Anti-Choice Lawyer Gives Away the Game in SCOTUS Abortion Case

The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in United States v. Idaho Wednesday—and it was not smooth sailing for the Gem State and its abortion ban.

At the crux of the case is whether pregnant people in Idaho will be allowed to get abortions when receiving lifesaving, critical care at hospitals and emergency rooms, or if they and their fetus will be considered two separate people, with the potential for the viability of the fetus to take a healthcare precedent.

But on Wednesday morning, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was already openly questioning why the nation’s highest court was even hearing the case if the state was, as Idaho Attorney General’s Office’s defense attorney Josh Turner claimed, in complete compliance with EMTALA, a federal law that requires emergency rooms to provide care to any individuals who show up.

But Turner’s claim completely fails to acknowledge the practical realities of medical care within the state, where politicians have made abortion care a felony and outright criminalizing the act even if it could save a pregnant person’s life—as Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar reminded the court.

According to Turner, there would need to be a “clear statement” in EMTALA that clarifies Congress explicitly demands doctors perform abortions.

Idaho already has a near-total abortion ban, but the Alliance Defending Freedom, the far-right Christian legal advocacy group arguing the lawsuit on behalf of the state, is utilizing the case to advance the idea of fetal personhood. This stipulation would effectively require doctors to treat fetuses—no matter how underdeveloped—with the same medical care as the person carrying it, even if it poses a medical risk to the pregnant patient.

Fetal personhood was a heavy topic of interest in Wednesday’s hearing, with Prelogar entering into a heated back-and-forth with Justice Samuel Alito over the issue, reminding the conservative judge that “a woman is an individual.” That made Alito, who wrote the majority opinion in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, scoff that nobody had suggested they weren’t, reported Rewire News Group’s Jessica Mason Pieklo.

But Prelogar shot one back: actually, Idaho is.

Pro-abortion activists have long warned that providing equal human rights to a fetus—especially if it’s a cluster of cells—will effectively strip pregnant people of their own rights. The notion of fetal personhood has also been leveraged elsewhere in the country to restrict IVF access in states such as Alabama and limit access to forms of birth control.

“Thirteen of Idaho’s 44 counties are already maternity care deserts. Emergency rooms then become frontline care. The Idaho ban’s severe limitation on treatment options will only result in increasing Idaho’s already unacceptable maternity mortality and morbidity rates,” warned the board chair of Physicians for Human Rights, Gerson H. Smoger, ahead of Wednesday’s hearing.

While much of the ignorant takes about Columbia University’s pro-Palestine divestment protests have come from the right, Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz has decided to offer one of his own after touring the campus.

Moskowitz visited Columbia on Monday alongside fellow Democrats Josh Gottheimer, Dan Goldman, and Kathy Manning. Moskowitz and Gottheimer have been slow to call for a ceasefire, despite the feelings of Jewish congressional staffers.

“We were mad years ago when we saw Charlottesville, and ‘Jews will not replace us.’ And Donald Trump saying ‘good people on both sides’ or ‘Mexicans are rapists.’ Right? But somehow we don’t have the same anger of ‘Go back to Poland,’” Moskowitz told CNN that night.

“My grandfather’s entire family was killed in Poland. He was the sole survivor, right? ‘All Zionists should be killed. Bomb Tel Aviv.’ I know the people saying this aren’t, you know, white Aryan males with tiki torches, but they have the same message,” he added.

While Moskowitz’s fear of anti-Semitism should not be dismissed, the protests at Columbia have included Jewish students, who even held a Shabbat service on Friday. The national organization Jewish Voice for Peace even pointed out in a statement that university officials, in attempting to shut down the protests, have infringed upon some Jewish students’ religious practices:

• Last Friday, on the eve of Shabbat, when Jewish scripture encourages Jews to gather in homes and in community to pray and welcome the sabbath, the university instead forced Jewish students from their homes on campus, denying them a safe place to worship or gather with their community.
  
• Some of these Jewish students also observe shomer Shabbat, abjuring all electronics during the sabbath. Last Friday, they were forced to break with their religious observances in order to comply with the administration’s urgent email communications.
  

Moskowitz’s comparison also compares protests against the war in Gaza to the “Unite the Right” protests of 2017, when white nationalists actively sought conflict in the college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, which didn’t want them there. In contrast, many faculty members at Columbia University, appalled at the university’s crackdown, led a walkout on Tuesday in support of the student protesters.

Student groups across the country have continued with their own campus encampments and protests following the events at Columbia, while the discovery of mass graves in Gaza has brought international calls for an investigation. It seems a solution to both would be a ceasefire, but that may not happen until the Biden administration also ends its support for the war.

Tennessee House Republicans have pushed through a bill that will allow teachers and staff to carry guns in public schools, causing the viewing gallery—filled with teachers, parents, and students—to erupt in outrage.

Moments after the legislation passed on Tuesday with a 68-28 vote, the mass of protesters exploded.

“Blood on your hands,” the group screamed in unison, waving signs that read “Protect kids not guns” and “1 Kid > All the guns.”

Democratic Representative Justin Jones, one of two lawmakers that Republicans expelled last year for joining protests in support of gun control, accused the GOP of “fascism.”

The bill will almost definitely become law once it reaches Republican Governor Bill Lee, who has yet to veto a piece of legislation that reaches his desk. The measure will allow teachers and staff to carry weapons in most school settings without notifying parents or even their colleagues that they’re armed.

The bill will also require some teachers to receive firearm training, though opponents to the bill have insisted that the minimal training is not enough to keep staff and children safe.

“This is nothing but a bad disaster and tragedy waiting to happen if we do not ensure personal responsibility,” House Democratic Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons told The Tennessean. “Our children’s lives are at stake.”

Shortly before holding the vote, House Republicans cut off debate on the legislation after one member of the viewing public, teacher Lauren Shipman-Dorrance, cried out from the gallery. House Speaker Cameron Sexton ordered state troopers to remove her.

“I’ve been teaching a long time. I’ve worked in a lot of schools where violence is a thing, even if a gun isn’t involved. And that will happen more if they pass this,” Shipman-Dorrance told The Tennessean. “I used to think they didn’t get it, but I honestly just think at this point, they’re not hearing us no matter what. And that really, to me, calls into question ethically, morally, what they are doing and why.”

The crowd erupted after Shipman-Dorrance was removed, prompting Sexton to order everyone seated in the gallery out—but that was only followed by the House completely falling into disorder, with some members of the House reportedly filming and pushing one another.

Donald Trump must sense the walls closing in. At 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, the former president begged Republicans to step in and save him from his hush-money trial in a long, rambling two-post thread on Truth Social.

“This New York Cabal, run by Crooked Joe Biden’s White House, is a hit job on a Political Opponent the likes of which the USA has never seen before. For the Good of our Country, it must be stopped. The Crooked Joe Biden Witch Hunts have to be ended. REPUBLICANS IN WASHINGTON MUST TAKE ACTION!” he wrote.

Trump took aim at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as being “soft on crime,” Judge Juan Merchan for being “rigged” against him, and even the judges in his defamation case and civil fraud case, calling them “corrupt.” His complaints come just up to the threshold of acceptable commentary under his gag order, which prohibits him from speaking publicly about courtroom staff, prosecutors, or any of their family members. Trump has complained bitterly and almost continuously about the order, even after his contempt of court hearing Tuesday for allegedly violating it.

Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts for allegedly using his former fixer Michael Cohen to cover up an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Tuesday’s proceedings did not go well for Trump, with witness David Pecker, who was publisher of the National Enquirer and CEO of its parent company in 2016, detailing how he worked with the Trump campaign to “catch and kill” negative stories about the then-presidential candidate.

If Trump is looking for Republicans to interfere in his court proceedings, there’s not much they can do besides make weird, full-throated defenses to the public. Even then, the real people Trump needs on his side are the jurors in the trial, who are understandably more worried about their own safety.

George Santos just pulled another fast one on… well, anybody who still believed in George Santos.

The disgraced former lawmaker dropped his renewed bid for Congress on Tuesday, claiming that he didn’t want his run for New York’s 1st Congressional District to be “portrayed as a reprisal” against his apparent Long Island nemesis, Representative Nick LaLota.

“Although Nick and I don’t have the same voting record and I remain critical of his abysmal record, I don’t want to split the ticket and be responsible for handing the house to Dems,” Santos wrote in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It is clear that with the rise of antisemitism in our country we cannot afford to hand the house to Dems as they have a very large issue with antisemitism in their ranks…”

But Santos’s latest FEC filing tells a different story: one in which the ousted congressman raised exactly $0 in the first quarter of his campaign.

Critics quickly picked up on the detail online, including LaLota himself, who snarkily wrote back that Santos was “taking a plea deal.”

“You wish you useless feckless RINO,” Santos barked. “Keep spreading misinformation… Show us that time sheet of yours from when you were at the BOE and Law school at the same time… We are waiting for you to refute but then again you can’t…”

The reputed hustler—who was caught fabricating his entire résumé and lying about his relation to Holocaust survivors, being “Jew-ish,” his connection to the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, and the kidnapping of his niece, among many other things—is currently facing 23 counts related to illegally receiving unemployment benefits, aggravated identity theft, and credit card fraud. His next court proceeding is scheduled for August 13, with a trial expected in September.

Still, there’s always a chance that Santos might return.

“It’s only goodbye for now, I’ll be back,” he wrote on Tuesday.