Richard Galant
‘‘I’m the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade,” former President Donald Trump boasted Tuesday on Newsmax. He cited his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who last June joined three other conservatives in overturning the 50-year decision guaranteeing abortion rights. The problem: two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the court’s rejection of a right to abortion, and many independent and even some Republican voters have shown repeatedly that they will side with Democrats on the issue.
In a general election, a strong anti-abortion stance can be a real negative. Trump – who has dodged questions about whether he would support a national ban on abortion – admitted as much by saying that his strongest GOP rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a bill banning most abortions after six weeks, is “losing women voters like crazy.” Yet within the Republican base, strong opposition to abortion is a plus. DeSantis has challenged the former president, citing his state’s ban: “I signed the bill. I was proud to do it. He won’t answer whether he would sign it or not.”
Trump’s refusal to say if he would support a national ban has drawn criticism from conservatives. Alice Stewart wrote, “Trump’s past performance on protecting the sanctity of life is strong, but his future commitments are about to be put to test in the 2024 GOP primary. Other Republican primary candidates have committed to signing a federal abortion ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. This policy distinction will not go unnoticed. … Trump may need to come up with a better answer to keep the pro-life community in his good graces.” While ambiguity on abortion could help Trump politically, he’s also vulnerable to blowback against other unpopular decisions from the Supreme Court he helped mold. It has weakened states’ ability to limit gun ownership, another unpopular stance in a nation plagued by mass shootings. And before the court’s term ends in late June, it could block Biden’s plan to forgive some college debt for millions of people. Democrats in Congress have stepped up their criticism of the court. They not only object to its increasingly conservative bent but also argue that continuing to shield the nine justices from the same ethics code that applies to other federal judges makes no sense.
Congress has the power to rein in the court, wrote CNN legal analyst and law professor Steve Vladeck, whose new book “The Shadow Docket” focuses on the Supreme Court. “Congress, in the first century under the Constitution, repeatedly used an array of unquestioned constitutional powers to check the court. In 1802, Democratic-Republicans effectively eliminated the Supreme Court’s entire annual sitting for that year by changing the court’s regular meeting date – a not-so-subtle threat to the Federalist justices to behave…” “Even the most pro-judiciary readings of the Constitution still leave to Congress broad control over the court’s docket, its budget and just about everything else short of the justices’ tenure and salaries,” Vladeck argued. “The issue isn’t that the Constitution prevents Congress from pulling these levers to exert influence over the court; it’s that Congress has chosen to stop pulling them.” DeSantis, who is expected to announce his candidacy for the GOP 2024 nomination within days, has a boast of his own.
According to the New York Times, he told donors Thursday, “You have basically three people at this point that are credible in this whole thing.” They are “Biden, Trump and me. And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president – Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him.” How will the Florida governor’s war against Disney, his state’s largest employer, play in those swing states? Last week, a fifth-grade teacher in Florida revealed that she’s under investigation by the state’s Department of Education for showing students the Disney animated film, “Strange World.” “She says she selected the film because it reinforced lessons on earth science and ecosystems,” wrote Jodi Eichler-Levine, a religion professor. “But then she said a parent (who is a local school board member), upset by the film’s depiction of a gay teenager flirting with his crush, reported her to the state.”
“Why would DeSantis, as a Republican who claims to be pro-business,” Eichler-Levine asked, “antagonize the largest single-site employer in his state, a company that attracts tens of millions of tourists a year? And why, as a social conservative, would he take aim at the nation’s leading purveyor of wholesome family-friendly American films?” “Because the Cinderella Castle holds an entire century’s worth of cultural capital. Disney remains an enduring symbol of youth – and childhood is the symbolic crucible in which we forge our notions of the future and the values it will contain. Disney is a potent cultural force that now promotes a vision of diversity and inclusion that regressive groups are right to fear.” When Disney announced Thursday that it’s scrapping plans for a $1 billion office campus in Florida, citing “changing business conditions,” Trump’s campaign said the real cause was “DeSantis’ failed war on Disney.” The governor’s office blamed it on Disney’s business challenges.
On the Democratic side, there’s worry about a potential threat to Biden’s re-election chances. The centrist group No Labels is weighing the possibility of running a third-party presidential ticket and Sen. Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat from West Virginia, has been mentioned as a possible contender to lead it. A Manchin run could strip vitally needed votes away from Biden and help elect Trump, if the former president gets the GOP nomination, wrote historian Julian Zelizer. “Since we live in an era of narrow elections, where landslides like 1936, 1972 or 1984 are extremely rare, all that Manchin would need to do is to take enough votes from a handful of voters within a handful of states to have a dramatic impact.” Meanwhile, Trump was claiming vindication over the release of special counsel John Durham’s report on the FBI’s Russia investigation. The report found that the FBI shouldn’t have launched a full investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
According to the report, “There was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents. The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director of the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence.” But the Washington Post Editorial Board noted, “Despite some commentators’ efforts to portray the actual result of the four-year investigation as damning, the reality is that the Justice Department special counsel uncovered next to nothing.” An earlier investigation of the Russia probe by the Justice Department’s inspector general Michael E. Horowitz found “flaws in the FBI’s handling of the matter … but they flowed from confirmation bias rather than politically motivated misconduct,” the Post said.
CNN
