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News and Politics
Maryland General Assembly Unleashes Disaster After Disaster: Primary. Elections. Have. Consequences.
Larry Hogan's Current and Future Legacy: Larry Hogan’s two terms as a Republican governor in deep blue Maryland are over but are not forgotten.
Hyser Supports "Ceasefire" in Gaza: Muslim Chaplain, GOP Candidate joins the radical left in calling on Israel to stop defending itself
Performative Legislating: The Maryland General Assembly has decided to honor former Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley by naming the Port of Baltimore after her. And that's a problem in a way you don't expect.
Maryland To Pay for Security at Abortion Clinics: Who's protecting the babies though?
Sports
In 2024, Why Does AEW Exist? With the business having changed so much in five years, why does AEW still exist and what is its mission?
Entertainment
Missing the Point: A new audiobook has been released covering George Orwell’s seminal work 1984. And they got it wrong.
The British Commonwealth Blueprint for the United Federation of Planets: Comparing the Commonwealth of Nations with the principles of Gene Roddenberry's United Federation of Planets from the "Star Trek" universe offers a fascinating exploration of real-world and fictional aspirations toward unity, peace, and cooperation
The Monday Thought
“Pro-lifers are used to Republican politicians stabbing us in the back. Donald Trump has stabbed us in the front.”
For ALMSOT TEN YEARS, I have been telling Republicans, conservatives, and pro-life activists that Donald Trump is no friend to the pro-life movement.
So I certainly was not surprised this week when Donald Trump said to leave abortion restrictions to the states:
Former President Donald J. Trump said in a video statement on Monday that abortion rights should be left up to the states, remarks that came after months of mixed signals on an issue that he and his advisers have worried could cost him dearly in the election.
Mr. Trump said his view was that the states should decide through legislation, and that “whatever they decide must be the law of the land, and in this case, the law of the state.” But he added that he was “strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.”
“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” Mr. Trump said in the video, which he posted on his Truth Social website.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about will of the people,” he added. “That’s where we are right now and that’s what we want — the will of the people.”
Here’s Donald Trump in his own words
And I certainly wasn’t surprised that Donald Trump won’t sign an abortion ban:
Appearing on a tarmac Wednesday in Atlanta, Trump provided a more definitive answer. Asked if he would sign a national abortion ban if it passed Congress, the former president shook his head: “No.”
“You wouldn’t sign it?” the reporter asked.
“No,” Trump said again.
Nobody should be surprised by that. I mean, Trump was talking about this last fall too.
And I certainly wasn’t surprised when Trump said Arizona went too far when a court in Arizona said that the 160-year old ban on abortion should be enforced.
Insisting abortion rights should be left to state governments, Donald Trump nonetheless said the rightwing Arizona supreme court went too far when it ruled on Tuesday that a 160-year-old near-total ban could be enforced.
“Yeah, they did [go too far],” Trump said on Wednesday to reporters at an airport in Atlanta, Georgia. “That’ll be straightened out, and as you know it’s all about states’ rights.
I want to go back to the Nathanael Blake piece I quoted at the beginning of this piece:
Less than two years after the generational victory of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, the pro-life movement is facing generational catastrophe. The crisis is not that we have lost a series of ballot initiates to the pro-abortion side (bad as those losses are), but that the Republican presidential nominee is openly abandoning and sabotaging the pro-life cause. Rather than cashing out after their unexpected wins at the Trump political casino, pro-life Republicans largely doubled-down and backed him for 2024. Now, pro-lifers might lose the Republican Party.
A few fellow pro-lifers have joined me in pointing out that Trump was never a friend of the pro-life movement. But many pro-life activists and nearly the entire professional pro-life establishment not only threw their lot in with Trump, but stayed with Trump even after everything that has happened over the last nine years.
There were plenty of pro-life candidates in the 2024 Republican primary. Nikki Haley is pro-life. Ron DeSantis is pro-life. Mike Pence is pro-life. But the pro-life movement stuck with Trump for reasons that have less to do with aborton and more to do with access and “winning”.
It’s hard to argue that the pro-life movement is currently winning considering the state of abortion politics in 2024 and the Republicans’ embrace of a cultish candidate who is not on their side. And it’s safe to say that the pro-life movement was not ready for the post-Roe world as some of us worried about.
When it comes to the cauldron of Trump’s politics, the professional pro-life movement was the frog that jumped right in. It has now discovered it is slowly being boiled……