Politics

In the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency, I went to an event at the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Washington’s Maryland suburbs. The occasion wasn’t a film but an evening with Bob Woodward. He talked about the lessons of Watergate and what it was like to chase down all, or at least most, of the president’s men. He was, however, pretty coy when it came to talking about the big reveals he would make in an upcoming book about the Trump presidency. “Follow the money,” he winked. He intimated that there would be big revelations about Trump and Russia. What they might be he never said. The reverential crowd of several hundred Washingtonians was ready to burn incense at his feet. But the oracle simply refused to deliver.

For the next week, the DC Diary will be written by a rotating cast of Spectator editors. Today’s author is Matt McDonald. Georgia pining Another Tuesday, another set of state primaries. This week, the national gaze flicks down to Georgia, where Republican governor Brian Kemp faces a primary challenge from former senator David Perdue. Perdue, the former CEO of Dollar General who lost to Democrat Jon Ossoff in the 2021 Senate runoff, is the chosen candidate of former president Donald Trump. For the reason why, look no further than Perdue’s opening salvo in his debate with Kemp last month: “First off, folks, let me be very clear tonight, the election in 2020 was rigged and stolen.

Michael Sussmann, a senior lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, is currently on trial for lying to the FBI. The allegation is straightforward. As the election approached, Sussmann texted his old friend and fellow attorney, James Baker, requesting a brief, urgent meeting. Baker was the FBI’s top lawyer and Sussmann was a partner at Clinton’s election-law firm. They were friends from their days together at the Department of Justice and continued to know each other socially. According to the indictment, Sussmann told Baker he was coming solely to help the Bureau and not on behalf of any client.

Something felt off about Mother’s Day this year. For one weekend every May, we post social media tributes and bow to marketing campaigns thanking our moms, letting them know they’ve given us something that can never be repaid. But that same weekend, the national news cycle was caught up in the drama — and the fear — generated by the mysterious leak less than a week earlier of a draft majority opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue of legal abortion to the states. By that Sunday, we’d seen maternity clinics and Catholic churches vandalized, protests in front of the homes of Supreme Court justices, and ominous warnings from the mainstream press explaining what women stand to lose if Roe falls.

Having recently botched South African history, the New York Times is now turning its sights to Australia. Our friends Down Under are holding an election this week in which the Australian Labor Party is expected to beat the Liberal-National coalition for the first time since 2013. (For Americans in need of a guide, the capital-L Liberals in Canada stand for the left, in Australia for the right, and in the UK for nothing whatsoever.) It's the issue of trans rights in the Australian campaign that has the Times's unisex knickers in a twist. They're worried in particular about one candidate, Katherine Deves, a Liberal running for a seat in parliament. Deves has said that trans youths who undergo gender-transition surgeries are being "mutilated.

Americans just got a window into why the left holds the “right” to an abortion to be so sacrosanct. During an exchange between Senator Tim Scott and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Yellen told Scott, "What we are talking about is whether or not women will have the ability to regulate their reproductive situation in ways that will enable them to plan lives that are fulfilling and satisfying for them. One aspect of a satisfying life is being able to feel you have the financial resources to raise a child." What message does that send to young women? That money, not starting a family, is how one lives a life that is fulfilling and satisfying. That one cannot lead a life that is meaningful with a burden, er, baby.

If classic horror resides in the banality of evil, modern horror resides in the banality of predictability: yet another deranged man, driven by hate, kills, and the left seizes the opportunity to try and restrict speech, claiming not metal music, not violent porn, not Alex Jones, but social media spurred the shooter from basement to killing ground. This risks the loss of speech rights out of fear. As the bodies lay on the ground in Buffalo, New York governor Kathy Hochul blamed social media and called for speech restrictions in order to prevent another tragedy. Hochul claimed free speech had gone too far when it allowed someone to shout fire in a crowded theater for the shooter to hear.

At the conservative Christian schools I attended from kindergarten through the end of undergrad, I became familiar with two types of believers: the knuckle-draggers and the nuance-mongers. The knuckle-draggers didn’t swear or drink. They watched dumb faith-based movies like God’s Not Dead. Secular music was suspect. Any engagement with the products of mainstream culture was accompanied by a humorless and formulaic discussion of how said opus fit into a “Christian worldview.” And when election time rolled around, they didn’t have to think twice. Only one issue mattered. Democrats wanted to kill babies, so voting anything other than a straight GOP ticket was out of the question.

Earlier this week, Politico ran a piece called “Inflation’s biting. Roe’s fraying. Dems are still trying to connect with voters.” The crux of the article is that while congressional Democrats have plans to counter rising inflation, they are having a hard time selling their command of the situation to voters. It’s no wonder. The star of the piece is Representative Katie Porter. Porter, a member of her party’s progressive wing, is portrayed as more aware of the impacts of inflation than her colleagues. The story describes an instance in which Porter had to put a package of bacon back on the shelf because, to her surprise, it was up to $9.99 per pound.

Not one American in a hundred has read Roe v. Wade, and perhaps no more of us really understand how a Supreme Court majority of seven justices barred — or, if you prefer, relieved — everyone else from coming to political terms on abortion. Think of Roe as a dispensation from the fraught business of democratic decision-making. It appears that respite is now nearing an end. Europe has set the example. It's where the US seems headed — into years of political fights in one jurisdiction after another, but in states rather than countries. Only with time has most of Europe managed to settle into norms usually established by legislatures reaching compromise aside from any creed, whether that of the Catholic Church or Planned Parenthood.