Do these types of programs still pretend to be funny, or is activism now just plain activism?
The Alito photoshop, I suppose, qualifies as humor. Kind of?
Just a few weeks ago, an assassination attempt against a justice was thwarted. The Court marshal is currently pleading with local law enforcement to take additional measures to keep protesters away from the justices’ residences. If we are not already there, we will soon reach the stage where the members of the Court must always travel with a security detail. It would be foolish to encourage liberals to confront justices on the court whenever they are seen in the wild.
It’s not an unusual tactic. but foolish.
Following Dobbs, at least one person was detained for allegedly making “terroristic threats” against the Court. The DHS director stated on “Face the Nation” yesterday that since the decision, the “threat environment” toward the Court has increased and that the department is setting priorities accordingly:
The lack of a “cooldown” period makes the Dobbs aftermath particularly frightening. The majority of significant court decisions explode like a bomb, sending a shockwave that passes before those nearby can gather their bearings. The sudden legislative activity on abortion makes the end of Roe feel more like a major earthquake with months of aftershocks than like a bomb. And the aftershocks become more powerful the more aggressively states try to restrict abortion:
Due to a ruling by the Montana state supreme court, abortion is still permitted there; however, trigger laws have been passed in all of the neighboring states, making it illegal. Can a pregnant person legally travel to Montana for an abortion from Idaho or the Dakotas? It’s ambiguous. Can a Montana abortion provider who performs an abortion on a resident of one of those neighboring states be sued in that state? Also ambiguous And so:
According to an email sent on Thursday by the organization’s president and CEO, Martha Fuller, patients in South Dakota and three other states with “trigger laws” will no longer be able to receive medication abortions there.
In the email, Fuller stated that all medication abortion patients would need to present proof of residency in order to comply with the change.
Fuller wrote in the email that there are “currently unclear risks associated with cross-state provision of services, with potential for both civil and criminal action for providing abortions in states with bans.”
As a result, some sick people who aren’t stable even on a good day are being shaken by the aftershocks. Congress should start considering extending the Secret Service’s purview to the nine justices.
Democrats’ best long-term option for dealing with the Roe issue is to emulate Republicans’ strategy of packing the Supreme Court with enough justices to overturn Dobbs. But how long would that undertaking require? Ed Kilgore, a leftist, is pessimistic:
It would be extremely difficult politically for Democrats to take back the Supreme Court. In order to get lucky with conservative vacancies, they would need to hold onto both the White House and the Senate for an extended period of time. Democrats have a good chance to keep control of the Senate in 2022, but their chances are poor in 2024. (three Democratic seats, and all ten Republicans seats up that year were carried by Trump twice). Obviously, a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential election is not a sure thing.
Beyond that issue for Democrats, the likelihood of future Supreme Court vacancies is significantly lower than it was in 2016. Ginsburg was 87 when she passed away, while Scalia was 79. Breyer retired at 83, Kennedy at 82. The current senior justice, Clarence Thomas, is 74; the three justices appointed by Donald Trump are all under 57, making them mere children by Supreme Court standards.
A new foundation for abortion rights would almost certainly need to be agreed upon by progressive justices; this foundation would likely be centered on equal-protection claims rather than the shaky ground of substantive due process that Roe and later Casey rested on. The prospect of simply re-establishing Roe and Casey as precedents will diminish over time. All of this will take time, followed by preliminary legal action, in which conservatives will bitterly engage in a rearguard defense.
In another 50 years, science might have produced low-cost methods of contraception that are virtually foolproof, undermining the case for legalized abortion on demand. If liberals are successful in resisting the urge to push unworkable legislation that insists on a right up until the moment of birth, I believe they will instead concentrate on legislative solutions rather than re-engineering the Supreme Court, primarily by codifying a fundamental national right to abortion. Even though Dobbs’ departure won’t persuade Democrats to support abortion rights, it may lower their expectations for what is actually achievable in terms of policy. That would represent at least some progress.
