Skip to content
Project 2025
Donate to support
diverse voices
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
​Performer Bad Bunny on stage.

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Sparks National Controversy As Trump Announces Boycott

Trump’s Plan to Gather Data on Every Voter Will Cripple Democracy

Trump’s Plan to Gather Data on Every Voter Will Cripple Democracy

The Insurrection Act, Revisited: Power That Waits in the Margins

The Insurrection Act, Revisited: Power That Waits in the Margins

Trump, Greenland, and the Alarming Silence in Congress

Trump, Greenland, and the Alarming Silence in Congress

What is a trigger law?

Anti-abortion protest at the Supreme Court

Proponents and opponents of abortion rights gather outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images
David Meyers
By David MeyersMay 04, 2022
David Meyers

David Meyers is the Executive Editor of The Fulcrum. Before launching The Fulcrum, David spent more than two decades at CQ Roll Call, a leading publisher of political news and information. During his time there, David served as managing editor of Roll Call (“the newspaper of Capitol Hill”) and as managing editor of member information and research, which included co-editing the definitive biographical directory of Congress, “Politics in America.” David went on to lead all of CQ Roll Call’s congressional research teams as vice president of research and content development before shifting to a revenue and strategy role as vice president of business operations for Roll Call, working with the advertising and editorial teams to develop new revenue models and expand the company’s events business. David lives in Fairfax, Va., with his wife, two daughters and rottweiler. A graduate of Tufts University, David is a past president of the Tufts University Alumni Association. He is also a past president of the Washington Press Club Foundation, which works to celebrate and advance the role of women and minorities in the media. David currently serves on the board of directors for Temple B’nai Shalom in Fairfax Station.

See More Writings by author

If the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade becomes an official court decision, states will be free to legislate abortion issues as they see fit. Abortions will immediately become illegal in 13 states that have passed “trigger laws” tied to a court decision.

What does that mean?

A trigger law is designed to take effect when certain conditions are met. The legislative maneuver is in the news this week because more than a dozen states, mostly in the South and the Plains, have laws that would ban or restrict abortions as soon as the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision is overturned.

Trigger laws are now solely the province of legislatures that oppose abortion. For example, a handful of states will automatically shut down their Medicaid expansion if certain conditions change at the federal level.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the following states have trigger laws that would restrict, if not ban, abortions:

  • Arkansas
  • Idaho
  • Kentucky
  • Louisiana
  • Mississippi
  • Missouri
  • North Dakota
  • Oklahoma
  • South Dakota
  • Tennessee
  • Texas
  • Utah
  • Wyoming

Nine states, some overlapping with the above list, already had abortion ban laws on the books prior to Roe, and those laws would once again be in effect if the the court acts as expected:

  • Alabama
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • Michigan
  • Mississippi
  • Oklahoma
  • Texas
  • West Virginia
  • Wisconsin

If these laws go into effect, millions of people would be barred from having an abortion unless Congress passes legislation making abortion legal nationwide. However, any such bill would need 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster (which is not going to happen). The alternative would be to change or eliminate the filibuster rule so legislation can be passed by a simple majority vote. But centrist Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema remain opposed to changing the filibuster rules.


Latest news

Alex Pretti’s Death Is a Code Blue for the U.S.
Governance & Legislation

Alex Pretti’s Death Is a Code Blue for the U.S.

The map of the U.S. broken into pieces.
Ethics & Leadership

Donald Trump’s “I Don’t Care” Philosophy Undermines Democracy

“Never Take Sides Against the Family”: Trump and the Mob Logic of the GOP
Ethics & Leadership

“Never Take Sides Against the Family”: Trump and the Mob Logic of the GOP

Read More

The Danger Isn’t History Repeating—It’s Us Ignoring the Echoes

Nazi troops arrest civilians in Warsaw, Poland, 1943.

The Danger Isn’t History Repeating—It’s Us Ignoring the Echoes

The instinct to look away is one of the most enduring patterns in democratic backsliding. History rarely announces itself with a single rupture; it accumulates through a series of choices—some deliberate, many passive—that allow state power to harden against the people it is meant to serve.

As federal immigration enforcement escalates across American cities today, historians are warning that the public reactions we are witnessing bear uncomfortable similarities to the way many Germans responded to Adolf Hitler’s early rise in the 1930s. The comparison is not about equating leaders or eras. It is about recognizing how societies normalize state violence when it is directed at those deemed “other.”

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. capitol.

The current continuing resolution, which keeps the government funded, ends this Friday, January 30.

Getty Images

Probably Another Shutdown

The current continuing resolution, which keeps the government funded, ends this Friday, January 30.

It passed in November and ended the last shutdown. In addition to passage of the continuing resolution, some regular appropriations were also passed at the same time. It included funding for the remainder of the fiscal year for the food assistance program SNAP, the Department of Agriculture, the FDA, military construction, Veterans Affairs, and Congress itself (that is, through Sept. 30, 2026).

Keep ReadingShow less
The Escalation Is Institutional: One Year Into Trump’s Return to Power

U.S. President Donald Trump on January 22, 2026

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Escalation Is Institutional: One Year Into Trump’s Return to Power

One year after Donald Trump returned to the White House, the defining feature of his presidency is not turbulence or rhetorical provocation, but escalation as a mode of governance. Escalation, in this sense, does not simply mean doing more or acting faster. It refers to a sustained pattern of exercising power in ways that bypass, compress, or sideline democratic intermediaries, including Congress, courts, local governments, civil society, and even international partners.

Rather than treating institutional friction as a constraint, the administration has increasingly treated it as an obstacle to be overcome. The result is a presidency that appears more orderly than Trump’s first term, but more consequential in how it tests the guardrails of American democracy.

Keep ReadingShow less
What Really Guides Lawmakers’ Decisions on Capitol Hill
us a flag on white concrete building
Photo by Adam Michael Szuscik on Unsplash

What Really Guides Lawmakers’ Decisions on Capitol Hill

The following article is excerpted from "Citizen’s Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials."

Despite the efforts of high school social studies teachers, parents, journalists, and political scientists, the workings of our government remain a mystery to most Americans. Caricatures, misconceptions, and stereotypes dominate citizens’ views of Congress, contributing to our reluctance to engage in our democracy. In reality, the system works pretty much as we were taught in third grade. Congress is far more like Schoolhouse Rock than House of Cards. When all the details are burned away, legislators generally follow three voices when making a decision. One member of Congress called these voices the “Three H’s”: Heart, Head, and Health—meaning political health.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026