Republicans barreling toward ‘unmitigated political disaster’: Politico

The latest edition of Politico’s Playbook makes the case that the Republican Party’s stance on abortion is leading it to an “unmitigated political disaster.”

As evidence, the publication points to the way that Democrats pounced on Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s recent ruling overturning federal approval for abortion medication mifepristone.

In total, 240 Democrats signed on to an amicus brief condemning the ruling, compared to just 69 Republicans who signed onto a brief supporting the ruling.

“There’s a reason that nearly all Democrats are loudly opposing Kacsmaryk’s ruling while most Republicans have been hiding from reporters asking questions about it,” the publication notes.

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To put a fine point on it, Playbook also broke down poll numbers showing broad opposition to abortion restrictions in the United States, including 72 percent who oppose laws banning the sending of abortion pills through the mail, 63 percent who oppose six-week abortion bans like the one Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed this week, and 52 percent who oppose 15-week abortion bans.

“These are bad numbers for Republicans,” Playbook emphasizes. “Whether you are DeSantis signing a six-week ban or Scott (tentatively) supporting a 15-week ban, you are still on the losing side of public opinion. That’s to say nothing of the Republicans who support outright bans, where public support ranges from the single digits to the low 20s, depending on whether there are exceptions for the life of the mother, incest or rape.”

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Trump may have accidentally  torpedoed his own bid to seize voter rolls: analyst



President Donald Trump's executive order demanding states put new procedures in place for mail-in voting and turn over information about who is voting by mail is almost certain to be struck down in court, Jim Saksa wrote for Democracy Docket on Friday — but that's not the only way it could derail Trump's ambitions.

That's because this order could also undermine one of the main arguments Trump's Justice Department has used in court to defend the lawsuits filed against dozens of states to seize their voting rolls.

"In those lawsuits, the DOJ has claimed it needs millions of voters’ private sensitive data in order to ensure the states are complying with federal laws that require states to take steps to ensure accurate rolls," said the report. "But outside of court, DOJ officials like Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon have undermined that claim by boasting that the state voter records they’ve already obtained have been used to verify citizenship status using the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program."

After judges began ruling against the lawsuits on these grounds, DOJ officials backpedaled somewhat and said there was no plan to help the Department of Homeland Security build a national database of voters.

Trump, however, may have blown that excuse by outright acknowledging in his executive order that he "directs DHS to create a nationwide voter registration database," noted the report.

"Along with Dhillon’s statements and Trump’s orders, the DOJ’s courtroom attestations have been impeached repeatedly," wrote Saksa. For example, "last week, CBS reported that DOJ and DHS were working to formalize a data-sharing agreement for the voter rolls. And on the same day Tucker was assuring a federal judge that the DOJ wouldn’t share state records with DHS, Eric Neff, acting chief of the DOJ’s Voting Rights Section, admitted to another judge in Rhode Island that they, in fact, would."

Trump's lawsuits for state voting data are not just limited to Democratic-controlled states, but even some Republican-controlled states where GOP election officials have concluded sharing the data would be illegal. Some of these lawsuits have run into legal blunders, including the revelation that there was no proof the suit against Washington State was properly served.