For reproductive rights advocates, this week’s breakthrough in France was one of the most striking international victories in recent memory. The Associated Press reported:

French lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly approved a bill that will enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in France’s constitution, a historic move designed to prevent the kind of rollback of abortion rights seen in the United States in recent years. In an exceptional joint session of parliament convened at the Palace of Versailles, the bill was approved in a 780-72 vote.[/blockquote]

Abortion rights enjoy majority support in the United States, but in France, backing is even more lopsided: As the AP report added, “None of France’s major political parties represented in parliament have questioned the right to abortion,” and after yesterday’s vote, “nearly the entire hall in France stood in a long standing ovation.”.....

The Associated Press’ report went on to note:

The government argued in its introduction to the bill that the right to abortion is threatened in the United States, where the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned a 50-year-old ruling that used to guarantee it. ... The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strip women of the right to abortion has reverberated across Europe’s political landscape, forcing the issue back into public debate in France at a time of political upheaval.

Mathilde Philip-Gay, a law professor and a specialist in French and American constitutional law, warned, “[W]hat happened in the U.S. can happen elsewhere in Europe, including in France.”

The New York Times reported on the “most rigorous and detailed study” to date on the effects of the GOP’s tax package and found that while the 2017 law “delivered a modest pay bump for workers” — one that fell far short of the party’s promises before the law passed — those small benefits came “at a high cost to the federal budget.”

The corporate tax cuts came nowhere close to paying for themselves, as conservatives insisted they would. Instead, they are adding more than $100 billion a year to America’s $34 trillion-and-growing national debt, according to the quartet of researchers from Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Treasury Department.

To be sure, these findings aren’t altogether surprising. We’ve known for several years that the Trump-era tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations didn’t pay for themselves. We’ve also known for quite some time that this question has been tested and re-tested, and the results are always the same......

So why does the evidence matter? Several reasons, actually.

First, there’s the question of accountability. The Republicans who claim to care deeply about “fiscal responsibility” and balanced budgets insisted that their tax giveaways wouldn’t add to the deficit that they occasionally pretend to take seriously. The public, when assessing these policymakers’ work, deserves to know that the GOP officials got this important question wrong.

Second, credibility matters, too. Republicans — who are inexplicably enjoying a sizable advantage in polling on economic policy, despite the realities of recent decades — claim to know what they’re talking about. When compelling evidence to the contrary comes to the fore, it warrants attention.

Third, at the heart of Republicans’ thinking about economic policy isn’t just the discredited belief that giving tax breaks to the wealthy produces broad prosperity, but also that the party need not concern itself with paying for the giveaways. Ideally, when presented with decades’ worth of evidence disproving their core assumption, the party would reconsider this misguided belief.

But perhaps most important of all is the fact that GOP officials are eager to repeat their mistake. In fact, The Washington Post reported in January that Donald Trump has privately told his allies “that he is keenly interested in cutting corporate tax rates again,” despite the failures of his 2017 effort.

Evidently, she’s had time to think about her future — and that future does not involve a second term. NBC News reported:

Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced Tuesday that she will not run for re-election this year, leaving the Senate after one term that saw her paint Arizona blue, leave the Democratic Party and play a key role in numerous legislative negotiations in a tightly divided Senate. “I will leave the Senate at the end of this year,” Sinema said in a video posted on her X account.

The outgoing senator, whose plans have been murky for months, elaborated on her perspective in a three-minute, direct-to-camera video released via social media this afternoon......

With Arizona’s recent partisan history in mind, Sinema very likely thought she was doing what she had to do. After all, the theory went, red state Democrats can’t very well govern the same way blue state Democrats do. If she expected to remain effective while maintaining a base of statewide support, she had no choice but to occasionally impress Republicans and their corporate donors. If that meant breaking party ranks from time to time, and frustrating her ostensible allies, it was a price Sinema was willing to pay in order to remain in office in a state where Democrats tend to lose.

But how reliable were those assumptions? Arizona has gradually become bluer during her term, electing Sen. Mark Kelly in 2020, while simultaneously backing President Joe Biden’s ticket. Two years later, Kelly — running as a relatively conventional Democrat, to Sinema’s left — won by an even wider margin than two years earlier.

Simultaneously, other Arizona Democrats — none of whom felt the need to move to the right or abandon their party affiliation — won the state’s gubernatorial race, secretary of state race, and state attorney general race.

Sinema, in other words, went further than she needed to. She could’ve annoyed Democratic leaders and Democratic voters far less, and won re-election anyway.

Last week, for example, Rep. Scott Perry raised the specter of rescinding Biden’s invitation. “He comes at the invitation of Congress, and Republicans are in control of the House,” the Pennsylvania Republican told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo. “There’s no reason that we need to invite him to get more propaganda.”

Exactly one week later, Sen. Joni Ernst sat down with the same Fox host and pushed a related message.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1764749330836082858

.....When the senator referenced “we,” she was apparently referring to proponents of her legislation on the matter. The Washington Examiner reported last week:

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) introduced a bill on Monday that would block President Joe Biden from giving a State of the Union address if he doesn’t submit his budget and national security proposal on time. Congressional Republicans are backing the Send Us Budget Materials & International Tactics In Time, or SUBMIT IT, Act, which would bar leadership from inviting the president to give the State of the Union address until Congress has received his budget and national security strategy.

Part of what makes all of this odd is the fact that the White House could submit budget blueprints and national security strategies to Capitol Hill, but congressional Republicans would probably ignore them. There’s a congressional maxim that’s been around for a while related to the budget process: The president proposes, Congress disposes. With this in mind, Ernst is effectively saying, “Give us a budget that we’ll quickly discard or you won’t get a SOTU invitation.”

Donald Trump’s rhetoric is often delusional, but the former president generally seems to understand the kind of criticisms he faces. The Republican rejects the disparagements, of course, but he realizes that they exist.

We know this, of course, because Trump invariably takes the criticisms and applies them to his political foes. The Associated Press reported over the weekend on a classic example of the phenomenon.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday further escalated his immigration rhetoric and baselessly accused President Joe Biden of waging a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America” as he campaigned ahead of Super Tuesday’s primaries.

“Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America,” the Republican said at an event in North Carolina. “Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.”....

More recently, after Trump tried to get the Justice Department to go after his political foes, he falsely accused Biden of trying to get the Justice Department to go after his political foes. When prosecutors accused the former president of committing crimes, he accused them of committing crimes.

In May 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz — at the time, Trump’s rival for his party’s nomination — said the future president “is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. ... Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing.”

Eight years later, the quote remains highly relevant.

But as it turns out, Murkowski didn’t just announce her support for Haley, the Alaskan also shared some thoughts on Haley’s national rival. NBC News reported:

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Saturday she “could not” vote for former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election should he win her party’s nomination again — but that also doesn’t mean she could cross party lines for President Joe Biden, either.

Murkowski didn’t elaborate on exactly what she intends to do with her 2024 ballot, except to indicate that she doesn’t intend to vote for either of the major parties’ likely nominees.

As things now stand, she joins Sen. Mitt Romney in a very small club: Incumbent Republican senators who’ve publicly said they won’t vote for Trump in 2024.

Given Murkowski’s recent ideological trajectory, her decision to reject her party’s former president is provocative, but not altogether surprising. It was, after all, just last year when the Alaska Republican said, “Now our party is becoming known as a group of kind of extremist, populist over-the-top [people] where no one is taking us seriously anymore.” The senator added, “I’m having more ‘rational Republicans’ coming up to me and saying, ‘I just don’t know how long I can stay in this party.’”....

By all appearances, Murkowski was already feeling despair about the state of the contemporary GOP. Vance’s missive almost certainly made matters worse.

Voting can be a potential legal minefield for those who may not fully understand the state's ever-changing restrictions. Just ask Hervis Rogers, whose life was turned upside down when he voted four years ago.

"It was a living nightmare," Rogers told the Chronicle last week in his first interview since his ordeal began.

In March 2020, Rogers, then 62 years old, waited for six hours to cast a ballot at Texas Southern University, watching as frustrated voters gave up and went home. When reporters arrived at the Third Ward polling location to document the disarray, Rogers told them he wasn't leaving. He thought his vote might make a difference. ,,,,,

https://twitter.com/nkhensley/status/1235061664531152897

After his arrest, Rogers spent another two years in legal limbo: a district judge in Montgomery County dismissed the case, then the Attorney General's office refiled the charges – this time in Harris County – and the matter finally came to a close when a grand jury determined last summer that no crime had occurred.

And while he still encourages others to do their civic duty, Rogers has decided he won't vote again.

"I know I'm not," Rogers said, even though he is no longer on parole and is eligible to vote. "I mean, I care. But if I had to go through all of that just to vote? No."