Blastocysts ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

BELIEVE:  No one thought that the US Supreme Court would really overturn Roe because the Trump appointees all testified that they would respect precedent, but they didn’t.  No one thought that Texas’s abortion ending bounty law would withstand court challenges, because $10,000 bounties to punish abortion “abettors” was beyond crazy but it did. No one thought that a slew of states would pass “heartbeat” abortion bans, but they did.  No one thought that pregnant women in the throes of life-threatening miscarriages would be sent home from emergency rooms because they weren’t close enough to death’s door, but they are being sent home.  No one thought that women would have to travel out of state to end tragic pregnancies, but they have been.  No one thought that women would be arrested for miscarrying at home and failing to properly bury fetuses circling the toilet drain but they have been. No one thought that ten- year-olds would be forced to carry their rapists’ children but are.  No one thought that people trying to help those raped children get abortions would be prosecuted but they have been.  No one believes that the Supreme Court will really ban mifepristone while also banning the distribution of abortion or even birth control medicines across state lines, but they might, soon.  Now we’ve got the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ending decision and again, it would be nice to think that it won’t stand and if it does, it’s only Alabama so what’s the big deal?  Think again, it’s a big deal that has already put the kibosh on the plans of women who’ve spent thousands of dollars, injected themselves with multiple hormone shots and were just hours away from having their eggs implanted and maybe seeing their dreams of motherhood come to fruition. And to those who think, nothing to worry about because they’ve got the financial means to finance their or their loved ones’ travel to a “blue” state to take care of problem pregnancies or fertility issues, start thinking internationally because as hard as it is to believe that it will ever happen, the religious right’s goal of banning abortions, assisted pregnancy and maybe even contraceptives NATIONWIDE, and that means blue states too, is closer than ever.  America 2024, where an 8-cell blastocyst is a live baby, but where the infant mortality rate for real live babies is embarrassingly high because health care for disadvantaged mothers and their babies is a low priority.  It’s sadly telling that the gut reaction of Nikki Haley, the supposedly sane Republican candidate for president, to the Alabama ruling was to say that she agrees that blastocysts are children.  Sure, like with slavery, she’s walked back that utterance but when people tell you who they are and what they think, believe them.

Legal Morass:  Trump has remained silent on the Alabama blastocysts equal babies decision likely because he’s trying to figure out what a blastocyst is and how to spin the decision in a manner that doesn’t jeopardize his religious wingnut support or cost him any more soccer mom votes, maybe something that blames the very Catholic Biden as a heathen and/or invokes murdered Russian dissident Alexie Navalny because that’s working so well for him.  Nevertheless, he was relatively busy yesterday, at least his lawyers were.  Last night in an attempt to get his purloined documents case dismissed they filed a series of motions in Florida.  It’s unlikely that those motions in which he’s again claiming both presidential immunity and that Special Counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed will withstand judicial scrutiny even by Judge “loose” Cannon’s perverse standards, but they will further slow the case down which is the point. As to immunity, we’re still waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision on whether or not to hear and stay, or just hear, or neither hear nor stay in Trump’s appeal of the DC appeals court ruling, the one that said he’s not immune because he’s not and never was a king.  It’s Friday so we may hear something by day’s end or not because speed even in the face of the end of democracy doesn’t appear to be SCOTUS’s thing. However, NY Judge Arthur Engoron is into progress, he has had enough with Trump and his shenanigans. Yesterday, he denied a request to delay the imposition of Trump’s rather large penalty and instead started the penalty clock. Trump and his codefendants have thirty days to put up the $400 million +/- that they, mostly Trump owe, appeal or no appeal.  New York Attorney General Tish James says she’s ready to start taking assets and selling off buildings if Trump doesn’t comply. There’s not much to report out of Fulton County where testimony by Nathan Wade, Fani Willis’ special prosecutor/one time beau’s divorce lawyer was rescheduled to next week.  It’s not clear that he will ever testify, but until that’s resolved there will be no ruling on Willis’ status and no progress on the RICO case.

More Fog:  The Republican South Carolina primary takes place tomorrow. Spoiler alert, Trump is going to win, bigly.  Lara Trump who is just days away from assuming a senior role at the RNC is saying the quiet part out loud, admitting that as soon as she’s in a position to authorize it the RNC will start covering some of Trump’s legal fees.  Some because they don’t have the money to cover all of them.  That’s not such bad news, because money spent on Trump’s legal fees means less money to down ballot Republican candidates, a bit of a problem since several state Republican organizations, including those in Arizona, Florida and Michigan are currently in disarray.  Those problems include warring leaders, leaked phone calls, and in the case of Florida, credible rape allegations.  Nothing to report on regarding the funding of the government or the passing of aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan but a little more on the Russian agent front.  That Russian agent, Alexander Smirnov, who was until this week, the Republicans key witness in their faux impeachment case against Joe Biden was rearrested yesterday because the DOJ really wants him locked up as they fear that he will either flee the country or maybe even get poisoned or defenestrated by his Russian handlers if he’s free to move about.  Meantime, references to his “Biden implicating” depositions have been wiped off of the Oversight Committee website though Republican Reps Jim “Gym” Jordan and James Comer insist that their efforts to move forward with Biden’s impeachment will continue because lack of evidence of any criminal activity by Joe isn’t a problem for them.  One more thing about the Smirnov embarrassment, it was Senator Chuck Grassley who brought him to the attention of his House colleagues; naturally even though the Smirnov thing has proven to be a bust Grassley has no regrets. We continue to hear that on the Israel/Gaza front a temporary ceasefire/hostage release is in the works, believe it when we see it and not before.

#BringThemAllHomeNow