Aaron E. Carroll/Upshot:
Why Politics Should Be Kept Out of Miscarriages
The possible problems of a new Georgia law, including causing further pain.
The new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, gives a 6-week-old fetus the legal status of a human being. One definition of second-degree murder in Georgia includes cruelty to children during which “he or she causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice.” This raises the question of whether a woman who miscarries because of what is perceived to be her conduct could be held liable for that conduct.
“This suggests that women who ‘cause the death’ of a fetus, with or without malice, could be charged with second-degree murder,” said Eric Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University, and a supporter of abortion rights. He said the law would most likely be struck down in the lower courts.
Kirsten Powers/USA Today:
'Heartbeat bills' reveal extremist anti-abortion view that values unborn over women
The anti-abortion movement pays lip service to caring for women, but there is only one thing they care about: the unborn. I care about all lives.
The focus of the “real Christians” around me was not on giving women the support they needed to prevent pregnancy through access to contraception or on developing economic support for poor women who can’t afford another child in an already struggling family. I could not make common cause with them. Until, it turned out, when it came to so-called late-term abortion, generally understood to be abortion after 20-22 weeks.
I wrote recently about the importance of admitting when you have made a mistake, and this is one area where I wish I could press “delete” on some of my past columns. I was particularly vicious toward Planned Parenthood, despite my long support for the work they do to increase health care access for women. When it came to abortion later in pregnancy, I employed my now signature black-and-white thinking on a complicated topic that required more care.
In hindsight, I seemed convinced that abortion supporters didn’t appreciate the gravity of later-term abortion. But the opposite is true. Nobody understands this issue better than women who have actually had a late-term abortion. By listening to their stories, I’ve come to see that the tragedy of this procedure, sought in desperation, is well understood by the women receiving it.
Recently, I followed the outrage over a New York abortion law, which conservatives claim allows abortion even as the woman is giving birth, and the GOP’s failed attempt to pass the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” which would add specific penalties for actions already illegal under a prior law that received bipartisan support in 2002.
Catherine Rampell/WaPo:
Democrats should be shouting Trump’s trade failures from the rooftops
Markets crashing, farmers suffering, allies seething, manufacturing workers fretting about their job security.
These were all foreseeable consequences of President Trump’s trade wars, which escalated in the past week after Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese goods ever higher and Beijing announced tit-for-tat retaliatory duties. Such developments reveal the risks of Trump’s protectionist instincts, his fundamental misunderstanding of how both trade and trade negotiations work, and his inability to learn the lessons of the trade war that deepened the Great Depression.
All this should be great ammunition for Trump’s rivals. Why isn’t it being used?
Republicans, of course, are too cowardly to challenge Trump on much of anything. But Democrats, particularly those angling for the presidency, should be shouting from the rooftops. They should be sharing soybean-farmer sob stories and damning stats with any voter still considering following Trump off the protectionist cliff. Especially given academic research finding that “Trump Country” has been hurt most by his trade conflicts.
Geoffrey Skelley/FiveThirtyEight:
The Buttigieg Bump Is Fading, But He Could Surge Again
No one has ever ascended from mayor to president in one fell swoop, but Pete Buttigieg is trying to change that. And from mid-March to mid-April, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s position in the race significantly improved — he surged in the polls and garnered a sizable number of donors, enough to easily meet both the polling and donor requirements for participating in the first two Democratic primary debates.
While Buttigieg’s upward trajectory in the polls has seemingly halted and he looks to have settled in at around 6 percent, down from a peak of 8 percent, that’s still a big jump for a candidate who started the race polling at 0 percent. So here is a closer look at Buttigieg’s rise and how he compares to other 2020 candidates, plus an idea of what this could mean for him moving forward, since he’s still relatively unknown.
Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark:
Brewster’s Millions at the NRA
How do you spend $1,100 in an airport with nothing to show for
Look: Lawyers are expensive! If you’re consulting with a top-level senior attorney in a big city you could have the meter running at $2,000 an hour.
But the NRA was burning through $100,000 in legal fees per day.
So let’s do the math. Assume that the lawyers working for the NRA are all top-notch, senior-partner level heavy-hitters billing out at $2,000 per hour. That’s 50 hours of billable work per day. Which is six superstar lawyers, working 9 to 5, without breaks, for the NRA. Every. Single. Day.
Exactly what sort of work were they doing? It’s not like they were running the government’s anti-trust case against Microsoft.
My point in this exercise is to show that these expenses aren’t just extravagant and wasteful, but are so insane that you can’t even really figure out how they were actually incurred.
In a weird way, the $13,800 on summer housing for the “intern” is actually the easiest expense to understand.
It is difficult to see how the NRA will survive this in anything remotely resembling its current form.
Chris Murphy and Jim Himes/USA Today:
Trump is edging toward a disastrous war with Iran. Stop the brinksmanship
We’ve seen precisely that movie before with Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi — and it doesn’t play out like we script it. U.S. military action against Iran is perhaps the one thing that can rally the Iranian people to the side of their awful leaders. While the Iranian military is no match for the United States, it has the capability to create immense chaos in the region. Terrorist attacks around the world, huge disruptions in energy markets, an attack on Israel and U.S. casualties are near certainties.
But it is not too late to stop this mistake. Military brinkmanship, designed to provoke or cause an aggressive reaction, can be stopped. We ask that the administration brief Congress on the situation in an open and transparent way and acknowledge that the Constitution grants war-making authority solely to Congress, not the Oval Office. Critically, President Trump must understand that the authorization for the use of military force that Congress passed in 2001 against al-Qaida does not authorize hostilities against Iran, no matter how much Mr. Pompeo would like to link Iran and al-Qaida.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us nearly $6 trillion and over 14,000 U.S. lives, with success still on the distant horizon. Tragically, war is sometimes necessary to protect America and our interests. But picking a fight with Iran now is neither necessary nor remotely a good idea. We know how it ends. We are watching it begin. Now is the time to choose a wiser course.
Otoh, it may well appeal to voters sick of the partisanship, even if he’s wrong.
My friend Chris Stroop, who covers exvangelicals, has this. Read the thread: