It’s a good thing for the entire world to decouple from the United States, we aren’t a reliable ally, nor are we stable even within our own borders. The President is at war with half the nation, and it’s going to get worse.
Trump may only have hastened a process that was already underway--a slow global drift away from the post-war alliances that had kept the world peaceful (relatively) and prosperous (relatively) for eighty years: the rise of Limbaughism and Murdochism, the first election of Trump--these were clear signs of breakdown even before the madness that has ensued since the 2024 election.
But he hastened it at light speed, at the same time hastening the decline of the US itself as a reliable partner.
Post-Trump we will, yes, still be powerful, still relatively affluent, still heavily armed with deadly weapons: but we will not be, in the eyes of the world, a reliable ally on any front--economic, diplomatic, military, democratic.
We will be a nation chock-a-block with guns and rage, one in which a majority of voting citizens looked at a corrupt, thuggish, staggeringly ignorant old crook--one who had attempted a coup d'etat and who ruled through tantrum and division--and returned him to power; cheering all the way; cheering all the more noisily and enthusiastically as he attacked and menaced old friends and allies and smashed up US democracy; as did the wealthy movers and shakers who bankroll the Republican Party.
Even if through some miracle, at some future point, we elect responsible, serious adults to the presidency and the Congressional majority, in the eyes of the rest of the world we will always be a nation that is perpetually one step away from Trumping the global order again. You don't build trade partnerships or military alliances on that.
Don't forget about energy technology. We're putting our emphasis on oil and even coal; the rest of the world will move ever faster to solar and wind. (Heck, I'll bet even the Middle East does that -- there's plenty of solar and wind in the Arabian Desert.)
And it's just a matter of time before those clever immigrants who settled in the Silicon Valley to create our modern information state will stop coming and stay in their home countries and -- hopefully -- create technologies that aren't the Big Brother our own moguls desire so strongly.
And I'm sick of the NY Times covering people like Lauren Bezos and the Kardashians as if their lives are "news". Our nation is burning down and they are covering rich vapid idiots.
Sadly, there's always a market for covering rich vapid idiots. We have the Kardashians; previous generations had Porfirio Rubirosa, the "jet set," and some guy named Donald Trump. Wonder what ever happened to that last one. (Former entertainment editor here.)
And here I was about to do a fashion commentary. But I don't know who the celebrities are. I just look at the outfits. It's like watching Downton Abbey. I hate all the characters, throw the tea in the harbor, those aristos are corrupt and stupid, but boy do they wear gorgeous gowns.
Hmmm, Germany gets the benefit of Ukraine's drone knowledge and manufacturing, and the US gets Don Jr and Eric's drone manufacturing company. I strongly suspect Putin would prefer it to be the other way around.
The Trump administration's abandonment of Ukraine was another of their very evil very bad moves. How does anyone possibly think that Trump isn't an active Putin asset?
I always ask myself: "What would Trump be doing differently if he was a Russian asset?" and the answer, so far as I can tell, is not much. He's pretty much doing all of the things we would expect a Russian sycophant, bribery target, or blackmail target to do.
The Ukrainians may not have held or even hold that many cards, and they never pretended they did. But they’ve played the cards they have very well, and in the process demonstrated what war will look like going forward. The Ukrainians military industrial base they have built during this war is one worth having, and the partnerships developed from it will be at the forefront of military technologies going forward. Supporting Ukraine is the best way for the EU to revive their own military position in the world, and the Ukrainian military technology allied with the EU would be a strong bulwark against an aggressive Russia. It could have been ours, but the Orange Narcissist was mored about his business opportunities in Russia, or at best rare earth mineral deals with the Ukrainians. Little did he see the real value in what Ukrainian human capital and technology was developing. Sigh, but when has he ever seen the real value in anything.
He's always made the bet that Ukraine is a lost cause, and his hero Putin would crush them. I'm very happy Ukraine and Europe are proving him very wrong.
Trump never understood Ukraine or people who are smart and resourceful. Half of my family are from the Russian Empire (mother's side). The immigrant generation of men became machinists. The next generation became engineers. One woman became a chemist.
The Ukrainians are an educated people and they are clearly using tech to their advantage. And they despise Russia. Sadly they may end up hating us too.
And their president holds at least some really good cards.
Ukraine created its own cards. Like magic out of almost nothing. Arthur C Clarke said a sufficiently advanced technology would look like magic. Slava Ukraini!
Thanks Ben and Cathy for your important updates and analyses on the war in Ukraine. Zelensky is the perfect example of an ordinary human being who is thrust into a crisis and then rises to the occasion to become a great wartime leader (something no doubt that the Mad King imagines himself to be).
Kurt - one of Zelenskyy’s gifts is that he embodies the strength & determination of his fellow Ukrainians. He doesn’t posture as an “only I can do it” authority. Rising to an ungodly occasion together - Ukrainians demonstrate, daily, that this is their shared culture
I agree completely. I am awed by the courage, resilience, and adaptability of the Ukrainian people. It reminds of the courage and fierce determination of the Polish people during WWII. They continued to fight against the Germans even after their country was occupied, fighting everywhere they possibly could - in Great Britain, Italy, Normandy, Holland and within their own country.
Ben: "From Donald Trump and JD Vance on down, almost every member of the Trump administration has talked about Ukraine as a sort of geopolitical beggar, always taking, never giving, and certainly unworthy of generosity or support. That view has always been not only morally idiotic but strategically short-sighted. Ukraine is now a valuable partner and ally for a host of countries that are willing to be good partners and allies in return. Unfortunately, the United States decided it didn’t want to be one of them."
The Trump Administration wants Russia to win the war. Or, perhaps more precisely, Donald Trump wants Russia to win the war.
Women have been aborting pregnancies for centuries, long before they could get Mifepristone in the mail. Where there's a will, there's a way. What the pro-life movement really wants is for women who abort pregnancies to get sick and die.
I've been reading and watching some things about old Rome and got to wondering how with all the goings on, women weren't having babies of unclear paternity all the time. A little searching revealed a variety of abortifacients, including Silphium, a plant so popular it was used to extinction. Early Americans used a variety of plants, including pennyroyal and tansy. The anti abortion movement is a 20th century invention.
There is a movement that wants fewer abortions. But I think it is now a separate entity from organizations like the ones complaining about Trump. It is a difficult thing, but we must sort out pro-life from anti-abortion groups.
Pro-life groups work with pregnant women and their significant others to find housing and day care and support. My Catholic church has rent assistance, for example.
Anti-abortion groups whine that Trump isn't hard enough and maybe we should have the death penalties for abortion. They hold up signs and march, but the one thing they never do is talk to pregnant women in distress. No support of infants and their families is available.
If we don't understand the difference, we will be stuck in this semantic trap forever.
The distinction you describe exists but you are (forgive me) applying it without much care. SBA Pro-Life America, the group I mention in the piece, doesn't fit your rubric at all. It actively opposes criminal penalties for women who obtain abortions and supports organizations that offer material support to vulnerable mothers to make family formation more viable.
The pro-life movement ought to want many things that would be pro-life, like reducing maternal mortality, better sex education, better suicide prevention, an end to capital punishment, better drug rehabilitation, better gun safety laws, reduced prison recidivism, improved social programs for kids, opposition to war, etc.
That they focus so much of their effort on imposing their religious dogma on women's bodies to me shows the real game at play here, which is controlling women. They're only pro-life in so far as they can impose a Christian sharia view of pregnancy and bodily autonomy on believers and non-believers alike.
One thing that would be more honest would be to stop calling the movement that opposes reproductive autonomy and family planning what it really is, which is “anti reproductive rights/ choice and anti-abortion”
To lump everyone in the misnomer “pro life “is a serious, misleading and politically incorrect error. The vast majority of these people do not care about the lives that are created when women are not given the autonomy to choose when to have a child, starting from lack of access and affordability of contraception. The same people do not support the lives of babies and young children. They do not support access to good medical and educational care and they certainly don’t support allowing a woman help with childcare so that she can enter the workforce. Many of them don’t even care that women are still paid less for the same jobs that men are doing Until you can prove to me that these so-called “pro life “people are truly pro-life once the child is born then you can’t call them that.
Everyone wants less abortions because no one wants to have an unplanned pregnancy!!!. Then give us universal access to birth control and healthcare and while you’re at it, invent a perfect form of contraception and mandate that men take responsibility for impregnating women. And stop judging women who need to make difficult and personal decisions about their bodies and their lives. And while you’re at it, make sure that you don’t harm perfectly healthy pregnant women that need access to abortion and the medications that are used for this in order not to die from a dangerous pregnancy or from a miscarriage that is not going well. As a gynecologist, I have seen too much to tolerate discussions by people who are unaware of what is really involved
Crazy talk? I'll give you a pass b/c you're ailing.
People have fewer abortions when having children doesn't equate to financial devastation. Trump just said making childcare more affordable is not the government's responsibility. Did anyone from the pro-life movement speak out against that? Trump famously told Chris Matthews in the 2016 campaign that women who abort pregnancies should be punished in some way. Did the pro-life movement speak out against that claim? The movement is laser-focused on banning safe and effective medications to make abortions riskier for the woman.
Also, banning mifepristone without banning misoprostol is just going to make medication abortions more painful. Women will still undergo the pain and discomfort, b/c as I said before, where there's a will, there's a way. But making the experience more painful is punishment pure and simple.
It always has been, is now, always will be a private, ultra personal, choice. What the "pro-life" movement "really wants" is their choice to make, for themselves. Maybe if they feel so strongly about intruding into my freedoms, they should begin inventing an abortifacient detector to screen international mail. If SCOTUS goes all the way on this, women will turn to international sources; there will surely be some. I'm hoping that Canada holds freedom of choice in enough regard to provide a path for American women whose freedoms will have been interrupted - temporarily.
Andrew Egger wants fewer abortions because he strikes me as a man who takes the teachings of Jesus seriously. Pro life movement as a whole? Is the jury still out?
"This morning, at his regular Pentagon press conference, Hegseth tried to nail two new planks into this rickety argument. The first was that the 'ceasefire' remains in place—despite the fact that U.S. and Iranian forces spent yesterday shooting at each other in the Strait of Hormuz. And the second is that what is happening now, in any event, is no longer the same conflict at all: Hegseth insisted that 'Project Freedom,' the new effort to unplug the strait by force, is 'separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury.'"
Why did he even bother? It's more *1984* every day.
He’s not wrong in the sense that Operation Epic Fury had no real strategic aim and the straight was still open at that time. Opening the straight is a very specific aim though the result of our actions. Hegseth might want to peruse the definition of sequela..
Am reading “The March of Folly” by Barbara Tuchman. One myth, three actual wars, showing the arrogance of conceit and a blindness of those in charge. One takeaway from the chapter on Vietnam is the tenacity of Ho Chi Man and his followers to wrest their country, first from the French, and last from the Americans. The parallels with Ukraine are there. Subjugation is short lived historically. People transfer their hopes and willingness to fight on to the next generation, and they transfer the same passion to the next. Coupled with an educated workforce, the Ukrainian people will prevail because they want this independence more than they want to live under the Russians. They tried it, they don’t want it ever again. Slava Ukraini!
Ben - in time, Russian culture may absorb some of the characteristics of their neighbor? That’s part of why Putin fears Ukraine so much and wants so badly to crush them
Maybe! It's a possibility. But that will be made more difficult by the relentless campaign to call the Ukrainians a fake people with an artificial country, confused, Nazified Russians gone astray, merely the cat's paw of the West, etc., etc.
J AZ, I think that's got to be a big part of it. I feel like the last 10 years has definitely solidified Churchill's? comment that Democracy is the last bad of all the forms of government out there. I know China is always held up as an exception to this rule because of their great advancement over the last 50 years, but after a century of imperialization, civil war, world war, and Mao, China had nowhere to go but up. China, with an aging population will probably start to see some of the same stagnation that killed off the Soviet Union in the 1970's....
It’s a great book and demonstrates how humans cannot seem to truly learn from other’s past mistakes. Reading Shelby Foote’s three volumes on the American civil war shows how much the war was decided on mistakes, accidents, leadership, and FUBARs in the fog of war.
I've read A Distant Mirror by her and now I'm looking for this book. It sounds fantastic. A Distant Mirror was great, although I had to skim it. She did so much research.
Justice Kavanagh ought to remember that he is on the court because you can’t do things to close to an election. Justice Barret could then explain that only republicans know what’s too close to an election.
'In a Truth Social post, he ticked off a laundry list of construction features, including “Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations,” and on and on. Without all this, “no future president,” he insisted, “can ever be Safe and Secure at Events, Future Inaugurations, or Global Summits.”'
So $1 billion for features like a cutting edge hospital that will never get used (probably run by Ronny Jackson, who will see a huge pay raise), and for a building that a Democratic president will face enormous pressure to just demolish. Oh, and for a building that was never supposed to cost tax payers a dime, while inflation and gas prices continue to rise directly because of policies this president has enacted, all of which were illegal (war, tariffs) because they all required Congressional approval.
How is this man's approval above 30%? This is why we are among the stupidest nations in the world.
Because MAGA members have chosen Felon Trump as the hill to die upon. They are wedded to all his lies because he represents all the ideas they hate and hate is all they have left. Maybe it was all they ever had but couldn’t say it out loud.
The more educated Trump apologists can't really believe that he is virtuous, honorable, intelligent and wise, so it has to be shared hatred that draws them to him.
I would like to say that this is the first time in a very long time that the Bullwark has even addressed reproductive rights in any kind of quasi comprehensive way. It doesn’t matter what side of the issue you’re on, this site needs to talk about what reproductive rights means for this country and how essential it is for the political and social health of this country. The use of this medication is not only for abortions… Which is sound medical care… It is also used for management of miscarriages and saves lives.
What about talking about the politics of what has happened after the reversal of Roe. What about acknowledging that abortions have not decreased despite these draconian measures in many states. In fact, the only abortions that have decreased are those that are indicated to save the life of a woman and women have died because of this.
Jonathan Cohn is a wonderful reporter, but why has he not dealt with this issue and addressed about women’s health issues at all?
Abortion has always been seen as a woman's thing, not for men and politics to spend much time on. Besides it is icky and filled with moralizing that many don't want to deal with...because it's a woman's thing. A lot of men could not care less about it as a policy, but do care on a personal level if it involves their family members.
That’s really sad and actually not entirely true. Perhaps if we held men more accountable for the lives they produce—supporting the children, educating them, and providing them healthcare—suddenly men would be interested in the importance of family planning.
It is well known that a societies’ political and sociological health can be measured by the access to family planning and the ability of women to control the size of their families. This is directly related to the ability of women to enter society and the workforce.
It's an objectively good thing for Ukraine to decouple from the United States; we are not a reliable ally.
A necessity for them; a blunder and a tragedy for us.
It’s a good thing for the entire world to decouple from the United States, we aren’t a reliable ally, nor are we stable even within our own borders. The President is at war with half the nation, and it’s going to get worse.
or about 63 % of the nation
Let’s hope that’s the number
And risiing.
Trump may only have hastened a process that was already underway--a slow global drift away from the post-war alliances that had kept the world peaceful (relatively) and prosperous (relatively) for eighty years: the rise of Limbaughism and Murdochism, the first election of Trump--these were clear signs of breakdown even before the madness that has ensued since the 2024 election.
But he hastened it at light speed, at the same time hastening the decline of the US itself as a reliable partner.
Post-Trump we will, yes, still be powerful, still relatively affluent, still heavily armed with deadly weapons: but we will not be, in the eyes of the world, a reliable ally on any front--economic, diplomatic, military, democratic.
We will be a nation chock-a-block with guns and rage, one in which a majority of voting citizens looked at a corrupt, thuggish, staggeringly ignorant old crook--one who had attempted a coup d'etat and who ruled through tantrum and division--and returned him to power; cheering all the way; cheering all the more noisily and enthusiastically as he attacked and menaced old friends and allies and smashed up US democracy; as did the wealthy movers and shakers who bankroll the Republican Party.
Even if through some miracle, at some future point, we elect responsible, serious adults to the presidency and the Congressional majority, in the eyes of the rest of the world we will always be a nation that is perpetually one step away from Trumping the global order again. You don't build trade partnerships or military alliances on that.
I’m afraid we will be less affluent as other countries drift away from the dollar as reserve currency while we continue to hike our national debt.
We will also be less powerful as allies drift away from us as strategic and military partners and source their arms elsewhere.
Putin may be flailing in his hot war against Ukraine, but his long investment in anti-West cyberwar and Trumpism has succeeded beyond expectations.
Don't forget about energy technology. We're putting our emphasis on oil and even coal; the rest of the world will move ever faster to solar and wind. (Heck, I'll bet even the Middle East does that -- there's plenty of solar and wind in the Arabian Desert.)
And it's just a matter of time before those clever immigrants who settled in the Silicon Valley to create our modern information state will stop coming and stay in their home countries and -- hopefully -- create technologies that aren't the Big Brother our own moguls desire so strongly.
Poland is watching very, very closely. I'll bet the Trump Admin forgot all about Poland.
Up to 10 million Polish Americans these days. The public hasn't forgotten.
Slava Ukraini
10 million Polish Americans helped to vote Trump in.
"The Met Gala was last night—and if you’re hoping for commentary on that, we’re afraid you’ve come to the wrong place."
Thank God! I'm so sick of news sources acting like celebrities eating cake is News!
Well it was news for the French, and they didn’t react happily.
And I'm sick of the NY Times covering people like Lauren Bezos and the Kardashians as if their lives are "news". Our nation is burning down and they are covering rich vapid idiots.
Sadly, there's always a market for covering rich vapid idiots. We have the Kardashians; previous generations had Porfirio Rubirosa, the "jet set," and some guy named Donald Trump. Wonder what ever happened to that last one. (Former entertainment editor here.)
EXACTLY!!! Me too!
!00% agreed!
And here I was about to do a fashion commentary. But I don't know who the celebrities are. I just look at the outfits. It's like watching Downton Abbey. I hate all the characters, throw the tea in the harbor, those aristos are corrupt and stupid, but boy do they wear gorgeous gowns.
Hmmm, Germany gets the benefit of Ukraine's drone knowledge and manufacturing, and the US gets Don Jr and Eric's drone manufacturing company. I strongly suspect Putin would prefer it to be the other way around.
The Trump administration's abandonment of Ukraine was another of their very evil very bad moves. How does anyone possibly think that Trump isn't an active Putin asset?
Trump sees himself as Putin's buddy and equal. Putin sees Trump as a useful stooge who can be manipulated with a shiny trophy and a pat on the back.
Assets cost money. Stooges can be influenced with "flattery and favors". And nobody knows that better than an ex-KGB agent.
I always ask myself: "What would Trump be doing differently if he was a Russian asset?" and the answer, so far as I can tell, is not much. He's pretty much doing all of the things we would expect a Russian sycophant, bribery target, or blackmail target to do.
Especially because Putin has the Epstein files.
The Ukrainians may not have held or even hold that many cards, and they never pretended they did. But they’ve played the cards they have very well, and in the process demonstrated what war will look like going forward. The Ukrainians military industrial base they have built during this war is one worth having, and the partnerships developed from it will be at the forefront of military technologies going forward. Supporting Ukraine is the best way for the EU to revive their own military position in the world, and the Ukrainian military technology allied with the EU would be a strong bulwark against an aggressive Russia. It could have been ours, but the Orange Narcissist was mored about his business opportunities in Russia, or at best rare earth mineral deals with the Ukrainians. Little did he see the real value in what Ukrainian human capital and technology was developing. Sigh, but when has he ever seen the real value in anything.
He's always made the bet that Ukraine is a lost cause, and his hero Putin would crush them. I'm very happy Ukraine and Europe are proving him very wrong.
Slava Ukraini!
But not to DJT.
All the while DJT holds Uno cards!
All of them! Bkz that's how you win at UNO, right?
If Trump were playing Uno he would intentionally collect all the cards and then say no one could play with him and so he won by default.
That's probably what happened to him his entire life, and why he thinks that's how you win that game.
Trump never understood Ukraine or people who are smart and resourceful. Half of my family are from the Russian Empire (mother's side). The immigrant generation of men became machinists. The next generation became engineers. One woman became a chemist.
The Ukrainians are an educated people and they are clearly using tech to their advantage. And they despise Russia. Sadly they may end up hating us too.
And their president holds at least some really good cards.
Ukraine created its own cards. Like magic out of almost nothing. Arthur C Clarke said a sufficiently advanced technology would look like magic. Slava Ukraini!
Oh but DJT holds the Uno cards!
my high schoolers got a big kick out of that one. Obviously video games have taken over, but Uno is the one card game that all the kids know.
I think I played it once. But forgot how!
The idea is to *get rid* of all your cards. So, this is pretty on-brand for Trumpo.
Thanks Ben and Cathy for your important updates and analyses on the war in Ukraine. Zelensky is the perfect example of an ordinary human being who is thrust into a crisis and then rises to the occasion to become a great wartime leader (something no doubt that the Mad King imagines himself to be).
Kurt - one of Zelenskyy’s gifts is that he embodies the strength & determination of his fellow Ukrainians. He doesn’t posture as an “only I can do it” authority. Rising to an ungodly occasion together - Ukrainians demonstrate, daily, that this is their shared culture
I agree completely. I am awed by the courage, resilience, and adaptability of the Ukrainian people. It reminds of the courage and fierce determination of the Polish people during WWII. They continued to fight against the Germans even after their country was occupied, fighting everywhere they possibly could - in Great Britain, Italy, Normandy, Holland and within their own country.
Can we start calling it Trump’s Bawl Room? 😂
Or no Balls Room?
Or Bowl (as in toilet) Room? He's flushing our nation down the toilet, after all.
Ben: "From Donald Trump and JD Vance on down, almost every member of the Trump administration has talked about Ukraine as a sort of geopolitical beggar, always taking, never giving, and certainly unworthy of generosity or support. That view has always been not only morally idiotic but strategically short-sighted. Ukraine is now a valuable partner and ally for a host of countries that are willing to be good partners and allies in return. Unfortunately, the United States decided it didn’t want to be one of them."
The Trump Administration wants Russia to win the war. Or, perhaps more precisely, Donald Trump wants Russia to win the war.
Well, they're an ally.
You mean Russia? If so, yes.
Women have been aborting pregnancies for centuries, long before they could get Mifepristone in the mail. Where there's a will, there's a way. What the pro-life movement really wants is for women who abort pregnancies to get sick and die.
I've been reading and watching some things about old Rome and got to wondering how with all the goings on, women weren't having babies of unclear paternity all the time. A little searching revealed a variety of abortifacients, including Silphium, a plant so popular it was used to extinction. Early Americans used a variety of plants, including pennyroyal and tansy. The anti abortion movement is a 20th century invention.
Millenia really.
I'm sorry but this is crazy talk. What the pro-life movement "really wants" is for fewer abortions to happen in America.
There is a movement that wants fewer abortions. But I think it is now a separate entity from organizations like the ones complaining about Trump. It is a difficult thing, but we must sort out pro-life from anti-abortion groups.
Pro-life groups work with pregnant women and their significant others to find housing and day care and support. My Catholic church has rent assistance, for example.
Anti-abortion groups whine that Trump isn't hard enough and maybe we should have the death penalties for abortion. They hold up signs and march, but the one thing they never do is talk to pregnant women in distress. No support of infants and their families is available.
If we don't understand the difference, we will be stuck in this semantic trap forever.
The distinction you describe exists but you are (forgive me) applying it without much care. SBA Pro-Life America, the group I mention in the piece, doesn't fit your rubric at all. It actively opposes criminal penalties for women who obtain abortions and supports organizations that offer material support to vulnerable mothers to make family formation more viable.
The pro-life movement ought to want many things that would be pro-life, like reducing maternal mortality, better sex education, better suicide prevention, an end to capital punishment, better drug rehabilitation, better gun safety laws, reduced prison recidivism, improved social programs for kids, opposition to war, etc.
That they focus so much of their effort on imposing their religious dogma on women's bodies to me shows the real game at play here, which is controlling women. They're only pro-life in so far as they can impose a Christian sharia view of pregnancy and bodily autonomy on believers and non-believers alike.
One thing that would be more honest would be to stop calling the movement that opposes reproductive autonomy and family planning what it really is, which is “anti reproductive rights/ choice and anti-abortion”
To lump everyone in the misnomer “pro life “is a serious, misleading and politically incorrect error. The vast majority of these people do not care about the lives that are created when women are not given the autonomy to choose when to have a child, starting from lack of access and affordability of contraception. The same people do not support the lives of babies and young children. They do not support access to good medical and educational care and they certainly don’t support allowing a woman help with childcare so that she can enter the workforce. Many of them don’t even care that women are still paid less for the same jobs that men are doing Until you can prove to me that these so-called “pro life “people are truly pro-life once the child is born then you can’t call them that.
Everyone wants less abortions because no one wants to have an unplanned pregnancy!!!. Then give us universal access to birth control and healthcare and while you’re at it, invent a perfect form of contraception and mandate that men take responsibility for impregnating women. And stop judging women who need to make difficult and personal decisions about their bodies and their lives. And while you’re at it, make sure that you don’t harm perfectly healthy pregnant women that need access to abortion and the medications that are used for this in order not to die from a dangerous pregnancy or from a miscarriage that is not going well. As a gynecologist, I have seen too much to tolerate discussions by people who are unaware of what is really involved
Crazy talk? I'll give you a pass b/c you're ailing.
People have fewer abortions when having children doesn't equate to financial devastation. Trump just said making childcare more affordable is not the government's responsibility. Did anyone from the pro-life movement speak out against that? Trump famously told Chris Matthews in the 2016 campaign that women who abort pregnancies should be punished in some way. Did the pro-life movement speak out against that claim? The movement is laser-focused on banning safe and effective medications to make abortions riskier for the woman.
Also, banning mifepristone without banning misoprostol is just going to make medication abortions more painful. Women will still undergo the pain and discomfort, b/c as I said before, where there's a will, there's a way. But making the experience more painful is punishment pure and simple.
It always has been, is now, always will be a private, ultra personal, choice. What the "pro-life" movement "really wants" is their choice to make, for themselves. Maybe if they feel so strongly about intruding into my freedoms, they should begin inventing an abortifacient detector to screen international mail. If SCOTUS goes all the way on this, women will turn to international sources; there will surely be some. I'm hoping that Canada holds freedom of choice in enough regard to provide a path for American women whose freedoms will have been interrupted - temporarily.
Andrew Egger wants fewer abortions because he strikes me as a man who takes the teachings of Jesus seriously. Pro life movement as a whole? Is the jury still out?
Where did Jesus comment on abortions?
"This morning, at his regular Pentagon press conference, Hegseth tried to nail two new planks into this rickety argument. The first was that the 'ceasefire' remains in place—despite the fact that U.S. and Iranian forces spent yesterday shooting at each other in the Strait of Hormuz. And the second is that what is happening now, in any event, is no longer the same conflict at all: Hegseth insisted that 'Project Freedom,' the new effort to unplug the strait by force, is 'separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury.'"
Why did he even bother? It's more *1984* every day.
"Operation Epic F*ck Up" is now "Project F*ck Up". See the difference?
Ahhh yes, NOW I get it! 🤪
We went from a SNAFU to a FUBAR in record time!
Operation WTAF
He’s not wrong in the sense that Operation Epic Fury had no real strategic aim and the straight was still open at that time. Opening the straight is a very specific aim though the result of our actions. Hegseth might want to peruse the definition of sequela..
Orwell thinks Hegseth has gone too far...
Am reading “The March of Folly” by Barbara Tuchman. One myth, three actual wars, showing the arrogance of conceit and a blindness of those in charge. One takeaway from the chapter on Vietnam is the tenacity of Ho Chi Man and his followers to wrest their country, first from the French, and last from the Americans. The parallels with Ukraine are there. Subjugation is short lived historically. People transfer their hopes and willingness to fight on to the next generation, and they transfer the same passion to the next. Coupled with an educated workforce, the Ukrainian people will prevail because they want this independence more than they want to live under the Russians. They tried it, they don’t want it ever again. Slava Ukraini!
heck, I don't think the Russians want to live under Russian rule right now.
Ben - in time, Russian culture may absorb some of the characteristics of their neighbor? That’s part of why Putin fears Ukraine so much and wants so badly to crush them
Maybe! It's a possibility. But that will be made more difficult by the relentless campaign to call the Ukrainians a fake people with an artificial country, confused, Nazified Russians gone astray, merely the cat's paw of the West, etc., etc.
J AZ, I think that's got to be a big part of it. I feel like the last 10 years has definitely solidified Churchill's? comment that Democracy is the last bad of all the forms of government out there. I know China is always held up as an exception to this rule because of their great advancement over the last 50 years, but after a century of imperialization, civil war, world war, and Mao, China had nowhere to go but up. China, with an aging population will probably start to see some of the same stagnation that killed off the Soviet Union in the 1970's....
It’s a great book and demonstrates how humans cannot seem to truly learn from other’s past mistakes. Reading Shelby Foote’s three volumes on the American civil war shows how much the war was decided on mistakes, accidents, leadership, and FUBARs in the fog of war.
I've read A Distant Mirror by her and now I'm looking for this book. It sounds fantastic. A Distant Mirror was great, although I had to skim it. She did so much research.
I loved that book. The way the Euros made The Plague exponentially worse on themselves is comically horrid.
Great book.
I am very, VERY disappointed; I lay awake all night wondering what wondrous commentary you guys would deliver on the MET Gala.
Well, there is always the possibility that JVL will say something. :crosses fingers:
All of my Met Gala takes are too scorching to allow them to escape containment; they would cost The Bulwark thousands of subscribers each.
DM me
Yes, there are a lot of people out there who CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!
;)
I think we need to see Tim Miller on the red carpet next year.
I’m holding out for video takes from Tim or Will Sommer
That would be awesome except I never watch the podcasts here because my internet is shit.
Justice Kavanagh ought to remember that he is on the court because you can’t do things to close to an election. Justice Barret could then explain that only republicans know what’s too close to an election.
Steve Vladeck, law professor at Georgetown, does an excellent breakdown in how SCOTUS is treating cases differently based on political considerations, including the mifepristone and VRA cases. https://stevevladeck.substack.com/p/226-two-more-data-points-for-the?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4n468j
'In a Truth Social post, he ticked off a laundry list of construction features, including “Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations,” and on and on. Without all this, “no future president,” he insisted, “can ever be Safe and Secure at Events, Future Inaugurations, or Global Summits.”'
So $1 billion for features like a cutting edge hospital that will never get used (probably run by Ronny Jackson, who will see a huge pay raise), and for a building that a Democratic president will face enormous pressure to just demolish. Oh, and for a building that was never supposed to cost tax payers a dime, while inflation and gas prices continue to rise directly because of policies this president has enacted, all of which were illegal (war, tariffs) because they all required Congressional approval.
How is this man's approval above 30%? This is why we are among the stupidest nations in the world.
Because MAGA members have chosen Felon Trump as the hill to die upon. They are wedded to all his lies because he represents all the ideas they hate and hate is all they have left. Maybe it was all they ever had but couldn’t say it out loud.
The more educated Trump apologists can't really believe that he is virtuous, honorable, intelligent and wise, so it has to be shared hatred that draws them to him.
The hospital will be used. Cutting edge privacy.
His paranoia is at Putin levels, isn’t it? Let’s fund a bunker for the two of them.
I would like to say that this is the first time in a very long time that the Bullwark has even addressed reproductive rights in any kind of quasi comprehensive way. It doesn’t matter what side of the issue you’re on, this site needs to talk about what reproductive rights means for this country and how essential it is for the political and social health of this country. The use of this medication is not only for abortions… Which is sound medical care… It is also used for management of miscarriages and saves lives.
What about talking about the politics of what has happened after the reversal of Roe. What about acknowledging that abortions have not decreased despite these draconian measures in many states. In fact, the only abortions that have decreased are those that are indicated to save the life of a woman and women have died because of this.
Jonathan Cohn is a wonderful reporter, but why has he not dealt with this issue and addressed about women’s health issues at all?
The issue has been dormant for a while, but when Roe v Wade was newly overturned TB was covering it big.
Abortion has always been seen as a woman's thing, not for men and politics to spend much time on. Besides it is icky and filled with moralizing that many don't want to deal with...because it's a woman's thing. A lot of men could not care less about it as a policy, but do care on a personal level if it involves their family members.
That’s really sad and actually not entirely true. Perhaps if we held men more accountable for the lives they produce—supporting the children, educating them, and providing them healthcare—suddenly men would be interested in the importance of family planning.
It is well known that a societies’ political and sociological health can be measured by the access to family planning and the ability of women to control the size of their families. This is directly related to the ability of women to enter society and the workforce.
There have been many comic takes on "if men got pregnant." My favorite is that you could get an abortion at an ATM.
I'm talking about visceral reactions and behavior, not societal thinking. Those can yield vastly different results.
I mean, pregnancy famously takes two.
Of course it does. Conception and then the man's job is done. I'm mostly being snarky here. but there are men who appear to live by that.
Emily - can’t add a word to your well written Comment but for this: thank you