Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: IVF, courts, and fundraising

[Brexiter]

Lourdes A. Rivera/HuffPost:

What the Alabama Supreme Court’s Decision Says About Our Failing Democracy

The high court ruling that the “wrongful death of a minor” law could be applied to an embryo created through in vitro fertilization is another extremist strategy in the criminalization of pregnant people.
For those of us following the Alabama Supreme Court closely, this is, while deeply disturbing, not surprising. Ten years ago, this court ruled that the definition of a “child” included fetuses at any point in gestation in the context of child abuse laws, meaning a pregnant person could abuse their “child” even as an embryo, ushering in the unprecedented mass criminalization of pregnant people in the state: more than 600 such cases from 2006 through 2022, outpacing every state in the nation in criminalizing pregnant people.

Lots to say about the Michigan primary, but the pundits aren’t done rewriting their preferred narrative. Check in tomorrow, but meanwhile:

Michigan voter on Trump: I think he is pretty much an asshole pic.twitter.com/Ub6lsbbtzO

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 28, 2024

Marilou Johanek/Ohio Capital Journal:

National and Ohio Republicans desperately pretending they haven’t been attacking IVF

All Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidates opposed November amendment passed by 57% of Ohio voters that guaranteed rights to fertility treatment

Don’t believe a word. The same extremists lining up to support a federal abortion ban, that would override hard-earned reproductive freedoms in states like Ohio, are now tripping all over themselves to profess their support for IVF and personal choice. Yeah right. The truth is freedom-killing MAGA Republicans were caught off guard after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos (created and stored for in vitro fertilization) are children under state law.

Public reaction to the decision — that repeatedly invoked scripture as its legal foundation for effectively stopping in vitro fertilization treatments across Alabama — was highly negative. Of course it was. Millions of Americans struggle with infertility issues. Many have turned to IVF for hope. So the patriarchal zealots on a mission from God to force their religious beliefs down our throats — to control what you read, say, do, who you marry, when and how you have kids — saw the polls on IVF and rushed to pretend they would absolutely protect access to it.

Don’t believe a word. The extreme agenda of Christian nationalists to inject government into our private lives and subjugate women as vessels of the state was bluntly exposed in the Alabama IVF case.​

Watch him get 80 percent in the Michigan primary, and have the same journalists call it a setback, reflecting deep divisions among Democrats. https://t.co/HFNKnx6ISW

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) February 26, 2024

Brian Beutler/”Off Message” on Substack:

IVF And The Faithlessness Of The GOP

Republicans desperately trying to cover their tracks are running the same play as the Supreme Court justices who lied about settled law to get confirmed so they could overturn Roe v. Wade.

In reality, Republicans do not care about truth in advertising, per se.

To the contrary, they have embraced near-total faithlessness. Long gone are the days when they ran and lost on a plan to privatize Medicare—now they promise not to touch entitlements on the campaign trail, hoping to win enough power to simply break the promise. When their policies are unpopular or disruptive, they don’t even bother with Obama-style salesmanship, where policy and rhetoric at least point in the same direction. They now simply pursue a range of toxically unpopular policies, while telling voters they do not.

Former Conservative Prime Minister of Australia. https://t.co/VfbWuPFhrP

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) February 27, 2024

Associated Press:

Trump is winning big with his base, but there’s no sign that he’s broadening support

AP VoteCast shows that Trump, the former president, has galvanized the core of the GOP electorate in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. His voters so far are overwhelmingly white, mostly older than 50 and generally without a college degree. This, however, is very different than the electorate he could face in November, when he’d have to appeal to a far more diverse group and possibly win over supporters of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Her pull has been limited in the GOP primaries – but her candidacy may foreshadow problems for Trump.

AP VoteCast reveals that a large portion of Trump’s opposition within the Republican primaries is comprised of voters who abandoned him before this year.

Mike Allen/Axios:

Trump's demographic problem

Those who went to the polls reflected Trump's strengths:

• This was the oldest South Carolina GOP electorate this century. (Chuck Todd)
• 60% of primary voters were white evangelical or born-again Christians. (CNN)

Reality check: That group isn't remotely big enough to win a presidential election. He would need to attract voters who are more diverse, more educated and believe his first loss was legit. South Carolina exit polls show he didn't do that.

• That's why Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate's only Black Republican, remains on Trump's short list for V.P.
• A bigger problem yet: Polls show these skeptics would be even less likely to swing his way if he's convicted of a crime — a real possibility among his four ongoing cases, insiders tell us.

NEW: Nancy Mace is circulating a non-binding resolution to express support for IVF & condemn judicial rulings or legislation that restrict access to fertility treatments, per draft sent to me & @FoxReports. But it’s symbolic — doesn’t actually enshrine IVF protections into law.

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) February 27, 2024

Marc Caputo/The Bulwark:

‘The numbers right now aren’t good.’

Why Trump is fundraising more than ever.

Trump’s legal issues have impacted his money picture in multiple ways: (1) They made some big donors nervous about giving to him, depriving him of money he otherwise would have had sooner. (2) They led some big donors to give to Haley instead, thereby prolonging her campaign. (3) They armed Trump critics with the argument that he wants the RNC to pay his legal bills. (4) The big financial judgments against him have made cash more scarce for Trump—which in turn make it harder to fill gaps by self-funding (which Trump has always been loath to do and hasn’t done this cycle).

“He’s much more engaged than I’ve ever seen him at this, and that’s because he has to be,” said one Republican familiar with the campaign’s finances. “The numbers right now aren’t good, but we should raise a billion dollars or $900 million at this pace now. We’ll have enough.”

Molly Jong-Fast/Vanity Fair:

Mike Johnson Is in Way Over His Head

Who’d have guessed a Trumpy backbencher would bungle the Speaker’s job?
Well, now you’ll even find Republicans pointing out that Johnson wasn’t the first draft pick. “We went through five choices and Mike Johnson’s the fifth choice,” Representative Patrick McHenry told CBS News last week. McHenry, who served as Speaker pro tempore last year after Kevin McCarthy, his ally, was ousted, may feel like he can finally speak freely since he’s not running for reelection. He’s part of a wave of House GOP retirements that includes Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Mike Gallagher, and Ken Buck. (Notably, Gallagher and Buck both voted against the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.) In the CBS interview, McHenry continued to muse about Johnson: “He has not been around these leadership decisions. He’s had a really tough process. We’ve thrown him into the deepest end of the pool with the heaviest weights around him and [we’re] trying to teach him how to learn to swim. It’s been a rough couple of months.” Sounds like McHenry has a little Speaker’s remorse! Or, as Punchbowl put it bluntly on Monday: “Johnson, quite frankly, has been hesitant to lead on any issue at all.”

This is the moment when the effort to boot Fani Willis off the Trump RICO case died. pic.twitter.com/f2TYDc6BDN

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 27, 2024

That's a wrap from Fulton County Superior Court on Terrance Bradley's testimony. That bombshell turned out to be a big 'ole dud. pic.twitter.com/RoV3ddnlhz

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) February 27, 2024

Cliff Schecter looks at Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz:

YouTube Video