It’s been 24 hours since Trump-appointed Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued a bombshell ruling invalidating the FDA’s 2000 approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, effective in seven days. The Department of Justice is challenging the decision, and Washington State Judge Thomas Rice issued a conflicting ruling saying the FDA can’t revoke approval of the drug in roughly half of the country—but Kacsmaryk’s opinion is nonetheless a clear victory for anti-abortion Republican politicians across the country, who’ve been fighting for this for decades.
So why, then, have the vast majority of them suddenly gone silent? Dozens of Democratic politicians put out statements within minutes and hours condemning the ruling and vowing to fight it.
On the right, however: mostly crickets. The only notable Republican’s praise of the ruling came from Sen. Cindy Hyde Smith (R-Miss.), who called it a “victory for pregnant mothers and their unborn children.”
“I’m grateful the Court reined in the [FDA] for recklessly violating the law & jeopardizing patient safety,” she tweeted.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) tweeted a video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) discussing the ruling with the caption, “Hogwash.”
Otherwise, most prominent GOP politicians pretended it didn’t happen. Some of them tweeted instead about Good Friday. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) took on Twitter CEO Elon Musk for Twitter’s new ban on Substack links. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wished Johnson a happy birthday. Sen. Cynthia Lumis (R-Wyo.) randomly tweeted congratulations to a James Beard award winner. Several Republican lawmakers whom I would characterize as regular Posters™️, such as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), have been tweeting in defense of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—Cornyn at least three times—instead of engaging with the biggest news of the past 24 hours.
And wait, here’s the best one: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) actually tweeted about his vacuum. Yes, his bagged vacuum named “Beth.”
“Beth, it’s Easter u and I have to work hard to get this farm house ready for the grassley [sic] gathering Sunday,” the senator wrote, as everyone else in the country—including the president and vice president—reacted to a Trump-appointed judge trying to revoke FDA approval of a very safe and common abortion medication.
The reason for the silence on the right, of course, is that they know this incredibly stupid decision—along with their entire crusade to ban reproductive rights—is looking increasingly like it’s going to cost them their jobs.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes put it best:
Abortion rights are unequivocally popular in this country, as we’ve seen again and again through popular votes in the states for the past year. Whenever abortion is on the ballot, even in red states, they win every time. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade also stemmed the supposed “red wave” that was coming in the midterms and has since delivered victory after victory for progressives. Judge Janet Protasiewicz won a crucial seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week after specifically talking about how the judiciary should be protecting abortion access, marking the first time liberals have held a majority on the state’s highest court in 15 years. Even right-wing hack Ann Coulter had to remind her party last week that pushing for more abortion limits is going to kill them at the polls.
So as we note and mock these people’s cowardly silence, we will also continue to remind everyone through a bullhorn the work they’ve done for years to create this fucking disaster. They birthed this judge’s decision, and now they have to raise it.