Last Call For Courting Disaster, Con't

A post-leak poll conducted by Team WIN THE MORNING finds overwhelming majorities for keeping Roe in place and a near-majority for keeping it legal nationally.

By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, voters oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted immediately after POLITICO published a draft opinion from the Supreme Court that would eviscerate the 1973 precedent guaranteeing federal abortion rights.

Half of voters (50 percent) say Roe v. Wade should not be overturned — more than the 28 percent who say it should be overturned. More than 2-in-10 voters, 22 percent, are undecided, according to the poll.

Majorities of Democrats (68 percent) and Independents (52 percent) say Roe should not be overturned, while a narrow majority of Republicans (51 percent) say it should.

The poll was conducted Tuesday, the day after POLITICO published Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, which would strike down Roe v. Wade and allow states to restrict abortion.

Asked whether abortion should be legal or illegal nationwide, or whether it should be up to the states, 47 percent say it should be legal, 21 percent say it should be illegal, and 19 percent say it should be up to the states to decide.

While there is little support for striking down Roe v. Wade, polls do suggest some limits on abortion are popular. Only 25 percent of voters surveyed in the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll say abortion should be “legal in all cases,” though an additional 31 percent say it should be “legal in most cases.” Roughly a quarter, 24 percent, say abortion should be “illegal in most cases,” and only 11 percent say it should be “illegal in all cases.”

 

That's the good news. The bad news is, at least initially, Republicans are the ones who will turn up to vote and not Democrats in November.

Republicans and those who want Roe gone want to vote, 56% of Republicans and 65% of those who want Roe overturned say they are Extremely or Very enthusiastic about voting, compared to 52% of Democrats and 52% of those who want to keep Roe.

That's a problem, folks.

Vote like your country depends on it.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

More indispensable reporting from The Guardian's Hugo Lowell on the ongoing January 6th prosecutions of white supremacist domestic terrorists like the Oath Keepers, with the latest revelation that the group's leader, Stewart Rhodes, begged the Trump regime to put the group in direct contact with Trump himself in order to coordinate stopping the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th.

Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia group leader charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, tried to get a Donald Trump confidant to ask the former US president to allow his group to forcibly stop the peaceful transfer of power, the Justice Department has alleged in court papers.

The previously unknown phone call with the unidentified individual appears to indicate the Oath Keepers had contacts with at least one person close enough to Trump that Rhodes believed the individual would be a good person to consult with his request.

Once the Oath Keepers finished storming the Capitol, Rhodes gathered the Oath Keepers leadership around 5pm and walked down a few blocks to the Phoenix Park hotel in Washington DC, the Justice Department said on Wednesday in a statement of offense against Oath Keepers member William Wilson.

The group then huddled in a private suite, the Justice Department said, where Rhodes called an unidentified person on speakerphone and pressed the person to get Trump to authorize them to stop the transfer of power after the Capitol attack had failed to do so.

“Wilson heard Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” the document said. “This individual denied Rhodes’s request to speak directly with President Trump.”

The extraordinary phone call indicates that Rhodes believed two important points: first, that he was close enough to the Trump confidant that he could openly discuss such a request, and second, that the confidant was close enough to Trump to be able to pass on the message.

Rhodes and his attorney were not immediately able to be reached for comment.

The previously unknown phone call surfaced on Wednesday in charging documents against Wilson, the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Oath Keepers, who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding as part of a plea agreement.

The statement of offense said that Wilson was involved in efforts to prepare for January 6 with the national leadership of the Oath Keepers, and how Rhodes added Wilson to the “DC OP: Jan 6 21” group chat on the encrypted Signal messaging app.

“Rhodes, Wilson, and co-conspirators used this Signal group chat and others to plan for January 6, 2021,” the Justice Department said.

On the morning of the Capitol attack, Rhodes confirmed on the group chat that they had several well equipped QRFs outside DC – a reference to quick reaction forces, that the government said it believes were on standby to deploy to the Capitol with guns and ammunition.

Around 2.34pm, the Justice Department said, Wilson stormed into the Capitol through the upper West Terrace doors as one of the first co-conspirators to breach the building, and by 2.38pm, was helping to pry open the doors to the rotunda from the inside.

The seditious conspiracy charge against Wilson is the latest in a string of recent such indictments. In January, Rhodes and 10 other Oath Keepers were charged with seditious conspiracy – an offense that carries up to 20 years in federal prison.

 

The smart money is that the "unnamed individual" is Mark Meadows.

 

The smarter money is that it's Roger Stone.

 

The brilliant, gifted, post-grad doctorate money is on the DoJ leaving the individual unnamed in order to charge them later. 

We'll see.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

I do so hate being right about things like this.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that Texas would consider challenging a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to offer free public education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants.

"Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler versus Doe," Abbott said, speaking during an appearance on the Joe Pags show, a conservative radio talk show. "And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue. ... I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago."

The remarks came days after a leaked draft of a forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court opinion revealed that a majority of justices are poised to revoke Roe v. Wade, the landmark case establishing the right to abortion.

More:Abortion would be illegal in Texas if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

Although the court has yet to officially issue a ruling in the case, civil rights advocates have raised concerns that the court's conservative majority might be amenable to other attempts to overturn established precedent, including those related to LGBTQ rights and interracial marriage.

Abbott raised the possibility of challenging the ruling on education during a discussion about border security, after Pagliarulo asked whether the state could take steps to reduce the "burden" of educating the children of undocumented migrants living in Texas.

There are of course of possible outcomes from this when it gets to SCOTUS just in time for the 2024 election season, I figure:

 

1. SCOTUS doesn't touch it and refuses to grant cert,
2. SCOTUS rules to uphold Plyler in its entirely,
3. SCOTUS upholds Plyler but allows states to restrict funding for undocumented kids,
4. SCOTUS says Texas doesn't have to provide education for undocumented kids but does for citizens,
5. SCOTUS Texas doesn't have to provide education for kids at all and states can decide on it,
6. SCOTUS says states can decide what services, if any, for undocumented people at all.

 

One and two, well. Probably not. Abbott wouldn't be doing this or even bringing this up if he didn't have a good chance at winning this, because then it becomes a huge landmine for his 2024 hopes (Although one allows him to blame the court and come back for another bite at the apple.) 

 

Numbers 3, 4, 5, under the Alito Roe logic, then becomes an opinion where Alito/Thomas/Evil is begging for a case to then get to 6. 

And six, well, six is the end of a lot of things involving undocumented folk being here at all.

Point is, anyone who thought Repu9blicans would stop at Roe clearly has not been paying attention to the last, I dunno, 40? years. Alito's opinion now allows states like Texas and Florida to get a head start on legal bullshit they want to see gone in the next term or two, yet another point in the column of "It was leaked by the right."

We'll see, as always.