What Comes After Roe?

The Atlantic’s executive editor, Adrienne LaFrance, discusses a post-Roe America with two contributing writers. The legal historian Mary Ziegler and the constitutional-law scholar David French answer questions about what happens now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. How will abortion bans be enforced? What will come of the legal and legislative battle moving to the states? And what other rights could the Supreme Court revoke? Listen and subscribe to Radio Atlantic: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity: Adrienne LaFrance:…

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‘I’m, Like, This Close to Snapping’

Four years and four months ago, a high-school student delivered a speech at a rally outside the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Three days earlier, a gunman had killed 17 of X González’s classmates and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland with an AR-15-style rifle. “We are going to be the last mass shooting,” González told the assembled crowd and cable-news cameras. It wasn’t, of course. In 2018 alone, there were 336 mass shootings in America, according to the Gun Violence Archive; since then, there…

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The Real Reason America Doesn’t Have Gun Control

After each of the repeated mass shootings that now provide a tragic backbeat to American life, the same doomed dance of legislation quickly begins. As the outraged demands for action are inevitably derailed in Congress, disappointed gun-control advocates, and perplexed ordinary citizens, point their fingers at the influence of the National Rifle Association or the intransigent opposition of congressional Republicans. Those are both legitimate factors, but the stalemate over gun-control legislation since Bill Clinton’s first presidential term ultimately rests on a much deeper problem: the growing crisis of majority rule…

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What the Primaries Reveal About the Future of Trumpism

For all the talk about how Donald Trump’s endorsed candidates would fare in the Republican primaries this year, the results in this week’s races made clear: Whatever happens to Trump’s personal influence, Trumpism is consolidating its dominance of the GOP. The former president’s scorecard on Tuesday was mixed. Candidates he endorsed won the GOP nominations for governor in Pennsylvania and Senate in North Carolina, while his preferred choice for Idaho governor failed to topple the incumbent and his late intervention could not save troubled young Representative Madison Cawthorn in North…

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Predictions for a Post-Roe America

Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health sent a shock wave across the country. After nearly a half century, it appears that the five-vote conservative majority on the Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade. If the draft emerges as the Court’s decision and abortion access is left up to the states, what could it mean in red and blue parts of the country? What was the path that brought the Court to this immense turning point? And where do Americans go…

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The Next Big Test of Trump’s Power

MORGANTOWN, West Virginia—Eight days before a Republican-primary election that could end his political career, Representative David McKinley stood on the sunny banks of the Monongahela River and stared into a tank filled with brown sewage. A fetid stench—something like a mix of sulfur and diapers—befouled the crisp Appalachian air. McKinley, battling Representative Alex Mooney, a fellow GOP lawmaker backed by Donald Trump, in his bid for his seventh term in Congress, was touring a wastewater-treatment plant and promoting his vote for an infrastructure law that could prove to be either…

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