Ukraine Between Two Empires

The public has long been accustomed to Donald Trump saying outrageous things, even when he appears to encourage political violence. It’s almost as if his aggrieved and menacing rhetoric has become a normal part of American politics. This normalizing effect is no accident; research shows it’s the result of a strategy utilized by autocrats.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho when a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk, according to Bloomberg News, which said a copy of the opinion was briefly posted Wednesday on the court’s website. The document suggests the court will conclude that it should not have gotten involved in the case so quickly and will reinstate a lower court order that had allowed hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to protect a pregnant patient’s health, Bloomberg said.

On a stormy night in February, Phil Lyman made a campaign stop at the Taylorsville-Bennion Heritage Center, where a warm room full of conservatives had braved the weather to hear from several Utah political candidates. A Republican state representative, Lyman was pardoned by former President Donald Trump for a trespassing charge he picked up for driving an ATV in an illegal protest on public lands in 2014.

Rep. Eric Burlison, from the House Oversight Committee intimated that President Biden has dementia and needs drugs to be able to stand for ninety minutes during Thursday's CNN presidential debate. Secretary Pete Buttigieg destroyed him back in 2023, so he's looking to get payback by smearing the president with despicable attacks. Speaking with Maria Bartiromo about the upcoming debate, this was his take.

The significant increase in infant death rates in Texas occurred after the state passed its extreme law banning abortions after six weeks and while the national infant death rate dropped. The fact that Texas’ law was enacted about nine months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade makes the state both a good petri dish for comparing Texas death rates with national statistics and as an omen for what’s to come in other states that have since enacted draconian anti-abortion laws. The Washington Post has more of the heartbreaking details in the Johns Hopkins University research findings: Between 2021 and 2022, the infant mortality rate increased by 8.3 percent in Texas compared to a 2.2 percent increase nationally.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security. The justices threw out lower-court rulings that favored Louisiana, Missouri and other parties in their claims that officials in the Democratic administration leaned on the social media platforms to unconstitutionally squelch conservative points of view. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The case is among several before the court this term that affect social media companies in the context of free speech.