ allegations on this issue are insufficient to establish standing,” Lanza wrote in his decision on Thursday. 

In the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election, Republicans across the country mounted legal challenges against voter roll maintenance practices, as a way to set themselves up to cry voter fraud if Donald Trump lost the election in November. These lawsuits have largely been dismissed. 

These lawsuits were designed to bring attention to a problem that does not exist, as a way to sow seeds of chaos and doubt in the election system in battleground states. It’s worth noting too that there are both federal and state laws in place that require election administrators to accurately maintain voter rolls. 

“It’s all coming from a larger narrative that the election system is not working,” Caren Short, director of legal and research for the nonpartisan nonprofit League of Women Voters, previously explained to TPM. 

— Khaya Himmelman

Words Of Wisdom

“I hope he holds the line all the way through. I’m defending him and we should all defend him. Look, we’ve all had some indiscretions in our past and things like that. Every human has. But good grief…”

That’s MAGA Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) talking about Pete Hegseth, who Trump nominated to be his next Secretary of Defense, and the troubling allegations that have surfaced from his past in recent days and weeks.

An undisclosed sexual assault allegation and a settlement from 2017 already had Hegseth in hot water with Trump’s team last month. Note that Hegseth denied committing sexual assault and described the incident as consensual. But last weekend, more allegations surfaced, including accounts from former colleagues claiming he was frequently drunk in public at work events, that he oversaw workplace environments that were saturated in sexism, and engaged in mismanagement.

Roy defining a sexual assault allegation among other things as “some indiscretions” is … certainly a choice. 

But sadly, the Texan is not the only Republican lawmaker running to Hegseth’s defense.

Earlier this week, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) downplayed the rape allegation against Hegseth, trying to dismiss it as old news.

“A lot of this stuff was years ago,” Tuberville said during a Fox Business interview.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) took low to a new level, claiming anonymous allegations shouldn’t be taken seriously.

“I’m not going to make any decisions based on an anonymous source,” Graham said. “If you’re not willing to raise your hand under oath and make the accusation, it doesn’t count. I’ve heard everything about all of these people. None of it counts. No rumors, no innuendo.”

— Emine Yücel