Is the Supreme Court About to Turn New York Into the Wild West?

It’s another week chock-full of Republican fuckery, and The New Abnormal is all over it. In the latest episode is a tough interview with Bryan Jones, the Republican trying to take down creepy Matt Gaetz in Florida’s 1st Congressional District. First, however, is a conversation between co-hosts Molly Jong Fast and Andy Levy about how Republicans seem more interested in capitalizing on the baby formula shortage to score points against President Joe Biden than they are in fixing it and, you know, making sure babies can get fed.

“This is another situation where there’s something that is a problem and Republicans have no incentive to fix it. They would rather run on it in the midterm. So this is like immigration. There’s no path to citizenship right now,” says co-host Molly Jong-Fast. “And the reason why is because Republicans wanna keep running on this so they don’t wanna ever fix it. That’s what this is with the baby formula.”

If you listen to the Republicans, says Molly, tongue fully in cheek, “the real problem is that Joe Biden has been drinking all the baby formula. I mean, the whole thing is so insane. These people suck so badly and I’m telling you, they’re just such nihilists, they don’t care about anything. I mean, it’s really kind of just crushing to watch.”

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But, says co-host Andy Cohen, “They would care if it was fetus formula.”

“Blastula formula,” says Molly.

Then Jay Willis, the editor in chief of Balls and Strikes, warns Molly that the looming Roe v. Wade reversal its just the start. “A lot of the backlash to this opinion has also dealt with not only the disastrous consequences for women, folks who may become pregnant, but also for its really unnerving hints about where the court could go in the future,” Willis says. “Roe is not enough for Samuel Alito, who’s got all kinds of accumulated culture war grievances to air.”

The reasoning of Alito’s draft opinion, notes Willis, “insists that the decision is just about abortion, my reasoning does not extend to anything else. It’s not at all persuasive. It’s sort of like, so, what am I supposed to do? Just take your word for this? Alito was a dissenter in Obergefell, the same-sex marriage case that was decided seven years ago. He’s saying, ‘Look, this decision that I hated at the time and that I still talk about how much I hate? Don’t worry! I’m definitely not coming for that next’… If your entire argument that these rights are not under attack is ‘Just trust me, I’m Sam Alito,’ yeah—I don’t know about that.”

And Willis notes, one other decision the court will drop this term, in addition to abortion, is one that will likely demolish New York’s restrictive concealed-carry law. Willis explains how that looming disaster stems from how, “in 2008, the Supreme Court for the first time in its history divined an individual right to gun possession, unconnected with your service in the militia, in the Second Amendment. And it’s hard to overstate how astroturfed this was. The court had never previously held that. This was a real sea change in the law. And it was the product of this long campaign of conservative legal academics and gun-rights organizations to gin up the sort of alternative history that your friend and mine, Antonin Scalia, could cite in support. But this was about having a gun in your home for self-defense purposes. So the question now is whether this extends outside of the home, if there’s a constitutional right to carry a gun outside for self-defense, perhaps even concealed. This law would call into question concealed-carry regimes in California, New York, New Jersey, some of the nation’s most populous states. And the outcome just sort of depends on how Wild West-y these justices really want to get.

Where the Right Will Strike Next After Its Big Abortion Win

“Most states use what are used what are called shall-issue licensing schemes, where if you apply for a concealed-carry permit, you presumptively get one unless one of a handful of exceptions applies to you. New York’s a little different—authorities can deny you one unless you show like some kind of special individualized need. The court could decide that that’s too onerous a requirement. It could issue a narrow decision about New York’s law or it could issue a broader, more generally applicable rule of law. We don’t know, but spoiler alert: It’s not gonna be great.”

In that 2008 decision, Willis notes, “Antonin Scalia took great pains to talk about how limited the decision was, how moderate it was. He talked about how it didn’t call into question long-standing traditions of legal restrictions on guns for people experiencing mental illness, for example, or people convicted of crimes, which really parallels Alito’s arguments in this [abortion] draft. Scalia said the decision is just about gun ownership in the home. Now you have the conservative legal movement pushing for gun possession everywhere. Same thing with Alito. He’s saying this only applies to Roe and Casey and abortion, but based on the way the conservative legal movement treated [the gun decision in 2008], I’m not so sure there’s a lot of stock we should put into that. If you give a demagogue an inch, they’re always going to take the mile sooner or later.”

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