Dear John,

Between the events of last weekend, this week’s Republican National Convention, and so much more, it was a week of nonstop whiplash when it came to the news. 

Let’s start with the Republican National Convention. In the “you can’t make this stuff up category,” as Mel Leonor Barclay writes, the GOP convention was a “display of the party’s version of masculinity.” Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off onstage as he called Trump a “gladiator.” A Kid Rock song called Trump an “American badass.” And Trump entered the convention hall “to a reverberating rendition of ‘A Man’s Man’s Man’s World,’ the dramatic R&B hit that credits men with the major inventions of modern civilization, while saying it all means ‘nothing without a woman or a girl.’” 

And then there’s Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who notably once called Vice President Kamala Harris, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg “a bunch of childless cat ladies.” He is staunchly anti-abortion, and defends abortion bans’ lack of exceptions for rape or incest, saying that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Need I say more?

Mainstream media reported this week that the RNC was softening its position on abortion, at former President Trump’s request—omitting, for the first time since 1984, the party platform’s explicit call for the passage of a national abortion ban. But what the mainstream media failed to note is that “the language of the platform maintains the party’s longstanding position that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment extends rights to fetuses—an interpretation that Republicans are already asking the Republican-stacked Supreme Court to adopt,” writes contributing editor Carrie Baker in Ms. this week. “They don’t need a new constitutional amendment or act of Congress when they have a stacked Supreme Court ready to interpret the current Constitution to ban abortion nationwide.”

And we can’t leave out the dramatic development in the criminal case against Trump for obstruction and mishandling of classified documents. Early last week, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon (a Trump appointee) quietly dismissed the case against Trump. It’s a distressing chain of events stemming from the Supreme Court’s Trump v. United States immunity decision earlier this summer, as legal journalist Chris Geidner points out: “Roberts has led the Supreme Court into an era in which precedent can selectively be ignored, eviscerated or overruled when it gets in the way of conservatives’ goals. That, in turn, has led lower court judges to feel that they have been given power to do the same—predicting, in essence, the precedents that they believe the current Court would ignore.”

And don’t forget about Project 2025. Like I said, a week of whiplash—in full force. Stay tuned to MsMagazine.com—we’ll be bringing you the latest updates as events continue to unfold.

 
For Equality,

Kathy Spillar
Executive Editor

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