Each December, The Fix looks back on some political developments we’ve covered that otherwise haven’t been given their due — but which we think are worth revisiting, either because of their significance or their staying power. We call it our “most undersold political stories” of the year.
Below is our 2022 edition.
The 2022 election involved a repudiation of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the fight is in many ways just beginning.
And perhaps the biggest battleground moving forward will be ballot initiatives.
Kansas’s primary was the first post-Roe election in which the pro-abortion rights position won when the question of reproductive rights was put to voters. But it wasn’t the last. Five states featured ballot initiatives on abortion in November, and all five broke the same way as Kansas did, including a swing state (Michigan) and two other red states (Montana and Kentucky).
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For Republicans who would very much like to regulate abortion more strictly, this is a problem. Not every state makes it easy to allow voters to decide such issues, but abortion rights advocates are keying in on the states where it’s feasible. Already, initiatives are being lined up in Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio.
Meanwhile, Republicans in some states like Ohio have doubled down on making it harder for voters to pass such measures — including, in Ohio’s case, moving to raise the...
KUANTAN: An elephant handler has expressed disappointment over claims that three Malaysian elephants sent to a Japanese zoo are suffering in their new environment. Mahout Suhaimi Ibrahim, who spen...