Peacocks, Not Ostriches

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

Wednesday’s debate revealed the extent to which Republican candidates are flailing to find an electorally palatable position on abortion heading into the election.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gave a non-answer when asked if he’d support the same six-week ban he signed in Florida on the national level, saying only that he’d be a “pro-life President.” Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) fell back on the old chestnut that we don’t have 60 votes in the Senate for a national abortion ban anyway, so who cares what she’d support.

Even former Vice President Mike Pence, the anti-abortion crusader, is advocating for a 15-week federal ban. Mr. “life begins at conception” endorsing a 15-week ban? What’s going on here?

This is the scattershot response to the electoral shellacking Republicans have been on the receiving end of ever since Dobbs. The anti-abortion movement got what it’s always wanted, just to find that what it’s always wanted is incredibly unpopular, in red states and blue ones alike. Now Republicans are desperately dancing to try to find a way to keep those activists satisfied, while not simultaneously handing Democrats ad copy on the extremism of their position.

They’re not getting much external help. The best advice from the likes of RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser boils down to: lean into abortion even more.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Dannenfelser and blast from the past Kellyanne Conway urged Republicans to “be a peacock and not an ostrich about the recent gains for life” — e.g. talk about the abortion bans more. They also advise Republicans to support measures like the expanded child tax credit, which the majority of them oppose, particularly in the more generous form Democrats champion.

As long as Republicans, particularly on the state level, pass the most extreme bans they can, the never-ending stream of horror stories about women being refused care until they’re in critical condition, of children being forced into motherhood, of grieving women given no choice but to carry non-viable pregnancies to term will continue to bubble into the conversation. And so will the energies of the angry majority, particularly women voters incensed at the cruel and paternalistic regime that deprives them of the ability to make their own choices.

Republicans, at the beck and call of the anti-abortion movement, made their bed. No positive spin will make the gruesome reality go away, now or in November 2024.

More on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Kate Riga

Goodbye, Prigozhin

Is there anyone else quite like Yevgeny Prigozhin? Mass-murderer, election interferer, hot dog salesman, mercenary entrepreneur, jokester, Putin loyalist and pretender to the Kremlin — all those and more fit the man who likely died in a spectacular jet crash north of Moscow on Wednesday.

Prigozhin most likely died alongside the top leadership of Wagner Group, the mercenary outfit he led since its founding in 2014. Most notable among the likely dead was Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian military intelligence office who gave the group its name after his callsign: Wagner, after the famed German composer. Perhaps not surprisingly from that, Utkin was an avowed neo-nazi, with SS insignias tattooed to his chest. It was Utkin who reportedly oversaw the military planning for Wagner group, and who commanded the column which stopped outside of Moscow during the June mutiny.

Prigozhin’s June mutiny came to an end after Putin publicly accused Prigozhin of betrayal, and after murky negotiations with Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko. And in true mafioso fashion, Putin remarked briefly on Prigozhin’s demise on Thursday, saying that he made “serious mistakes” but “got results.” Lukashenko was somewhat blunter: “It wasn’t my job to guarantee Prigozhin’s security.”

— Josh Kovensky

Cutting Off The Cheese

TPM favorite Ken Chesebro launched a somewhat surprising bid this week: hold his trial as soon as possible.

As initially formulated, Chesebro would have had his trial occur alongside his other 18 co-defendants. Early for him, early for everyone else.

Of course, that’s not at all what Trump wants. It was, however, fine for DA Fani Willis, who said as much in an eager court filing letting the world know that she was on board with an October trial. Trump signaled the opposite, saying that he would move to split his case from Chesebro’s to keep it from happening early, and would do the same if any other co-defendant asked for an early trial.

It was a bold and convoluted move, typical of the Chesebro legal style that birthed the fake electors scheme. And, similarly, it’s not clear that it paid off for Ken: the judge agreed to set an October trial date, but only for him, and nobody else. His trial is scheduled to start in exactly two months, on Oct. 23.

— Josh Kovensky

“I want to ask them: What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this. I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.”

That’s former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin commenting on Donald Trump’s Georgia arrest on Newsmax.

The Thursday night commentary on the so-called “two tiered justice system” is straight out of the MAGA playbook and is not surprising to anyone who has been following the coverage of Trump’s four indictments. But even as they’ve become increasingly common since Trump’s rise in American politics, the threats about a civil war and encouragements around “rising up and taking the country back” always catch me off guard.

All of that for a guy currently facing 91 charges, 44 of them federal. Take the country back to what exactly?

— Emine Yücel