One of the biggest—if not the biggest—takeaways of the 2022 midterm election was that the overturning of Roe v. Wade galvanized women and young people to register and then to vote. You would think that the end result—Democrats retaining control of the Senate and the GOP barely taking the House (and solely on the back of extreme gerrymandering in Florida and New York)—would have been a turning point for the Republican Party.

And it did seem what way because after that election the GOP announced that it was going to do a post-mortem of their performance and then everything went radio silence. Who is surprised? In the meantime, local Republicans have run wild, like this stunt a freshman legislator in South Carolina pulled:

A bill proposed by a freshman legislator would allow abortion to be punished like murder. It is not expected to pass, but less extreme abortion bans already have. https://t.co/Fp2h1MRIc2

— The Seattle Times (@seattletimes) March 16, 2023

OK, so it probably won’t pass—but why poke the bear? Women are angry and this kind of stuff only makes us more angry. Oh yeah, I know why—it’s all a game to them. It’s another iteration of what I wrote about yesterday—none of it is supposed to make sense.

And then there’s the move to ban Mifepristone, a drug used to end a pregnancy. Mifepristone has been used for 20 years, and it doesn’t require surgery. Naturally the anti-woman mob wants to ban it as well. Here’s a summary of where we are:

While the antiabortion group challenging the drug acknowledged there is no precedent for a court to order the suspension of a long-approved medication, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk questioned whether mifepristone has met the rigorous federal standard necessary to be prescribed to patients in the United States.

He asked a lawyer for the group whether the court could unilaterally withdraw FDA approval for a drug, and engaged with attorneys for both sides about whether mailing the pills should be prohibited because of a 19th-century law that bans sending articles “for any indecent or immoral use” through the Postal Service.

At the close of the four-hour hearing, Kacsmaryk said he would issue his ruling as soon as possible, potentially disrupting access to mifepristone even in states where abortion is legal and protected.

I don’t know what grinds my gears the most about this story:  the fact the anti-choice group admits there’s no legal basis for their challenge? The lies about the drug not being formally approved? The reference to a 19^th century law? The attempt to ban abortion even in states where it is legal? Oh hell, it’s all of them. And don’t get me started on how this is also part of the plan to ban birth control, too.

The fact that this is all a game to the extremists is, I suppose, meant to demoralize women and to sap their desire to fight back. See, that’s not going to work. All it does is make women angrier and more likely to take action.

For example, Machaela Cavanaugh, a state legislator in Nebraska, objected to an anti-trans bill on the legislative docket. Fulfilling her vow to filibuster every anti-trans or anti-abortion bill, she held up the legislature for 3 weeks. And she had a huge effect on the work of the legislative body:

True to her word, Cavanaugh has slowed the business of passing laws to a crawl by introducing amendment after amendment to every bill that makes it to the state Senate floor and taking up all eight debate hours allowed by the rules — even during the week she was suffering from strep throat. Wednesday marks the halfway point of this year’s 90-day session, and not a single bill will have passed thanks to Cavanaugh’s relentless filibustering.

Clerk of the Legislature Brandon Metzler said a delay like this has happened only a couple of times in the past 10 years.

“But what is really uncommon is the lack of bills that have advanced,” Metzler said. “Usually, we’re a lot further along the line than we’re seeing now.”

In fact, only 26 bills have advanced from the first of three rounds of debate required to pass a bill in Nebraska. There would normally be two to three times that number by mid-March, Metzler said. In the last three weeks since Cavanaugh began her bill blockade, only three bills have advanced.

She was able to broker a deal with the legislative speaker to put the bill on the floor for debate, because she thinks that that will kill passage of the bill so she has ended her general filibuster of everything but reserves the right to filibuster individual bills.

More of this, please.

This sums up my thinking about what the GOP is pulling these days (although I much prefer this live version):