Another week, another blockbuster Supreme Court case that could have lasting consequences for American politics: On Tuesday, the nation’s high court heard arguments in a case challenging whether federal prosecutors could charge rioters in the January 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol using a law that criminalizes what is known as “obstructing an official proceeding.” The Justice Department has argued that defendants violated this law, enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal more than two decades ago, by attempting to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory in 2020.

More than 350 people have been charged, and more than 100 have pleaded guilty or been convicted, under the statute, which has a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Perhaps the most prominent person charged under the federal obstruction statute: former President Donald Trump.

But the justices seemed to be divided on the issue in arguments on Tuesday. Some conservative justices, who comprise the majority of the court, worried that the statute grants federal prosecutors overly expansive authority to target protesters. “Would a heckler in today’s audience qualify, or at the State of the Union address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?” Justice Neil Gorsuch asked.

Justice Clarence Thomas—whom Democrats hoped would recuse from the case, due to the efforts by his wife, Ginni Thomas, to overturn the 2020 election—questioned whether the law had been used in relation to other violent protests. (Although the case will not be decided for months, federal judges in lower courts have allowed several of the defendants who were imprisoned because of the law to be released from custody.)

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 includes a provision that applies to anyone who “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding,” or “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” The Biden administration’s arguments rest on the word “otherwise,” maintaining that it is a catchall that refers to obstruction that goes beyond the shredding of documents. But Chief Justice John Roberts argued that “the general phrase is controlled and defined by reference to the terms that precede it”—in this case, “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals.” (This would not be the first time the executive branch has been stymied by the judiciary in using Sarbanes-Oxley: In 2014, the Supreme Court limited the interpretation of the law outside of corporate fraud cases.)

Perspectives on the case from Capitol Hill, somewhat predictably, were divided along party lines. GOP Senator Josh Hawley argued that the federal application of Sarbanes-Oxley in this case ran “far, far afield” of the original intent of the law. “You want to charge rioters, go right ahead. Charge them with trespass, charge them with assault, charge them with whatever,” Hawley said. “They have applied that so broadly, and they’ve completely lifted it out of the records context, and that could be applied to just about any situation to any government proceeding.”

If the Supreme Court were to limit the use of the law, it’s unclear what effect this would have on prosecutions relating to the January 6 riot; many defendants, including the former police officer who brought this case before the court, were charged with multiple other crimes. Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the federal case against Trump, has argued that a narrower reading of the law would not prevent the former president from being prosecuted under the statute. The two obstruction counts against Trump involve him conspiring to create false slates of electors, which Smith says would apply even under a stricter interpretation of the statute.

“I’m curious to see what the Supreme Court will say, but nothing in that particular legal adjudication affects in any way our sense of the criminal character of the violent and fraudulent assault on the 2020 election,” said Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, who was a member of the House select committee that investigated the riot in 2022. “I don’t think there’s any cause for a narrowing construction of that statute. But I think that if it did happen, again, it doesn’t change the essential character of the events we’re talking about.”

This article first appeared in Inside Washington, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by staff writer Grace Segers. Sign up here.

I’ve previously written in this newsletter about the Affordable Connectivity Program, which helps connect millions of low-income Americans to the internet—and which will end in May if Congress does not approve additional funding. The program grew from a pandemic-era benefit, and has been used by around 23 million households. Despite bipartisan and bicameral support for the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act, which would boost funding for the program by $7 billion, the future of the bill is uncertain. Congress is preoccupied with a host of other priorities, including approving a supplemental package of aid to Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific.

Despite these complications, a group of Democratic representatives is pressuring Johnson to take up the legislation. I spoke with Representative Annie Kuster of New Hampshire, the chair of the New Democrat Coalition, about how her caucus of centrist Democrats is pushing to keep the Affordable Connectivity Act a priority. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

The ACP is set to end in May. Do you believe Congress can approve legislation to extend the program before that deadline?

I certainly hope so. I mean, that’s our goal. We’ve waited too long, obviously. This was a bipartisan bill when it passed; the extension has two dozen Republican co-sponsors. And we were hoping that they would help us to get it to the floor quickly. Now we’re really running up against the deadline. And so we want to make sure that we keep the pressure on the House Republican leadership.

These enrollees are all across the country, in red and blue districts, so we’ve got to put aside partisan politics and work together. It’s a lifeline for American families, for students doing homework, or people applying for jobs. We have very low unemployment, and our companies are looking for people to do jobs, to cover their job openings. And if you don’t have the internet from home, you can’t apply for the job. You can’t look up the bus schedule to get to the job. You can’t be in touch with your employer to send or receive messages.

The way America works and lives, and the way our communities function—for schools, for hospitals—everyone has the expectation that people will be available via the internet. And 23 million Americans have had this access to affordable internet. We’ve been closing this digital divide. This is true for low-income communities, but it’s also true for rural communities like my district to provide access to affordable broadband. We did this during Covid because it became immediately apparent how important it was for telework, for telehealth, for education online. And then now it’s being stripped away—just in my own state, we’re talking about 40,000 households. So that is a significant number of people who will no longer be able to participate in the normal course with our community and with our economy.

What do you believe is the best pathway for approving the Affordable Connectivity Program extension?

Well, the best pathway would be to just attach it to a bill that’s going to be considered, and get it to the president for his signature as quickly as possible. If the Republican leadership is unwilling to do that, then we would have to consider alternative pathways.

What kind of bill would you want to see it attached to?

Whatever passes the relevancy test. It’s such a popular bipartisan program. It shouldn’t be difficult to identify it—you know, a path to get this done. This should be a priority, really, with the deadline bearing down on us?

Well, that does bring me to my next question. There is a lot happening in Congress right now.

Yes, yes. Maybe we could attach it to Ukraine aid. [Laughs]

How do you convince Speaker Johnson that this is a priority?

I think it’s so popular that we should be able to do it on suspension, and now we’ve got a few extra days here. Let’s do it on Friday under suspension. That might be the way to go.

[Author’s note: Approving a bill under suspension of the rules requires a two-thirds majority to pass.]

The bill does, as you mentioned before, have significant GOP support. But there are a few Republicans who say that the ACP is redundant or that it has not truly connected a meaningful number of Americans. How do you respond to those criticisms?

Twenty-three million Americans is a meaningful number to me, and certainly 40,000 households in New Hampshire. We’re a state that has, I think we’re at 2.3 percent unemployment.… We can’t afford to have 40,000 people isolated, not connected to our economy and our society to the extent that they can’t fill out a job application, they can’t apply for a new position, they can’t go online to get new skills. Health care is a great example. So much of health care is working your way up from an entry level [licensed nursing assistant] to getting your credentials, working your way up to nurse practitioner. The way these things happen is that people take classes online, over the weekend, at night. And you’re just, like, squashing all of that talent. I wish I had a sophisticated word. I’m just thinking of just pushing people down. You’re not giving people the opportunity to thrive, and it will impact our economy.

I have one health care provider with 750 openings, they need to be able to communicate with everybody. And if you take 40,000 people out of the pool of potential applicants, just simply because they don’t have access to know about the position, to look online for a job, to fill out the application, to pull down their transcript from their school—everything happens online. Put yourself in the position of trying to apply for a job and not being able to go on a computer. It’s ludicrous in this day and age. And so to me the ACP is the equivalent of basic infrastructure. It’s like having public roads and high winds and phones and everything that we need to function. This is the modern version. The twenty-first-century infrastructure includes access to affordable internet.

I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you a question related to the news of the week. So, specifically, consideration of the package of national security bills and what that could mean for Johnson if the House is able to pass this new legislation. Do you think Democrats would be prepared to vote to keep Johnson in office if there is a motion to vacate against him?

So what I have said publicly is that, first and foremost, we’re focused on the substance. So we are taking today to ensure and reassure ourselves that all the parts of the set package are included. So, aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel, humanitarian aid to Gaza; there’s a fourth piece that has to do with Taiwan. We need to absolutely confirm that all of the pieces [are there]. But if I accept your proposition that all of the pieces will be passed, I have said publicly that if he’s a man of his word, and he told me directly, personally, that that’s what would happen, then I would personally have no reason to remove him from the chair.

That seems like a very conditional statement.

Entirely. Entirely conditional. And frankly, I wouldn’t even make that decision until that decision had been made by my leadership. You will see Democratic unity on this issue. We will negotiate together. This will be in conjunction with a decision that’s made by our leadership, Leader Hakeem Jeffries and our whip, Katherine Clark. I would never get out in front of them.

‘I’m gonna O.J. you’: How the Simpson case changed perceptions—and the law—on domestic violence, by Sonja Sharp in the Los Angeles Times

The coiled ferocity of Zendaya, by Matt Zoller Seitz in Vulture

The truth about organic milk, by Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic

How climate change turned camels into the new cows, by Chico Harlan, Rael Ombuor, and Malin Fezehai in The Washington Post

Into the Tubi-verse, by John Wilmes in The Ringer

How the dream of a financial aid upgrade became a nightmare, by Grace Segers in The New Republic. (It was recently pointed out to me by my mother, of all people, that I often include my own stories in the “What I’m reading” segment. To which I respond: How else will I get people to read what I write?)

In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion has become a defining campaign issue for Democrats and a thorn in the side of Republicans. The topic was once again at the fore this week, when former President Donald Trump on Monday stated his belief that abortion access should be determined by the states. After weeks of mulling support for a 15- or 16-week national ban, he chose not to endorse federal limits; however, he did not say how his potential administration would approach abortion access on the executive level.

“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land—in this case, the law of the state,” Trump said in a video posted to his social media site, Truth Social. He also touted his nomination of three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, calling himself “proudly the person responsible for the ending” of Roe.

With few notable exceptions, this viewpoint was quickly embraced by many Republican lawmakers. “I think President Trump is right where he needs to be, and importantly, where a majority of Americans are,” said Senator Thom Tillis.

Although the Biden administration is working to tie Trump to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe, it may be difficult to define him by any particular position on abortion. He is, in many ways, a political Rorschach test: Strong abortion opponents know he would nominate conservative judges, while more centrist Republicans inclined to support him see him as “culturally moderate,” said John Conway, the director of strategy at the Republican Accountability Project.

“[Trump] understands that pro-lifers and evangelicals will go with him no matter what and that he needs to try to neutralize the abortion issue in 2024,” said Conway. “There are voters who understand that Trump is going to do what Trump is going to do to maintain political power.”

Republican Senator Kevin Cramer said that he believed Trump had been speaking from the heart in his announcement on Monday. “It was authentically him. I think it’s where he’s comfortable,” said Cramer.

But Trump’s vague positioning faced a challenge just a day after his announcement. On Tuesday, the Arizona state Supreme Court ruled that a nineteenth-century law prohibiting the procedure could go into effect on Tuesday. The 1864 statute bans abortion without exceptions for rape or incest, and would allow physicians to be prosecuted for conducting the procedure. The ruling was instantly blasted by vulnerable House Republicans from Arizona, as well as GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake, who had previously praised the law. Even Trump, who had just said that abortion should be left to the states, disagreed with the decision.

“It’s all about states’ rights, and it will be straightened out,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday, when asked if the ruling had gone too far. “And I’m sure the governor and everybody else have got to bring it back into reason and that it will be taken care of, I think.”

Trump said later on Wednesday that he would not sign a federal abortion ban if reelected, contradicting his position in his first term in office. However, it’s unclear whether his administration would take executive action to restrict abortion.

It’s difficult to know exactly how much of a motivating factor abortion will be in the 2024 elections, particularly in such close races. Arizona is a critical swing state, with congressional races that could determine control of the House and the Senate. There may be an initiative on the ballot in November that would amend the state constitution to expand abortion access in Arizona. (A similar initiative will appear on the ballot in Florida in November, and may also go to voters in states like Missouri and Montana.)

Representative David Schweikert, a Republican from Arizona facing a difficult reelection, criticized the ruling as “functionally overruling the legislature.” However, he said that he did not believe the ruling would affect the Senate race or his prospects of reelection in November. “It’s the fever delusion of the left,” Schweikert argued.

This view was echoed by Republican Representative Ryan Zinke, the former interior secretary from a swingy district in Montana. The ballot initiative to expand abortion access is “a Democratic push in Montana to mislead, quite frankly, and get the vote out,” Zinke said. “I don’t think it will be successful.”

As far as Trump is concerned, meanwhile, it’s unclear whether any position he might take on abortion would stick to him in the long term.

“One of the political advantages Donald Trump has always had is that voters understand that this man is not an ideologue,” said Conway. “Because Donald Trump can’t be tied down on any ideological issues, voters see him as someone who’s fighting for their interests.”

This article first appeared in Inside Washington, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by staff writer Grace Segers. Sign up here.

When I started reporting for this week’s vibe check, I did so under the impression that the articles of impeachment for Mayorkas would be delivered to the Senate on Wednesday. Democrats, who control the chamber, then likely would have moved to table or dismiss the articles on Thursday—thus putting the issue to rest. Bada-bing, bada–Bob’s your uncle.

But such a scenario was not to be. Under pressure from Senate Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed the transmission of the articles from the House until sometime next week. The outcome will likely be the same: All 51 Senate Democrats, and perhaps a small number of Republicans, likely will vote to table or dismiss the articles. Even if the impeachment did go to trial in the Senate, it would fall far short of the two-thirds vote needed to convict. So why delay the inevitable?

Short answer: Senators hate staying in the Capitol past Thursday at 2:30 p.m. Almost every week, there is a final vote at 1:45 p.m.; senators show up in jeans or other casual attire, ready to cast their votes and skedaddle out of the building. (This is why Thursdays are known on this side of the Capitol as “Senate Fridays.”)

This upcoming Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is set to address a joint session of Congress in the morning. That would have punted any consideration of impeachment articles to Thursday afternoon—right before senators’ flights out of town. As GOP Senator Mike Lee put it when he praised Johnson’s “bold willingness to delay” the delivery of impeachment articles: “Members will be less inclined to operate under jet fume intoxication on a Monday than they would on a Thursday.” (For his part, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “We’re going to move this as expeditiously as possible.”)

GOP senators are expected to put forward their own motions in an effort to put the pressure on vulnerable swing- and red-state Democrats to hold the full trial. Still, despite its ostensible political benefit for Republicans, an impeachment trial is hardly a thrilling prospect. It’s been a little over three years since Trump’s second impeachment trial and a little over four years since his first. As someone who sat through both trials—indeed, the inception of my vibe check came from that coverage—I can confirm that the senators did not enjoy them.

Still, Senator Kevin Cramer noted that Republicans were perhaps more eager to undergo an impeachment trial this time around than they were when Trump was under the microscope. “The issue of the border is just such a wonderful one for us to talk about as Republicans, that I think there’s a little more enthusiasm for it,” he said. “The House did it, so here we are, and now we might as well make the most of it.”

Republicans have also argued it would be a dereliction of duty to dismiss or table the articles. (Of course, they didn’t feel this way when Trump was impeached the second time, when the vast majority of Republicans voted to dismiss the trial.) Senator Josh Hawley, who himself introduced a resolution to make it easier to dismiss articles of impeachment ahead of Trump’s first trial in 2020, argued that successfully dismissing the Mayorkas trial would “probably be the end of impeachment.”

“A future majority that wants to get rid of an impeachment is going to do that. It’s just easy, it’s done,” Hawley said.

Some Republicans do acknowledge that impeachment has become an increasingly political tool, although they insist Democrats started it with their first impeachment of Trump, in particular. Senator Thom Tillis said that he wanted a full trial to occur in order to figure out whether the complaints against Mayorkas were legitimate, rising to the level of an impeachment, or born of anger with the current administration.

“There’s a lot of frustration there. I don’t know if that’s what motivated it, or if there’s really meaningful evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor. I just don’t think we’ll get to the point where that even gets considered or entered into the record on the Senate side,” Tillis said.

Regardless of whether Republicans are actually clamoring to sit through an impeachment trial, the articles have been approved in the House and will eventually be sent over to the Senate.

“In the Senate, we just have to respond to what the House does,” said Senator Mike Rounds. “The House is the emotional animal, the Senate is supposed to be the adults in the room.”

Shōgun is reinventing the TV epic, by Phillip Maciak in The New Republic

Arkansas led the nation sending letters home from school about obesity. Did it help? by Kavitha Cardoza in NPR/KFF Health News

The RFK-curious women of Bucks County, by Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic

The deeply silly, extremely serious rise of ‘Alpha Male’ Nick Adams, by Ben Terris in The Washington Post

How Texas teens lost the one program that allowed birth control without parental consent, by Eleanor Klibanoff in The Texas Tribune

Fallout finds the fun in an apocalyptic hellscape, by Austin Considine in The New York Times

This week, the Florida state Supreme Court issued two rulings with significant ramifications for abortion access in the state. In one decision, the justices overturned decades of precedent by ruling that the state constitution’s enumerated rights to privacy do not apply to abortion, which paves the way for a recently passed Florida law that bans the procedure at six weeks to go into effect beginning in May.

In their second ruling, however, the majority of justices found that a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to an abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy could go on the ballot. In other words, the state legislature has had its say, now Florida voters will have the chance to provide an electoral riposte—and overnight, that pending ballot initiative becomes one of the hot tickets in an already heady election season.

But these decisions have major implications for abortion access not only in Florida, the nation’s third-largest state by population, but throughout the South as well. In 2023, more than 84,000 abortions were performed in the Sunshine State, with nearly 8,000 out-of-state residents obtaining an abortion in Florida.

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic representative challenging incumbent Republican Rick Scott in the upcoming Florida Senate election, told The New Republic that she believes the two decisions by the state high court will not just be consequential for abortion access in the near future—but will have long-term political implications as well, in her state and beyond.

This interview with Mucarsel-Powell has been condensed and lightly edited.

What were your initial reactions to the state Supreme Court decisions released this week?

I had a lot of mixed feelings—because by them upholding the 15-week abortion ban, we know that in 28 days, the six-week abortion ban will go into effect. And it’s a near-ban on all abortions with hardly any exceptions for incest and rape. And I’m very concerned about the safety and the health of women in Florida and in the Southeast region. So many women from the Southeast region come [here] to receive care.

I’m really concerned to see a rise in maternal mortality rates. And it’s an issue that, as someone that came from Latin America, I have seen what happens when women don’t have access to this key critical reproductive health care. It affects, of course, Black women and Latino women disproportionately. And those are the first thoughts that came to my mind when I saw that.

And then at the same time, the good news is that Floridians are going to have the opportunity to make sure that they come out in November to protect their freedoms, their rights. This is an opportunity for us to make sure that we enshrine reproductive health care into the state constitution. But it’s not going to mean anything........

© New Republic