If the Supreme Court guts Roe v. Wade, as the leaked opinion implies, then the political landscape going into the 2022 election is almost certainly changed. The election will focus on the impact of that decision and progressives need to take advantage of the new political environment.

If the leaked memo from Supreme Court is correct, Roe v Wade has been overturned. It’s a bit shocking, even if it was predictable. Conservatives are giddy, even if trying to focus more on the unprecedented leak than the impact on low-income women who can’t afford to travel for health care. Liberals and progressives are outraged. 

Madison Cawthorn has learned one lesson of the Trump era well: Republican politicians are above the law.

It appears that Republicans are closing ranks around Ted Budd in the U.S. Senate primary. Earlier this week, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger announced his endorsement and this morning, Budd is running ad with Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson touting his support. I suspect some of the consolidation is an attempt to prevent a costly and divisive runoff, but it begs questions about where the GOP is heading in North Carolina. 

Mitt Romney is an American hero. No, I don’t regret that he lost to Barack Obama and I don’t think the attacks against him during the campaign were unfair. I disagree with him on most major policy debates, but I believe he has a very clear-eyed view of the threat to this country and an understanding of the dysfunction that permeates our federal government. He also stands up for what he believes regardless of who it rankles. That’s a lot to admire, especially at this time in our history. 

If Madison Cawthorn doesn’t want to be invited to orgies or watch people snort cocaine, he should stop hanging around with the likes of Matt Gaetz and Don Trump Jr. And if the Republican Party wants to quit being embarrassed by the likes of Cawthorn, they need to reject Donald Trump and the right-wing media that helped create him. Cawthorn is a product of Trumpism and the disinformation and prejudice that feeds it. 

Yesterday was a bad day for those Republicans who want to diversify their party. After the way GOP members of the Senate Judiciary committee treated Ketanji Brown Jackson, Republicans have lost Black women for another 25 years. And the NC GOP’s rising African American star, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, paid for an abortion back in 1989 despite virulent anti-abortion views.

According to the State Board of Elections, unaffiliated voters now make up a plurality of voters in North Carolina. These independents surpassed Democrats for the first time in history. They surpassed Republicans a few years ago. It’s really not that big a deal and has been inevitable for decades. 

With the battle over maps sucking the air out of the political conversation in North Carolina for the first two months of the year, the Republican U.S. Senate primary has gotten little attention. That’s about to change.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Russia, but almost 40 years ago, I took a bunch of Russian history classes in college. I was more interested in Russia in the 20th century, but I learned enough to see patterns emerge that go back centuries.