What we’re all witnessing is the beginning of the end of what has evolved into the Republican party of today.
“There was an explosion of news this week with a theme: The increasing radicalization of the Republican Party.
First, we have the abortion pill mifepristone debacle in which a federal judge in Texas attempted to outlaw mifepristone for the entire nation. Here’s the timeline (I find that a bullet point timeline is the best tool for understanding a complex legal situation) ** see below
The Republican Cycle of Radicalization
While the title of Let Them Eat Tweets by Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, and Berkeley political scientist Paul Pierson feels a bit dated, the book succinctly explains what we might call the Republican cycle of radicalization whereby the party leaders are locked into accepting increasingly extreme and unhinged positions.
The authors begin with what Harvard Prof. Daniel Ziblatt calls the “Conservative dilemma,” which goes like this:
Conservatives represent the interests of a few wealthy people.
Their economic policies are unpopular.
So when more people are allowed to vote, conservatives have a problem.
Plutocracy is incompatible with democracy for two reasons: (1) most people will not knowingly vote to keep a plutocrat in power when that plutocrat is essentially robbing them, so plutocrats have trouble winning elections the normal way, by putting forward their policies and plans. (2) As more money becomes concentrated in the hands of a few people, power, too, becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people.
Plutocracy is not new in the United States. Slavery, after all, was a plutocracy, as was the era of robber barons. (Heather Cox Richardson in her book To Make Men Free refers to these as our first two oligarchies. We are now heading toward a third.) The Civil War got us out of the first oligarchy. Roosevelt’s New Deal got us out of the second.)”
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"Last year, a coalition of anti-abortion rights groups called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sued the FDA alleging that mifepristone should not have been approved. Note: Mifepristone was approved 20 years ago, has been proven safe, and is also used in miscarriage management.
On Friday, April 7, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas agreed with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. He ruled that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved the abortion pill mifepristone and issued a nationwide injunction pausing the FDA approval, set to take effect in 7 days.
Hours after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, the DOJ appealed to the Fifth Circuit.
A coalition of Democratic attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit to block the FDA from pulling the drug from the market.
In response to that lawsuit, a federal judge in Washington state, Thomas O. Rice, blocked the FDA from “altering the status quo and rights as it relates to the availability of Mifepristone.”
We thus had dueling federal district court rulings, creating an untenable situation for the FDA, which meant that SCOTUS would have to weigh in quickly.
On Wednesday, April 12, the Fifth Circuit, in a late-night ruling, held that mifepristone can remain on the market, but with limited access. The order was riddled with problems, which I won’t go into here.
On Friday, the DOJ and abortion pill distributor Danco Laboratories asked the Supreme Court to block the order limiting access to mifepristone.
Late Friday, the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay maintaining the status quo while it hears the case.
Bottom line: As a practical matter, a federal judge doesn’t have the authority to intervene in the workings of the FDA and substitute his judgment for the judgment of the FDA. As Steve Vladeck pointed out, the case has other procedural problems such as standing (do the plaintiffs have the right to bring this lawsuit) and statute of limitations."