The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade more than a year ago, but in the time since, the number of abortions performed nationwide seems to have gone up, not down. And not just in blue states—even in red states where abortion has been banned, some sizable percentage of people can and do travel out of state or get abortion pills in the mail.

[Read: Dobbs’s confounding effect on abortion rates]

The anti-abortion movement is—no surprise—committed to stopping this flow of patients and abortion pills across state lines. One strategy that has recently emerged is an effort to revive and reinterpret the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-vice law that the movement claims makes sending or receiving any abortion drug or device in the mail a federal crime. Other approaches are proliferating. In Alabama, the attorney general has vowed to use existing state conspiracy law to prosecute residents for helping others seek abortions out of state. And in Texas, several counties passed an ordinance allowing anyone to sue a person driving on local highways who is bringing a patient to get an abortion, whether illegally in Texas or legally elsewhere.

Putting questions of constitutionality aside, how will these strategies even work? How would an abortion foe—or federal prosecutors trying to enforce the Comstock Act—know what was in a sealed envelope in someone’s mailbox? How would an activist aiming to sue under the Texas ordinances know why any individual was driving on the interstate? Alabama’s attorney general, for example, doesn’t have an obvious way to identify people helping their friends and family travel out of state for abortion.

But enforcement challenges do not mean that these approaches are empty threats, intended to create a climate of fear but no actual prosecutions or prison sentences. Instead, the likely outcome is arbitrary and unfair enforcement, reliant on informants with personal grudges and a network of grassroots activists. This is apparent in the history of the Comstock Act, which made it a federal crime to mail or receive items deemed to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile.” How the Comstock Act was enforced in the first 40 years of its existence is very much a roadmap for the enforcement of many seemingly unenforceable anti-abortion measures today.

The Comstock Act had sweeping potential when it passed in 1873, able to be interpreted to cover information, drugs, and devices related to abortion or contraception, as well as anything else deemed obscene. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, law-enforcement officers and postal inspectors didn’t have access to the reams of digital data available today. Catching those who published newsletters or put information on the outside of an envelope was easy; most people sending abortion or contraception materials quickly learned to use sealed envelopes. And to open an envelope, investigators needed a warrant.

But anti-vice crusaders found two ways around this problem. First, they tapped into a network of tipsters and detectives—people who deceived potential abortion providers, pretending to be patients or their loved ones to gather evidence for potential prosecutions. Anthony Comstock, a former dry-goods salesman and anti-vice activist who lobbied for the law named after him (and who became a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service in enforcing the act), perfected the art of decoy letters and disguises, looking for evidence that could be turned over to postal inspectors or police.

Second, they relied on personal vendettas and animosities: angry ex-lovers, controlling husbands, business rivals, and others who used the law for their own ends. Countless people weaponized the law in their own personal conflicts. Victorians who sent “vinegar valentines,” cards that insulted or humiliated their targets, were turned in for Comstock violations. So were men who harassed women, a flirting couple who arranged potential rendezvous, and wives who wrote angry letters to their husbands’ mistresses.

[From the May 2022 issue: The future of abortion in post-Roe America]

Some abortion opponents may try similar strategies now. In 2021, Texas Right to Life operated a tip line for violations of Senate Bill 8, which in September of that year became a state law allowing any individual to sue abortion providers or those who assisted an abortion seeker for at least $10,000 per procedure. (The site was quickly spammed by TikTokers and ultimately taken down by the web-hosting company GoDaddy.) Less formal surveillance networks are also emerging. Crisis pregnancy centers—facilities that discourage abortions—gather information from clients that privacy experts warn could be shared with activists or angry family members interested in filing a lawsuit. The law has become a weapon in private disputes too. Jonathan Mitchell, one of the architects of S.B. 8, is representing a husband suing his ex-wife’s friends for allegedly helping her get abortion pills.

In the past, these tactics led to arbitrary enforcement, with the privileged sometimes escaping scrutiny. In perhaps the most grotesque example, while postal inspectors pursued charges against others selling birth control, Samuel Colgate, a tycoon and patron of Comstock’s, was never arrested, even as his Colgate company (falsely) marketed Vaseline as a contraceptive. Congress repealed the contraceptive provisions of the Comstock Act in 1971, but uneven—and often unfair—enforcement of the provisions that remain is likely to come if abortion opponents successfully resurrect it.

The more that off-the-wall anti-abortion tactics proliferate, the easier it is to dismiss them as scare tactics. But that might not be the case at all. Any law can be enforced if enough people take part in rustling up offenders. Of course, the Supreme Court could be hostile to the anti-abortion activists’ new enforcement strategies, striking down laws limiting travel or rejecting conservatives’ interpretation of the Comstock Act. But this Court may not. The majority’s conservative leanings are clear, and many of the legal areas at issue are undeveloped enough to leave room for a sympathetic justice to side with abortion opponents. If that comes to pass, then the laws’ “unenforceability” can’t be counted on to protect anyone.

They planned to take Kyiv in three days, the rest of Ukraine in six weeks.

More than 21 months later, Russian forces have withdrawn from half the territory they occupied in February of last year. At least 88,000 Russian soldiers are likely dead—a conservative estimate—and at least twice as many have been wounded. Billions of dollars worth of equipment, Russian tanks, planes, artillery, helicopters, armored vehicles, and warships have been destroyed. If you had predicted this outcome before the war—and nobody did—it would have seemed fanciful. No one would have believed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a professional comedian, could lead a country at war, that the democratic world would be united enough to help him, or that Russian President Vladimir Putin would endure such a humiliation.

Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union have achieved something remarkable: Working together, they have not only preserved the Ukrainian state, but stood up to a bully whose nihilism harms the entire world. Putin backs far-right and extremist movements in Europe, provides thugs to support African dictatorships, and colludes with China, Iran, Venezuela, and other autocracies. From the beginning, Putin hoped the war would demonstrate that American power and American alliances can be defeated, not only in Ukraine but everywhere else. He still does, and for this purpose the war remains useful to him.

The fighting creates food shortages in Africa, thereby generating more unrest and more demand for Russian mercenaries. The war stokes discontent in Europe as well, giving pro-Russian parties a boost. Americans and Europeans view turmoil in country after country as a series of isolated conflicts, but Putin doesn’t think that Ukraine and the Middle East belong to different, competing spheres. On the contrary, since the conflict in Gaza erupted, he has intensified his relationship with Iran, invited leaders of Hamas to Moscow, and attacked Israel because of its links with the U.S., hoping that the spread of violence will decrease Western support for Ukraine. Iranian drones have terrorized Ukrainian cities; Iran, in turn, distributes Russian weapons to its proxies. Hezbollah is thought to have Russian anti-ship missiles that it could use against U.S. warships in the Mediterranean at any minute.

The allied fight against Russia in Ukraine has damaged Russia’s ability to project negative power in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But despite his extraordinary losses, Putin still believes that time is on his side. If he can’t win on the battlefield, he will win using political intrigue and economic pressure. He will wait for the democratic world to splinter, and he will encourage that splintering. He will wait for the Ukrainians to grow tired, and he will try to make that happen too. He will wait for Donald Trump to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and he will do anything he can to help that happen too.

Right now, Putin’s bets are on the Republicans who repeat Russian propaganda—Senator J. D. Vance, for example, echoes Russian language about the Ukraine war leading to “global disorder” and “escalation”; Representative Matt Gaetz cited a Chinese state-media source as evidence while asking about alleged Ukrainian neo-Nazis at a congressional hearing; Vivek Ramaswamy, a GOP presidential candidate, has also called Zelensky, who is Jewish, a Nazi. Putin will have been cheered by the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, who is knowingly delaying the military and financial aid that Ukraine needs to keep fighting. The supplemental bill that he refuses to pass includes money that will keep Ukrainians supplied with the air-defense systems they need to protect their cities, as well as the fiscal support they need to sustain their economy and crucial infrastructure in the coming months.

The U.S. is supplying about a third of Ukraine’s financial needs—the rest comes from the European Union, global institutions, and the taxes paid and bonds purchased by the Ukrainians themselves—but without that help Ukraine will have trouble surviving the winter.  

Part of the Republican resistance to helping Ukraine fight an American adversary is simply the perverse desire to see President Joe Biden fail. Another part comes from the fear that Ukraine is not able to win. The Ukrainian summer counteroffensive did have some success, especially in the Black Sea, where a combination of drones and missiles has badly weakened Russia’s navy and forced some of its ships to leave the Crimean port of Sebastopol. But the progress on land was slow. Ukraine’s ability to inflict huge casualties on Russia was not enough to create a backlash, or a reconsideration, in Moscow. General Valery Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian commander in chief, has recently spoken of the war as a “stalemate.”

Although Zaluzhny has also described, in detail, the technology he needs to move his army forward and break that stalemate, his statement has renewed talk in the West of a truce or a cease-fire. Some are calling for a cease-fire in bad faith. In fact, they want a Russian victory, or at least a defeat for Biden. Others, however, advocate a truce with the best of intentions. They believe that because Putin will never give up, the damage to Ukraine must be limited. Lately, I’ve heard several well-meaning people, all supporters of Ukraine, argue that this conflict could end the way the Korean War once ended, with the borders frozen on the current front line and the rest of Ukraine, like South Korea, protected by an American security guarantee and even U.S. bases.

All of these suggestions, well-meaning or otherwise, have the same flaw: A cease-fire, temporary or otherwise, means that both sides have to stop fighting. Right now, even if Zelensky agrees to negotiate, there is no evidence that Putin wants to negotiate, that he wants to stop fighting, or that he has ever wanted to stop fighting. And yes, according to Western officials who have periodic conversations with their Russian counterparts, attempts have been made to find out.

Nor is there any evidence that Putin wants to partition Ukraine, keeping only the territories he currently occupies and allowing the rest to prosper like South Korea. His goal remains the destruction of Ukraine—all of Ukraine—and his allies and propagandists are still talking about how, once they achieve this goal, they will expand their empire further. Just last week, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, published an 8,000-word article calling Poland Russia’s “historical enemy” and threatening Poles with the loss of their state too. The message was perfectly clear: We invaded Poland before, and we can do it again.

In this sense, the challenge that Putin presents to Europe and the rest of the world is unchanged from February 2022. If we abandon what we have achieved so far and we give up support for Ukraine, the result could still be the military or political conquest of Ukraine. The conquest of Ukraine could still empower Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and the rest of Putin’s allies. It could still encourage China to invade Taiwan. It could still lead to a new kind of Europe, one in which Poland, the Baltic states, and even Germany are under constant physical threat, with all of the attendant consequences for trade and prosperity. A Europe permanently at war, an idea that seems impossible to most people in the West, still seems eminently plausible to the Russian president. Putin spent a memorable part of his life as a KGB officer, representing the interests of the Soviet empire in Dresden. He remembers when eastern Germany was ruled by Moscow. If it could be so once, then why not again?

The stark truth is that this war will only end for good when Russia’s neo-imperial dream finally dies. Just as the French decided in 1962 that Algeria could become independent of France, just as the British accepted in 1921 that Ireland was no longer part of the United Kingdom, the Russians must conclude that Ukraine is not Russia. I can’t tell you which political changes in Moscow are necessary to achieve that goal. I can’t say whether a different Russian leader is required—maybe or maybe not. But we will recognize this change when it happens. After it does, the conflict is over and negotiating a final settlement will be possible.

To reach that endgame, we need to adjust our thinking. First, we need to understand, more deeply than we have done so far, that we have entered a new era of great-power conflict. The Russians already know this and have already made the transition to a full-scale war economy. Forty percent of the Russian state budget—another conservative estimate—is now spent annually on military production, about 10 percent of GDP, a level not seen for decades. Neither the U.S. nor its European allies have made anything like this shift, and we started from a low base. Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute told me that, at the beginning of the war, the ammunition that the United Kingdom produced in a year was enough to supply the Ukrainian army for 20 hours. Although the situation has improved, as production has slowly cranked up all over the democratic world, we are not moving fast enough.

Secondly, we need to start helping the Ukrainians fight this war as if we were fighting it, altering our slow decision-making process to match the urgency of the moment. Ukraine received the weapons for its summer fighting very late, giving the Russians time to build minefields and tank traps—why? Training by NATO forces for Ukrainian soldiers has in some cases been rushed and incomplete—why? There is still time to reverse these mistakes: Zaluzhny’s list of breakthrough technologies, which includes tools to gain air superiority and better wage electronic warfare, should be taken seriously now, and not next year.  

[Read: Zelensky has an answer for DeSantis]

But the path to end this war does not only lead through the battlefield. We need to start thinking not just about helping Ukraine, but about defeating Russia—or, if you prefer different language, persuading Russia to leave by any means possible. If Russia is already fighting America and America’s allies on multiple fronts, through political funding, influence campaigns, and its links to other autocracies and terrorist organizations, then the U.S. and Europe need to fight back on multiple fronts too. We should outcompete Russia for the scarce commodities needed to build weapons, block the software updates that they need to run their defense factories, look for ways to sabotage their production facilities. Russia used fewer weapons and less ammunition this year than it did last year. Our task should be to ensure that next year is worse.

The West has already sanctioned Russia and put export controls on electronics and many other components necessary for the Russian defense ministry. Paradoxically, there may now be too many of these sanctions, which are difficult to keep track of and enforce, especially when materials go through third or fourth countries. Instead, we should target the most important supply chains, depriving the Russians of the specific machine tools and raw materials that they need to make the most sophisticated weapons. At the start of the war, the U.S. and its allies froze Russia’s foreign-currency deposits. The assets of many Russian oligarchs were frozen too, in the hope that this would make them more inclined to resist the war. With some exceptions, it did not. Now it’s time to take those assets and give them to Ukraine. We need to demonstrate that our commitment to the principle of Russian reparations for Ukraine is real.

But some of our money is needed too. Spending it now will produce savings down the line, and not just because we can prevent a catastrophe in Ukraine. By learning how to fight Russia, a sophisticated autocracy with global ambitions, we will be better prepared for later, larger conflicts, if there is ever a broader struggle with China or Iran. More important, by defeating Russia we might be able to stop those larger conflicts before they begin. The goal in Ukraine should be to end Russia’s brutish invasion—and to deter others from launching another one somewhere else.

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The GOP debates have turned into performance art. They demean our electoral process, but many in the national media are backing away from facts and probity and enabling the worst candidates in their effort to corner the attention market.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Peter Thiel is taking a break from democracy. The baffling cruelty of Alfred Hitchcock Sleep more and be happier.

Working the Refs

I watched the Republican primary debate last night, and at first, I had no real intention of writing again about a process that is now a national embarrassment. But when it was over, I couldn’t shake the thought of how far America has come over the past few decades—and how far down our politics have fallen.

I will not criticize Nikki Haley for calling Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” last night. Ramaswamy tried to pull Haley’s daughter into the debate, and I applaud her for speaking up with such clarity. I’ve sat here many times trying to describe Ramaswamy while poring over my inventory of multisyllabic words—obnoxious, execrable, insufferable—and the former UN ambassador beat me to it with a legitimate punch that clearly came out of justified disgust.

But after Haley dispensed with Ramaswamy, my mind wandered back to an earlier era, and to other debates. I had a sudden sense of the swift passage of time, the disorienting recognition of how much has changed over the years.

I was thinking, in particular, of 1988.

In 1988, I was 27, and keenly interested in politics after working in Washington, D.C., and spending two years for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in Boston as a legislative assistant. (Eventually, I would go on to do a year in the U.S. Senate.) That fall, I was back in New England to do some research for my doctoral dissertation, but I was closely following the national presidential election between George H. W. Bush and Mike Dukakis, and I wasn’t going to miss the vice-presidential debate between Republican Dan Quayle and Democrat Lloyd Bentsen.

I raise this bit of nostalgia to remind all of us of Bentsen’s immortal zinger against Quayle during that debate, how nasty it seemed at the time, and how quaint it all seems now.

Quayle was 41, and had served in Congress for nearly 12 years. Today—compared with presidential hopefuls such as Democrat Dean Phillips or Republican Tim Scott, or even compared with Barack Obama in 2008—Quayle might seem qualified to run for a national spot. But in those days, Quayle’s youth, boyish looks, and inept off-the-cuff moments all opened the door for questions about his qualifications.

Quayle was asked what he would do if he had to assume the presidency. He flailed around, stammering about prayers and Cabinet meetings and his time in Congress. When the moderator, Tom Brokaw, came back to the question, Quayle apparently felt he was being slammed for inexperience, and so he compared himself to John F. Kennedy: “I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency.”

And that’s when Bentsen turned the key on his nuclear response:

Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.

Quayle, with a look both of hurt and anger, turned to Bentsen and said: “That was really uncalled for, senator.”

Watching in real time, I felt embarrassed for Quayle and mad at Bentsen. It was stupid of Quayle to invoke Kennedy, not least because he should have known that any mention of JFK would set up Bentsen’s cheap ambush (one, it turns out, Bentsen had prepared in advance). But to the credit of both men, this throat-punch was only one moment in what was otherwise a real debate between serious politicians.

Fast-forward to 2023. The front-runner for the nomination, Donald Trump, hasn’t bothered to show up for any of the debates so far. The GOP primary stage—showcasing competitors not for the No. 2 spot but for the job of commander in chief—was populated by a senator whose insubstantial campaign has failed to gain traction but who finally made news last night by appearing in public with a girlfriend; a governor whose unsteady campaign has been weighed down by culture warring, aloofness, and his inability to seem comfortable in his own skin; two other former governors who earlier bent their knees to Trump; and Vivek Ramaswamy, who unfortunately is still Vivek Ramaswamy. It was an utterly unserious business.

Why is this happening? Part of the reason is the structural lock Trump now has on the nomination, which relieves the candidates of the burden of being taken too seriously. At this point, he could lose half his supporters and still win. But another reason is the way the media insists on treating this election as just another contest between normal politicians, a problem that was on full display last night in Miami.

In fairness to the NBC journalists Lester Holt and Kristen Welker, last night was a more orderly affair than the previous free-for-all. (Hugh Hewitt was also there. I’ll get to him.) But the questions were out of some pre-Trump-era playbook, old-school stuff about the economy and foreign policy—and nothing about the likely winner of the primary, his multiple criminal indictments, or his plans to undermine American democracy on his first day.

Instead, Haley and Chris Christie and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gamely went through their talking points. Scott, for his part, seemed to be running for the presidency of a Bible college. Ramaswamy, as usual, engaged in one inanity after another, both showcasing his ignorance of issues (the moderators let him get away with some flagrant errors, including one about Tuesday’s vote on abortion rights in Ohio) and reinforcing his commitment to gaining followers from fans of Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and Elon Musk.

Hewitt, a conservative talk-radio host and Trump enabler, tried to make the Republican Party seem like a normal political organization by asking wonky questions, including one about how many ships the U.S. Navy should have, as if this were one of the issues that created a 40-point gulf between Trump and the rest of the field.

Hewitt is a GOP partisan and he knew what he was doing, and too many in the national media are following the same path because they are in the grip of a normalcy bias, the conviction that things aren’t really that different than they were before and that they won’t change that dramatically in the future. As Margaret Sullivan wrote today in The Guardian, the media should be communicating the stakes of this election to the public. But alas.

Instead, journalists have emphasized Joe Biden’s age and Trump’s “freewheeling” style. They blame the public’s attitudes on “polarization”, as if they themselves have no role. And, of course, they make the election about the horse race—rather than what would happen a few lengths after the finish line.

This commitment to a false neutrality is why journalists have to nod politely while a Trump or a Ramaswamy (or, on the other side, a Marianne Williamson, who is running again) says incomprehensible things onstage. To call candidates to account for being ridiculous or offensive would lead to charges of bias and partisanship.

The media—like the Democrats, unfortunately—seem to have internalized right-wing criticisms about them. Last night showed yet again that the refs have been worked. And we might all pay the price next year.

Related:

“Nothing is going to stop Donald Trump” The Republican primary is slipping away.

Today’s News

Israel will begin daily four-hour pauses in areas of the northern Gaza Strip to allow Palestinian civilians to flee. President Joe Biden has also asked Israel for a pause of at least three days to facilitate negotiations for the release of some hostages. Suspicious mail was sent to election offices in at least five states this week; four letters have tested positive for fentanyl. The previous 12 months were likely Earth’s hottest in 125,000 years, according to a new analysis by scientists at Climate Central.

Dispatches

Atlantic Intelligence: Generative AI is confusing Google, Damon Beres writes. This technology won’t be contained. Up for Debate: Are humans better or worse off for having beer, wine, and spirits? Conor Fridersdorf asks readers for their thoughts.

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Culture Break

Read. “Younger Than War,” a poem by Mosab Abu Toha reflecting on his childhood under Israeli military occupation.

“I was still 7 at the time. / I was decades younger than war, / a few years older than bombs.”

Listen. In The Atlantic’s newest podcast, How to Keep Time, co-hosts Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost, an Atlantic contributing writer, examine our relationship with time and what we can do to reclaim it.

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