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If it wasn’t horrifying enough to learn via a leaked draft majority opinion written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that the Supreme Court intends to overturn Roe v. Wade, to make bad even worse, Alito uses a sickening racist theory as evidence to support the legal reversal.

The 98-page draft opinion is a defiant indictment of the 1973 ruling promising federal protections for abortion. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled… It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

If all that isn’t enough, Alito pivots to the white savior role, actually attempting to justify that the removal of reproductive rights somehow aligns with a fight against racism—even citing the same misrepresented statistics used by pro-choice activists advocating for eugenics.

RELATED STORY: Supreme Court Justice Roberts calls leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion ‘betrayal of confidences’

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“Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” Alito writes. “It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.”

The National Human Genome Research Institute defines eugenics as a “scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations… Implementation of eugenics practices has caused widespread harm, particularly to populations that are being marginalized.”

Let’s unpack Alito’s argument that abortion is being used to cull the number of Black Americans being born.

First off, using race as pro-life rhetoric is not new. But what it doesn’t take into account is the realities of what Black pregnant people face in birthing health care, or the fact that white America has long sought to wipe out people of color—without ever needing to use abortion as a means.

Black enslaved women were raped by slaveholders and then forced to bear children to increase their property holdings—all while their own children were sold away from them for profit.

Even today, the disparities in prenatal health care and birthing mortality are stunning. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that Black pregnant people are “three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women,” citing “variation in quality health care, underlying chronic conditions, structural racism, and implicit bias” as factors. 

”Social determinants of health prevent many people from racial and ethnic minority groups from having fair opportunities for economic, physical, and emotional health,” the CDC adds.

This is in addition to an overall greater lack of health insurance, employment, or food security caused by well-documented socioeconomic disparities between Black and brown families and white Americans.

Black pregnant people don’t need anyone shaming them about abortion, or suggesting that they need the Court to dictate how their bodies are used for the greater good of a nation that mistreated them for centuries.

And, importantly, the racial demographics of abortion Alito refers to as “highly disproportionate” aren’t as disparate as he suggests. According to a 2019 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Black Americans account for 38% of abortions, while white people account for 33%—as I said, hardly “highly disproportionate.”

In another passage, Alito writes that societal norms around pregnancy when parents aren’t married “have changed drastically” since Roe v. Wade was enacted and argues there’s now a higher demand for adoption.

Let’s unpack. Adoption numbers are actually declining. Creating a Family reports that the number of children adopted via public child welfare was 57,881 in 2020.

“In 2007, the total number of adoptions was 133,737. The numbers for 2014, the last year that the full range of data was available, fell to 110,373. Of those adoptions, 41,023 were adoptions within the family (where the child is related to the adopting family) and 69,350 were unrelated adoptions,” according to the Creating a Family website.

So forgive me if I don’t buy the bull**** of Alito’s argument that ending Roe v. Wade is good for Black folks or the new changing demographics of partnerships in the U.S. and the demand for more adopted children.

Support for the reversal of Roe includes Justices Alito, and unsurprisingly, Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, the Politico report reads.

Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan were said to be crafting dissents.

The Supreme Court is expected to make the final decision in late June.

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Donald Trump must be feeling pretty good following the Ohio Senate primary in which his chosen one, J.D. Vance, triumphed over a crowded field. In addition to Trump’s endorsement, Vance had $15 million in outside money from Peter Thiel. But he was also hammered by outside advertising from the Club for Growth, hitting him for his past negative statements about Trump. And, following Vance’s win, Axios reports that the Club for Growth isn’t the only part of the Republican establishment unhappy about the situation.

“The Republican establishment privately regards Vance with the same disgust many felt toward Donald Trump when he entered the White House on Jan. 20, 2017,” according to Jonathan Swan and Lachlan Markay. We know how that worked out: Trump took over the party and few Republicans would speak out against him publicly, sitting back and playing along as long as they thought it contributed to Republican power.

RELATED STORY: Trump-endorsed rich guy J.D. Vance wins massively expensive Ohio Senate primary

One key issue where Vance could make life difficult for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wing of the party is Ukraine. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” he said on Steve Bannon’s podcast before Russia invaded, and he hasn’t changed his position since, with campaign sources telling Axios it was because people who don’t want the U.S. supporting Ukraine are likely to vote on that position, while few voters who otherwise liked Vance would vote for someone else just because he opposed any intervention.

Vance’s history shows he’s a raging phony. He didn’t just go from mild criticism of Trump to sucking up for Trump’s endorsement. His turnabout took him to the endorsement after having said, in 2016, he “loathed” Trump, and tweeted, “What percentage of the American population has @RealDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?” That tells you what kind of a craven slimeweasel we’re talking about. And it tells you that as long as Trump remains his best bet for power, he will be committed to being as disgusting as possible. For example:

And also:

So, yeah. Mitch McConnell and a lot of other high-ranking Republicans should be nervous. If J.D. Vance wins—which, given the recent rightward shift in Ohio, is likely—they’re getting a colleague whose commitment to his own personal advancement above any principle makes him willing to do his level best to out-Trump Trump. But, as we know, McConnell et al’s ruthless pursuit of power means they won’t try to limit the rise of someone like Vance as long as they think he might be even a little bit useful. They all deserve each other.

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We all know that our whereabouts can be easily tracked on our cell phones, and that the data can then be sold. But, according to Vice, there’s a company that also tracks visits you make to a health care clinic—including those that provide abortion care.

Being tracked is frightening enough, but all of this becomes even more terrifying after a draft opinion from Supreme Court Justice Alito leaked to Politico indicating that the Court may very well overturn Roe v. Wade, which would remove federal abortion protections and ban or partially ban abortion in at least 13 U.S. states.

Gathering this data could be a very effective tool for anti-abortion rights activists who’ve had health care clinics, providers, and pro-choice organizations in their crosshairs for decades. But giving them the option to simply purchase this information from companies is a scary reality.

RELATED STORY: Legendary reproductive justice activist advises women to start talking openly about abortion

Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher who closely tracks data selling, says, “It’s bonkers dangerous to have abortion clinics and then let someone buy the census tracks where people are coming from to visit that abortion clinic… this is how you dox someone traveling across state lines for abortions—how you dox clinics providing this service.”

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court’s leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats must do now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

SafeGraph is one such tracking company. Essentially, Safegraph gathers location data from the apps we download onto our phones. The apps come with an unseen code and that code sends our location to companies to sell for a fee. Vice reports that SafeGraph recently sold $420,000 worth of data to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to help them track how well COVID-19 lockdown measures were working.

“SafeGraph’s Patterns dataset includes visitor and demographic aggregations for points of interest (POIs) in the US. This contains aggregated raw counts of visits to POIs from a panel of mobile devices, answering how often people visit, how long they stay, where they came from, where else they go, and more,” according to the SafeGraph website.

Vice reports the data costs around $160 for a week’s worth of information, and “Planned Parenthood” is considered a “brand” that can be tracked.

“SafeGraph is going to be the weapon of choice for anti-choice radicals attempting to target ‘out of state clinics’ providing medical care,” Edwards said.

As Mother Jones reports, anti-choice groups have long had a serious surveillance game. Documenting who comes and goes from abortion clinics, maintaining databases, and tracking license plate numbers of patients and providers. Now, add some high-tech data tracking, and you’re able to follow people, even if they cross state lines into states where abortions are available.

As we reported in September of 2021, since SB 8 went into effect in Texas, banning almost all abortions in the state, pregnant Texans began driving from places as far south as Galveston or Corpus Christi to seek abortions in Oklahoma and Kansas.

“It’s not good,” Communication Director Zack Gingrich-Gaylord of the Trust Women Clinic in Oklahoma City told KFOR. “These are patients who would otherwise be going to seek care in their own communities. The surrounding states are not that big and they don’t have that many clinics. So it’s creating a significant strain on the neighboring states to Texas.”

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Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had an urgent message for his conference Tuesday: Whatever you do, don’t talk about the Supreme Court’s draft opinion destroying abortion rights.

Chastising his GOP colleagues at their weekly luncheon, McConnell told them, “You need, it seems to me, a lecture to concentrate on what the news is today: Not a leaked draft, but the fact that the draft was leaked.”

As my Daily Kos colleague Hunter detailed, Republicans spent Tuesday fixated on the leaking of the bombshell opinion as a “stunning breach” by “the Left” to “intimidate sitting Supreme Court justices.”

The harm done to the high court and its justices by the leak was apparently deeply enraging and irreparable. But being forced to carry a fetus to term because the Supreme Court says so? Meh. Republican senators reserved all their outrage for the nine Americans who donned fancy black robes while deciding that the government does indeed have the right to dictate people’s health care decisions.

The emphasis on the leaking (versus what was leaked) was an interesting fixation for a party that has devoted much of its last five decades to clearing the way for the demolition of Roe v. Wade.

But McConnell just might be the ultimate example of the dog that caught the car. Sure, he wants Roe shredded along with basically every other decision supported by a solid majority of Americans. But McConnell surely doesn’t want it shredded before the midterms. By Jove, he can practically taste that Majority Leader goodness.

Except now the fringe court for which he stole two seats might be complicating Senate Republicans’ path back to the majority. Here’s a little glimpse of why McConnell and his conference had a cow after the leaked opinion surfaced in Politico.

Data for Progress notes that public support for a federal ban on abortions doesn’t exceed 30% in any single state.

YouGov’s G. Elliott Morris tweets that the “latest public polls from Pew, Gallup, YouGov, and CNN, all from the last year, found that between 58% and 70% of Americans oppose the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, including roughly three-fourths of Independents and nearly a majority of Republicans.”

We’re going to find out a lot more about polling on this topic over the coming months. But one of the most interesting footnotes is that the vast majority of voters truly didn’t believe the Supreme Court would overturn Roe. Just 20% or even fewer voters believed that, according to Democratic pollster and president of Impact Research, Molly Murphy. So this Supreme Court ruling gutting Roe will truly come as a shock to the electorate. And Republicans clearly know it.

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Monday night’s leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion essentially overturning Roe v. Wade has been overwhelming news, to say the least. Reproductive justice advocates have mobilized, organizing protests and fundraising efforts to support organizations in states that have so-called “trigger laws” meaning that, were such a ruling to go into effect, 13 states would immediately see abortion bans on the books. This includes the state I live in, Louisiana, which also happens to have a terrible track record when it comes to both reproductive justice and environmental justice. Led by a pro-life Democratic governor, Louisiana readily gave up the abortion fight in 2020 when voters moved to pass an amendment that added this language to the state declaration of rights: “Nothing in this constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”

Between now and then, major natural disasters have occurred, studies have revealed the damning costs of continuing to allow polluters to harm some of the state’s most vulnerable communities, and people have suffered because of lack of access to much-needed reproductive health care services — among many, many consequences from a warming planet and reproductive rights restrictions. Louisiana is just the canary in the coal mine of what’s to come were an expected June ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization consistent with Alito’s draft opinion. The case that made its way to the highest court in the land comes from the neighboring state of Mississippi — yet another state with a trigger law on the books. And, unsurprisingly, Mississippi is a state with blatant environmental justice issues that span generations and still affect residents today.

The consequences of climate change are especially hard on pregnant people and children, with extreme heat posing a particular risk to pregnant people and even more so for pregnant people of color. Studies have been conducted on the impact of flooding to pregnant people, with one such report published in 2018 finding that “[it] has a significant impact on the health of pregnant women and children. In addition, it may exacerbate a range of negative psychological and physiological child and reproductive health outcomes.” The lingering effects of natural disasters only add to the pain for survivors who lack the services they need in the wake of such life-altering events.

Countless studies on reproductive care in the wake of Hurricane Katrina found that fertility levels decreased for Black pregnant people and that substantial percentages of those affected by the storm were unable to access health care. According to one study, 40% had not used birth control and 4% “experienced an unintended pregnancy as a result of lack of access to care.” As natural disasters and extreme weather events become more frequent, it’s more important than ever to make sure that our climate mitigation response is an intersectional one that includes advocating for and enacting policies that advance reproductive rights.

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Abortion is still legal, even in Texas. Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas, wants to reiterate that. Even since Sept. 1, when the abortion bounty-hunter law went into effect, the clinics have still been helping people.

“When news like this comes out, it confuses people and scares people, and I think there are people who will read these stories and think that abortion is already illegal,” said Hagstrom Miller. “I think it’s important for us to speak to these people and let them know this isn’t final, and at least for now we can still offer them the care they deserve.”

However, when the Supreme Court makes the leaked draft ruling from Justice Samuel Alito overturning Roe v. Wade and Casey (the long-standing rulings protecting the right to an abortion) official, Texas is going to ban abortion with just one exception: to save the life of the patient or if there’s a risk of “substantial impairment of major bodily function.” Thirty days after the Supreme Court issues that ruling, doctors providing abortions in Texas could face life in prison and $100,000 fines.

Contribute now to support abortion funds providing financial assistance to people seeking abortion care.

As if the six-week ban hasn’t been harmful enough to people who need abortions. NPR spoke with one 21-year-old Texan, Mady, who accidentally got pregnant. “When I initially found out that I was pregnant, I was like, I cannot have a kid right now. Like, I cannot do that.” Which is a pretty mature thing to know about yourself. She was past the six-week deadline when diagnosed, and when she reached out to clinics outside of Texas, found they were all booked already with Texas patients. She had to wait more than a month for her procedure. “So I drove all the way to Mississippi through the night with my father,” Mady said.

“And then after the initial visit, they’re like, you can come in on this day at this time next week. And so right after my appointment, we turned around and drove back to Texas.” She and her mom flew back to Mississippi the next week so she could have the abortion. It cost her about $2,000. Which means Mady was a very lucky person to have not just an understanding and helpful family, but the means to obtain the care she needed.

Another Texan, Nicole, counted herself lucky because her old car’s engine decided to turn over on the day of her procedure; any delays, and it couldn’t have happened. “I just had to honestly just make the decision quickly and say you know what, I’m 33 years old, I have a week and a half to kind of decide this, and it’s just going to be a ‘yes,’ honestly, at this point,” she told CNN. “I don’t know what would have been my next options,” she said. “I’m just grateful that my car came on today.”

Another Texan, 27-year old Caroline, found out too late, at 12 weeks. It took another six weeks for her to get an appointment at a Colorado clinic more than 1,000 miles from home. Caroline lives in an abusive home, where money is tight. A child was not an option. ”A lot of women in domestic violence situations,” she said, “know that if they give birth, that child will be turned into a weapon.” The wait was difficult, with complications arising in the 17th week that cemented her decision. “I haven’t been able to sleep and eat,” she said. “Pregnancy takes a toll on your body and my body’s just been hurting.”

More than 20 states are “certain or likely” to ban abortion once Roe is overturned. Thirteen of those states have trigger laws that will end abortion just as soon as the Supreme Court decision is handed down.

Blue states are working hard to counter that, to ensure that abortion will be made available to whoever needs it, no matter how far they have to travel. But there’s the rub—they have to have the information, the means, and the support to get there.

Here’s another reality.

Prenatal and maternal care in this country is abysmal, considering the resources we have. We are the absolute worst among developed nations for maternal mortality. But that’s not a concern for the predominantly white, predominantly male, and predominantly wealthy people making these decisions about other people’s bodies and lives.

It’s the people who are poor, who are Black or brown, who are marginalized because of their gender identity, who are young, and who are trapped by any situation—all of whom are on the list of people Republicans especially don’t care about—who will suffer the most.

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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

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Leading Off

● OH-Sen: The Republican primary for Ohio’s open Senate seat—which weighed in at nearly $75 million—finally concluded on Tuesday with a win for Trump’s endorsed candidate, venture capitalist J.D. Vance. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy author and one-time vociferous Trump critic, reinvented himself as a MAGA diehard and defeated former state Treasurer Josh Mandel 32-24 for the nod to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman. Vance will take on Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who won his own primary 70-18 against former Treasury official Morgan Harper, in a longtime swing state that has lurched hard to the right in recent years.

Just a few months ago, Vance’s allies at Protect Ohio Values, a super PAC funded by megadonor Peter Thiel, warned that the candidate’s poll numbers were in “precipitous decline.” The group highlighted the previous fall’s assault by the Club for Growth, which supported Mandel and had run a barrage of ads using 2016 footage of Vance saying, “I’m a Never Trump guy,” an offensive that persuaded many voters that Vance could not be trusted.

Senate

● NV-Sen, NV-Gov, NV-04: Former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt has publicized an internal from WPA Intelligence that gives him a 57-20 lead over Army veteran Sam Brown ahead of the June 14 Republican primary. Back in mid-March, WPA’s survey for Laxalt’s allies at the Club for Growth found him ahead by an almost-identical 57-20 margin.

The central committee of the Nevada Republican Party, though, spurned the Trump-backed frontrunner over the weekend by voting to endorse Brown. The party’s leadership also threw its support behind attorney Joey Gilbert, who has bragged that he was “definitely on the Capitol steps” on Jan. 6, in the primary for governor; the decision came days after Trump endorsed another candidate, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. Additionally, the state GOP went for Air Force veteran Sam Peters in the GOP contest to face 4th District Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford.

Governors

● NY-Gov: The state Board of Elections ruled Monday that both 2014 nominee Rob Astorino and former Trump White House staffer Andrew Giuliani had submitted enough valid signatures to appear on the June Republican primary ballot despite a challenge by one of their intra-party rivals, Rep. Lee Zeldin. The field also includes wealthy businessman Harry Wilson, whose petitions were not contested by anyone.

● RI-Gov: Campaign finance reports are in covering the first quarter of 2022, and WPRI has rounded up the totals for all the notable Democratic contenders:

• former CVS executive Helena Foulkes: $900,000 raised, additional $400,000 self-funded, $1.5 million cash-on-hand

• Gov. Dan McKee: $427,000 raised, $1.1 million cash-on-hand

• Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea: $378,000 raised, $896,000 cash-on-hand

• former Secretary of State Matt Brown: $110,000 raised, $79,000 cash-on-hand 

Businesswoman Ashley Kalus, who is the only major Republican contender, took in a mere $13,000 from donors but self-funded another $500,000, which left her with $410,000 available at the end of March.

House

● FL-15, FL-14: Jay Collins, who lost a leg as a combat medic in Afghanistan, announced Tuesday that he would seek the Republican nomination for the new and open 15th District. Collins had been running against Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor in the neighboring 14th District, which remains safely blue turf under the GOP’s new gerrymander, and he ended March with $339,000 on hand that he can use for his new campaign.

On the Democratic side, Alan Cohn, who was the party’s 2020 nominee against now-Rep. Scott Franklin in the old 15th, says he’s also “seriously considering” running for the open seat. (Franklin himself is running for the renumbered 18th District.)

● NY-LG, NY-19: Gov. Kathy Hochul named Rep. Antonio Delgado as her new lieutenant governor on Tuesday, the day after state legislators passed a new law at Hochul’s behest allowing former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin’s name to be removed from the ballot following his resignation last month.

The legislation also allowed a seven-member committee of Democratic leaders to swap Delgado in for Benjamin, who prior to the new law’s enactment could only have been taken off the ballot had he died, moved to another state, or been nominated for another office; now, anyone charged with a crime can be removed as well.

Delgado, a moderate representing the swingy 19th District in Upstate’s Hudson Valley, was facing a difficult re-election campaign that was likely about to get more so: While his fellow Democrats had sought to make his seat bluer in redistricting, that map was recently thrown out by the state’s highest court, so the next iteration of the 19th—which will be drawn by an independent expert—could well be tougher.

But Delgado’s new path is still fraught. In New York, candidates run in separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor, with the winners merged onto a single ticket on the November ballot. That system typically prompts pairs of candidates to forge alliances in the hopes of avoiding an unwelcome “shotgun wedding” for the general election, but even if Hochul defeats her two opponents on June 28 (as all polls have indicated she will), there’s no guarantee Delgado will do the same.

In fact, after Benjamin’s arrest on bribery charges, a number of progressive leaders had rallied around activist Ana Maria Archila, who’s allied with New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. (The only other alternative, former New York City Councilwoman Diana Reyna, is running alongside Rep. Tom Suozzi, who’s positioned himself well to Hochul’s right.)

Delgado will benefit from Hochul’s powerful perch and massive war chest, but he may be hurt by accusations that the governor sought to change the rules mid-stream in order to benefit herself—a concern that led a sizable number of Democratic senators to oppose the bill in a rare show of dissent.

And no one knows better that being linked with a powerful, deep-pocketed governor is no guarantee of victory than Hochul herself. In 2018, on the same day that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo romped to an easy 66-34 victory over actor and activist Cynthia Nixon, Hochul only narrowly defeated the little-known Williams, at the time a member of the City Council, by just a 53-47 margin.

Once Delgado is sworn in to his new post—no legislative confirmation is required—Hochul will have 10 days to call a special election under a law passed last year requiring such elections be held in a much timelier manner than they had been in the past. (Cuomo had been notorious for repeatedly dragging his feet on calling specials when it didn’t suit him to do so, thanks to a huge gap in state law that gave him wide discretion.) The election must then be held within 70 to 80 days.

While redistricting is still up in the air, the special will take place under the old lines. Recent trends had been favorable for Democrats in the 19th: Joe Biden flipped the district in 2020, carrying it by a slender 50-48 margin four years after Donald Trump won it 51-44; Delgado, meanwhile, unseated one-term Republican Rep. John Faso 51-46 in 2018 and then defeated an unheralded GOP foe 54-43 two years later.

In New York, local party committees, rather than primary voters, pick nominees for special elections, but there isn’t much suspense as to whom Republicans will choose. Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro has been running for the 19th since September without any serious intra-party opposition, and he quickly confirmed he would campaign in this summer’s contest.

Things are far more uncertain on the Democratic side, though a couple of names have already surfaced. Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan, who took second place to Delgado in the 2018 primary, said he was considering, while an unnamed source told the New York Times that state Sen. Michelle Hinchey is looking at the contest as well. Hinchey is the daughter of the late Rep. Maurice Hinchey, who represented a sizable portion of this district from 1993 to 2013.

● OR-05: Journalists at Sludge report that Mainstream Democrats PAC, a new group with the stated purpose of thwarting “far-left organizations” that want to take over the Democratic Party, will spend $800,000 in ads to help moderate Rep. Kurt Schrader fend off attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner in the May 17 primary.

The first spot from the super PAC, which is funded in part by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, uses footage of the Jan. 6 attack and warnings about Team Blue’s prospects in the midterms to argue, “We need proven leaders who can beat Trump Republicans.” The narrator goes on to declare that McLeod-Skinner, who lost both the 2018 general election for the safely red 2nd District and 2020 primary for secretary of state, “just can’t do it,” while Schrader “beats every Republican every time.” The commercial continues by arguing that the incumbent shares “our Democratic values” and reminding the audience that he’s President Joe Biden’s endorsed candidate.

● TN-05: Music video producer Robby Starbuck has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the state GOP’s decision to keep him off the August primary ballot for failing to meet the party’s definition of a “bona fide” Republican. Starbuck, who moved to the state three years ago, was rejected because he had not voted in three of the last four statewide primaries, which his suit dubbed an unconstitutional “camouflaged residency requirement.”

Former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, who was Trump’s endorsed candidate, also failed to pass the bona fide test for the same reasons, but she says she will not challenge the decision. Businessman Baxter Lee, the third candidate kicked off the ballot, does not appear to have said what he’ll do. It may not matter, though, as NBC notes that “courts, including those in Tennessee, have given broad deference to political parties in such disputes” as this one.

Prosecutors

● Baltimore, MD State’s Attorney: Prosecutor Thiru Vignarajah last month released a mid-April GQR poll that shows him trailing incumbent Marilyn Mosby 35-32 in the July Democratic primary to serve as Baltimore’s top prosecutor, with defense attorney Ivan Bates at 13%. It takes only a simple plurality to secure the Democratic nod, which is tantamount to election in this reliably blue city.

Ad Roundup

• GA-Sen: Raphael Warnock (D-inc)
• OH-Sen: Tim Ryan (D)
• WI-Sen: Ron Johnson (R-inc)
• CA-Gov: Gavin Newsom (D-inc)
• MD-Gov: Rushern Baker (D)
• KY-03: Protect Our Future PAC – pro-Morgan McGarvey (D)
• MN-01: Jeff Ettinger (D)
• NC-04: Protect Our Future PAC – pro-Valerie Foushee (D)
• GA-AG: Chris Carr (R-inc)

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This week on The Brief, hosts Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld talked about the leaked initial draft majority opinion in a case that would overturn Roe v. Wade, written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated inside the court.

Guest Christine Pelosi, an attorney, author, and advocate who has has trained thousands of leaders in almost every state and four foreign countries, joined the hosts for this episode. Pelosi is also in the process of training Democratic candidates running for the House of Representatives this November, and she shared her thoughts on what happens now that we know about the impending demise of Roe v. Wade.

Outrage poured out across the nation as news of the leaked document made its rounds on the internet early this week. “No matter how much you expected this decision, the impact was still a gut punch,” Moulitsas said. This extremist ruling hardly reflects the views of most Americans: Civiqs polling shows that a majority of Americans—58%—believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to 38% who believe it should be illegal in most or all cases.

While Eleveld emphasized that this is a draft opinion, she acknowledged that it has been authenticated. The question, she added, is whether it manages to get toned down before the final ruling likely lands in June—and what ripple effects it could have:

One way or the other, five justices have voted to overturn. Who knows, maybe there will be a concurring opinion from Chief Justice Roberts, but it’s done. It’s … a maximal assault on all progressive constitutional decisions, basically. This is just the beginning for the right-wing conservative movement. They are going to go after contraception, they are going to go after LGBTQ rights, the same-sex marriage decision … they are going to go after everyone who’s not male and white and Christian.

Justice Samuel Alito, in the decision, also took a slap at Lawrence v. Texas, which Eleveld noted is “basically the first big LGBTQ rights win at the Supreme Court [level] in 2003 that said that same-sex couples have the right to privacy to have sex in their own bedrooms without [the government getting involved].

“Conservatives are shredding what we have come to know over the last fifty years as modern America,” she added. Ultimately, the conservative justices’ argument revolves around what the Supreme Court confers upon Americans as “unenumerated rights”—ones not specifically mentioned in the Constitution by name, but ones the Supreme Court has deemed inferred or implied by the rights listed in the Constitution.

Moulitsas and Eleveld expressed concern that society has greatly changed and evolved since the U.S. Constitution was written, arguing that strictly adhering to the document simply doesn’t make sense. “Once you get into, ‘Well,’ it’s not explicitly written in the Constitution,’ then it’s open season [on your rights]. They will go after everything that we have come to know as basic, modern American civilization,” Eleveld said.

Joining the conversation, Pelosi chimed in that trigger laws in thirteen states, many passed in the years since the Roe decision in 1973, could also come into play. These laws explicitly state that abortion will be outlawed as soon as SCOTUS strikes down Roe v. Wade.

Moulitsas called out many Democrats’ complacency around Roe v. Wade over the past few decades, noting that abortion rights activists have long been sounding the alarm on the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark decision. While Republicans have been very effective at using the Supreme Court as an electoral tool, he noted, “Democrats … were unable to weaponize the Supreme Court issue as a campaign issue, as a way to galvanize our voters.”

He also pointed out how Alito appeared to be sensitive to the fact that he is a man determining an issue directly affecting women and decided to weaponize feminism in the decision. As Alito wrote, “Women are not without electoral or political power. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.” Thus, Moulitsas said, “He is basically daring women to do something about it.”

Pelosi believes that Democrats need to show up in the streets and press for action at the congressional level to show Alito and the other conservative justices that this is unacceptable:

Bless his heart. The same man that gave us Citizens United [v. FEC], the same man that helped gut the Voting Rights Act, is now going to talk about, ‘Oh don’t worry, women, you can vote’? It’s actually women who have more voter suppression to deal with than less, because women who get divorced or married, therefore changing their [last] name, have a more difficult time going through all those legal documents. I think a lot of people are dealing with voter suppression, and a lot of them are women. So no, I think it is a dare and I think we should take him up on his dare … I feel like Alito is channeling Scalia in saying, ‘Well, if you don’t like it, you can just vote to change the law.’ Well, we did vote to change the law! Right? We voted for a Democratic Senate, we voted for a Democratic president, [but] you know, Mitch McConnell didn’t give us our vacancy when Scalia passed.

Pelosi also impressed upon the audience the importance of urging their senators to “confirm everyone you can as quickly as you can right now.”

While the leaked draft ruling is horrible, Pelosi urged Democrats to lead with empathy and humanity first:

I think the shock is only just starting to wear off, and I think because it’s such a personal, painful decision, we want to be really careful about how we go about looking at where it would have electoral advantage or disadvantage. Yes, it’s going to piss people off, yes, it’s going to get people out and voting. Yes, women know who’s on their side. Patients know who’s on their side … that much will be clear. I also want to just put in a word for those who are coming at this from a place of trauma, because what I don’t think would be helpful is to add to the unhealed grief and the long COVID and the trickle-down hate from the last administration.

We want to be careful about making sure that it is a net plus that Democrats know that our base is furious. They’re furious with us, they’re furious with themselves, they’re furious with this country, and we have to honor that pain … I would just hope that this is done with a tad of nuance and a lot of care, because yes, it’s a bumper sticker, right? ‘My body, my choice.’ Who decides, you or them? Vote pro-choice, vote Democratic. Like, we get that. It’s actually easier to campaign on other issues in that respect. But there are a lot of scared people who are going to be in a lot of pain and potentially die … Let’s just make sure that we’re leading with that empathetic heart and with input from the people who are most impacted so what the public sees is that we care about them—which we do.

“What I’m hearing from you is something we’ve been talking a lot about in recent shows about messaging, which is that you start by stating your values and what you’re for, and then you say, ‘And then what is the other side going to do for you? What plans do they have to help you?’ Because at this point, their only plans are the culture wars. So that’s it,” Eleveld replied. “There are no plans to help with healthcare, there are no plans to help with reproductive rights, there are no plans to help with inflation, there are no plans to help with anything.”

Pelosi left the audience with important strategic takeaways about how to take meaningful action:

Support your local grassroots organizing. If you are blessed enough to be in a place where, after you organize for yourself, you can organize for others, then work on holding the House, and holding the Senate, and holding some of these seats in nested communities, right? Going to what we call red California or purple California, but also looking at places like Michigan, where they’ve got a contested governor’s race, where they’ve also got contested legislative races, and they will in the general have some contested congressional races. Work in Florida, work in Texas … But we’ve got to make sure we hold this House, and to do that, we have to make sure we’re getting out the word that yes, the House did codify Roe once. They’ll do it again, and they’ll be able to do it next year too, and to fund a codified Roe, if we have a Democratic majority, so hold the House.

Watch the full episode here:

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