Last week, Donald Trump promised he'd be making a statement "next week" which would lay out his position on abortion laws. Astoundingly, he actually followed through today by releasing a video on his pet social media network. I say "astoundingly" because Trump has promised to unveil new policies "next week" throughout his entire political career, but he seldom (if ever) actually does so. As Little Orphan Annie might say, "next week" is always conveniently a week away, for Trump.

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Living in California means not being generally surprised by earthquakes, but we realize that this is simply not so in New York City and the Northeast in general. So when a 4.8 temblor hit New Jersey, we certainly could sympathize. However, it seems East Coast tectonic zones have a certain personality trait that goes (we can't resist) right down to the bedrock? Here was the tweet that the "USGS Earthquakes" account put out this morning:

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President Joe Biden's re-election campaign just got some good news today, as No Labels announced it is throwing in the towel and will not be running a third-party presidential ticket this year. This brings an end to one of those political science experiments that might have sounded good in the abstract, but which doesn't really live up to its promise in the end.

The basic idea was to run a so-called "Unity ticket," consisting of one Republican and one Democrat, for president and vice president. No Labels was initially coy about which one would lead the ticket, but in recent months let it be known that they were looking to run a moderate Republican for president, with a centrist Democrat as his or her running mate. All those voters out there yearning for a different choice than the two men who ran last time would thus be given a new option to vote for. No Labels deluded themselves into thinking they could draw enough of this protest vote to actually win enough states to win the presidency.

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The Florida supreme court just sent a very mixed message on abortion rights. In two decisions released today, the high court will allow a very strict abortion ban to take effect, but they also decided to allow an abortion-rights ballot initiative (which would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state's constitution) to appear on this November's ballot. Conservatives in the state government had been hoping that the ballot measure would just get tossed out, but the court allowed it to go forward. As I said, this was a very mixed message from the court.

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From the "stop me if you've heard this one" file, we suppose: An old man is running for president who is saying increasingly bizarre things... except that you might not know about it because the mainstream media only goes into a frenzy of breathless reporting when his opponent misspeaks.

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In much the same way that odious manure previously spread over the ground can give rise to the sweetest-smelling flowers in the spring, New Jersey politics seem to be going through a period of rebirth or re-emergence into the light of a new spring day (perhaps appropriate for "The Garden State," no?). The sleazy scandal which has (so far) successfully brought down Senator Robert Menendez -- complete with 24-karat gold bars seized by the feds -- has tangentially morphed into an attack on the state's "machine politics," and it could all wind up with major reforms in the way local political leaders currently hand-pick their favorite candidates. This is long overdue and although it comes from an unexpected direction (a major scandal not directly related to the reform itself), it should be welcome news for voters in New Jersey -- and anyone else who supports the concept of fairness in politics.

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For once, big things are actually happening in Congress. No, really!

As we write this, the House has passed the final budget bill for this fiscal year (by a vote of 286-134) and sent it over to the Senate. The Senate may pass it tonight, if senators like Rand Paul can restrain their natural urge to be total [insert favorite plural derogatory expletive here]. If they do throw a monkey wrench into the works, we could have a very short-lived partial government shutdown, but if it gets resolved before the weekend is over then it won't do much damage at all. Either way, the bill's got the votes to pass the Senate, so it's now only a matter of time until President Joe Biden can sign it and the budget that was supposed to be in place on the first of October last year will finally be finished.

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Because this year's primary season has pretty much been a foregone conclusion on both sides of the aisle, political pundits have been denied their usual "who is up, who is down" frenzy of horserace reporting. Both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have already clinched their respective parties' nominations (and very early on), so there's really not all that much to write about when more states' primary returns come in. However, this hasn't stopped the pundits from pushing a story about how Democrats should be worried because of all the "protest votes" cast on their side. Biden is getting pushback from younger and more progressive voters on his backing of Israel in the Gaza war, as well as Democrats who are just not all that enthused about him running again. But there haven't been a lot of stories exploring the protest votes being cast on the Republican side, which is odd because there were actually more of them this week than on the Democratic side.

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This week President Joe Biden and Donald Trump both secured their respective parties' 2024 presidential nominations. Most Americans, if the pollsters can be believed (and they do all seem to be telling the same story), are not exactly thrilled with this rematch and would have preferred different choices. But we are where we are, so that's not going to happen for another four years.

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In a surprise move yesterday, Representative Ken Buck announced that he will not be stepping down from his seat at the end of his current term (as he had previously announced), but instead will step down next week. By doing so, Buck has roiled the waters of the Republican House majority and his surprise move also may tend to quash Representative Lauren Boebert's hopes of remaining in the House after November.

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