This week would have marked the 53rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide — that is, until 2022, when the court overturned it. Since then, abortion has been banned in 13 states and severely limited in 10 others.

Yet anti-abortion activists remain frustrated, in some cases even more so than before Roe was overturned.

Why? Because despite the new legal restrictions, abortions have not stopped taking place, not even in states with complete bans. In fact, the number of abortions has not dropped at all, according to the latest statistics.

“Indeed, abortions have tragically increased in Louisiana and other pro-life states,” Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, said at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing this month.

That’s due in large part to the easier availability of medication abortion, which uses a combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, and particularly to the pills’ availability via mail after a telehealth visit with a licensed health professional.

Allowing telehealth access was a major change originally made on a temporary basis during the covid pandemic, when visits to a doctor’s office were largely unavailable. Before that, unlike most medications, mifepristone could be dispensed only directly, and only by a medical professional individually certified by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Biden administration later permanently eliminated the requirement for an in-person visit — a change the second Trump administration has not undone.

While the percentage of abortions using medication had been growing every year since 2000, when the FDA first approved mifepristone for pregnancy termination, the Biden administration’s decision to drop the in-person dispensing requirement supercharged its use. More than 60% of all abortions were done using medication rather than a procedure in 2023, the most recent year for which statistics are available. More than a quarter of all abortions that year were managed via telehealth.

Separately, President Donald Trump’s FDA in October approved a second generic version of mifepristone, angering abortion opponents. FDA officials said at the time that they had no choice — that as long as the original drug remains approved, federal law requires them to OK copies that are “bioequivalent” to the approved drug.

It’s clear that reining in, if not canceling, the approval of pregnancy-terminating medication is a top priority for abortion opponents. This month, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called abortion drugs “America’s New Public Health Crisis,” referencing their growing use in ending pregnancies as well as claims of safety concerns — such as the risk a woman could be given the drugs unknowingly or suffer serious complications. Decades of research and experience show medication abortion is safe and complications are rare.

Another group, Students for Life, has been trying to make the case that the biological waste from the use of mifepristone is contaminating the nation’s water supply, though environmental scientists refute that claim.

Yet the groups are most frustrated not with supporters of abortion rights but with the Trump administration. The object of most of their ire is the FDA, which they say is dragging its feet on a promised review of the abortion pill and the Biden administration’s loosened requirements around its availability.

President Joe Biden’s covid-era policy allowing abortion drugs to be sent via mail ”should’ve been rescinded on day one of the administration,” SBA Pro-Life America’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said in a recent statement. Instead, almost a year later, she continued, “pro-life states are being completely undermined in their ability to enforce the laws that they passed.”

Lawmakers who oppose abortion access are also pressing the administration. “At an absolute minimum, the previous in-person safeguards must be restored immediately,” Senate HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy said during the hearing with Murrill and other witnesses who want to see abortion pill availability curtailed.

Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) said at the hearing that he hoped “the rumors are false” that “the agency is intentionally slow-walking its study on mifepristone’s health risks.”

The White House and spokespeople at the Department of Health and Human Services have denied the review is being purposely delayed.

“The FDA’s scientific review process is thorough and takes the time necessary to ensure decisions are grounded in gold-standard science,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in an emailed response to KFF Health News. “Dr. Makary is upholding that standard as part of the Department’s commitment to rigorous, evidence-based review.” That’s a reference to Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner.

Revoking abortion pill access may not be as easy as advocates hoped when Trump moved back into the White House. While the president delivered on many of the goals of his anti-abortion backers during his first term, especially the confirmation of Supreme Court justices who made overturning Roe possible, he has been far less doctrinaire in his second go-round.

Earlier this month, Trump unnerved some of his supporters by advising House Republicans that lawmakers “have to be a little flexible” on the Hyde Amendment to appeal to voters, referring to a decades-old appropriations rule that bans most federal abortion funding and that some Republicans have been pushing to enforce more broadly.

And while the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration has many analysts noting how much of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint has been realized, the most headline-grabbing portions on reproductive health have yet to be enacted. The Trump administration has not, for example, revoked the approval of mifepristone for pregnancy termination, nor has it invoked the 1873 Comstock Act, which could effectively ban abortion nationwide by stopping not just the mailing of abortion pills but also anything else used in providing abortions.

Still, abortion opponents have decades of practice at remaining hopeful — and playing a long game.

HealthBent, a regular feature of KFF Health News, offers insight into and analysis of policies and politics from KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner, who has covered health care for more than 30 years.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Four years have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization — a ruling that, according to conservative GOP consultant Sarah Longwell, continues to be a political liability for Republicans.

Writing in the conservative website The Bulwark, Longwell — founder of Republican Accountability (RA), formerly Republican Voters Against Trump — explains, "Amid all the talk of inflation, war, and artificial intelligence, people are underestimating just how important abortion could still be to this fall's elections. That seems like an insane sentence to type because, after all, abortion proved decisive in 2022, when Democrats dramatically overperformed expectations. The consensus quickly formed that the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was the key contributor. But when the Democratic Party put a heavy emphasis on abortion in the 2024 elections, it didn't pan out. That's because voters were more motivated by economic issues."

Longwell adds, "Fights around abortion moved to the states — where Republican- controlled legislatures were passing sweeping bans — and receded from the federal level. Today, Dems may have over-learned the lesson of 2024."

Although Longwell is on the right politically, she is very much in the Never Trump school of conservatism and rooted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. And she emphasizes, in her Bulwark piece, that not all conservatives want abortion to be illegal.

"I can't tell you how many times I've heard voters — even swing voters and conservatives — say some version of 'I'm pro-life, but I believe in a woman's right to choose,'" Longwell notes. "Translation: Voters can be personally uncomfortable with abortion and still believe that the state-level bans are a bridge too far. In recent focus groups I've conducted, abortion still pops up as an issue. That's especially true in states with very restrictive abortion bans — including some that have key Senate and gubernatorial races this year, like Iowa and Texas."

In Texas, outgoing Sen. John Cornyn — who recently lost a U.S. Senate primary to far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — is anti-abortion, but not as extreme on the issue as the Donald Trump-backed nominee.

"Paxton is a weak candidate for a lot of reasons, including his association with Texas' extreme abortion laws," Longwell observes. "This is something Democrats can and should hang around his neck. Sure, Texas is still Texas. But Paxton's liability on abortion, among his other indiscretions, could prove a major drag. In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds also received plenty of fire. She isn't running for a third term. But Republican Zach Lahn is on the ballot, and he supports a total abortion ban with potential implications for IVF, which is even more extreme than the current law…. Dems seem aware that abortion itself isn't enough to tip any one race. Instead, it’s folded into a candidate's broader profile — and that can make all the difference."

Longwell continues, "Governors like Brian Kemp in Georgia and Mike DeWine in Ohio managed to get reelected in 2022, even though in 2019, both had signed 'heartbeat' abortion bans similar to Texas'. But they benefit from a broader 'normie' appeal. By contrast, patently insane candidates who supported near-total bans — like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Tudor Dixon in Michigan, or Kari Lake in Arizona — all lost their races. Extreme positions on abortion are often, though not always, a leading indicator of extreme positions on other issues, like whether or not the 2020 election was stolen."

The anti-abortion movement has been a major ally of President Donald Trump, applauding him for appointing three U.S. Supreme Court judges who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade after 49 years. But on Sunday night, May 3, the Wall Street Journal published an article detailing tensions between Trump and a top anti-abortion activist: Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

Dannenfelser told the Rupert Murdoch-owned WSJ, "Trump is the problem. The president is the problem."

Patrick T. Brown, director of anti-abortion policy for the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, highlighted Dannenfelser's quote in a Sunday night post on X, formerly Twitter.

According to WSJ reporters Philip Wegmann, Liz Essley Whyte and Jennifer Calfas, "The ubiquity of abortion pills during the second Trump Administration has led anti-abortion advocates to decry the president's appointees, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, and promise cash and political firepower to politicians who oppose the drugs."

When the High Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its 5-4 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in 2022, Trump applauded the decision as a victory for states' rights. Abortion is now banned or greatly restricted in many Republican-leaning states, while remaining legal in other states.

Some blue states, in fact, have strengthened their abortion-rights protections since the Dobbs decision. But Dannenfelser and other anti-abortion activists are hoping for a national anti-abortion law. And Dannenfelser recently said that the anti-abortion movement "as we know it is finished" without such a national ban or restriction.

"Now, Dannenfelser's group is preparing to spend $160 million in the coming midterms and the 2028 presidential primary. The hurdle for candidates looking to tap in to that support: They must commit, Dannenfelser said, 'to pro-life action at the national level,'" the WSJ journalists report. "Leaders in the anti-abortion movement are quick to credit Trump for nominating the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, but their frustration has been building for months. They hoped that the (Trump) administration would roll back (Joe) Biden-era rules allowing the abortion pill, mifepristone, to be prescribed online and shipped through the mail."

Wegmann, Whyte and Calfas add, "The regulations have allowed clinicians in states with liberal abortion laws, such as New York, to prescribe and send pills to women in states with strict abortion bans, such as Mississippi. The Food and Drug Administration has instead left those rules intact."

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council — a major Religious Right group — told the WSJ, "You have Republican states that are challenging a Republican administration over this because their laws are being undermined. Pro-life voters are going to be wondering what’s going on when they head into the polls in November."

The race for the Republican Party’s evangelical vote is already taking shape, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears to have an early advantage over JD Vance.

As both men quietly position themselves for 2028, Politico claims that Rubio’s standing with the far-right voters may give him a head start in what could become a defining contest for the post-Trump GOP.

"[Rubio] has a great deal of trust and admiration from conservative evangelicals and an amazing story that appeals to evangelicals looking for candidates to support,” explained Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in an interview with Politico. “Marco Rubio is far better known to American evangelicals than JD Vance.”

To win the GOP nomination, a candidate must have evangelical voters. In 2024, for example, Politico noted that 82 percent of evangelicals backed President Donald Trump in 2024.

“There is no path to the nomination that doesn’t run through the tollbooth of the evangelical vote," the report said.

"And though he is Catholic," Politico noted that Rubio has managed to win over evangelicals by being friendly enough to "regularly attend a Southern Baptist megachurch in Miami."

Vance has gone in another direction, meeting with Vander Plaats during his recent trip to Iowa. Politico described him as a lesser-known evangelical.

Meanwhile, “prominent evangelicals" view Rubio as someone who could win both Trump's MAGA base as well as the Reagan-era conservative establishment that has slowly lost power in the party over the past two decades.

Vance has left "some evangelicals uncertain," the report continued. "His foreign policy instincts run toward non-interventionism — a posture that has put him at odds, at times, with the administration’s stalwart support for Israel. Rubio, by contrast, leaves little room for ambiguity."

A key piece of those in the movement are the anti-abortion activists who feel like the elimination of the landmark case Roe v. Wade was not enough. They want a full national ban.

The Susan B. Anthony organization, an anti-abortion group, has begun calling the administration the “Trump-Vance administration” in its press releases, to help boost Vance's profile at a time when an attention-hungry president can get miffed when someone steals his spotlight. They're using Vance's ambition for 2028 and his influence to try and move Trump to restrict abortion even more.

“This does not seem to be an accidental strategy, to try to be saying, ‘Come on Vance, like, use your sway with your boss,’” an anti-abortion advocate told Politico about coalition calls.

Congressional Republicans are reportedly trying to insert anti-abortion language into government funding legislation as the shutdown continues, with the GOP and President Donald Trump digging in against a clean extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits as insurance premiums surge.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sounded the alarm on Saturday about what he characterized as the latest Republican sneak attack on reproductive rights.

“Republicans said they might vote to lower Americans’ healthcare costs, but only if we agree to include a backdoor national abortion ban,” Wyden said in remarks on the Senate floor.

The senator was referring to a reported GOP demand that any extension of ACA subsidies must include language that bars the tax credits from being used to purchase plans that cover abortion care.

But as the health policy organization KFF has noted, the ACA already has “specific language that applies Hyde Amendment restrictions to the use of premium tax credits, limiting them to using federal funds to pay for abortions only in cases that endanger the life of the woman or that are a result of rape or incest.”

“The ACA also explicitly allows states to bar all plans participating in the state marketplace from covering abortions, which 25 states have done since the ACA was signed into law in 2010,” according to KFF.

Wyden said Saturday—which marked day 39 of the shutdown—that “Republicans are spinning a tale that the government is funding abortion.”

“It’s not,” Wyden continued. “What Republicans are talking about putting on the table amounts to nothing short of a backdoor national abortion ban. Under this plan, Republicans could weaponize federal funding for any organization that does anything related to women’s reproductive healthcare. They could also weaponize the tax code by revoking non-profit status for these organizations.”

“The possibilities are endless, but the results are the same: a complete and total restriction on abortion, courtesy of Republicans,” the senator added. “Trump said he’d leave abortion care up to the states. Well, this latest scheme makes it crystal clear: A de facto nationwide abortion ban has been his plan all along.”

The GOP effort to attach anti-abortion provisions to government funding legislation adds yet another hurdle in negotiations to end the shutdown, which the Trump administration has used to throttle federal nutrition assistance and accelerate its purge of the federal workforce.

Trump is also pushing a proposal that would differently distribute federal funds that would have otherwise gone toward the enhanced ACA tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

“It sounds like it could be a plan for health accounts that could be used for insurance that doesn’t cover preexisting conditions, which could create a death spiral in ACA plans that do,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the conservative majority’s opinions in two of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in recent years: 1) Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—overruling Roe v. Wade; and 2) Louisiana v. Callais—neutering the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In both cases, Alito recited and relied on asserted “facts” that did not exist.

Alito Rewrote History to Ban Abortion

Ohio State University Prof. Treva Lindsey observed, “From the nation’s founding through the early 1800s, pre-quickening abortions—that is, abortions before a pregnant person feels fetal movement—were fairly common and even advertised.”

But Alito claimed incorrectly in Dobbs that “no common-law case or authority... remotely suggests a positive right to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy” and, in the United States specifically, “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”

Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan called Alito “embarrassingly” wrong. There was no such “unbroken tradition,” and historical evidence undermined his claim. But the conservative majority got its desired outcome.

Roberts Began the Assault on the Voting Rights Act

In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority began undermining the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case. Prior to that decision, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting had to obtain federal approval before making changes to election rules—a process known as preclearance. The state or locality had to prove that any changes would not disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities.

Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.

Roberts argued that the elections of 2008 and 2012—when there was no difference in voter participation rates between Black and white voters (i.e., no “turnout gap”)—meant that the Voting Rights Act had done its job and preclearance could be suspended.

Even at the time, Roberts’ reasoning was suspect. The elections of 2008 and 2012 were anomalies—not the end of the turnout gap—because Barack Obama’s candidacy had driven up Black turnout.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted another flaw in Roberts’ logic: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Justice Ginsburg was correct, and now democracy is getting wet. A 2024 study concluded:

The formerly covered states [subject to preclearance] have large nonwhite populations and large turnout gaps, leading to some of the largest statewide turnout distortions in the nation. Put differently, a decade after Shelby County, the turnout gap continues to have a disproportionate impact in precisely the parts of the country that were once covered due to their histories of racially discriminatory voting practices.

Stated simply, “[S]ince 2013, the racial turnout gap around the nation has exploded.”

Alito Finished the Job

Justice Alito ignored the exploding turnout gap in striking the fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act on April 29, 2026. For decades previously, the court had ruled repeatedly that a state could not undermine minority voters’ power to choose their desired candidates by drawing legislative districts that dispersed such voters across majority-white districts. Instead, states had to create “majority-minority” districts, thereby assuring minority representation in statehouses and Congress.

In its amicus brief to the court in the Callais case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) ignored the trend after 2013 and argued that majority-minority districts were no longer necessary because “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Shelby County, 570 U.S. at 547-548.” To emphasize the point, the DOJ observed, “Since 2004, black voters have turned out at higher rates than white voters in two of five presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”

Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.

Alito parroted the DOJ’s sophistry: “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”

As election experts have observed, Alito’s claim that Black and white turnout reached parity in 2 of the 5 most recent presidential elections “represents egregious cherry-picking. [H]e was not referring to recent elections, but to those in 2008 and 2012—the years that Barack Obama ran for president. In the three most recent presidential elections, the trend shows exactly the opposite. The indisputable fact is the racial turnout gap is widening, and the Roberts Court is partially responsible [because of its Shelby County decision].”

Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.

Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.

A recent dissent from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has prompted two legal analysts to question just "how far gone" the infamous conservative is.

Last week when the Supreme Court temporarily upheld telehealth access to Mifepristone, a frequently used drug that can expel pregnancies and miscarriages.

Thomas wrote in his own dissent, disagreeing with the majority of the court, claiming that the 1873 Comstock Act blocks the mail delivery and telehealth prescriptions for the drug. The law, however, applied to "obscene" materials and was used to stop the mailing of adult photos, magazines and other items.

“I write separately to note that, as Louisiana argued below, it is a criminal offense to ship Mifepristone for use in abortions,” said Thomas. “The Comstock Act bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug ... for producing abortion.’"

Those pharmaceutical companies, Thomas claimed, "cannot, in any legally relevant sense, be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes."

He said that they should be "thrown in prison."

"Applicants, which are the makers of these drugs, are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise. They cannot in any legally relevant sense be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes," Thomas continued.

Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern spoke with "Balls and Strikes" deputy editor Madiba Dennie, who called the Thomas opinion "outrageous."

Stern wondered what Dennie made of Thomas "throwing down" and "making the Comstock act great again."

She keyed in on the claim that the companies are part of some "criminal enterprise" as if they were "some guy on the corner selling heroin."

"I'm just like, 'Okay, buddy.' Like it's like somebody's been watching too much crime TV," she quipped.

Dennie went on to say it was "really egregious and just really trying to legitimize what was once a fringe theory that the Comstock Act does apply here, that it is valid, that it's still good law and should be used to prosecute all so many people."

"It's truly something absurd. I think it just shows how far gone Clarence Thomas is," she continued. "The language is on another level."

Stern explained that the language comes from the "crazy far-right anti-abortion advocates."

"They have been saying for years that this is a criminal network and a criminal conspiracy, and Thomas is just like, 'Absolutely. I'm just going to copy-paste that stuff into the U.S. reports, right?'" Stern argued.

Dennie agreed, "I think you have seen this sort of trend for Thomas for a while. Like he always describes abortion as this really nefarious, like racist eugenics-like operation happening across the country. And yeah, he really sees the opportunity to sort of put that put that into into his dissent here and mix in some criminality for good measure."

Stern clarified that she wasn't being hyperbolic, that Thomas did describe it as a racist eugenics program in a previous opinion.

"So, this guy is not pretending to be a neutral judge in these cases. He is like, 'We must outlaw abortion and imprison everyone who participates in it, including quite possibly patients,'" Stern said.

During George W. Bush's presidency, the term "values voters" was used to describe socially conservative voters who were strongly motivated by their opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Other Bush supporters might have been motivated by national security or tax policy, but the "values voters" focused primarily on social issues — and GOP strategists, working closely with the Religious Right, made a point of getting them to the polls.

"Values voters," on the whole, favored Bush over Democratic nominee John Kerry in the 2004 election. But journalist E.J. Dionne Jr., in a New York Times op-ed, argues that a new type of "values voter" is emerging in the 2026 midterms: one that is being aggressively pursued by Democrats and dislikes the values of the second Trump administration and the MAGA movement.

"The assumption took hold that Americans who cared about 'values' were conservatives animated by opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage," Dionne explains in the Times. "The 2026 campaign is reminding us that this narrow view of how voters think about values is out of step with a long American tradition that gave rise to moral appeals for improving society as a whole, particularly at times of great economic and technological change. We are witnessing the return of a politics of morality organized around the injustices of the economic system and an array of related problems: the costs of technological change, the unraveling of community, civil rights, and financial and work-balance issues confronting families."

Dionne adds, "These themes are powerful in the campaigns of Democrats this year across the party's philosophical spectrum — and it's about time."

President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies often attack Democrats as anti-religion, but Dionne notes that religion has long played a role in liberal and progressive politics —including the Black church during the civil rights movement. And Dionne cites James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and the Democratic nominee in Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race, as the "most explicit" example of "the resurgence of a Christian left."

"He is inspired by Jesus' overturning of the money changers' tables outside the temple, described in all four Gospels," Dionne says of Talarico. "The top of his campaign website features Mr. Talarico's signature line, 'It's time to start flipping tables.' His campaign against the Republican nominee, Ken Paxton, will provide the starkest contest between the old values debate and the new one. Mr. Paxton has denounced Mr. Talarico's theology and issued familiar attacks from the Religious Right, notably around trans issues. The scandalous personal baggage weighing down Mr. Paxton will complicate his talk about morality. But it won't stop him from using it to appeal to the remnant of the old values voters who helped Mr. Trump win in 2024."

Other examples of Democrats with an appeal to "values," Dionne notes, include Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock (a Baptist minister) and Jon Ossoff, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (who is Jewish) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

"Americans have quarreled over Prohibition, birth control, abortion, sexuality and other aspects of individual behavior," Dionne argues. "But we have also confronted the corruption of political and economic systems and our responsibilities to put things right. We are in a transition in how we talk about values because now is a moment to tend to the demands of our common life — and our obligations to one another."

In Florida, Judge Marlon Weiss expressed strong views in a surrogacy-related case that, according to the Tampa Bay Times, "could dramatically reshape reproductive issues" in the Sunshine State. And it has far-reaching implications that go way beyond the case itself.

The case involves a married couple, both men, who made an agreement with a Florida woman for her to carry their child. But when the due date was approaching, they made a petition for early parental rights. The order was granted, and Weiss, Tampa Bay Times reporter Romy Ellenbogen notes, "suggested in his order that surrogacy may be unconstitutional" — while Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier "is arguing that surrogacy is akin to slavery, saying it violates the 13th Amendment and should be deemed unconstitutional, according to a lawyer representing the family."

Ellenbogen stresses that the implications of this case are much broader than surrogacy.

"The questions raised by Weiss in his order could also have a chilling effect on Floridians' access to abortion," the Tampa Bay Times reporter explains. "Weiss' questions center around the idea of fetal personhood, a concept long supported by anti-abortion advocates. If a court were to deem that a fetus or embryo has the same constitutional rights as a newborn, that opens the door to arguments that a fetus' life can't be terminated."

Weiss is an appointee of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while Uthmeier is a close ally of the MAGA governor and a vehement opponent of abortion.

Attorney Katie Jay is representing the fathers and is questioning Uthmeier's conduct.

In a letter to the court, according to Ellenbogen, Jay wrote, "It is election year for the Attorney General and he has signaled that surrogacy cases are valuable political fodder for his campaign. Unfortunately, this seems to have incentivized someone to breach the public trust of the independent judicial branch and use the Broward County Courthouse as a political playground to curry favor in Tallahassee."

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), a far right candidate running for the Republican's Georgia Senate nomination, just defeated a more moderate alternative — and making it easier for Democrats to retain that seat.

Collins defeated football coach Derek Dooley in a primary in which President Donald Trump endorsed Collins at the last second. Republicans reportedly urged Trump to either stay out of the race or support Dooley, who is viewed as more electable, but refused to placate Trump's lie that he had won Georgia during the 2020 presidential election.

Prior to picking Collins, Republicans hopes that Dooley would prevail because he is believed to be a strong candidate against the incumbent. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA). Ossoff, though popular among Democratic voters, nevertheless needs to win in a state that traditionally votes conservative, and before Collins' nomination was viewed as one of the most vulnerable incumbents seeking reelection.

Collins' victory changes all of that. As MS NOW explained on Tuesday, Trump's endorsement of Collins "has landed with a clear sense of dread" among the GOP, who already saw Trump potentially cost them the Texas Senate race by choosing the loyal-but-extreme-and-scandal-riddled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the Republican incumbent, Sen. John Cornyn. Paxton will face the pastor James Talarico.

"If you went to a laboratory and tried to create the worst general election candidate for this state and environment possible, you couldn’t do better than Mike Collins,” an anonymous Georgia GOP strategist told MS NOW. In addition to being an election denier, Collins has a reputation for posting controversial comments on social media and for taking hard right stances against abortion viewed as extreme even by many other conservatives.

“He has a ton of personal baggage and won’t be able to raise money," the source said. "He possesses the unique ability to offend female voters with that personal baggage, but also with the hardest right abortion stance you can have. He will lose the Atlanta metro in unprecedented fashion, and we have to hope he doesn’t take everyone else down with him.”

I have some minor medical issues. So do my kids. Tracking all our medical appointments, getting to the appointments, getting prescriptions, getting insurance to pay for the appointments and prescriptions, paying the bills – this takes up a not insignificant amount of my time and brain space.

I am not awesome at handling administrative burden, but I can do it. Not everyone can.

Imagine you are working full time at a low-paying job that does not provide health insurance. Maybe you have kids to take care of in the hours you aren’t working. Maybe you have medical issues or just want to try to stay healthy. So you try to do the responsible thing and get health insurance through Medicaid.

That requires navigating MO HealthNet, Missouri’s chronically dysfunctional Medicaid system. It might mean spending hours on hold with the agency, going in person or dealing with them losing your documents. It’s an ordeal. But let’s say you eventually manage to get it done.

Thanks to the new work requirements in Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” you now have to go through the ordeal again twice a year to prove you are working and still qualify (or prove you are sick enough to deserve health insurance). Proving you are still eligible is not easy, especially if your employer changes how many hours you work, you’re a gig worker, you lose your job, you don’t have internet, you can’t get to the office, the office is closed, you didn’t get the renewal letter or you did get the renewal letter but it is incomprehensible… the list goes on.

What if you don’t have the time or skill to navigate all this bureaucracy?

Republicans are counting on you not being able to get it done.

The Medicaid savings in the federal law are expected to come from people not being able to jump these hurdles. Republicans claimed with straight faces that the savings would come from eliminating “fraud, waste, and abuse.” But let’s be real: this isn’t about fraud.

Our Republican lawmakers know many people are too poor, tired or swamped to manage the deliberately imposed administrative burden. Their plan has always been to reduce Medicaid spending by red-taping as many people as possible out of their health insurance.

And it’s not just low-income people on Medicaid who can’t handle the administrative burden imposed by the federal law. You know who else can’t? The states. Especially Missouri.

Our system was already a mess. We do not have the staff or computer systems to efficiently require people to jump through the new additional hoops. But the federal law’s new work requirements require us to blowtorch millions of state tax dollars in the attempt.

Missouri estimated the added administrative costs would amount to $294.6 million. That was before the Trump administration imposed even more arduous rules for sick people this month.

Missouri Republicans, rather than trying to figure out how we are going to pay for this, tried to put work requirements in our state constitution.

There was a time when Republicans decried red tape and over regulation. Now it is their favorite weapon.

I’m most familiar with this in the abortion context. When Roe was the law and abortion couldn’t be banned outright, the strategy was to impose medically inappropriate regulations so onerous that abortion clinics couldn’t function. Those laws are still on the books in Missouri, which is why it remains nearly impossible to end a pregnancy in a timely manner here despite Missouri voters voting to legalize abortion. When voters aren’t with Republicans, or Republicans are otherwise blocked by law, Republicans achieve their goals through red tape.

Where Republicans have really taken the red-tape strategy to the next level is in their attempt to keep more people from voting.

Do you know where your birth certificate is? I do not. I have a passport, but half the country does not. I didn’t change my name when I got married, but most women do. This means they will have a problem if President Donald Trump’s prized SAVE Act becomes law because it will make proving eligibility to vote extremely document-intensive. I’m not talking about just locating documents, but getting new ones. SAVE is intended to keep people who are statistically less likely to vote for Republicans, like women and low-income people, from voting. By burying us in administrative tasks.

Republicans, in Missouri and at the federal level, have somehow made “small government, less regulation, less red tape” their brand. The truth is they are all about red tape. They will go to the mat to impose as much red tape as possible. They will spend endless legislative time, dollars and political capital to impose more red tape.

This is because red tape is effective. Republicans want those of us who don’t have all our documents together and are short on time to spend as much work and money as possible to exercise our basic rights.