Author: Kevin Drum

The Washington Post reports that the freedom-loving free marketeers at the Heritage Foundation are suggesting that Donald Trump should regulate insurance companies more heavily if he wins. In particular, they shouldn't be allowed to pay for out-of-state abortion:

The Heritage Foundation, which has been heavily involved in policy proposals for a Trump second term, has recommended that the Labor Department and Congress “should clarify” that federal labor regulations for employer-sponsored health-care plans “should not be allowed to trump states’ ability to protect innocent human life in the womb.”

If Dobbs is to be taken seriously, there's no way the federal government has the power to do this. On the downside, if Dobbs is to be taken seriously, state insurance authorities might very well have this power.

In any case, this is yet another indication—as if we needed any more—that social conservatives are in no way willing to abide by the federalism in Dobbs. They support it insofar as it killed Roe v. Wade, but their goal is to ban every abortion of any type for any resident of the United States. No surgical abortions, no pills, no traveling to other states, no traveling out of the country, nothing. That's the goal, and there's no way to stop them except to vote their asses out of office when they try to pull this stuff.

An organization called Fix the Court has published an estimate of all gifts received by Supreme Court justices since 2004. Their figures show Clarence Thomas way out in front, but this is obviously unfair since Thomas has been on the court longer than most justices. When you adjust for gifts per year, you get something totally—

Actually, you get exactly the same thing. Thomas has raked in a dozen times the volume of gifts of the next highest justice. It's basically Clarence Thomas and the eight dwarfs.

I don't really care very much about Sam Alito hoisting an upside-down flag after the January 6 insurrection. I already assumed he was an ardent Stop the Steal fan anyway. But Clarence Thomas's buck raking is really and truly corrupt. And yet there's nothing to be done about it short of impeachment, which Republicans will never support because Thomas is one of them. If they continue to support Donald Trump, they're certainly not going to do anything about Thomas.

POSTSCRIPT: Fix the Court estimates that, on average, justices have reported only 28% of the gifts they've received. Among sitting justices, this ranges from 83% for Sonia Sotomayor to 8.5% for Thomas.

(Kavanaugh and Barrett are technically at 0%, but that's for a grand total of four gifts totaling $600.)

This is a World War II cemetery in Normandy. It holds the remains of British troops who stormed Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches on D-Day.

I didn't notice this when it was published, but I see that polling from the New York Times confirms the YouGov results I mentioned yesterday. Donald Trump's conviction on felony charges has moved voters only slightly:

The Times interviewed some of the folks who were previously Trumpish or undecided. Here are their complaints about Biden:

Jack: Earlier this year, he said he considered himself a Trump voter primarily because of his anger over Mr. Biden’s economic policies.

Eric: Mr. Tabor said he had turned to Mr. Trump after Mr. Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan was rejected by the Supreme Court, and Mr. Tabor was left with the feeling that the president was getting little done.

Jamie: She blamed him for not saving abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Carla: She watched Mr. Biden perform the job as president and could not envision voting for him again. “Sometimes Biden says things without thinking,” she said.

This is all crazy. The economy is great under Biden. Biden has gotten a ton of things done. It makes no sense to blame him for a conservative Supreme Court that Trump appointed. As for saying things without thinking, has Carla ever listened to Trump?

But crazy or not, this is how a lot of people think. You just have to figure out a way of getting through to them.

I was browsing through the press highlights of the April trade report and learned that we set a new record for imports from Ireland. But what the hell do we import from Ireland? Whiskey? Shamrock-themed tea towels? The answer turns out to be drugs. Now you know.

Over at National Review, Michael New says Democrats were "grandstanding" with their bill yesterday that would have protected the right to contraception:

The aim of the bill was to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

First, contraceptives are widely available.... Furthermore, more contraceptive use would not necessarily reduce the number either of abortions or of unintended pregnancies.... The legislation contained no conscience protections.

This is weak tea. The aim of the bill, needless to say, is to make sure access to contraceptives doesn't become a problem. Contraceptives shouldn't just be "widely available," they should be universally available, and we should make sure to keep things that way.

As for contraception not reducing abortions or unintended pregnancies, that seems a wee bit unlikely, doesn't it? I mean, obviously they do something or else millions of women wouldn't use them.

And conscience protections are embedded in other laws and in Supreme Court rulings. There's no need to repeat them.

New's piece is a good example of why Democrats are grandstanding about this: it's a winning issue. Even Republicans can't really come up with any good reasons against it.

Here's the headline on a Jim Geraghty post at National Review:

President Biden to Time Magazine: ‘(Unintelligible)’

What is with these people? Geraghty isn't one of the insane ones at NR, but here he is trying to push the conservative narrative of Biden's mental decline by pointing to (a) one word (b) during a one-hour interview (c) while Biden had a cold and had apologized for his voice.

But maybe Geraghty should have pointed out something else: Time's fact check of their interview with Donald Trump was seven times longer than their fact check of Biden (about 4,000 words vs. 600 words). Time had to correct 33 Trump claims compared to seven for Biden. And a large number of the Trump claims were serious lies designed to mislead. Biden's were exclusively small misstatements.

I dunno. Maybe that's more important.

Has Donald Trump's felony conviction hurt him? Naturally I was curious to see the results of the first post-verdict weekly poll from YouGov.

The answer is "slightly." YouGov finds that the verdict made 5% of the electorate less likely to vote for him and 2% more likely to vote for him. That's a net loss for Trump of 3%. On the question about vote intent, Trump registered a net loss of 1%.

These are small numbers and may not hold up. But it's pretty safe to say that if the trial had any effect at all, it was pretty small.

But take a look at this chart, which breaks down vote intention by gender:

Trump gained four points among men and lost five points among women. The trial verdict made Trump even Trumpier, which apparently men liked and women didn't.

Likewise, the verdict made conservatives more likely to vote for Trump and liberals less likely. Self-IDed moderates didn't move at all.

Donald Trump was convicted of a felony last week, but today he got better news. In Georgia, a state appellate court halted Fani Willis's election fraud trial while it decides whether she should be removed from the case. In Florida, judge Aileen Cannon has delayed proceedings once again while she considers a bunch of ridiculous motions offered up by Trump's lawyers.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court can't delay much longer on Trump's claim that he has absolute immunity for any act taken as president. Presumably even the current court is going to rule against him on this, so that will allow the federal election fraud case to get going again.

Republicans like to complain about "two-tiered justice," and they're right—just not in the way they think. Trump has been remarkably successful at delaying his most serious trials by getting conservative courts to spend time mulling over absurdities. At the same time, we know for a fact that the prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case doesn't think the charges against him have much merit—he admitted as much by originally agreeing to a plea deal with Hunter. Nonetheless, Hunter Biden is on trial.

The Democratic president's son gets screwed while the former Republican president gets endless help from his ideological friends—including in cases which are all but open and shut. That's a pretty good example of two-tiered justice.

Good news! I get to go through menopause.

Really. I met with the oncology team about my prostate cancer today and they recommended a treatment plan of hormone therapy plus radiation. The hormone in question is testosterone, which is the main feedstock of prostate cancer. So basically the idea is to suppress testosterone and starve the cancer. As a side effect I'll be getting hot flashes and fatigue for the next two years.

Do you want more details? If not, just scroll on by. But I've been oversharing about cancer for a decade and I'm not about to stop now. For starters, here's a picture of my prostate:

The bright white patch is where the PET scan lit up, and it's basically the entire prostate with a large bulge on the left (note that the image is reversed). The bulge prompted the oncology team to lean against surgery because there was about a 50-50 chance that I'd still need radiation treatment afterward. So why not just do the radiation instead?

That makes sense. However, although the PET scan showed no spread of the cancer outside the prostate, the size and aggressiveness of my cancer make it likely that there are still microscopic amounts in my bones and lymph nodes. That's what the hormone therapy is for. It (hopefully) kills off the micro cancers and makes the prostate a little more amenable to radiation.

Overall, my doctor says this combination has about a 100% chance of very significant improvement and a 70-80% chance of complete remission.

The radiation involves daily visits for six weeks. After a prep session, they program the machine and then target my prostate with beams of—something. I forgot to ask about that. It's either X-rays or protons. By the end of six weeks my prostate and all the surrounding areas (bladder, rectum, etc.) will be nice and inflamed, which promises to be unpleasant. But then it's over.

The hormone therapy is a drug called Lupron that's injected once every six months. The doctor I met with was very nice and assured me I could take some time to think about this, but why bother? I've been dealing with this crap for ten years, so I'm ready. My first injection is next Tuesday. The radiation treatment will start in July.

Anyway, testosterone suppression really is analogous to the loss of estrogen that causes menopause in women. So that's what I'll get. I wasn't really expecting that the ladies out there would have much advice for me about prostate cancer, but it turns out they might! But don't tell me. Let's make it a surprise, OK?

POSTSCRIPT: I know what you're thinking. This has all been about me me me, but how does it affect you? The answer, I think, is that I'm likelier to become crankier, and if Donald Trump wins the election I'm going to get really cranky. Bewarned.