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Biden Blasts US Supreme Court’s Draft Opinion on Abortion

High court may overturn Roe v. Wade, landmark ruling that legalized abortion in US, and leave decision to state legislators
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Explainer: The Leak of Supreme Court’s Draft Roe v. Wade Reversal

Late Monday, the American news website Politico dropped a bombshell: A draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion it had obtained revealed that the court was set to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion in the United States in 1973.

The leak of a highly anticipated court opinion, unprecedented in modern history, set off a political firestorm in Washington and protests across the country. Democrats denounced the leaked draft decision as “the greatest restriction of rights in over 50 years” and vowed to pass legislation to protect abortion rights. Republicans cheered the reported opinion written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito while accusing the “radical left” of “bullying” Supreme Court justices.

In a city where the executive and legislative branches of government routinely leak information to the press, the Supreme Court has long enjoyed a reputation as one of a handful of relatively leak-free institutions.

And while some recent internal high court deliberations have been released to the press, never before has a draft opinion been leaked in its entirety prior to its announcement.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who, according to Politico, had yet to endorse the majority opinion by Alito and four other conservative justices, issued a stark condemnation of the leak.

“This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here,” he said in a statement.

At the heart of the Supreme Court case is a Mississippi law that prohibits performing abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. During oral arguments in December, the court’s conservative justices appeared willing to uphold the law without signaling they were united in overturning the 1973 decision.

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about the Supreme Court leak:

How rare are leaks of Supreme Court decisions?’

Extremely rare. The court keeps its internal deliberations and proceedings confidential to shield the justices from public pressure.

However, while court opinions have not been leaked in modern times, unauthorized releases of court decisions and deliberations date back to the mid-19th century, according to University of Georgia media law professor Jonathan Peters.

In 1852, the New-York Tribune reported the outcome of a court decision 10 days before its official announcement, Peters tweeted late Monday.

In 1972, The Washington Post reported details of the court’s internal deliberations in the Roe v. Wade case before the justices announced their decision. 

And in 2012, CBS News reported how Roberts initially sided with the court’s conservative wing before voting to uphold key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. 

But those leaks pale in comparison to what was given to Politico, experts say.

“There’s been leaks in the past of how a case might turn out for some internal deliberations of the court. But in terms of a fully baked 98-page majority opinion with citations, with all the notations of how a Supreme Court opinion looks and the outcome, this has never happened before,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonpartisan Fix the Court.

Who might have leaked the document?

In a statement, Roberts ordered the Marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court — the court’s internal police force that protects the justices and the building — to investigate the leak. Colonel Gail A. Curley is the current marshal.

Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, told VOA the Supreme Court’s internal police has “all the authority to enforce both federal and District of Columbia laws that may have been broken with this leak of an opinion.”

But Roth is skeptical that the culprit could be exposed.

About 50 to 100 people could have had access to the leaked document, including the nine justices, 37 clerks, administrative employees, building staff and security guards, he said.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the bottom of who might have leaked the copy to Politico,” Roth told VOA.

Were any crimes committed?

It’s not clear whether the leak involved any criminal violations. If an authorized person accessed and leaked the court document, charges could potentially involve theft of government property, but there are no indications that a person authorized to access the document shared the draft with Politico.

However, Supreme Court opinions, unlike many other government documents, are not classified, but the court’s deliberations and draft decisions are understood to be confidential, Perry said.

Moreover, leaking a draft opinion for the purpose of swaying justices could be a “serious offense,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics czar who is now a law professor at the University of Minnesota.

If a Supreme Court justice was involved in leaking the document, he or she could face impeachment by Congress.

Only one justice — Samuel Chase in the early 19th century — has ever been impeached, but none has been convicted and removed from the bench, according to Roth.

Will the public outcry change the final decision?

Highly unlikely. In a statement, Roberts said the leaked document “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

While justices sometimes change how they vote in a case, some experts say the leak has made it more unlikely that the five conservatives on the court will walk back their apparent support for overturning Roe v. Wade, along with a 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Supreme Court justices, Painter noted, “never want to be perceived as bowing to public pressure.”

In recent months, Roberts was believed to be seeking a middle ground that would endorse the law without overturning Roe v. Wade. But after the leak, he may join the other conservatives on the court in overturning the decision, Perry said.

“He did try to seek a middle ground,” she said. “We might, for example, see a 5-3-1. But based on his very strenuous statement that this is not going to have an effect on how they are ruling, I am inclined to believe that we might have actually gained Chief Justice Roberts, when before this leak, we might not have had him.
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DC Reaches $750,000 Settlement in Trump Inauguration Lawsuit

Former President Donald Trump’s businesses and inaugural committee have reached a deal to pay Washington, D.C., $750,000 to resolve a lawsuit that alleged the committee overpaid for events at his hotel and enriched the former president’s family in the process, according to the District of Columbia’s attorney general. 

Attorney General Karl Racine announced the settlement agreement in the case against the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the Trump Organization and the Trump International Hotel in Washington in a tweet on Tuesday. The document had not yet been signed by a judge. 

The agreement says the case is being resolved “to avoid the cost, burden, and risks of further litigation” and that the organizations “dispute these allegations on numerous grounds and deny having engaged in any wrongdoing or unlawful conduct.” 

As part of the agreement, the defendants will pay the District of Columbia a total of $750,000, which will be used to benefit three nonprofit organizations, the settlement paperwork says. 

“We’re resolving our lawsuit and sending the message that if you violate DC nonprofit law—no matter how powerful you are—you’ll pay,” Racine said in a tweet. 

In a statement, Trump blasted Racine and noted that the settlement includes no admission of guilt or liability. 

“As crime rates are soaring in our Nation’s Capital, it is necessary that the Attorney General focus on those issues rather than a further leg of the greatest Witch-Hunt in political history,” Trump said. “This was yet another example of weaponizing Law Enforcement against the Republican Party and, in particular, the former President of the United States.” 

Racine has said the committee misused nonprofit funds and coordinated with the hotel’s management and members of the Trump family to arrange the events. He said one of the event’s planners raised concerns about pricing with Trump, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Rick Gates, a top campaign official at the time. 

The committee has maintained that its finances were independently audited, and that all money was spent in accordance with the law. The committee raised an unprecedented $107 million to host events celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. But the committee’s spending has drawn mounting scrutiny. 

Gates, a former Trump campaign aide who cooperated in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, personally managed discussions with the hotel about using the space, including ballrooms and meeting rooms, the attorney general’s office has said. In one instance, Gates contacted Ivanka Trump and told her that he was “a bit worried about the optics” of the committee paying such a high fee, Racine said. 

Prosecutors say the committee could have hosted inaugural events at other venues either for free or for reduced costs but didn’t consider those options. 
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Report: Draft Opinion Shows US Supreme Court to Overturn Abortion Rights

In a rare leak from the highest court in the U.S., Politico reported it has obtained a draft Supreme Court opinion showing a majority of the court in favor of striking down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. 

The document, labeled as a “1st Draft” by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated among the other justices in February, represents a breach in the highly secretive deliberation process among the justices in which their decisions are unknown until the rulings are officially issued. 

Those positions can change during the deliberation process, even after the drafting of a majority opinion, and the final ruling is expected before the court finishes its current term in late June or early July. 

At stake is the issue of abortion rights in the United States, which since the Roe decision have been protected on a national level and reaffirmed in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 

A Supreme Court spokesperson declined to comment. 

Public opinion polls in show a majority of the U.S. public favors abortions being legal either in most or all cases. 

“If the Supreme Court does indeed issue a majority opinion along the lines of the leaked draft authored by Justice Alito, the shift in the tectonic plates of abortion rights will be as significant as any opinion the Court has ever issued,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement late Monday. “It would deprive half the nation of a fundamental, constitutional right that has been enjoyed by millions of women for over 50 years.” 

Alito is one of six conservative justices on the nine-person court and overturning Roe has been a longtime goal of social conservatives in the United States. 

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences,” the draft opinion says. 

The justices are deciding on the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which involves the state of Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. 

A federal appeals court ruled against Mississippi, saying its timeframe went against the standards set in Roe and Casey that allow a mother to terminate a pregnancy without state interference before a fetus is viable outside the womb. 

The draft opinion rejects the limits on state authority in the Roe and Casey decisions, saying state lawmakers should be the ones to decide what is legal in their state. 

“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” the draft says. “The Constitution does not prohibit citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.” 

Politico said it received a copy of the 98-page draft decision “from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Trump: Republican Political Kingmaker or Political Meddler?

Is former U.S. President Donald Trump a Republican political kingmaker or just a political meddler? 

The first answers are coming in the month of May.  

The United States is about to get its first significant reading on how much political clout Trump retains over the Republican Party 16 months after he played a role in hundreds of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol to protest his 2020 election defeat and then left Washington as Democrat Joe Biden became president. 

Trump, who retains a wide Republican following, to this day claims he was cheated out another four-year term in the White House and has teased making another run for the presidency in 2024.  

To that end, he has endorsed nearly 130 Republican candidates in coming party primary elections — state legislative and congressional contenders and incumbents — who share his political vision, with many of them also embracing his contention that Biden fraudulently won. Some of those Trump is supporting have also been accused of abusing women. 

Court after court has ruled that the scant irregularities that may have occurred in 2020 would not have been sufficient to overturn Biden’s victory. Those decisions have not stopped Trump from making the election fraud claims and endorsing his most ardent supporters, even as other key Republicans and interest groups aligned with the party have endorsed their opponents. 

The first test comes Tuesday in the Midwestern state of Ohio, which Trump easily won in the 2020 election, where he has endorsed the Senate candidacy of J.D. Vance, author of a book called “Hillbilly Elegy.” It is a memoir of Vance’s upbringing in Ohio and acts in part as an explanation of why white working-class voters became enamored of Trump during his successful run for the presidency in 2016 and subsequent loss for reelection two years ago. 

Several of the Ohio Republican Senate contenders actively sought Trump’s endorsement but the former president went with Vance even though he had criticized Trump’s 2016 candidacy, saying then that his “actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd” and describing Trump as “reprehensible.” 

But Vance, as he transformed himself into a politician, recanted his views about Trump, saying, “I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy. I think he was a good president; I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.” 

According to recent polling, Trump’s mid-April endorsement of the 37-year-old Vance immediately doubled his share of the vote and pushed him to a narrow lead in the crowded field. He could now be positioned to win the Republican Senate nomination with just a quarter of the primary vote to run in the November general election against the likely Democratic nominee, Congressman Tim Ryan. 

But Vance’s six-year-old attacks on Trump quickly reemerged as a point of contention in the Republican primary. 

The Club for Growth, a national pro-Republican anti-tax group and often a Trump ally, had already endorsed one of Vance’s opponents, Josh Mandel, a former state treasurer who has pledged that if he wins, he will take on “squishy establishment” Republicans in Washington. After Trump’s Vance endorsement, Club for Growth immediately started airing television ads showing Vance’s repeated 2016 attacks on then-presidential candidate Trump. 

Trump angrily had an assistant send a vulgar message to Club for Growth president David McIntosh protesting the broadcasting of the ad, but the group, rather than backing off, responded by saying it would increase its spending on the anti-Vance ad with his attacks on Trump. 

Three other contenders narrowly trailed Vance in the latest polling, giving them a chance as well in the Tuesday election: Ohio State Senator Matt Dolan, businessman Mike Gibbons, and former Ohio Republican chairwoman Jane Timken. All of them have collected endorsements from various state and national Republican figures. 

In Nebraska

Trump’s grip on Republican politics will also be tested this month in three other states. 

Next up is the May 10 party primary in the staunchly conservative Midwestern state of Nebraska, where Trump on Sunday rallied with gubernatorial contender Charles Herbster, a businessman who has advised Trump on agricultural policy and donated to his campaigns.  

Herbster is denying allegations that he has sexually assaulted multiple women. Trump called Herbster a “very good man” who had been “maligned.” 

“I defend people when I know they’re good,” Trump said. “A lot of people, they look at you and say: you don’t have to do it, sir. I defend my friends.” 

In Pennsylvania

A week later, on May 17 in the Eastern state of Pennsylvania, which Trump lost in the 2020 election, he is backing the Senate candidacy of a celebrity television doctor, Mehmet Oz, in his run for an open seat after Republican Senator Pat Toomey announced he would be retiring. 

Oz, echoing Trump, is disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. 

“I have discussed it with President Trump and we cannot move on,” Oz said at a recent debate. “As all the other candidates up here have outlined, under the cover of COVID, there were draconian changes made to our voting laws by Democratic leadership, and they have blocked appropriate reviews of some of those decisions. We have to be serious about what happened in 2020, and we won’t be able to address that until we can really look under the hood.” 

Oz’s key opponent appears to be David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive and undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs during the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush. 

Trump’s first choice in the Senate race in Pennsylvania was not Oz but rather Sean Parnell, an Army veteran and former congressional candidate who dropped out of the race late last year after losing a custody battle with his estranged wife over primary custody of their three children. A judge ruled that Parnell had committed some abusive acts toward his wife in the past. 

In Georgia

Last up on the May political primary calendar is Georgia, on the 24th, a state Trump lost in 2020. A grand jury is convening in the state capital of Atlanta to investigate his possibly criminal efforts in a taped telephone call he made to try to convince a state election official to “find” him one more vote than he needed to overtake Biden’s 11,779-vote victory. 

Trump’s anger over his loss in the southern state — the first for a Republican presidential candidate in Georgia since 1992 — has spilled over to the state’s gubernatorial primary. Trump has endorsed former Republican U.S. Senator David Perdue in his race for the state governorship over incumbent Governor Brian Kemp. 

Trump is opposing Kemp’s reelection because he claims Kemp did not do enough two years ago to help him overturn Biden’s victory in the state. 

Polling in the state, however, shows Kemp with a substantial lead over Perdue, who lost his Senate seat in a run-off election in early 2021. 

Trump is also supporting Herschel Walker, a former professional football player for a Trump-owned team, for the Republican Senate nomination in the state. Polls show Walker far ahead in his maiden bid for elected office and will likely face Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in the November general election. 

In supporting Walker, Trump has ignored advice from Washington Republican political analysts that Walker is a flawed candidate after he acknowledged abusing his former wife, who accused him of holding a pistol to her head and “extremely threatening behavior.” 

 
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