Hangers and Back Alleys?

Bye, Bye Roe:  Things have just gotten worse, way worse.  Yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced plans to retire in July.  Rumors that Kennedy was seriously considering throwing in the towel first started emerging last summer so the announcement of his departure isn’t all that surprising, he even hinted about his plans in his travel ban ruling concurrence where he pretty much said that someone needed to “watch out” going forward, implying that someone would no longer be him.   Kennedy was hardly a liberal, however he was viewed as the court’s most reliable swing vote, a view that was more a reflection of the consistently conservative voting patterns of the other four members of the court’s conservative wing than anything else.  Kennedy joined with those other conservatives more often than not, just this week his was the pivotal vote that upheld Trump’s travel ban, left standing political gerrymandering, unwound decades of union protections and let a florist off the hook for refusing to decorate a same sex wedding.   That said, his departure is likely to put the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade abortion rights decision into jeopardy.  To repeat, women are likely to lose the right to their reproductive freedom.  During his campaign Trump promised to appoint “pro-life” judges to the Supreme Court, a pledge that brought him the support of the religious right, a group that has become a key component of his base and that continues to support him despite his obvious violation of everything else they claim to stand for only because they want to see abortion rights curtailed. Regardless of how Trump really feels about abortion, delivering an abortion ban to his religious supporters will cement their gratitude and support forever, with an emphasis on forever.  A court challenge of an Iowa bill that bans abortions as soon as a heartbeat can be detected, a so called “heartbeat bill,” is already pending.  If, or more likely, when  Trump gets his nominee through the confirmation process, absent a move by Chief Justice Roberts to cross the aisle to support the status quo established in Roe, the court would strike down Roe, throwing the decision on abortion rights back to the states.  Eight states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada and Washington have laws on the books that would protect a women’s right to choose.  However, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota already have laws that would automatically ban abortions if Roe was overturned and other states, including Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio have laws that would restrict abortions to the maximum extent allowed by the Supreme Court.  Two more, West Virginia and Alabama have 2018 ballot measures to say that there is no right to an abortion under their state constitutions.  The right to choose isn’t the only right in jeopardy.  Kennedy was also the swing vote on gay rights, he wrote the decision legalizing same sex marriage, was frequently the pivotal vote on affirmative action and death penalty issues and at least until he punted on the recent group of gerrymandering cases, had been seen as the swing vote on that issue as well.  With regard to gay rights, its likely that Chief Justice Roberts would switch sides, leaving the right to same sex marriage intact.  Still celebrating the court’s travel ban ruling, a gloating Trump promised that he will act fast to nominate a candidate to replace Kennedy, most likely someone already on his list of very conservative judges, someone certain to pass his anti-abortion litmus test.  Senate Leader Mitch McConnell quickly announced plans to push any Trump nominee through the Senate confirmation process in time for the next court session which begins on October 1.  Democrats are in an uproar, screaming foul.  Though their powers are limited they are calling for McConnell to stick with the rule he created, the one that effectively killed the seating of Obama’s last nominee, Merrick Garland, by putting his confirmation process on hold until after the 2016 election.  They argue that at the very least no new court nominee should be put up for vote until after the 2018 midterms. Democrats lack the power to impose the “McConnell rule” on their own but they hope, more accurately pray,  to get some support from Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, the only two pro-choice Republican senators.  That said preventing a vote on a Trump candidate until after the election remains an uphill battle, one that not only relies on the help of those two Republican Senators but that also requires that the vulnerable red state Democrats up for reelection in Trump states stay on board, not a given since three of them, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitcamp, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, voted for Trump’s last nominee, Justice Gorsuch.  Sadly, there’s also no guarantee that the Democrats will regain leadership of the Senate during the midterm elections, in fact holding on to some of the seats they have right now won’t be all that easy.  That said, the fight is on, Democrats are energized and maybe, just maybe some of those white suburban women who voted or Trump in 2016 will realize that their rights really are in jeopardy.  They better wake up soon  because the abortion issue will also energize conservative Republicans, spurring them to show up to vote too.    

Immigration:  Despite last minute all caps support from Trump who tweeted HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL….. EVEN THOUGH THE DEMS WON’T LET IT PASS IN THE SENATE. PASSAGE WILL SHOW THAT WE WANT STRONG BORDERS & SECURITY WHILE THE DEMS WANT OPEN BORDERS = CRIME. WIN!,  the House immigration bill went down in flames.  More than half of the House Republicans joined all of the Democrats, defeating the bill by a vote of 301-121.  As to the children separated from their parents, they are still separated.  It’s not clear that the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Homeland Security have the ability or the will to abide by Tuesday night’s court ruling, the one that orders families be reunited as soon as possible. Despite Trump’s assertion that he wants to see the kids returned to his parents, its also possible that “his” Justice department will appeal that ruling, in part because Attorney General Sessions really doesn’t care about the kids and believes that separating them from their families is an effective deterrent and in part because he knows that the government is too inept to meet the judge’s reunification demands.  In the meantime, Trump’s order to the military to build more tent facilities to house immigrant families still stands.

    Communicating:  Trump is expected to name former Fox News co-president Bill Shine to serve as his Communications Director, a position that has been held vacant since the departure of Trump’s gal Friday, Hope Hicks.  Shine, a longtime ally of the late Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, had been forced out of Fox a year ago over accusations that he had looked the other way when staffers came to him with reports of harassment by Aisles and former Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly.  For obvious reasons, none of that disturbs Trump, in fact it probably adds to Shine’s shine.  To the extent that he is appointed, Shine will likely continue espousing Trump’s party line, that former campaign manager Paul Manafort only worked for the Trump campaign for a minute, in the hope that if you repeat a lie enough times it will transform into the truth.  Distancing himself from Manafort continues to make sense for Trump, yesterday another one of Special Counsel Mueller’s court filings revealed that Manafort’s links to Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska were even closer than reported. Deripaska lent Manafort and his wife $10 million, a tidy sum that probably wasn’t dispersed out of the goodness of the oligarch’s heart.   John Bolton, Trump’s current National Security Advisor who once said that Russia's election interference was "truly an act of war" against the US, and that a policy based on trusting Russia was "doomed to failure" met with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to discuss plans for the upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin.  Apparently he’s changed his views on Russia and Putin, saying that he would not discuss or comment on his earlier statements, he instead thanked Putin for his “courtesy and graciousness.”  It’s not clear what Putin was serving but it must have been potent and truly mind altering.  Bolton also said that readmitting Russia to the G7 economic group would be one of the things discussed during the upcoming meeting.  That’s something that is likely to further raise the already heightened concerns in Europe.  As to those allies in Europe, last night during a rally in North Dakota where he was campaigning for Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp’s opponent, Trump attacked all Democrats, especially Congresswoman Maxine Waters who is now his number one target, denied that he’d ever called for violence against protesters, something that Waters did not do, and then took another swipe at those European allies, attacking the EU as an entity that was set up to  “take advantage of the US.”  Words that must warm Putin’s heart.