The Weekly Sift

This week’s Sift is going to center on the Supreme Court and abortion.

If you haven’t been on Mars or under a rock, you know that a draft of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade and eliminating constitutional protection for abortion rights came out Monday night. This is a big deal, both in itself and in what it presages about future decisions. We can expect red states to pass not only laws banning abortion (which are already on the books in many of them), but also challenges to birth control, same-sex marriage, and other previously accepted constitutional rights. This decision may not immediately validate such laws, but the logic it uses could be repurposed to overturn other Supreme Court precedents.

I’ve written two featured posts that consider this issue from different angles. The first, which should be out shortly, is a legal analysis of what Justice Alito’s draft says, assuming that it becomes the opinion of the Court next month. The second asks how we got here, and more specifically “Who’s to blame for overturning Roe?” That should appear around 10 EDT.

Even that doesn’t finish covering the issue, though, so the weekly summary will take up the political implications going forward.

Also in the summary: Today is Victory Day in Russia, and yet the new offensive in Ukraine continues to go badly. Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper has a book giving new reasons to believe Trump is/was unfit to be president, and that we dodged a bullet by getting him out of office without even greater damage to the Republic. The pandemic continues to heat up again. The debate about what to do about student loans continues. And a few other things are going on.

I’ll try to get that out by noon.