In case you slept late the big story of the day was a scoop by Politico that the Supreme Court is poised to reverse its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision along with a contentious 5-4 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which resisted curbing Roe. Justice Samuel Alito Jr. is said to be the author of the upcoming decision which, Politico reports, pulls no punches.
"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," Alito writes. "We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled," he reportedly adds. "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives."
Even some liberal legal scholars agree with this assessment of the 1973 jurisprudence. But overturning a 49-year-old precedent on an emotional and intractable issue that has become the brightest line of demarcation between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is certain to further inflame America's already combustible politics.
Leaking a draft decision is, as The Washington Post noted this morning, "an extreme breach of modern Supreme Court protocol." Was it done by giddy conservative court clerks who couldn't contain themselves? Or, as seems more likely, by bitter liberal clerks (or justices) hoping to pressure the Republican-appointed justices, most notably Chief Justice John Roberts?
We may never know, but that's a secondary matter now.
Six years ago today, Indiana held its presidential primary. In hindsight, it was a harbinger of things to come. On the Republican side, Donald Trump carried the Hoosier state, winning his seventh primary in a row and essentially wrapping up the GOP nomination. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders won Indiana's Democratic primary, allowing him to fight another day.
Vermont's Democratic-Socialist wouldn't prevail in the end, but the election returns from Indiana on May 3, 2016 carried an important message, one insufficiently understood by Hillary Clinton and her advisers: While campaigning successfully in Indiana, Sanders and Trump said some of the exact same things about the North American Free Trade Agreement. Both populist candidates (Bernie from the left, The Donald from the right) blamed NAFTA for the decision by United Technologies to close a profitable furnace plant in Indianapolis operated by its Carrier division and move the manufacturing operation to Mexico.
The company freely admitted why it was shuttering the plant, along with another one in Huntington, Indiana: cheaper labor in Mexico, which meant higher profits for executives and shareholders.
Trump vowed that if elected president he would keep the Indianapolis plant open, which he was largely able to accomplish -- with help from outgoing Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. He kept another campaign pledge, too, this one to legal conservatives about his judicial appointment process. And that promise has led us to where we are today on Roe v. Wade, for good or ill.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.