Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

All hail the time of the bunny!

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

T R E 4 5 O N

Republicans in disarray!

When we show up, we win.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Gods Bless President Biden

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Gods Bless President Biden

by | 143 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

He’ll need all the help he can muster, given the circumstances, and his enemies in the GOP and the media…

Reader Interactions

143Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    Sigh. I’ve heard the GQP wants to change the 1/6 Commission to the 8/31 Commission. It’s going to be such a long winter.

    As long as Joe continues stating the fact that this was TFG’s deal, I’ll be happy.

    ETA: Last night, the local Fox affiliate ran several clips of 2001 Joe advocating for war. I say, “When you know better, you do better.”

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Does the president envision any situation in which he might deploy a large amount of U.S. troops abroad under his presidency?”

    “Please.”

  11. 11.

    Skepticat

    Does the president envision any situation in which he might deploy a large amount NUMBER of U.S. troops abroad under his presidency?”

    So I’m a pedant; tough.

  12. 12.

    John S.

    The media are already gearing up to move on to the next outrage as they begin to lose interest again in Afghanistan. Up next?

    Federal unemployment ends this month, and it’s all because of Biden and those dastardly Democrats!

    Biden and Congress are setting ‘a 5-alarm fire’ by letting federal unemployment benefits expire in a week as Delta surges

  15. 15.

    MomSense

    One of the most important qualities in a leader is the ability to stay calm and confident during crisis and criticism.  We are so lucky to have Biden.  His administration is juggling multiple crises with such compassion and competence.

  17. 17.

    MomSense

    @John S.:

    Jesus they must all have whiplash.  Weren’t they just blaming unemployment benefits for the short staffing of low paid service jobs?

  23. 23.

    hueyplong

    @rikyrah: The correct answer to the question “How many times is enough?” is, of course, “However many times Biden did it +1.”

    Can you imagine such inquiries during a Trump Administration?  We just lived through one and that kind of question was asked zero times in 4 years.

  26. 26.

    John S.

    @Baud: Yup. And they aren’t necessarily wrong. But the framing and the headline are wildly misleading.

    It’s really only a matter of time before we start to hear Republicans criticizing Biden for yet another problem they created.

    (See: Afghanistan)

  29. 29.

    JPL

    @rikyrah: Neighbor against neighbor.    Imagine after suffering from a miscarriage facing a neighbor’s lawsuit because she/he doesn’t believe you.

  32. 32.

    hueyplong

    @debbie: The part that stunned me was the reference to “President Biden.”  We’re accustomed to RW tweets declining to use anything in the neighborhood of a decently respectful reference to someone’s name if that someone isn’t a member of the Bund.

  33. 33.

    germy

    @debbie:

    It’s her.  She wanted Trump to either carpet bomb the entire country or leave.  He did neither, so she’s disappointed in him.

  34. 34.

    John S.

    @JPL: Surely this is all according to God’s plan!

    How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! Do not plot harm against your neighbor, who lives trustfully near you.

    Never mind.

  35. 35.

    Jo Jo las Orejas

    Buenos dias!!!
    Mi mamá está estresada. Vamos a emprender un viaje muy, muy largo. Me temo que no hay suficiente espacio en mi Sienna para todas mis golosinas, juguetes y comida. Ella dice que no podemos cargar mi pelota gigante. Esto me molesta mucho. Es mi favorito. No tenemos vacas para que las pastoree. Tengo mi gran bola verde.

  39. 39.

    germy

    House GOP is threatening telecommunications companies if they “play with Democrats”

    Greene: These telecommunication companies, if they go along with this, they will be shut down. That’s a promise pic.twitter.com/YtLmZa8IPi

    — Acyn (@Acyn) September 1, 2021

    The deep terror @GOPLeader feels is knowing that elements of entire @GOP were involved in 1/6: Trump, WH Staff, Senators, Members of Congress, their staffs, state AG’s & staff, state party staffs. At every level there were individuals trying to gain favor with Trump who helped. t.co/s1gD4DjNIO

    — stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) September 1, 2021

  43. 43.

    JPL

    @germy: MJG should be more concerned about the covid cases running rampart in her district.   Another child recently died of the virus.

  52. 52.

    Jo Jo las Orejas

    @Baud:
    Eso me asusta. Duermo con chofer. Me gusta refrescarme y estar lista para la fiesta toda la noche después de que mi mamá conduzca de 8 a 10 horas.

  53. 53.

    NotMax

    Kneejerk jerkwad.

    This doesn’t change the fact, however, that Trump — among other things, a possible presidential contender in 2024 — has spent years saying he wants to get out of Afghanistan, only to suggest going back in now that Biden has gotten us out of Afghanistan. Source

  56. 56.

    Chris

    “Does the president envision any situation in which he might deploy a large amount of U.S. troops abroad under his presidency?”

    God.  These people really don’t know what the fuck to do with themselves without a big war going on.

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    I’m listening to an NPR interview with an angry father of one of the 13 fallen marines and It’s a good thing I’m not driving.

  58. 58.

    Jeffro

    OT but with those tornado warnings going off until the wee hours last night, Team Fro is TIRED!  Even the dog (who played 2 straight hours of ‘fetch’) is like, ‘let’s just take a chill day today, sound good?’

    Might have to crank the Gn’R and Cult louder than usual to get the ol’ bloodstream goin’… ;)

  60. 60.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I know, but consider that Georgia just elected TWO Demonrats to the Senate last time around. Wisconsin? Ohio? Maine? Kentucky, Iowa, Indiana, Pennsylvania? At least one Rethuglican Senator. And those are full-on Union states, not border states.

     

    ETA: Baud beat me to it. But s/he’s still a loser.

  62. 62.

    mrmoshpotato

    Today, the culmination of the WH Press Corps’ war-thirsty questions:

     

    “Does the president envision any situation in which he might deploy a large amount of U.S. troops abroad under his presidency?”

    Jen: Well, if all of you Trump-humping, bloodthirsty motherfuckers enlist…

    Seriously, the goddamn DC press corpse…

  63. 63.

    Soprano2

    @MomSense: Jesus they must all have whiplash.  Weren’t they just blaming unemployment benefits for the short staffing of low paid service jobs?

    Yes, they were, and the truth is that it didn’t make that much difference, just like I kept telling people it wouldn’t. For awhile literally every person I talked to about the difficulty of finding help would start their reply with something about those lazy moochers sitting on their asses collecting unemployment. I talked to our resident ex-cop about it a few weeks ago; I asked him why, if that was what was causing the problem, do I still see signs at most businesses that they’re hiring (in this city at least if you don’t have a job right now it’s because you don’t want one or can’t work)? The answer – those lazy moochers just saved that money and it hasn’t run out yet (after 2 months), and as soon as it runs out you’ll see! They will not let go of this idea even in the face of clear evidence that it’s not true.

  65. 65.

    Soprano2

    @germy: Wow, now I’m going to have a tiny bit of guilt as I burn the pages of Ann Coulter’s books. She really did sour on Trump, didn’t she?

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MomSense:

    One of the most important qualities in a leader is the ability to stay calm and confident during crisis and criticism. We are so lucky to have Biden. His administration is juggling multiple crises with such compassion and competence. 

    What?  No screaming whiny bullshit on Twitter at 3AM?  Is Biden even President?  Let’s ask Van Jones!

  67. 67.

    Betty Cracker

    Some months ago when antichoice bills like the one in Texas weren’t yet law, Kay said that gutting Roe would make every woman’s pregnancy everyone’s business in an intolerable way.

    Well, here we are.

  69. 69.

    Soprano2

    @germy: House GOP is threatening telecommunications companies if they “play with Democrats”

    Whatever happened to the idea that if you didn’t do anything wrong you shouldn’t be worried? That’s what they said when Democrats protested the huge expansion of government surveillance rights under the Patriot Act. I think Republicans are going to find out that this law can be used against them, too. They never can imagine it happening to themselves, or people they like, until it does.

  75. 75.

    Soprano2

    @MomSense: I’m listening to an NPR interview with an angry father of one of the 13 fallen marines and It’s a good thing I’m not driving.

    I heard part of that. I turned it off when it came on again. I’m so old I remember Republicans going on Fox all outraged when the widow of a soldier who was killed in Niger went on TV and said Trump told her that her husband “knew what he signed up for”. I personally feel that it’s wrong for news organizations to talk to these people right now. They are raw and hurting, and I’m sure that lashing out in this way makes the father feel better, but it doesn’t really do anyone any good. Unsurprisingly for someone who I’m sure didn’t vote for Biden, he didn’t know about the card Biden always carries with the number of our war dead. I bet Trump couldn’t ever have told him how many war dead we had under his watch, but I’m sure this father would have felt proud to meet Trump. *puke* People say all kinds of insensitive stuff to you after a loved one dies, although I think people are better now compared to when my father died in 1982.

  77. 77.

    Jo Jo las Orejas

    @Baud:
    ¡El guapo y sabio Baud! Siento que comprendes mi difícil situación. Si no puedo tomar mi bola verde gigante, tal vez usted le diga a mi mamá que lleve mi bola de risa para el viaje de 4 meses. Hace una risa loca cuando lo persigo. Creo que a mi mamá le gusta especialmente despertarse a las 3 de la mañana para escucharlo y pensar que un amigo ha llegado por una ventana en medio de la noche.

  78. 78.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    We’ve been in what feels a forever war aimed at changing the culture in the South. 

    Since the 1860’s I would say.  Take that ended-war-who-couldn’t-even-drink!

  80. 80.

    Betty Cracker

    Regarding the NPR interview with the father of a servicemember who died in Afghanistan, are y’all talking about the Mark Schmitz interview? I heard it too, and I’m not understanding all the outrage, so I’m wondering if there was another interview I missed.

  82. 82.

    Geminid

    I see that headlines from various news outlets covering the Presidents speech describe him as “defiant.” Considering that Joe Biden is defying the broadly unpopular military-industrial complex, foreign policy establishment and national news media, “defiant” is a positive quality. After all, the valiant starship captain Ben Sisko commanded the Defiant, not the Compliant.

  84. 84.

    Soprano2

    Tankersley is taking a lot of shit on Twitter for the question in that last tweet. He’s saying he asked it because he wanted “clarification” on something Biden said, not because he’s a warmonger. I think it’s a dumb question, asking about future actions no one can possibly know about.

  85. 85.

    Ken

    “Does the president envision any situation in which he might deploy a large amount of U.S. troops abroad under his presidency?”

    “I’m not promising anything, but if the nation’s fifty most important reporters were to — against all US advice — fly into Afghanistan and be captured by a splinter ISIS faction, we might have to consider going in to rescue them.”

  89. 89.

    Starfish

    @rikyrah: We need a front page post on this topic.

    Brett Kavanaugh, a sexual predator, who was appointed to SCOTUS by Donald Trump, a sexual predator, gets to make decisions about what women can and can’t do with their bodies.
    — The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) September 1, 2021

  93. 93.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Repeated theme in post-speech analysis: How dare the president defend his policies in ways that do not suit the narrative I have been peddling for the past few weeks? How dare he make his case on his terms and not on mine?

    Damn, I having flash backs to those two retired goverment aholes and thier bullshit in that game I ran. What the living fuck is wrong with these people? It’s like they are some libertarian nightmare of a bureaucrat that Scott Adam’s came up for Dilbert that escaped into the real world “Hello, my name Reynolds, I am the group disablerer. My passion is making sure no project succeeds. I can talk for hours in a meeting and say nothing useful and i volunteer for jobs I don’t intend to do. Beyond that, I have no measurable skills at anything.”. How does someone like that function in life and not end up homeless?

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    @Soprano2:

    Whatever happened to the idea that if you didn’t do anything wrong you shouldn’t be worried?

    We’re talking about the Republicans, here.  Neither intellectual consistency, nor innocence of wrongdoing, is on the table.​

  97. 97.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud:

    If you read the article at the link above, the current critique is coming from lefty groups.

    This is my not-shocked face

  98. 98.

    Starfish

    Imagine if California passed a law banning firearms and outsourced enforcement to the public. If you catch a person with a firearm, you sue them and if you win you get 10K. Sure it violates the constitution but *shrug*

    That’s what’s happening with abortion in Texas right now.
    — Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) September 1, 2021

  99. 99.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Soprano2:

    personally feel that it’s wrong for news organizations to talk to these people right now. They are raw and hurting, and I’m sure that lashing out in this way makes the father feel better, but it doesn’t really do anyone any good

    Hear, hear.

  102. 102.

    Joe Falco

    @Ken:

    “I’m not promising anything, but if the nation’s fifty most important reporters were to — against all US advice — fly into Afghanistan and be captured by a splinter ISIS faction, we might have to consider going in to rescue them.”

    Operation The Expendables 4

  103. 103.

    AWOL

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: She, and a few other conservatives, are signaling to their cultists that they are now paleocons. It’s similar to the way Republicans suddenly become Libertarians when a scandal emerges, an election is lost . . .

  104. 104.

    Quinerly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Please don’t encourage him. He has threatened to tell the Espanola Humane Society when we visit his “humble roots.” We have planned a visit with the nice woman who facilitated his adoption and with the vet who fixed his badly broken leg at age 6 weeks. That’s where he learned Spanish… Living with the vet and his family while he recovered before I adopted him in Feb 2020. The first few weeks I had him he didn’t know any English. True Story.

  105. 105.

    L85NJGT

    Jen should have offered to put them on the next USAF flight to Haiti.

    Their entire conception of Afghanistan is from being flown into Bagram and recording POTUS slinging turkey dinners.

  106. 106.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Starfish:

    @rikyrah: We need a front page post on this topic.

    Seconded.

    And they’re fucking cowards, doing this in the middle of the night.  Was this another of those ‘shadow docket’ cases?

  107. 107.

    Brachiator

    Today, the culmination of the WH Press Corps’ war-thirsty questions:

    “Does the president envision any situation in which he might deploy a large amount of U.S. troops abroad under his presidency?”

    What? WTF?
    I am not a super political junkie, but I cannot recall any president within my news watching lifetime being asked if they might be thinking about starting a war sometime. Or if they had the gonads to start a war. Or if they thought that war was cool.

    What the hell is wrong with these cretins?

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    What the living fuck is wrong with these people? It’s like they are some libertarian nightmare of a bureaucrat that Scott Adam’s came up for Dilbert that escaped into the real world “Hello, my name Reynolds, I am the group disablerer. My passion is making sure no project succeeds. I can talk for hours in a meeting and say nothing useful and i volunteer for jobs I don’t intend to do. Beyond that, I have no measurable skills at anything.”. How does someone like that function in life and not end up homeless?

    I actually knew someone like this. Worked on a project with him. At one point I had to give him pointless busy work so he would not slow things down.

    He was a champion bullshit artist. Got promoted twice before he got found out and dumped.

  112. 112.

    MomSense

    @Soprano2:

    I said the exact same thing to my mom this morning.  BTW it happened to me.  I was caught up in the W administration’s warrantless wiretapping because I was part of the peace action network.  I’m sure the NSA found our rantings and protest planning super interesting.

  113. 113.

    Cameron

    Apparently the war-hungry press has never heard of contingency plans. But why give them something else to chew on?

  114. 114.

    J R in WV

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    this has probably already been posted, but Jeet Heer went spelunking through Richard Engel’s tweets

    Spelunking is something you do in a natural cavern, not something you do in a sewer. What Jeet Heer has done is far more like working in a very failed sewer system than exploring a cave.

  116. 116.

    Soprano2

    This morning I listened to the speech Biden gave yesterday. I hope all the Democrats defend it, because it was an excellent speech. Biden has no fucks left to give about this subject, that’s for sure, and he cares a lot more about the men and women in the Armed Forces than he does about what any particular reporter or right wing hack might think about his actions. The ironic thing is that if TFG had done what Biden did, and given a speech anything at all like that speech, Republicans would be falling all over themselves to tell you what a great accomplishment it was, and how much TFG showed he cared about “the troops” because of doing it.

    I was born in 1961; I thought we had always been at war, because I saw the reports about Vietnam every night on the CBS Evening News. It was strange to think about what it would be like if we weren’t fighting somewhere. Lots of kids will now have the same experience I did when we ended our participation in the war in Vietnam.

    Oh, and all the Republicans who were wringing their hands and acting like they cared about the women and girls of Afghanistan are now on TV and the radio talking about how great the Texas abortion law is. Fuckers.

  119. 119.

    Another Scott

    @Starfish: Planned Parenthood should be flooding TX with information about RU-486 and how to get it by mail, etc.

    We can’t let the monsters win this battle.

    Grrr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  120. 120.

    laura

    @JPL:   Imagine after suffering from a miscarriage facing a neighbor’s lawsuit because she/he doesn’t believe you.

    Now imagine your nieghbor wanting the $10,000 bounty for alleging your miscarriage was an abortion.

  121. 121.

    Quinerly

    @Baud: clearly, you have not experienced the “As Seen on TV” Giggle Ball. It was a gift from a dog park mom. I don’t think the mom likes us. JoJo tries to “pitch woo” to the lovely Luna. Her mom freaks out a bit. (Luna also isn’t allowed to drink water out of the dog park bowls. She has a bowl that matches her leash and collar) I laughingly said that Luna seems to like JoJo’s amorous advances. So the next day they gave us this used obnoxious Giggle Ball. We haven’t seen them since. ?

  122. 122.

    SFAW

    @Brachiator:

    I actually knew someone like this. Worked on a project with him. At one point I had to give him pointless busy work so he would not slow things down.

    He was a champion bullshit artist. Got promoted twice before he got found out and dumped.

    Nerd alert/trigger warning!

    At DEC (a/k/a Digital Equipment Corporation), there was a high-level manager — he may have been a VP at the time —  named Gordon Bell. At one point, he issued a now-legendary (among the nerdigentsia) memo, proposing the creation of the NOD — the No Output Division. He proposed it in response to a meeting he attended where one or more bullshitters was/were in attendance. His rationale for the proposal was that said bullshitters not only did no useful work of their own; their behavior/performance prevented OTHERS from getting useful work done. Thus, throw them all in the NOD.

    I have a photocopy of that memo somewhere in my morass of paper. It’s a keeper (unlike a lot of my other paper).

  123. 123.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: Some of the worst people around have been allies when it comes to being antiwar. The racist/fascist paleocons were always isolationists. Remember, some of Trump’s early support came from people who thought he was more dovish than the Democrats and that voting for him was a blow against Empire.

    Coulter was a big warmonger back in the day, but her having come around on this doesn’t make her a better person than, say, Pat Buchanan. Any more than Max Boot is a good guy for hating Donald Trump.

  124. 124.

    L85NJGT

    “Entergy” (there’s a name concocted by a NOD) spun up the natural gas peaker power plant they built in New Orleans. So at least some power will be available to critical infrastructure in the city as they repair the long haul lines.

  125. 125.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: In March or April of last year when my son’s funding was cut off and he was told to come back to the US because of the COVID (which he ended up ignoring) he got exactly one (1) notice from the government. 19 “not a lot”?? WTF?

  126. 126.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rikyrah:  @Gin & Tonic: I saw that tweet yesterday. It’s just amazing how free reporters feel to just straight up pundit-ize, not even bothering to couch it in “many are saying…”. And to do it so stupidly

  127. 127.

    The Moar You Know

    Trump REPEATEDLY demanded that we bring our soldiers home, but only President Biden had the balls to do it.

    Here are a few of Trump’s wuss, B.S. – I mean “masterful” – tweets: pic.twitter.com/4iLD02Pn0G

    — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 31, 2021

    @germy: Huh.  This is an interesting turn of events.

    I give her credit for being prescient enough to see what a lot of folk both on her side and ours don’t:  Trumpism is doomed.

  128. 128.

    J R in WV

    @Brachiator: ​
     

    A guy named Jim Tankersley asked “Does the president envision any situation in which he might deploy a large amount of U.S. troops abroad under his presidency?”. This was in Jen Psaki’s press briefing — I guess yesterday afternoon. I watched it in a video clip on twitter, so I assume it really happened just as it was shown in the video.

    Apparently Tankersley is an economics reporter for the New York Times. I suppose he wondered if Biden might declare war upon Canada again if the economy needed a quick boost? Or maybe Mexico, after all we have fought a couple of wars with Mexico as well…

    What a dumbass hypothetical place to wander off to, wondering if Biden was imagining a new war~!!~

  129. 129.

    Betty Cracker

    @Another Scott: Wouldn’t that require the cooperation of prescribing MDs, who could then be hunted down by antichoice fanatics and turned in for a bounty? (In Texas, anyway.) I think we’ll see underground markets develop, possibly operated from abroad. Maybe preferable to coat hangers, but it won’t be safe. The situation is so horrible and depressing. I have no words.

  130. 130.

    Roger Moore

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Any more than Max Boot is a good guy for hating Donald Trump.

    Max Boot isn’t a nice guy, no matter how much he hates Donald Trump. The thing that makes him interesting is that he’s willing to acknowledge he was part of the problem.  He has written about how and why he participated in the movement conservative stuff that helped to create monsters like Trump.  I don’t agree with him on much beyond his hatred for Trump, but he’s definitely worth reading if you want to understand how conservative intellectuals wound up on the path to Trumpism.

  133. 133.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker: I have little doubt that the need will be satisfied, one way or another.

    It’s obviously been horribly politicized by the monsters.

    KFF.org:

    The FDA guidelines and label for Mifeprex apply equally to the approved generic. The FDA-approved REMS program for Mifeprex, and now, the generic mifepristone, also includes Element to Assure Safe Use (ETASU), a stronger version of REMS, and contains three provisions:

    * Mifepristone must be dispensed to patients only in certain healthcare settings, specifically clinics, medical offices, and hospitals, by or under the supervision of a certified prescriber;

    * A provider must become a certified prescriber by completing and sending a Prescriber Agreement Form to the specific distributor, Danco Laboratories or GenBioPro, which confirms they are able to assess the duration of a pregnancy, diagnose ectopic pregnancies, and provide surgical abortion in the case of an incomplete abortion;

    * The certified prescriber must obtain a signed Patient Agreement Form from the woman before dispensing the drug, as documentation of safe use conditions.1

    In October 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit, on behalf of a group of providers, against the FDA challenging the REMS requirements for mifepristone. These plaintiffs cite the low rate of complications associated with medical abortions and assert that other drugs with similar or more serious risks do not have REMS restrictions, and are unduly burdensome on patients trying to access the drug, particularly patients in rural or medically underserves areas. The case is still pending in front of the District Court of Hawaii.

    In May 2020, ACOG and other provider groups filed a subsequent lawsuit challenging the REMS requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in person in response to the need to have an alternative to the in-person requirement because of the pandemic. In July of 2020, the federal district court ruled that the FDA was required to temporarily suspend the REMS in-person requirement during the pandemic emergency while the case worked its way through the courts. The Trump Administration appealed this lower court’s ruling and in January of 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump FDA, allowing them to again enforce the in-person dispensation of mifepristone during the pandemic. This action effectively blocked the ability of nearly all providers to dispensing medication abortion pills by mail during the COVID-19 emergency, as many providers had temporarily been able to do since July of 2020.

    On April 12th, 2021, the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) notified ACOG that they will “exercise enforcement discretion” during the ongoing public health emergency with respect to in-person dispensing requirements of mifepristone based on a safety review. Effectively, this will allow providers in states that do not have laws that would otherwise ban this practice to dispense mifepristone using the telehealth protocol for medication abortion.

    On May 7th, 2021, in response to the ACLU lawsuit, the FDA announced in a court filing that a review of the REMS is currently underway.

    […]

    Self-managed abortion, sometimes referenced as “self-induced” or “at-home” abortion, is when a person ends a pregnancy outside the medical care setting, typically by ordering abortion pills online. This practice is illegal in the U.S., but is permitted in some other countries. Women may seek to manage their own abortion for many reasons, including clinic access barriers, cost, transportation, and privacy. The median cost of mifepristone-misoprostol products ordered online is approximately $205, about half of the average charge for a clinic abortion. Legal barriers, such as the threat of criminal charges, to self-managed abortion affect pregnant people as well as those who help them in ending their pregnancy.

    Women Help Women, which already operates to provide pills to women in other countries, recently launched Self-managed Abortion; Safe and Supported (SASS), to provide information about self-managed medication abortion to women in the United States. However, due to legal barriers, they do not ship pills to women in the United States. A few projects, such as the Plan C Campaign, are now working to inform women in the US about self-managed abortions, including how to appropriately take the drugs, how they might access funds to pay for them, and a list of online retailers with reviews on price, ship time, product quality, and physician oversight. The FDA has issued warning letters to some of these organizations, including Aidaccess.org and RAblon, asking them to immediately cease the introduction of abortion medications into the U.S., as mifepristone may only be legally dispensed using the REMS protocol.

    Few rights are more fundamental than the right not to be forced to reproduce. If it’s not legal, people will break the law, or travel to where it is legal.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  134. 134.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Roger Moore: I didn’t read Max Boot’s book, or Stuart Stephens’, but from what I’ve heard them say in interviews and read in shorter pieces, they are the only significant never-trumpers (that I’m aware of) who have meaningfully addressed the racism of the GOP. Boot especially says mea culpa because his family fled the USSR in large part because of anti-semitism and he says he’s ashamed of himself for not acknowledging the dog-whistles.

  135. 135.

    Miss Bianca

    @Roger Moore: I thought I wanted to understand how conservative intellectuals wound up on the path to Trumpism. Then I realized, after reading some of the mea culpas and watching their volte-faces after Biden’s decision to end the Afghan war, that I didn’t give a shit about their “intellectual development”. If they see the error of their ways and actually repent to the point of not repeating their errors, great. If not, fuck ’em. I’m done with trying to understand them, or listen to them justify themselves.

  136. 136.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Brachiator: The two dears I had to deal with were loathed by most of the group to there was a  plot to hunt one of them down and murder them that I had, to my annoyance, stop, and yet no one would call them on their bullshit and when I did start pushing back, dozens of people these same people  tried to stop  me.  And again, this was just in a damn role playing game, not work.

  137. 137.

    sdhays

    @Matt McIrvin: I still remember her rant that a previously seemingly respectable magazine actually published right after 9/11. She is a monster. A literal monster.

    She soured on Dump because she’s a real deal bloodthirsty racist psychopath, and she got tired of being bullshitted about her firmly held, genocidal beliefs. Dump shares her beliefs, but what animates Dump is his own narcissism. He’s also fundamentally a coward and very, very stupid.

    So for someone like Ann, he betrayed her, and she had such high hopes.

  142. 142.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    I didn’t catch the name, but there was only one interview with a soldier’s father, so it must have been him. I think he got prickly at the very end of the interview.

Comments are closed.