Abortion Is Now a Wedge Issue — Against Republicans

During the half-century when Roe v. Wade was law, anti-abortion advocates and their Republican allies frequently complained that the right of “the people” to determine abortion policy had been stolen by the unelected Supreme Court. It became a classic “wedge issue” benefiting the GOP, as frustrated traditionalist Catholics and conservative Evangelical Protestants left the Democratic Party in droves, providing votes and grassroots muscle to the GOP for decades. This legacy culminated in the devil’s bargain that cultural conservatives struck with Donald Trump in 2016.

Well, in the 13 months since the newly conservative Supreme Court created by Trump reversed Roe and “the people” regained that right (which in reality meant the right to deny other people reproductive rights), voters in red and blue states alike have wherever possible used this freedom to restore the rights the courts and Republican legislators have sought to steal. It happened again on Tuesday in Ohio, the Republican-trending former battleground state where voters decisively rejected a sneaky GOP bid to make it harder to write abortion rights into the state’s constitution through a ballot initiative in November.

This is the seventh statewide abortion-ballot measure since Roe was reversed, and pro-choice forces have won every one of them, even in conservative states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and now Ohio. When Ohio voters (more than likely) enact the constitutional amendment Republicans failed to block, the tally will be 8–0. And in 2024, voters in at least seven states will decide on measures to protect or deny abortion rights.

If the rout continues, giving “the people” control over abortion policy may be quite the pyrrhic victory for the anti-abortion movement and even more so for the GOP whose electoral fortunes could be caught in the powerful backlash to Roe’s reversal. That backlash is already the prime suspect in the disappointing 2022 midterm results for Republicans who expected a “red wave” that never quite materialized. But the depth and breadth of popular commitment to abortion rights going into what may be an apocalyptic 2024 presidential cycle remains significantly unclear.

It should be understood, however, that the option of using “direct democracy” to restore abortion rights via citizen-initiated constitutional amendments that circumvent Republican legislators (as has now happened in both Michigan and Ohio) is available only in a total of 16 states. Voters may also fight back in cases where GOP lawmakers are trying to abolish state constitutional abortion rights that have been recognized by state courts and need voter ratification of their handiwork (that’s what happened in 2022 in Kansas and Kentucky). But to a significant extent, the fate of the right to choose in many politically contested states will continue to depend on partisan control of major offices, including legislative chambers, governorships, and in some cases elected judges. And that’s aside from the power of Congress to preempt state abortion laws if one party or the other secures a trifecta and can overcome a Senate filibuster. So even in states with no abortion ballot test on tap in 2024, the subject will very much be on the ballot via the two polarized pro-choice and anti-abortion major parties.

The pro-choice state-ballot-measure winning streak, the impact of the subject on key 2022 races, and bountiful polling showing pro-choice majorities in all but the most conservative corners of the country have combined to convince many Republican operatives and even elected officials that the subject is a loser for the GOP. When Donald Trump said just that at the beginning of 2023, it produced a lot of consternation among anti-abortion advocates who had previously adored him for his successfully redeemed promise to appoint justices who would overturn Roe. The Ohio results will convince even more Republicans that the 45th president was right. Perhaps they will even whisper to their abortion-obsessed allies in and beyond religious conservative circles to show some patience, keep their mouths shut, and help the GOP obtain enough power to give their friends what they want when political conditions are more favorable.

But now that Roe is gone, abortion politics is a 24/7 business, and anti-abortion activists are out of patience; that’s particularly true among the newer and more militant organizations like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life. They are eager to use the competitive Republican presidential-nomination contest to increase, not hide, their leverage over the GOP, and Trump’s candid remarks on abortion politics have encouraged his rivals to pledge greater allegiance to the cause. Mike Pence and Tim Scott have both leapt to embrace the hard-core position of favoring a national six-week abortion ban. Ron DeSantis has punctuated his effort to run to Trump’s right by bragging to Iowans about the six-week ban (deemed “too harsh” by Trump) he signed in Florida.

It’s possible Trump will cruise to the nomination without renewing the vows underlying his marriage of convenience to the anti-abortion movement, and abortion will recede as a 2024 campaign issue. But national Democrats, who know a good wedge issue when they see one, almost certainly won’t let general-election voters who pledged to protect abortion rights and who worked hard to abolish them. We don’t have a partisan breakdown of the vote from Ohio (the state does not have voter registration by county), but there were clear indications the “No on Issue 1” coalition included quite a few Republican voters, as did the similar pro-choice coalitions in other states with previous abortion-ballot measures. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has presented county-level data comparing 2020 partisan-vote margins to abortion-ballot measures in Ohio and five other states (California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Montana) and the results are striking:

In Ohio, about one-fifth of counties that voted for Trump in 2020 opposed Issue 1. The same pattern held in the six states included above. Of the 510 counties included in the analysis, only two counties that voted for Biden in 2020 also opposed access to abortion. Among Trump-voting counties, 81 supported that access.

To use the parlance of political observers, abortion, particularly when presented to voters directly, is an effective wedge issue for the left.

In a hypothetical Biden-Trump general-election rematch, a significant number of anti-Trump Republicans and Republican-leaning independents will be under pressure to defect to Biden, as a decent number did in 2020. Abandoned pro-choice swing voters of every background will have another reason to conduct their own protest against the GOP, or at least split their tickets.

The prominence of the issue will be enhanced in the media and the minds of voters by conspicuous abortion-rights ballot measures that will face 2024 voters in DeSantis’s Florida, and perhaps in ultra-battleground Arizona. It’s just not a good look for today’s allegedly populist, anti-elite GOP to deny people fundamental rights or even the power to determine policies affecting their fundamental rights. Abortion rights could be the populist cause of the next decade or so. That’s a real problem for those who oppose those rights and the Republican political party so many of them call home.

Tesla’s Incipient Dominance of EV Charging Networks

Last year, the Biden administration made a smart move to guarantee universal access to electric-vehicle charging stations. As a condition for accepting some of the $7.5 billion in public funding available to build out charging networks, companies would have to make their chargers interoperable to any EV.

There was really only one target for this effort. Practically every EV automaker had already committed to the Combined Charging System (CCS) plug. The sole holdout was for Tesla, which used a proprietary port that it decided to call the “North American Charging Standard” (NACS), even though at that time it wasn’t standard at all.

When Tesla agreed to abide by the government’s conditions and open up its “Supercharger” stations to all cars, it looked like the problem was solved. And the problem is being solved—but mostly on Tesla’s terms.

In a jarring turnaround, it appears that Tesla’s NACS will supplant CCS in the next couple of years. The shift started back in June when Ford and GM announced their intention to adopt the NACS plug for 2025 models. Polestar, Volvo, Rivian, Mercedes, and Nissan quickly followed suit, and Stellantis and Toyota are rumored to be considering NACS as well. As manufacturing scales up, this would soon put most EVs actually on the road in America in the NACS camp. When the automotive standards organization SAE International announced its support for NACS, and most of the independent charging networks like ChargePoint and EVGo said they would add NACS ports, the die was truly cast.

(Full disclosure: I’m a Volkswagen EV owner who uses Electrify America, one of the last holdouts on NACS because it was created by Volkswagen as a requirement of the Dieselgate scandal. Lucky big-brain me.)

Given the administration’s smart commitment to interoperability, this may seem like a footnote in history, reminiscent of the format wars between Betamax and VHS, or HD DVD and Blu-ray. But there is now a potential competition problem, where public EV charging in America is increasingly reliant on a single EV manufacturer. Tesla walled off its Supercharger network until it became challenging for other automakers to continue with patchwork alternatives. But killing off its rivals, and profiting from non-Tesla owners, could diminish U.S. charging infrastructure more than it builds it.

Tesla’s victory is clearly a testament to vertical combination, specifically the investment in its Supercharger network.

Tesla’s victory is clearly a testament to vertical combination, specifically the investment in its Supercharger network, which has more charging locations than all its rivals combined. The other networks, most of which do not have automaker support, have not been able to make EV charging into a viable business. The reason is most vehicle trips are quite short, and therefore drivers don’t need very much power to recharge their EV on a daily basis. Unlike gasoline, electricity is available to the home, and with modest upgrades, a “Level 2” charger can power up an EV overnight. Even a regular plug can charge an EV tolerably given enough time. So the independents are competing with home use, which means limited customers at their stations.

This has led to disinvestment and inoperable chargers; at my local Electrify America hub, at least three of the ten chargers are broken, and another nearby hub has been out of commission for weeks.

Tesla, by contrast, cross-subsidized its charging stations with other revenue to make them viable and boost sales to customers with range anxiety. With other carmakers switching to Tesla’s standard, the independents could shrink in direct proportion to Tesla’s growth, leaving this essential infrastructure at a standstill rather than in expansion, with more cars coming on the road every day.

Other automakers are trying to catch up; a consortium announced a $1 billion investment for 30,000 charging stations a couple of weeks ago. (The new network will have CCS and NACS plugs.) The consortium’s new network is at least an indicator that some in the industry think it would be unhealthy to have a competitor control access, pricing, and innovation of the main EV charging standard in the U.S. But they don’t expect all 30,000 to roll out until the end of the decade; this is a bit late in the game. Ford, which has its own deal with independent chargers, and Volkswagen, which has Electrify America, aren’t participating in the new consortium.

What’s crazy here is that we have the logical location for chargers everywhere in America. If the current network of gas stations just added EV chargers, we wouldn’t be talking about this. But gas stations are in a fight with utility companies all over the country over who gets to install the chargers, who pays for the upgrade, and ultimately who benefits. That has led to very slow adoption. Until that dispute is settled, and with the independent model in seemingly inevitable decline, Tesla is essentially in the driver’s seat.

Charging your EV at a public station means not only finding one with the right plug, but also having the right software, usually in the form of a phone app, to talk to the charging network and pay for the service. The Biden administration has recognized this as well, announced additional deals in February designed to “eliminate the current practice of loading up your iPhone with 30 different apps, depending on where you pull up to charge.”

If the current network of gas stations just added EV chargers, we wouldn’t be talking about this.

But that’s in the early stages, and by getting everyone to shift to Tesla’s Supercharger stations, the company clearly stands to benefit. It’s unclear how a non-Tesla driver will be able to use a Tesla Supercharger: Will they need a Tesla account and an app? Will they pay the same rate for electricity as Tesla owners? (The answer to that is almost certainly no; other companies like Volkswagen and Hyundai routinely build discount deals into the purchase of their EVs.) Indeed, analyst Piper Sandler estimates that Tesla will earn $3 billion from non-Tesla owners by 2030 from charging fees.

Moreover, the fate of the millions of CCS cars on the road remains a question. Now that Tesla forced most EVs onto its standard, will it follow through with its interoperability promises? So far, there are fewer than 100 CCS ports at Tesla Supercharger stations. Some users will be able to use adapters—that’s the plan for Ford and GM owners—but that brings us back to the software operability issues.

There’s a separate security issue with EV chargers, and if networks are consolidated further, that just makes the opportunity bigger for hackers.

And Tesla getting the whole industry to adopt its NACS plug could be a model for a side business in supplying technology to other carmakers who don’t want to invest capital in EVs. Under the hood, all cars could be Teslas; just the body shapes and brand names would be different. “At what point will the legacy car companies realize that they also don’t need to build their own batteries and chassis and drivetrains,” one analyst proffered to Axios.

This is something that could spur the competition authorities to action. You’re talking about an electric-vehicle landscape, backed by public subsidies at every level, that could come down to Tesla plugs, Tesla chargers, Tesla batteries, and Tesla technology. That offers a ripe set of possibilities for abuse and exploitation.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration might conclude that if the EV charging business is falling into the hands of one EV company, the free market isn’t figuring out the transition to EV charging networks.

I was thinking about this very question the other day. We’ve driven hybrids for 19 years, and the last vehicle just paid off early (we had a decent rate, but determined we needed to get it down in order to avoid more payment going towards interest). I don’t see how this is going to be affordable, and I’ve wondered if Biden set aside enough money for this initiative. I was looking at the list of states/metro areas that have publicly available chargers. In IL, that number is low, and in many of the Midwest states, the number is low.

Marcy Wheeler

Shorter DJT: Mexico will pay for new SCIF

In Trump’s response to DOJ’s motion for a classified protective order in the stolen documents case, his lawyers clarified that they didn’t so much want to discuss classified documents with Trump while sitting in his offices, which is how the government represented their request, but instead wanted to restore the SCIF at one or another of his resorts.

Even there, the response itself says that Trump wants to review classified materials in a restored SCIF, while a footnote disavows that, then says he wants the space where he used to review such material, with another footnote disavowing a plan to transport classified documents there now.

President Trump opposes any portion of the Proposed CIPA Protective Order that prohibits counsel from simply discussing the relevant purportedly classified material with President Trump inside an approved secure location other than the designated SCIFs in the Southern District of Florida where the classified discovery will be housed. President Trump respectfully requests that the Proposed CIPA Protective Order be modified to approve re-establishment of a secure facility in which President Trump was permitted previously to discuss (and review2 ) classified information during his term as President of the United States.3

2 To be clear, President Trump is not asking for the proposed CIPA Protective Order to be modified to permit any classified materials to be transported to or reviewed or stored in, this location.

3 Counsel can provide additional information about President Trump’s proposed secure location but respectfully request that such information be provided in camera because of security concerns.

[snip]

So that President Trump and his legal team may discuss classified information in a substantive manner as regularly as necessary to prepare an adequate defense, we respectfully request that the Court approve re-establishment of a secure facility in which President Trump previously discussed (and reviewed5 ) classified information during his term as President of the United States.

5 Again, President Trump is not requesting that any classified materials be transported to or reviewed or stored in this location. [my emphasis]

Throughout this filing, Trump refers to purportedly classified material in the body of his argument, then disavows wanting to transport classified material in a footnote.

To that end, President Trump requests that the Court approve the renewed use of the previously approved and appropriately secure location so that he is then able to discuss the relevant classified information with his counsel without the need to mobilize his security detail and state and local law enforcement every time he has a conversation regarding his defense as it relates to purportedly classified information.8

8 Again, President Trump is not asking for the proposed CIPA Protective Order to be modified to permit any classified materials to be transported to, or stored in, this location.

[snip]

Indeed, the government has the authority to discuss the purported classified material in other approved facilities outside of a Court designated SCIF, and we anticipate it does so regularly. That is not inconsistent with the law so long as they are having those discussions in a secure, approved facility. Our request is to have the same opportunity. We are seeking the Court’s permission to discuss classified information in a secure facility that was long approved for such use and met then, and could easily meet now, the standard required by our nation’s intelligence community to ensure protection of information deemed classified. [my emphasis]

All the reassurances that Trump doesn’t want to store classified material back at Mar-a-Lago modify claims that it might not be classified. Given those caveats, there’s a big question whether stolen classified documents will end up right back at Mar-a-Lago.

Put aside the gimmick here — Trump is demanding that the government make his home a legal place for classified information, which still amounts to seeking, “permission to do so in the very location at which he is charged with willfully retaining the documents charged in this case.”

This is also a filing about Secret Service. The response and Todd Blanche’s related declaration describes that this proposal is based on, “multiple communications with several individuals who are familiar with the required security protocols surrounding President Trump and his family.” But it doesn’t describe any consultation with the people whose job it is to protect classified records.

6. When President Trump was in office, there was a designated, secure location where classified information was approved to be housed and discussed. We have had discussions with officials familiar with this arrangement.

Blanche says that because he had discussions with the Secret Service agents who know where the SCIF was, it’s the same as discussing security arrangements for building and maintaining one.

That is, this filing is about conflating the protection of Trump with the protection of classified records.

Indeed, Trump repeatedly minimizes the risk of storing classified records at Mar-a-Lago, with all the spies targeting it (which I’ll return to), because of the Secret Service detail there.

Similarly, the government’s statement to the court in its Motion that President Trump’s personal residence should be compared to the residence of “any private citizen” is misleading. This is especially true given the necessary protections afforded to our nation’s leaders after they leave office and the uniqueness of the location of President Trump’s residence, coupled with the fact that a secure location already existed for the relief sought herein and can be re-established with appropriate safeguards.6

6 The statement comparing President Trump’s personal residence at Mar-a-Lago to that of “any private citizen” is all the more disingenuous considering a member of the prosecution’s trial team has visited the Mar-a-Lago property during the course of the investigation and is therefore personally aware of the differences between President Trump’s residence and that of “any private citizen.”

[snip]

President Trump objects to the Proposed Protective Order insofar as it does not allow him and his counsel to discuss the relevant purportedly classified material inside an appropriate secure facility at or near his personal residence. Limiting any discussions with counsel to the government offered SCIFs is an inappropriate, unnecessary, and unworkable restriction, given the unique circumstances of President Trump’s access to security—namely that he resides and works in a secure location that is protected at all times by members of the United States Secret Service, and that the proposed alternate location previously housed an area approved for not only the discussion, but also the storage and review, of classified information

[snip]

The government’s Motion dismisses this fact and compares President Trump’s request herein to any other defendant’s request to discuss classified information in their “private” or “personal residences” or offices. (See ECF No. 84 ¶¶ 13–14). This characterization is misleading and misconstrues the facts of this case. Donald J. Trump served as President of the United States for four years, and he, along with other Presidents and senior government officials, have had access to remote facilities for the purposes of reviewing and discussing sensitive information while in office, and at times after leaving office.

Of course, Trump didn’t have access to classified information after he left office, at least not after Biden ended Trump’s classified briefings in February 2021.

But this dispute is likely partly an attempt to manufacture some conflict between the President and the guy who wants to replace him.

The argument here is based on inflated claims about how hard it is for Trump and his Secret Service detail — who are making multiple trips a week to give speeches in places like New Hampshire high school gymnasia — to travel from Mar-a-Lago to a SCIF in South Florida.

2. If President Trump travels to a public facility in the Southern Division of this District, most circumstances would require an overnight stay in the local area by his protective detail, including members of the Secret Service, as well as an overnight stay by President Trump, due to the distance between his residence and the public facility.

[snip]

5. In any of these scenarios, the required security measures take significant planning and effort, as well as financial resources.

6. The alternate secure location in which President Trump seeks to discuss (but not review) classified information is under 24-hour a day full security protection, whether President Trump is present or not. Furthermore, the government can re-establish a restricted area within the proposed secure location in which President Trump and his legal team can discuss classified information in a manner that is consistent with government security protocols.

7. Between 2017 and 2021, with reasonable effort and expense, a secure facility was established and approved at President Trump’s residence in the Southern District of Florida. In that facility, President Trump was permitted to review and discuss classified information. Reestablishing this secure facility is readily possible if the Court so directs.

Donald J. Trump — the same guy who never missed a chance to bilk the Secret Service for space in his own residences or hotels — is demanding that the US Government minimize the inconvenience of secure travel by him to defend himself for stealing classified information even as he is traveling all over the country — incurring the same costs and inconveniences for those around him — campaigning with nary a care about the cost that imposes on tax payers.

And he’s not offering to pay the US government to rebuild the SCIF in his beach resort.

Multiple people on Xitter joked that he’ll probably just ask Mexico to pay for it, and that’s about right: Trump is promising that the government can build something instantaneously without cost.

But given that Aileen Cannon is involved, it may well work.

This is not a good faith offer. It is an attempt to create a conflict that, if and when it is appealed to the 11th Circuit, will present closer calls than the ones on which Judge Cannon got her ass handed to her last year.

We’re on the ground on Maui today to assess the ongoing recovery efforts. Mahalo to @Maui_EMA and our first responders who have been working around the clock to fight these fires and keep people safe. pic.twitter.com/Fv1VI527Yb

— Senator Brian Schatz (@SenBrianSchatz) August 10, 2023

The Supreme Court on Thursday put on hold a proposed bankruptcy plan for Purdue Pharma that would allocate billions of dollars to help ease the nation’s opioid crisis — a plan that would also shield the family that owns the company from future lawsuits. https://t.co/Y843aONoNn

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 10, 2023

from the grey lady…

The Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to consider the government’s challenge of a bankruptcy settlement involving Purdue Pharma, putting on pause a deal that would have shielded members of the wealthy Sackler family from civil opioid lawsuits in exchange for payments of up to $6 billion to thousands of plaintiffs.

In doing so, the court sided with the Justice Department, which had requested the court put the settlement plan on hold while it considered reviewing the agreement. The government has argued that the family behind Purdue Pharma, maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, should not be able to take advantage of legal protections meant for debtors in “financial distress.”

The court’s order, which was unsigned, gave no reasons and included no public dissents, adds to the uncertainty around the plan to compensate states, local governments, tribes and individuals harmed by the opioid crisis while offering protection for the Sackler family. The order specified that the justices would hear arguments in the case in December.

The court’s decision to take up the challenge to the bankruptcy agreement is the latest twist in the yearslong legal battle over compensation for victims of the prescription drug crisis.

In May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit approved the settlement plan as part of a court review of bankruptcy restructuring for Purdue Pharma. The company had filed for bankruptcy protections in September 2019. At the time, both the company and members of the Sackler family were facing lawsuits connected with the opioid crisis.

Although it is routine for companies who seek bankruptcy protection to be shielded from legal claims, the unusual part of this agreement was that it extended that liability protection to the company’s owners. Sackler family members have said they would not sign onto a settlement without an agreement protecting them from lawsuits.

The U.S. Trustee Program, an office in the Justice Department that oversees the administration of bankruptcy cases, has long argued that bankruptcy judges do not have the power to permanently block lawsuits against company owners if those owners haven’t sought personal bankruptcy protection.

For seven decades, the aviation industry paid little attention to emissions. Now it faces a $5 trillion existential threat — and passengers will be on the hook https://t.co/ZuTIIS0qit

— Bloomberg Economics (@economics) August 10, 2023

Bernie livestream…

"These disasters are anything but natural," Ing says of the devastation of the Maui wildfires, the severity of which he attributes to both the climate crisis and "colonial greed" that reshaped the Hawaiian landscape.

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) August 11, 2023

Biden asks Congress for another $24 billion to help Ukraine and other countries affected by Russia’s invasion, the first time lawmakers have been asked to increase financing for the war effort since Republicans took over the House. ⁦@lukebroadwater⁩ https://t.co/bDvPZgUfhG

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) August 10, 2023

https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-jb-pritzker-preserves-nuclear-moratorium-20230811-2kvezngvrbgidbgqlv3i5jnqaa-story.html

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday vetoed a bipartisan proposal that would have lifted a decades-old ban on construction of nuclear power plants in Illinois.

With the relatively rare use of his veto pen, the second-term Democrat handed a victory to environmentalists who opposed lifting the ban, while also dealing a defeat to labor unions, who saw the measure as a way to generate construction projects and preserve high-paying energy sector jobs as coal and natural gas plants are shut down in the coming decades.

The issue was one of several in recent years that have pitted the two key constituencies of the Democratic Party against each other.

Pritzker, who two years ago signed a sweeping energy policy overhaul that aims to achieve carbon-free power by midcentury, had previously expressed some interest in the idea of allowing smaller modular nuclear reactors in Illinois, while cautioning that the “devil’s in the details.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday vetoed a bipartisan proposal that would have lifted a decades-old ban on construction of nuclear power plants in Illinois.

With the relatively rare use of his veto pen, the second-term Democrat handed a victory to environmentalists who opposed lifting the ban, while also dealing a defeat to labor unions, who saw the measure as a way to generate construction projects and preserve high-paying energy sector jobs as coal and natural gas plants are shut down in the coming decades.

The issue was one of several in recent years that have pitted the two key constituencies of the Democratic Party against each other.

Pritzker, who two years ago signed a sweeping energy policy overhaul that aims to achieve carbon-free power by midcentury, had previously expressed some interest in the idea of allowing smaller modular nuclear reactors in Illinois, while cautioning that the “devil’s in the details.”

He ultimately decided the bill passed by legislators didn’t address enough of those details.

“Unfortunately, the vague definitions in the bill, including the overly broad definition of advanced reactors, will open the door to proliferation of large-scale nuclear reactors that are so costly to build that they will cause exorbitant ratepayer-funded bailouts,” Pritzker wrote in a veto message to lawmakers.

Benny’s Bar is open