James Gallagher, who leads the Republican Party in the California State Assembly, snapped back at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s defense of abortion rights Wednesday, saying the governor is the “last person who should talk about constitutional rights.”
Gallagher was reacting to Newsom’s attack on a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which was leaked to Politico and published on Monday night. In the opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, speaking for a 5-4 majority of the Court, said the right to abortion had no basis in the Constitution and returned the contentious issue to the states to decide on their own.
Newsom reacted angrily, vowing to “fight like hell” and proposing an amendment to the state constitution to protect abortion.
Our daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers will not be silenced.
The world is about to hear their fury.
California will not sit back. We are going to fight like hell. https://t.co/EhwSWXiZhx
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) May 3, 2022
In a press briefing on Wednesday morning, Newsom repeated a false claim that President Joe Biden and other Democrats have made that Alito’s decision would threaten a variety of other rights, though Alito said in the opinion that it affected abortion alone: “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
After Newsom said that the 2022 midterm elections — including his own reelection race — would now be defined by the abortion issue, FOX 11 anchor Elex Michaelson asked him if abortion was more important than inflation and homelessness.
.@GavinNewsom says *the* issue of the 2022 election is abortion.
I asked him why that's more important than issues like inflation & homelessness?
"Rolling back your constitutional rights has a profound impact across the spectrum of issues. It’s a foundational issue." pic.twitter.com/y7MOCi9igq
— Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) May 5, 2022
Newsom replied that abortion was a “foundational issue,” suggesting that it was a basis for other constitutional rights.
Gallagher responded to that by arguing that Newsom was “the last person who should talk about constitutional rights”:
You would think the explosion of violent murders in LA and the fact that more Californians than ever can’t afford a home and are struggling to make it through the week might be higher on his priority list…
And he is the last person who should talk about constitutional rights https://t.co/oMqsfN7kx8
— James Gallagher (@J_GallagherAD3) May 5, 2022
Gallagher seemed to be referring to Newsom’s use of emergency coronavirus powers to shut down religious worship in the state. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2021 that Newsom’s ban on religious meetings in private homes was unconstitutional.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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