Friday Round Up! 4/21/23

Thomas and Alito up to their old tricks. Jim Jordan wins in court. Dominion settles. Florida hates girls having periods. But it's not all bad.

A shorter round up today, as I’m writing from Williamsburg, Virginia where we did a stop on a mini-college tour for my son. We started in Annapolis and then visited UVA earlier this week and took the afternoon yesterday to ride roller coasters at Busch Gardens. The weather has been gorgeous. This is my old neck of the woods — I grew up in Hampton Roads — and I have to say, every time I come back I wonder why I chose to freeze my butt off in Connecticut.

Anyway, big news yesterday was the Supreme Court staying the ruling from Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, which had instituted a nationwide injunction on ban of mifepristone, the so-called “abortion pill.” (As an FYI, mifepristone is part of a two-step abortion regimen within ten weeks of pregnancy, and is not the same thing as the “morning after” pill.) Renato and I discussed the different legal moves that got us up to this point in this week’s podcast:

Meanwhile, a judge in New York denied Manhattan DA Alving Bragg’s request to invalidate Jim Jordan’s subpoena. Bragg is appealing that decision. More on the background of that below in one of my pieces this week, and more on both topics, as well as understanding the potential fallout from Fox News’ $787.5million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems and the war on puberty in public schools, in my recommended pieces this week!

My pieces this week

• An explainer/analysis for CAFE Insider about Bragg’s lawsuit against Jim Jordan and the Judiciary Committee

• Some policy recommendations for the military in light of the Texeira leak, coauthored with Yale School of Management Professor Jeff Sonnefeld and Steven Tian for TIME

Additional articles worth reading

• A post mortem in The Nation of the SCOTUS stay by Elie Mystal, including Alito’s disingenuous criticism of the Court’s “shadow docket”

• Professor Sonnefeld’s and Steven Tian’s assessment for TIME of what’s to come for Fox News after the Dominion settlement, which is basically all bad news (yay!)

• This deeper dive in Lawfare into the legal issues raised by Bragg’s lawsuit by Eric Columbus, who was the former litigation counsel at the U.S. House of Representative’s Office of General Counsel

• This piece in Parents magazine by Allison Slater Tate, who sheds light on some of the absolutely crazy legislation that is being passed at the state level that is politicizing, of all things, girls’ periods. This one made me big mad.

Upcoming events

• Guest Speaker Julia Davis will be speaking to the class about Russian media on Wednesday, April 26, at 5 p.m. EDT — she has clips from Russian TV shows and trust me, they are bonkers! (You’ll be shocked to know that Tucker Carlson features heavily in their coverage.) You don’t want to miss this (link will be sent to paid subscribers at 2 p.m.)

• Wine & Fries happy hour in May with Elie Mystal, date/time TBD!

That’s it for this week — see y’all when I get back!