Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: A new great migration?
This post was originally published on this site
We start today with Jerusalem Demsas of The Atlantic writing that while blue-state politicians are giving assurances that abortion rights will be defended in their states, those states might not be prepared for those that might eventually seek refuge in blue-states.
Blue-state politicians know that they can largely define how well rights are protected within their borders and, in the case of abortion, have promised to ensure ongoing access. After Politico published an article revealing that the Court may soon fully overturn Roe, California Governor Gavin Newsom pledged to enshrine the right to choose in the California Constitution. “We will do everything in our power to defend abortion rights in Connecticut,” Governor Ned Lamont said. “Let me be loud and clear: New York will always guarantee your right to abortion,” Governor Kathy Hochul stated.
What blue-state politicians are not doing is ensuring that people in other states can find refuge in Democratic states. For decades now, what was once commonplace—Americans moving from state to state—has been made exceedingly difficult, largely because of cost-of-living concerns. Declining rates of interstate mobility show that many Americans are stuck where they are, consigned to the political decisions of governments they may profoundly oppose, without an escape valve. Low-income Americans have also been forced out of expensive, typically blue states to less expensive, typically red ones, where their access to basic government protections may be nonexistent, but at least the average home price doesn’t exceed $600,000. Those who stay are resigned to watching more and more of their paycheck go to rent, and record numbers find themselves teetering on the edge of homelessness.
In a federal system, access to housing undergirds access to many of the civil rights Democrats claim they want to protect. If the price tag for those rights is $3,200 a month, that tells me all I need to know.
And as one other story in today’s APR points out, abortion rights isn’t the only reason that thousands of people (at the very least) may seek to move from a Republican-controlled state to a Democratic-controlled state.
Given the current SCOTUS make-up and the explicit threats contained in the Alito draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade to LGBTQ rights, I will probably never return to live in my home state of Michigan, in part, because this law is still on the books.
Robin Givhan of The Washington Post wonders why Chief Justice Roberts and various U.S. Supreme Court watchers are clutching their pearls over the leak of the Justice Alito draft opinion.
Alito’s draft opinion was published Monday evening by Politico and Tuesday afternoon, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. confirmed that it was authentic but not final and that he’d ordered an investigation into how the confidentiality of the court had been breached. People are shocked by this lapse of protocol, this egregious disregard for trust. But why should anyone be surprised? All the traditions and norms that have long held this country together have been breaking and fraying since the Trump era. There’s no wonder that the Supreme Court is coming apart at the seams, too. It doesn’t appear as though this country has the capacity to do anything with full-throated dignity and grace.
The other justices included in this tentative majority are Clarence Thomas, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. The draft is 98 pages long and spends a good deal of time expounding on the idea that there’s no tradition of a right to abortion because the subject of abortion rights didn’t come up until a few years before Roe was decided in 1973, which suggests that Alito believes that demanding full equality has some sort of due-by date or expiration date. Alito laments that there’s no precedent for recognizing abortion as a right even as he explains why the establishing precedent should be overturned.
It’s a head-spinning and sharply worded opinion and one that uses the political divide over abortion as a reason for the justices to eschew wisdom, mercy and compromise and simply throw up their hands and let the states do what they’d like, which is to essentially bend to the strongest political wind. For Alito, Roe v. Wade is bad because a lot of people found it upsetting and disagreed with it, even though the majority of the country actually believes it should be upheld.
Rebecca Solnit of the Guardian states the obvious that, nevertheless, needs to be said and repeated: elections and electoral coalitions are the only way out of this nightmare.
There are many kinds of actions to take in response to this likely overturning of a fundamental right to bodily self-determination and privacy. (And it’s bitterly amusing that a court that wants to set policies reaching into the uteruses of people across the country apparently feels violated by having its own internal workings exposed with this leaked draft opinion.) Direct support for the poor and unfree people who will be the most affected is already under way – and by unfree I mean those who are under the domination of a hostile partner, family, church or community. People have organized to offer travel to clinics for those far from them, access to abortion pills, and other forms of support. But by backlash I mean and am hoping for the kind of backlash Trump’s election and subsequent outrages provoked, the 2018 election that swept the Squad and many other progressives into office and took back the House of Representatives. A Democratic majority in both houses could make abortion a right by law, and it’s worth remembering that Mexico, Ireland and Argentina are among the countries that recently did so.
What is striking this time around in the US both about the rightwing agenda and the response is that it is broad enough to build powerful coalitions. The human rights activism of the 1990s was siloed: though the same voters and politicians might support LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights and racial justice, largely separate campaigns were built around each of them, and the common denominators were seldom articulated.This time around – well, as I wrote when the news broke: “First they came for the reproductive rights (Roe v Wade, 1973) and it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a uterus in its ovulatory years, because then they want to come for the marriage rights of same-sex couples (Obergefell v Hodges, 2015), and then the rights of consenting adults of the same gender to have sex with each other (Lawrence v Texas, 2003), and then for the right to birth control (Griswold v Connecticut, 1965). It doesn’t really matter if they’re coming for you, because they’re coming for us.”
And they have been coming for voting rights.
I assume that most of us understand why Ms. Solnit singled out Mexico, Ireland, and Argentina.
Niki Griswold of the Austin American-Statesman writes that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is now aiming for SCOTUS to declare the requirement of states to provide a public education for undocumented immigrants unconstitutional.
Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that Texas would consider challenging a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to offer free public education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants.
“Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler versus Doe,” Abbott said, speaking during an appearance on the Joe Pags show, a conservative radio talk show. “And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue. … I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago.”
The remarks came days after a leaked draft of a forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court opinion revealed that a majority of justices are poised to revoke Roe v. Wade, the landmark case establishing the right to abortion.
In Plyler v. Doe, SCOTUS overturned the Texas law by a 5-4 vote.
Benji Jones of Vox writes that coral reefs may be able to keep coastal cities above water in the future if only we take care of and protect them.
Tropical storms are among the most dangerous and costly natural disasters in the US. Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana last August, for example, cost Americans roughly $75 billion, cut power to more than a million homes and businesses, and killed dozens of people.
If that’s not bad enough, climate change is making hurricanes more destructive. Global warming raises sea levels and fuels storms with more water and stronger winds, increasing the risk of flooding. […]
Coral reefs are among the many ecosystems, including mangrove forests and wetlands, that can protect us. They function like natural breakwaters during a hurricane, helping to dampen or “break” waves that can flood homes and offices near shore.
The problem is that coral reefs are dying. Along with disease and pollution, climate change — the same force making hurricanes more damaging — has wiped out half of the world’s reefs. So to protect our coastal cities, scientists say, we should also protect and restore our coral reefs.
Who could have possibly known what would happen after the White House Correspondents Dinner last Saturday?
Chris Cameron/The New York Times
“Did none of you learn anything from the Gridiron Dinner? Nothing,” Mr. Noah said, referring to another elite Washington gathering in April, after which dozens of attendees tested positive for the coronavirus. “Do you read any of your own newspapers?”
By Wednesday, Mr. Noah’s chiding remarks at what he called “the nation’s most distinguished superspreader event” were beginning to appear prophetic as a growing number of attendees, including a string of journalists and Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, said they had tested positive for the virus. […]
The growing number of cases presented another sign of an official Washington that has largely returned to prepandemic routines, even as officials still urge Americans to take precautions, and has decided to live with the result.
Journalists across several major news organizations reported testing positive. Among those were Jonathan Karl, ABC News’s chief Washington correspondent, who shook hands with Mr. Biden during the dinner, and Steve Herman, the chief national correspondent at Voice of America. CNN reported that those infected also included staff members from its network, as well as NBC News, CBS News and Politico.
Eric Topol writes for The Los Angeles Times that COVID-19 Omicron variants continue to get more transmissible and are better at evading existing vaccines and boosters.
For perspective, Omicron’s BA.1 was about 50% more infectious than Delta, the variant it replaced. At the time, it was hard to conceive of a version of the virus that could be more contagious. But BA.2, which out-competed it here in the U.S., is 30% more transmissible than BA.1. And BA.2.12.1, now overtaking BA.2, is another 25% more infectious than BA.2. Accordingly, in recent months since Omicron was first recognized in the United States in late November, we’ve gone from a hyper-transmissible virus strain to two more that take that problem to another level.
To make matters worse, the Omicron-specific vaccines that are in clinical testing by multiple vaccine manufacturers, such as Moderna and Pfizer, use the BA.1 spike and will most likely not be adequately protective against BA.2.12.1 infections or other new Omicron family variants. […]
Although existing vaccines are not particularly helpful at preventing infections with or transmission of the new BA.2 variants, they do still work, especially with boosters, to protect against hospitalizations and deaths. We also have the Paxlovid pill pack for treatment of any of these variants, which has been shown to reduce hospitalizations and deaths by 89% in people deemed at high risk. While Paxlovid is variant-proof at this time, resistance can emerge, and there have been reports of early relapse, a problem that has not yet been adequately explained.
Natalia Datskevych of the Kyiv Independent details the economic costs to Ukraine of Russia’s invasion.
Fending off the war has cost big bucks for Ukraine.
According to Danylo Hetmantsev, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s finance and taxation committee, budgetary spending has quadrupled compared to that of peacetime. The monthly budget deficit currently ranges from $5-7 billion, most of which goes to the military and social support.
At the same time, the state’s main sources of income are in trouble. Total budget revenues have fallen by 75%.
Dividends paid by state-owned enterprises, which previously covered 30% of all revenues, are going down. Other forms of income are also expected to decline. Before the war started, Ukraine’s Finance Ministry planned to collect $18 billion of taxes on imported goods, $14 billion in value added tax, and $2.6 billion in excise taxes in 2022.
After one month of all-out war, the country’s customs managed to collect only a fifth of the planned revenues – $240 million instead of the expected $1.3 billion.
Ukraine is going to need something like a Marshall Plan.
Greg Miller and Shira Rubin of The Washington Post report exclusively on the failed efforts of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich to negotiate with Vladimir Putin and that those failed efforts have shielded Abramovich from being sanctioned by the United States.
While recasting himself as a back-channel diplomat, Abramovich has gone further than other Russian oligarchs in exploiting political connections and calling in favors to protect a financial empire that has sustained significant damage in the fallout from the war. It’s a gamble that risks ultimately backfiring by exposing his connections with the Russian president — ties that he had previously strongly denied.
Abramovich has enlisted support from unlikely sources, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who pressed both President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to refrain from imposing sanctions on Abramovich while he served as a channel to Putin, according to U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the matter.
Biden agreed to grant Abramovich a reprieve after a Zelensky request that seemed almost inadvertent, officials said. In March, Biden used a call with Zelensky to run through measures the administration planned to announce to support Ukraine, including sanctions targeting a list of Russians. Only when Zelensky heard Abramovich’s name did he ask that the administration hold off in hopes that the oligarch could prove useful in talks with the Kremlin, officials said. Zelensky’s intervention was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Shura Burtin writes a very long report for the Russian independent media outlet Meduza about how Russian citizens feel about the war in Ukraine.
“You know…The negative…”
I’d heard that word already, from my mother. On the third day of the war, I went over to her house and she suddenly started talking about targeted strikes and “where were we looking for the past eight years.” I started telling her about the bombings, about a girl I knew in Kharkiv who’d called me, terrified, during a break in the shelling. I explained that there was a real war going on and that I didn’t understand how people refused to see this monstrous thing. My mother sat there stupefied, staring down at the floor.
“People are tired of negativity,” she sighed.
That phrase explained something. In the past 20 years, every time I’ve happened to overhear what’s being said on television, they were frightening people with something: migrants, “Gayropa,” Banderites — the main thing is that these people are just “others.” I suppose that the audience itself had wanted this. Having something specific to fear was more manageable than the free-floating terror of the unknown that people were forced to live with during the 1990s. […]
When you read Hitler’s speech from September 1, 1939, you just can’t believe your eyes. At first I even thought it might be a Ukrainian fake. The night before the war, I got a similar shock from the reports of Ukrainian saboteurs invading Russia: a direct calque of the Gleiwitz incident. And on June 22, Hitler explained to the German people that there were 160 Russian divisions on the border ready to invade Europe. I don’t know who came up with this nasty joke, history in general or some specific cynics out there.
Here’s a (translated) transcript of Adolf Hitler’s speech before the Reichstag given on September 1, 1939 and here’s a (translated) transcript of Vladimir Putin’s televised address of February 24, 2022 announcing the special military operation in Ukraine.
Markus Becker, Jan Puhl, Mattias Gebauer, and Fidelius Schmid of Der Spiegel report that the European Commission is preparing to take steps to deal with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
In his speech given on March 15, the anniversary of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, which was quelled with Russian support, Orbán effectively gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a gift. Hungary, whose security and economic well-being is guaranteed by NATO and the EU, pursues only its own interests, even if neighboring Ukraine is brutally invaded. “God above us all,” were Orbán’s closing words. “Hungary above all else!”
With those words, Orbán alienated himself from the last allies he has left in Europe. Germany and the EU, meanwhile, are facing the wreckage of their policies toward Hungary. They largely stood by idly as Orbán established an autocracy in the middle of Europe. At the European level, the European People’s Party, which included Orbán’s Fidesz party alongside Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and it’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), hesitated to kick his party out of the bloc in the European Parliament for years. The Hungarian leader then withdraw his party on his own last March. The CSU, in particular, has courted the self-styled illiberal democrat from Budapest, while longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to contain Orbán through appeasement. […]
Last week, the European Commission activated its new funding withdrawal mechanism for the first time. In a 43-page letter obtained by DER SPIEGEL, the EU executive accuses Hungary of “systematic irregularities,” particularly in public procurement. It states that Hungary is steadily deteriorating in the fight against corruption. The abuses have continued for many years, despite constant reminders, the Commission stated, and it no longer had any other choice but to trigger the budget mechanism to prevent further abuse.
Robert Muggah writes for Foreign Policy that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is preparing to use all matter of “election-related chicanery” for Brazil’s October 2022 presidential elections.
Bolsonaro, his sons, and his closest advisors are widely recognized as the most prolific purveyors of such election-related chicanery. The president alone is accused of making more than 5,000 false or distorted statements to date, including repeated attacks against the TSE and supreme court. After setting up a dedicated unit in 2019 to fight fake news, the TSE received over 100,000 reports of misinformation and disinformation during the 2020 municipal elections. In order to accelerate efforts to reduce the spread of digital harms, the TSE and the Brazilian National Congress signed a new cooperation agreement in 2021. Meanwhile, a three-year investigation into fake news led by the STF is exposing a web of vested political and economic interests reaching the highest echelons of power. Last year, the TSE even authorized a formal investigation into Bolsonaro’s claim that efforts are underway to defraud the 2022 elections. Yet Latin America’s “Teflon president” has shrugged off these probes and continues to spew lies into the ether.
A growing number of Brazilian institutions are cracking down on such digital misdeeds. In 2021, Brazil’s federal police accused Bolsonaro and a constellation of his top advisors of coordinating a “hate cabinet” that reportedly played a “direct and relevant” role in spreading falsehoods about the electoral process. The feds reported how the secretive cabinet targeted opponents and disseminated disinformation to incite animosity against legislative, judicial, and military bodies on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and especially WhatsApp and Telegram. A separate parliamentary investigation warned of the risks these so-called digital militias pose to democracy.
Finally today, The Diplomat’s Uzair Younus reports that while Pakistan’s Parliament set former Prime Minister Imran Khan free, Khan and his followers just keep hangin’ on.
To come to power…Khan had to make certain compromises. He not only needed the approval of the country’s powerful army but also its powerful business tycoons, who began to fund his party. Professional turncoats, who change loyalties based on whom the establishment is signaling support for, were welcomed, and political opponents alleged that the playing field was not even.
Following the 2018 elections, his party managed to cobble together a coalition, with Khan becoming prime minister with only a four-vote margin in the lower house of the parliament. The compromises he made along the way, however, meant he was on a slippery slope right from the outset. This is why it was no surprise that within months of a fallout with Pakistan’s military establishment, the opposition was successfully able to win over political allies. To maintain a grip on power, Khan tried to subvert the constitution, only for the country’s Supreme Court to push back. Finally, a late night vote on April 10 in Pakistan’s lower house of parliament led to Khan’s removal from power.
But while Khan has lost the prime minister’s office, his core base of supporters has not abandoned him. They are rallying to his cause with increased vigor, and while Khan has said that he was ousted by the United States — an outlandish conspiracy theory — his supporters on social media and in private conversations blame the military establishment.
Everyone have a good day!