The Supreme Court released another decision today, one that could have led to upending the entire process of American presidential elections. Thankfully, the court decided (6-3) not to go down such a dangerous path. Instead, checks and balances will remain at the state level when it comes to elections. The alternative would have been to open the doors to exactly what Donald Trump wanted to see happen after the 2020 presidential election -- partisans in state legislatures overturning the will of the voters of their states and just unilaterally declaring a winner. This is what Trump wanted Mike Pence to facilitate. What the Supreme Court just did was to slam the door on any speculation that such a thing could actually happen.

At the heart of the case, Moore v. Harper, was a radical concept called "the Independent State Legislature Theory." This stems from one clause in the Constitution which states: "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof." In practice, this has meant that state legislatures have set up elections laws, created elections departments and officials, and empowered them to conduct elections. It also means that any of this can be challenged in court, just like any other law subject to judicial review.

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It is "Infrastructure-Touting Week" again at the White House. I say this, of course, to draw a stark distinction between President Joe Biden launching a media blitz (to boast of his ongoing achievements in improving America's infrastructure) and the former president, for whom "Infrastructure Week" became the punchline to a long-running and rather sad joke.

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One year ago, the Supreme Court overturned a right that women had been able to freely exercise for the previous half-century. Since then, the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade continues to reverberate across the political landscape. Initially it was thought by many that this would be some sort of minor and temporary political issue, as clueless pundits predicted that somehow women would just sort of forget about the fact that a freedom had been taken away from them -- that they likely wouldn't even remember it at all by the time the next election rolled around. This has been proven wrong on numerous occasions, and it will likely be proven wrong all over again in the 2024 elections as well. Losing the fundamental freedom of bodily autonomy is a lot bigger issue than many had assumed, for what are now patently obvious reasons. When has taking freedom away from people ever been popular with those affected, after all?

Poll after poll after poll continue to show that the public is moving in one direction on the issue -- towards supporting abortion rights and away from the forced-birth laws the Republicans are passing everywhere they can. Democrats are not completely united on the issue, but their differences are minor (whether to support only what Roe guaranteed or whether to go even further). Republicans, however, are much more divided on what exactly they should support and how exactly they should go about taking the next political steps. This leaves them arguing about how harshly they want to take away women's freedoms, which is not exactly a winning issue for them. Some of them have realized this already, which is what is at the heart of their argument. Some Republicans want a national abortion ban to be enacted by Congress, some want it to remain at the state level, and there are disagreements about what week to allow abortions up to and what exceptions should be built into new laws. This leaves them to choose between positions that are somewhat objectionable to most of the public or positions that a vast majority of the public considers far too extreme. Which is why a lot of Republican politicians just don't want to talk about it at all.

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One year ago, Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which will likely go down in history alongside Dred Scott, Korematsu, and Plessy v. Ferguson as one of the worst decisions the high court has ever made. But that's a gradual process involving a consensus of legal historians, which could take years. In the meantime, the issue has become extremely politically potent. And if the next few years is anything like the first, it is going to become a gigantic albatross around the neck of the Republican Party, since they are now held captive by their most extreme wing on this particular issue.

To state it bluntly, Republicans are trying to outdo each other in state after state by passing the most restrictive abortion laws they can think up. These laws are wildly unpopular. One big issue at the center of the 2024 election is going to be whether Republicans rally behind an effort to impose their strict forced-birth laws on the entire country at once, rather than just state by state -- and both sides are going to be talking about it. The supporters of such a move are going to try to make it paramount to the Republican primary process, while opponents of a national abortion ban are going to be warning voters that this is indeed exactly what the Republican Party wants to do.

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President Joe Biden's son Hunter has cut a deal to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses, while a third charge of illegally possessing a weapon (after lying about his drug use on a form) has also been filed but will be withdrawn if Hunter successfully completes two years of probation. Hunter Biden will likely avoid any prison sentence as a result of the plea deal.

Republicans reacted predictably, decrying it as a "sweetheart deal," while there were zero Democrats out there screaming about Hunter being charged as part of a "witch-hunt" or swearing up and down that it was fully legal for Hunter to do these things. That's the difference between the parties in a nutshell: Democrats support the rule of law even when one of their own is caught, while Republicans want the book thrown at all Democrats while giving a free pass to all Republicans for all crimes.

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Donald Trump was interviewed on Fox News last night by Bret Baier, and to say it did not go well for Trump is a vast understatement. It was so bad it left me actually feeling sorry for his defense lawyers. It is, after all, pretty hard to present a coherent legal defense in a court of law when your client essentially goes on national television and admits that the worst charge against him is true. No wonder Trump's lawyers keep quitting, to put this another way.

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Since it is a holiday (Happy Juneteenth!), I considered taking the day off. But rather than totally punt today, I thought I'd just run large excerpts from the official CBS transcript of this week's Face The Nation, since it was a rather extraordinary show.

I'm not usually a big fan of Face The Nation, in terms of the Sunday morning political chatfest lineup, but occasionally they manage to do a good job. This week we had Robert Costa guest-hosting, but it wasn't his presence so much as the guest list itself that made the program notable. The first two segments might have been subtitled: "Republicans Explaining Why Trump Is So Screwed" (if you'll forgive the language).

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President Joe Biden got some good economic news this week, as the official inflation rate fell to only 4.0 percent. This is down from last year's high of 9.1 percent, and is a significant achievement. Most economists will tell you that's still a bit too high and that 2.0 percent is the goal they're shooting for, but 4.0 percent is getting pretty close to that goal, you have to admit.

Even the Wall Street Journal had some good economic news as well, as they noted "Stocks Close At Highest Levels Since 2022."

Biden also touted some progress on a more microeconomic level for many Americans, as he hosted the leaders of some prominent companies who have not exactly gotten rid of their "junk fees" for consumers, but at least have voluntarily agreed not to hide the junk fees. They will now feature "up-front pricing," which is a fancy way of saying: "admitting what something actually costs instead of some fantasy of a lower price that nobody actually pays." The companies volunteering not to blatantly rip people off anymore included Ticketmaster, SeatGeek, and Airbnb. Biden called for getting rid of junk fees in his State Of The Union address, so it is good to see progress being made on the issue without Congress even acting.

What else was in the news? Biden endured a root canal, but it didn't involve general anesthesia, so we didn't have an "Acting President Kamala Harris" while he was under (for those who keep track of such historical footnotes). What wasn't in the news -- and hasn't been -- is a massive border crisis, since the gigantic surge the doomsayers were predicting after Title 42 was lifted never actually happened.

All in all, a good week for Joe Biden.

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I have to admit, in an otherwise rather extraordinary week in the presidential campaign, I learned an interesting factoid: there is already a convicted felon running for president from the inside of a jail cell. Amusingly, this is happening over on the Democratic side of things. The so-called "Tiger King," a.k.a. "Joe Exotic," is currently serving a 21-year sentence in a federal prison for a murder-for-hire scheme (as well as other lesser charges). He is currently also a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. He's run for president before, in 2016 and 2020, but this is his first time running as a Democrat. Amusingly enough, an article about his campaign launch prominently featured one campaign promise from the Tiger King: "First of all, as soon as I'm sworn in, I have the right to pardon myself."

If I were President Joe Biden, I wouldn't be all that worried, to put it mildly. However, there is a different Democratic candidate who, while he almost certainly won't derail Biden's eventual renomination, might make a splash in the early primary news that could at least prove embarrassing for Biden. Here is what very well could happen, according to Axios (emphasis and gratuitous bullet point in original):

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That headline is my subtle way of letting everyone know I'm essentially taking today off. It's been an eventful week already, and there's nothing like a minor holiday to glom onto in order to take a break, right? So I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Flag Day today!

The flag is back in the news, also in a fairly minor way. The conservative fake-rage machine cranked up into high dudgeon mode this week over a celebration of Pride Month at the White House, which included a display of the current iteration of the "rainbow flag" that has long been a symbol of the struggle for L.G.B.T.Q. rights. They complained about the pride flag being displayed at all, and a subset of them got fake-irate over a "violation of the U.S. Flag Code" (which it actually wasn't, as there was another U.S. flag being flown above, on the roof of the White House).

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