Originally published by The 19th.
The Justice Department announced Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against Texas over its six-week abortion ban that went into effect last week. The Biden administration has faced pressure to take action after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the new law that has become the most restrictive in the country.
The DOJ lawsuit will test the federal government's ability to challenge Texas' unique legislation, which empowers private parties to sue anyone who “aids or abets" a person in obtaining an abortion in the state after six weeks of pregnancy. That key provision significantly differs from attempted abortion restrictions in other states, which rely on criminal enforcement, and may complicate federal attempts to intervene, experts say.
In a news conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland said his department is seeking a “permanent and preliminary injunction" prohibiting the law from being enforced.
“The act is clearly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court precedent," Garland said. “The obvious and expressly acknowledged intention of this statutory scheme is to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights by thwarting judicial review for as long as possible."
The department's complaint argues that the Texas restriction violates the Fourteenth Amendment right for a person to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
“S.B. 8 implicates this doctrine by expressly authorizing—indeed, empowering—individuals to engage in conduct that violates the constitutional rights of women throughout Texas, in a manner in which the State itself would not be able to engage," the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also asserts that the law violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, which says the federal constitution takes precedence over state laws.
“There are all kinds of federal agencies who have federal contractors or federal employees operating in Texas, and some of the things they do would put them at risk of being sued by individuals in Texas under S.B. 8," said Sara Ainsworth, senior legal and policy director at If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice. The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, for example, can help facilitate reproductive health care, including abortions for unaccompanied minors. S.B. 8 would also interfere with the Defense Department's legal authority to provide abortions to people who are eligible because they either would be endangered by carrying a fetus to term or became pregnant due to rape or incest, the lawsuit says.
Abortion rights organizations praised the move. “We are heartened to see the Biden administration stepping in to take action to vindicate Texans' rights," Helene Krasnoff, vice president of public policy litigation and law for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.
- “It's a gamechanger that the Department of Justice has joined the legal battle to restore constitutionally protected abortion access in Texas and disarm vigilantes looking to collect their bounties," Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.
Last week President Joe Biden promised that his administration would explore a “whole-of-government" response to the Texas law. He condemned the restrictions, stating that the aid and abet clause “unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts."
Congressional Democrats are vowing to pass federal legislation to establish abortion access nationally. This includes a proposed bill known as the Women's Health Protection Act, which would create a statutory right to abortion care, effectively voiding restrictive state laws like Texas'.
“Every woman, everywhere has the constitutional right to basic health care," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a statement following the Supreme Court's ruling. “S.B. 8 is the most extreme, dangerous abortion ban in half a century, and its purpose is to destroy Roe v. Wade, and even refuses to make exceptions for cases of rape and incest. This ban necessitates codifying Roe v. Wade." But abortion rights legislation would face obstacles in the evenly divided Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass.
On Tuesday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for Garland to “use the full power of the Department of Justice to defend a woman's constitutional right to choose an abortion," including criminal prosecution against individuals who attempt to enforce Texas' law.
Ainsworth said the DOJ's lawsuit could lead to a different interpretation from the Supreme Court's majority opinion, which essentially argued that the court could not block Texas' law largely because it is individuals, not officials, who are in charge of enforcement.
An important distinction between the cases, Ainsworth said, is that the DOJ lawsuit holds Texas responsible for enabling individuals to sue. Part of the department's argument, she said, is this: “You may say that you farmed this out to private people to enforce and therefore you are free from any lawsuit against it, but you are wrong."
Those who successfully sue someone over an abortion would be awarded at least $10,000 and have their legal fees reimbursed. Lawsuits on the constitutionality of the six-week ban are pending.
Since the law took effect on September 1, clinics in the state have stopped scheduling abortion-related visits for people who are more than six weeks pregnant. A number of clinics in surrounding states have abortion appointments booked through mid-October, said Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund. Many people do not understand the specifics of the legislation, leaving them uncertain about what circumstances they can face legal action, Conner added.
Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes, one of the bill's lead authors, told The 19th last week that he has had conversations with other state lawmakers interested in writing similar legislation. In his news conference, Garland said any similar actions from other states will be met with federal action as well.
As the court battle over Texas plays out, abortion rights advocates are also looking ahead to another case that will allow the Supreme Court to determine whether Mississippi will be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. That restriction, like others around the country, has been on hold while it's being considered by the courts, and the decision could have wide-ranging effects.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.