If Democrats have their way, the 2024 election will be a one-issue election for many voters (enough to win, hopefully). And conservative Republicans just keep making it easier and easier for that to actually happen.

In the half-century that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, Republicans made a lot of political hay out of being what they called "pro-life," but what is now more accurately referred to as "forced-birth." They want to force every woman who ever gets pregnant -- no matter the circumstances, no matter the consequences -- to give birth, no matter what. American women (and men, it should be noted) do not support these radical restrictions of their rights. And they're now going to get to vote on it, in the clearest way since Roe was overturned. The 2024 election may well go down in history as being "the abortion election," to put this another way.

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Barring any last-minute surprises, we are now all on the brink of seeing a spectacle that has never happened before: an ex-president of the United States defending himself in criminal court against felony charges. Donald Trump's lawyers filed a flurry of motions this week to try to stave off this inevitability, but to no avail. Each one was summarily dismissed or postponed and in none of them did Trump achieve what he had been seeking, which was to delay the start of his first criminal trial. I should mention that I say "his first" with optimism, since he is facing three other possible felony court cases -- but nobody knows when (if ever) any of them will begin. Hope springs eternal, but for now what we've got is: "The People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump."

Trump is admittedly a master of the legal delay. He has seemingly-bottomless funds to foot the bills of teams of lawyers who will file every motion under the sun in an effort to delay, delay, delay. Each and every motion can then be appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently has three members appointed by Trump himself. A court case which in normal circumstances would be over within a few months or perhaps half a year at most can be dragged out for years and years in this fashion, and Trump has been a master at doing so for decades now. He has participated in one way or another in thousands of court cases, although this will be his first as a criminal defendant.

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We are still over half a year away from the 2024 election, so it would be premature to say: "This is the issue is that the election will all be about" (since anything could happen in the meantime which could eclipse all the biggest current issues). But it is looking like abortion rights are going to be a major part of it, at the very least. The fallout from the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision continues -- in statehouses, in ballot measures, and in court decisions. Republicans continue to learn that the most Draconian abortion laws are incredibly unpopular, and they scramble to figure out some way to deal with it all. Democrats are out there championing "freedom" and "protecting your rights" and "get the government out of your private business," which are all very potent arguments in general and which all seem to be resonating with the voters on abortion.

Yesterday, the Arizona supreme court dropped a bombshell into the political fray. It ruled that an abortion law first written in 1864 was still valid and constitutional and would soon go back into effect. This law, written during the Civil War era, completely bans abortion with only one exception. Here is the relevant text of the original, from the section criminalizing poisoning (and "just after the section banning duels"):

[E]very person who shall administer or cause to be administered or taken, any medicinal substances, or shall use or cause to be used any instruments whatever, with the intention to procure the miscarriage of any woman then being with child, and shall be thereof duly convicted, shall be punished by imprisonment in the Territorial prison for a term not less than two years nor more than five years: Provided, that no physician shall be affected by the last clause of this section, who in the discharge of his professional duties deems it necessary to produce the miscarriage of any woman in order to save her life.

Note that: "Territorial prison" -- Arizona had just become a U.S. territory and wouldn't be admitted to the Union for almost another half-century (in 1912, the last of the contiguous 48 states to join). This law was quite literally "frontier justice," to put it a different way.

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That title (and double-L spelling) comes, of course, from T. S. Eliot's masterpiece poem "The Waste Land," which begins: "April is the cruellest month...." Will this prove to be the case this year for House Speaker Mike Johnson? Will he still be speaker when the May flowers start a-blooming? The answer to those questions might hinge on whether he actually gets anything done this month or not. He's certainly got plenty of things on his plate, and he has actually indicated he's going to move a few of the more critical ones forward -- which (naturally) has absolutely incensed certain members of his caucus. And if he does get them passed, it will further enrage them -- possibly to the point of throwing him overboard.

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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.

Trump also promised his stance on abortion would "make both sides happy," but his announcement fell far short of that (which was to be expected). In fact, Trump's statement leaves major questions unanswered, since all he came out in favor of is basically the status quo we have now. Trump came down on the "states' rights" side, which leaves it up to each state's government to set their own abortion rules. He did not call for a national abortion law, although he also didn't directly address whether he'd sign one as president (if a Republican Senate and House of Representatives were to pass one and put it on his desk). He also was mum on what (if any) executive actions he would take as president on abortion.

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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:

Earthquakes are uncommon but not unheard of along the Atlantic Coast, a zone one study called a "passive-aggressive margin" b/c there's no active plate boundary between the Atlantic & N. American plates, but there are stresses. Did you feel the NJ quake?

"Passive-aggressive"? We are going to exhibit a mighty amount of restraint here, and leave it to everyone else to suggest their own jokes in response to that. No, really... we're just going to sit here and not type... in the dark... all by ourselves... while you go out and have your fun, don't worry about us....

Heh. Seems we couldn't resist, after all!

Geological/psychological kidding aside, there was at least one political announcement this week which we suppose qualifies as "earth-shaking." The group No Labels, one week after the death of co-founder Joe Lieberman, announced that they will not be running a third-party presidential ticket in 2024, after spending tens of millions of dollars (of other people's money) preparing to do just that. This is incredibly good news for the effort to re-elect President Joe Biden, since it would have been a wild card in what is shaping up to be a very close race.

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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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Nebraska, as anyone who has taken an American civics course will tell you, has a unique form of government. But "unique" isn't the "uni-" word that we all learned to describe it, that would instead be: "unicameral" -- since its legislature only has one chamber, not two. Every other state follows the model of the United States Congress, with an upper chamber that corresponds to the U.S. Senate and a lower chamber matching the U.S. House of Representatives. Nebraska, however, decided long ago that such a division was not necessary. Nebraska also has one other governmental quirk that is not completely unique, since it shares this one with Maine: neither state awards its Electoral College votes in the "winner-takes-all" fashion that the other 48 states use. This, however, might be about to change in the Cornhusker State.

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Up until the advent of Donald Trump in American politics, there had been a pervasive attitude among many politicians that there were certain norms and traditions that had been established and long-followed, so there was no need to codify any of them into actual laws. One of these was the belief among Democrats that Roe v. Wade was settled law and that as time went on it had become increasingly impossible to even consider that it would ever be overturned. The judiciary had staked out certain rights, so there was no need for Congress to enact the same rights -- doing so would actually be redundant.

This way of thinking, obviously, was wrong. It should have been obvious -- and it was, to the pro-choice activists. The anti-abortion side, for decades, had been racking up incremental wins in state after state, imposing increasingly-tough hurdles for women to jump over in order to exercise what the Supreme Court had said was their right. Democrats mostly looked the other way while this was happening.

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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.

But before anyone gets optimistic that Sunshine State voters will reinstate the rights that the Republican politicians have now taken away from women, you have to take into account how hard that is actually going to be. Because unlike in other states, voter initiatives that amend the state's constitution have to hit a higher bar in Florida -- they have to pass with a supermajority of 60 percent to be adopted. And that is a very high bar indeed.

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