On Monday the Dept. of Justice moved one step further to try to get the U.S. Supreme Court to block Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s near-total ban on abortion, which legal experts and now the DOJ itself say is unconstitutional.

“For half a century, this Court has held that ‘a State may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability,'” DOJ’s 39-page emergency filing signed by Acting Solicitor General Brian H. Fletcher reads.

BREAKING: The Justice Department has filed its emergency application asking the Supreme Court to block Texas’ six-week abortion ban.

The filing is here: https://t.co/iMHQxg7C8R https://t.co/YxOW0mLRxh

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) October 18, 2021

DOJ is asking SCOTUS to “vacate” the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal’s stay on a lower court’s ruling injunction that effectively stopped the law, known as SB 8, from going into effect.

But perhaps the most important part, as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, Buzzfeed’s Zoe Tillman, and others point to, is that DOJ is asking the Supreme Court to consider taking up the Texas law “this Term,” rather than using the highly-criticized shadow docket to enact its will.

Notable: Biden’s Justice Department wants to move the Texas abortion litigation off the Supreme Court’s shadow docket and onto the merits docket to secure full briefing, oral argument, and a decision this term. 👇https://t.co/QGWNuncgR8

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 18, 2021

Reuters’ U.S. Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley notes that the “appeals court decision that allowed the law to be enforced ‘enables Texas’s ongoing nullification of this Court’s precedents and its citizens’ constitutional rights,’ the Justice Department says.”

“The Texas law ‘defies’ the Supreme Court’s abortion precedents by ‘banning abortion long before viability — indeed, before many women even realize they are pregnant,’ the filing says,” Hurley adds.

He adds:

Justice Department says Texas’s argument that federal courts are “powerless” to block the abortion law is “as breathtaking as it is dangerous”

— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) October 18, 2021

Rewire News Group’s Senior Editor of Law & Policy, Imani Gandy adds:

The DOJ filed a cert petition with SCOTUS asking them to vacate the 5th Circuit’s stay. #SB8

It remains BEYOND ABSURD that this law is still in effect when under the Supreme Court’s own precedent, SB 8 is unconstitutional. It’s absolutely ridiculous. https://t.co/AEaouGKAK2

— 🎃Imani Gandy Corn🎃 (@AngryBlackLady) October 18, 2021

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough sounded the alarm over Donald Trump’s continued election lies.

The twice-impeached one-term president falsely claimed during a Georgia rally that the Arizona “audit” showed he had won and called on other states to conduct similar partisan probes to justify his lies about fraud — and the “Morning Joe” host explained how Trump was setting the stage to steal the 2024 election.

“Why are they changing election laws in states where Donald Trump won?” Scarborough said. “They’re afraid in 2024 he may not do as well, it may get closer and they may need to steal the election. For those of you, again, when you hear about voting reforms, you hear about a lot of the challenges that this country and this democracy is facing, it’s so important to look at the two phases these Trump-friendly states are doing.”

“The first phase, of course, is putting up roadblocks to prevent [voting], especially for Black voters and other people of color, but even more frightening than that for all Americans is the fact that they’re trying to change the rules on the counting of the votes, changing one state legislature after another in Trump-friendly territory is trying to make it so state legislatures can throw out your vote,” Scarborough added. “If you don’t vote for Donald Trump, if they don’t like what your community does or your precinct does or what your state does, these Republican legislatures that are Trumpists are now passing legislation that takes the power away from election officials and takes the power away from secretaries of state and governors.”

Scarborough warned that Trump and his conspiracy theories posed a direct threat to democracy, and he called on Democratic senators to eliminate the filibuster and pass legislation to save it over Republican objections.

“Democrats have the votes to actually pass legislation that will stop state legislators from stealing the election — from stealing the election — their intent, my good friend Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, their intent is to steal the election,” Scarborough said. “You can see the clear intent written on that legislation. If Mitch McConnell believes there should be an exemption for the filibuster for one of the most important things the Senate does, and that is confirming Supreme Court justices, there can’t be a filibuster for saving American democracy for voting rights laws for civil rights laws?”

“I guess the question in Washington has been for some time now, will the Democratic Party have the courage to count the 50 to stop these schemes for stealing elections and destroying American democracy?” he added. “Will they have the courage to count the 50 and do what Republicans would do in a New York second?”

Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner is demanding an investigation into the FBI after it was revealed that there were 4500 complaints filed against then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh that went ignored and were merely handed over to the White House.

The Guardian reported that the FBI claimed they didn’t have the authority to investigate Kavanaugh during his nomination process. It comes while the FBI is facing demands of a probe into how it mishandled allegations that Dr. Larry Nasser was molesting and raping Olympic gymnasts.

In 2018, when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward with her allegations of sexual assault when they were in high school. A Yale classmate also accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her when they were in college. The FBI has been accused of not thoroughly investigating those allegations, as well as flat-out ignoring thousands of others while doing a background check into Kavanaugh.

The FBI closed their background check after just four days, handing over all 4500 allegations against him to President Donald Trump’s White House officials.

“The very person — the very office that was trying to cram Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court down America’s throat,” said Kirschner.

It was only this week that the FBI revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee how many tips they got about Kavanaugh that went ignored.

“At the heart of the new questions that [Christopher] Wray will face later this week, when he testifies before the Senate judiciary committee, is a 2010 Memorandum of Understanding that the FBI has recently said constrained the agency’s ability to conduct any further investigations of allegations of misconduct,” said the report.

Kirschner explained that presumably the new administration has those 4500 accusations and could conduct an investigation into them. He went on to call for the 4500 citizen tips to be subpoenaed by Congress so that they can see the accusations that were ignored.

“Let’s start doing some damn justice,” he said, noting that women in Texas deserve it as do the rest of America.

“In its years-late response to our questions, the FBI leaned hard on the notion that this MOU limited its authority to be the FBI and investigate wrongdoing. Now that we have the MOU, it’s even harder to understand the Bureau’s excuses for ignoring credible information it received. Director Wray ought to be ready to answer my questions about this episode — I won’t stop asking until he does,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

See the analysis below: