Independent News
Following major loss last fall, California's ban on private prisons will get a new day in court
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California Attorney General Rob Bonta said last fall that he would seek a rehearing after the conservatives from a three-judge appeals panel ruled against historic state law banning private, for-profit prisons. This includes detention facilities that imprison immigrants.
In a significant step forward for California—and the immigrant communities that passionately fought for the law’s passage in 2019—the state will get a new hearing in front of an 11-judge appeals panel. The three-judge panel’s Oct. 2021 ruling has also been thrown out, San Francisco Chronicle reported.
RELATED STORY: California attorney general seeks rehearing following ruling against state’s ban on private prisons
Bonta as a state assemblyman authored AB 32, which would block the state from entering into new private prison contracts, or renewing existing ones. “We are sending a powerful message that we vehemently oppose the practice of profiteering off the backs of Californians in custody,” Bonta said at the time. “We are committed to humane treatment for all.”
The bill targeted a deadly immigration detention facility operated by notorious private prison profiteer GEO Group, which, predictably, sued. While a George W. Bush-appointed judge initially ruled against GEO Group, the private prison profiteer appealed. Two of the judges were appointed by the previous administration. The third and lone dissenting judge was appointed by the Obama administration.
This rehearing means that California will now face off against the Biden administration. When the previous administration lost its coup attempt and left office on January 20, 2021, the new administration took over in urging the courts to block AB 32. “Biden’s Justice Department has backed the Trump administration’s position and argued that federal law does not authorize state regulation,” the Chronicle reported.
The Biden administration’s defense of GEO Group and its abhorrent facility is at odds with the president’s executive order directing the Justice Department to not renew private prison contracts, and his campaign pledge “that the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention, including detention of undocumented immigrants.” The Dignity Not Detention Coalition said last fall that a ruling in favor of GEO Group “would allow these detention centers, which have a long track record of serious abuse, to remain open.”
GEO Group also has the backing of the federal government as a court last fall ordered the company to pay $23 million in damages for violating minimum wage laws in Washington state. The Northwest ICE Processing Center facility had been forcing detained immigrants to work for $1 a day, and sometimes nothing at all. Rather than having to pay immigrants beyond what the court had required, the multi-billion company instead shut down this “Voluntary Work Program.”
In seeking a rehearing last fall, Bonta said that “for-profit, private prisons and detention facilities that treat people like commodities pose an unacceptable risk to the health and welfare of Californians. AB 32 puts people over profits.”
RELATED STORIES: Conservative judges overturn California’s ban on private prisons—with an assist from the Biden admin
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Biden responds to 'leaked' SCOTUS opinion, says abortion rights are 'fundamental'
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President Joe Biden has issued a statement emphasizing his commitment to keeping abortion accessible following the release of an alleged leaked draft opinion by Politico that states the Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights.
In the statement issued Tuesday, Biden noted that a women’s right to an abortion is a “fundamental.” He added that: “Roe has been the law of the land for almost fifty years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned.”
Biden did also question the legitimacy of the draft, noting that it was not confirmed as drafts often change, meaning it’s possible this could not be reflective of the court’s final decision. “We do not know whether this draft is genuine, or whether it reflects the final decision of the Court,” he said.
Despite the draft and what decision is made, he stayed hopeful that should it be true we are not at a complete loss. He called on voters to make a difference in the upcoming elections and elect pro-abortion rights officials at the federal level to help Democrats pass legislation protecting abortion rights.
“If the court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman’s right to choose,” Biden said. “And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November. At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice Senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law.”
The statement also shared that the White House counsel’s office and the Gender Policy Council have been working on options to respond to potential outcomes in the Supreme Court case.
Biden’s statement gives us hope because it signals consistency. Since being elected, Biden has emphasized his support of abortion rights. In January, on the 49th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade case, he issued a statement with Vice President Kamala Harris emphasizing how the constitutional right to an abortion “is under assault as never before.”
“It is a right we believe should be codified into law, and we pledge to defend it with every tool we possess,” the statement said. “We are deeply committed to protecting access to health care, including reproductive health care—and to ensuring that this country is not pushed backwards on women’s equality.”
His statement then focused on newly passed abortion laws in Texas and the Mississippi law that is currently challenging the landmark case.
”We must ensure that our daughters and granddaughters have the same fundamental rights that their mothers and grandmothers fought for and won,” the joint statement said.
The country is currently in shock following the leaked draft. Said to have been drafted in February, the 67-page draft opinion claims that Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey are both not grounded in the Constitution.
“We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives,” the draft opinion states.
According to the draft opinion, the high court plans to overturn the landmark case. If done, at least 26 states will ban abortion, impacting more than 40 million women of child-bearing age, The Guttmacher Institute said in a report.
The New York-based research organization also noted that in 2021, at least 22 states passed their own versions of abortion laws that would begin as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned. The states included Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
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Republican lawmakers and sedition supporters are irate that the end of Roe was leaked in advance
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You might have expected that Republican lawmakers would have been giddy last night with the leaked news that the newly far-right Supreme Court is on the cusp of granting their half-century-old dream, the dream of erasing abortion rights that was the very reason the party began putting forth those new archconservative nominees to begin with. Nope. Republican lawmakers were and continue to be absolutely furious, alleging that the rare (but hardly unprecedented) leak from the court is an outrage that must not be allowed to stand.
And so a parade of willing seditionists, defenders of corruption, and those who keep voting to block investigations into any of it in order to advance Republican power have spent the last 24 hours screaming about the norms while saying little to nothing about the raw cruelty of Alito’s leaked far-far-right opinion, or its hints that the Trump-packed court intends to use the Alito framework to undo rights ranging from LGBT marriage to contraception to anti-“sodomy” laws.
No, the Republican Party that both mounted an attempted coup and is still working, to this day, to block the investigations into who organized the effort and who they had help from—they’re very mad about the Alito-written draft opinion getting leaked. It didn’t even take an hour for that to become The Talking Point.
The Senate’s two most visible insurrection backers weighed in, of course. Sen. Ted Cruz was outraged by the “blatant attempt to intimidate the Court through public pressure rather than reasoned argument,” which you know is bullshit because insurrection. At the same time, Sen. Josh Hawley immediately went weird conspiracy crank because apparently not even history-shaking reality is as exciting as the theories in his own head.
There’s no part of that that makes sense, which is how you know Josh Hawley wrote it himself. He also has a solution: The Libs Made Me Fascist Harder!
Elsewhere in Team Active Sedition, we find that same “intimidating,” coupled with a “radical left.” It’s not attempting to overthrow the U.S. government or packing the courts with unqualified hardliners that’s radical; it’s some clerk or technical worker inside the Supreme Court leaking the end of abortion rights in this nation before Team Sedition’s justices have fully crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s.
The man who broke the court himself, Mitch McConnell, repeats the notion that the real “mob rule” is a random leaker inside the Supreme Court. “Escalation,” “radical left,” “attack,” and “intimidate” are all used, giving the impression of coordinated violence akin to, say, insurrection to describe reporters getting a leaked document from an unknown government source.
What’s important here, however, is to remember that McConnell is the most prolific liar in all of government now that Trump is gone. He literally gives speeches like this on a daily basis, all explaining that “the left” are the real radicals and that he is a man of high principle who would never do the things he just did. Mitch McConnell invented new rule after new rule to make sure the Supreme Court slid to the current archconservative dismantlers even as America continued to vote for Democratic presidents to undo it. There’s nobody who’s been more radical; a press leak may be embarrassing, but it’s neither an insurrection nor a spate of new laws blocking Americans from their ballots.
Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Alito’s hyper-cruel opinion must be hidden from the public lest Alito feel vulnerable about it. Every theocratic fascist is secretly a wilting flower, which is why we’re getting all these new laws banning books that make people like Sam Freaking Alito feel bad.
OH MY GOD I’m just going to start filtering out any tweets or news stories that so much as mention Susan Collins’ name. Susan Collins could be replaced with a potted plant and it would make absolutely no difference in anyone’s lives, ever. Imagine basing a whole political career on the theme of being the single most gullible person in America—and getting reelected for it.
But the talking point is the talking point, and it’s still going.
Hey, it’s Guy Who’s All About Projecting Dignity While His Party Collapses Into Fascism:
Also Sen. Lindsey Graham said something, and I don’t even care. Lindsey saved his top career meltdown for the purpose of railroading a serial sex predator through the confirmation process rather than abide testimony against him. We all already know what he thinks about the “dignity” of our court systems.
Instead, here’s another reminder that this other guy remains neck-deep in the attempt to nullify an American election rather than recognize the right of Americans to pick non-Republican winners:
What a toad this guy is. But the notion that “a Supreme Court leak is the real insurrection” has gotten a lot of traction among the people who … don’t think actual insurrections are bad.
All right, that one’s simply amazing. It should come with its own theme song.
There is a distinct link between the curtailing of abortion rights and rising fascism, by the way.
There are two things to note that make Team Sedition’s posturing here even more grotesque than it first appears—aside from the uncanny link between restricting reproductive justice and authoritarianism/fascism. The first is that we sincerely don’t know who could have leaked this opinion or why, and we probably won’t know for a long time. There’s just as much reason to expect a conservative abortion opponent inside the court leaked the document to blame a secret liberal inside the court; if conservative justices were feeling uneasy about the sheer magnitude of what Alito intends to unravel, leaking the document would paint a target on whichever conservative justices were threatening to back out.
So it’s yet again the case that the Republicans insisting that their enemy, “the left,” are responsible for the latest crimes against Washington decency are basing those claims on fictions inside their own heads. They don’t know who leaked any more than the rest of us do, and they don’t know why.
The other detail that Republican outrage is conveniently ignoring is that while Supreme Court leaks are rare, they’re far from unprecedented. And leaking about Roe, in particular, is quite precedented!
Unlike an attempt by House and Senate Republicans to nullify an American presidential election based on false claims and party-pushed hoaxes, leaks from the Supreme Court are not, in fact, unprecedented assaults on our democracy.
One can even make the case that our Supreme Court justices might behave a bit better if there were more leaks into how they arrive at their decisions, given this new court’s unwillingness to even issue written explanations of some of their most radical orders. Perhaps we would learn more about why the wife of a Supreme Court justice felt so confident about her own role in an attempted pro-Trump coup, and why that justice voted to block further evidence from coming to light. Perhaps we would learn why the court is currently pretending, very very hard, to be confused over whether constitutionally protected rights can be scrubbed out by any state willing to hire private bounty hunters to do it for them.
Perhaps we’d learn why Alito’s opinion leans so heavily into arguments that not just abortion rights need to be erased, but that civil rights legislation needs to be rolled back by several generations—back to the days when American women couldn’t open bank accounts without their husband’s permission, much less have control over their own human selves. Perhaps, though, we’d just learn that the current Supreme Court is just as devoted to forcing Republican rule onto the rest of us as the Josh Hawleys of the party are. They just don’t have to explain themselves when they do it.
RELATED LINKS:
Leaked draft of Supreme Court opinion shows justices have voted to overturn Roe v. Wade
Supreme Court confirms authenticity of leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion, opens investigation
Republicans plot national abortion ban as Democrats fail to even run on expanding the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has gone completely rogue, and promises worse. Expanding it is the only answer
Fight back! A list of a few reproductive justice organizations you can support today
Supreme Court confirms authenticity of leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion, opens investigation
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The Supreme Court announced Tuesday both its confirmation of a draft decision indicating a plan to overturn Roe v. Wade and its order to investigate the leak of the draft.
A letter from the office of public information calls the leaked draft, obtained by Politico Monday night, “authentic”—but clarified that it “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”
RELATED STORY: Fight back! A list of a few reproductive justice organizations you can support today
Justice John G. Roberts condemns the leak as a “betrayal of confidences” and writes that it was “intended to undermine the integrity of the operations,” adding that it will “not succeed.”
Roberts went on to refer to the leak as “a singular and egregious breach” of trust and an “affront to the Court, and the community of public servants who work here.” Roberts says that he’s directed the Marshal of the Court to open an investigation into the leak.
Yale law professor and former Supreme Court clerk Amy Kapczynski speculates that the leak came from a “conservative fanatically committed to every word of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft.”
Kapczynski’s Twitter thread highlights the timing of the leak.
“If a liberal was mad about it, why wait until April to send it to Politico? The op will be out in June. What are the benefits of releasing it early? And a BIG downside—the focus on the leak itself instead of the opinion,” Kapczynski tweeted.
Kapczynski says draft “majorities circulate first, and then concurrences and dissents. So this is about the right timing for concurrences to come out. I think best bet is that Chief Justice Roberts circulated one recently, adopting a more moderate position… Maybe Roberts says abortions ok in some time frame, preserving exceptions for the life of the woman, etc. And Kavanaugh is tempted by it—maybe not enough to vote for it, but enough to demand some changes to the Alito opinion.”
Essentially, Kapczynski says leaks are a well-sharpened tool conservatives use to show they’re bold enough to break the rules and public trust to get what they want… and then blame the left. But, in the end, the leak isn’t the story. The opinion is.
Congrats, Gov. Greg Abbott! You cost Texas a major railway from Mexico
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Texas is off the table as pathway for the ambitious T-MEC Corridor, a railway project meant to connect Mazatlán in Mexico’s Sinaloa state with Winnipeg in Canada’s Manitoba province. Mexican Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier spoke about the decision during this year’s Latin American Cities conference presented by the Americas Society Council of the Americas. Much of what Clouthier had to say had to do with the conference’s theme of nearshoring, the practice of outsourcing to a nearby country. In Clouthier’s case, parts of that nearby country (the state of Texas in the U.S.) have been inhospitable to the T-MEC Corridor, so the route will instead run through New Mexico. It was originally planned to go through the Lone Star State until Gov. Greg Abbott temporarily required “enhanced” inspections of commercial trucks traveling from Mexico to Texas.
The added inspections, which Abbott claimed would counteract potential smuggling and address safety concerns, ultimately turned up nothing and led to Texas losing $4 billion over the stunt, which lasted just 10 days. Not content to shoot himself in the foot just once, when Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador voiced his displeasure over the added checks, Abbott threatened to do it again. For that reason, Clouthier said last week that Mexico is “now not going to use Texas.” “We can’t leave all the eggs in one basket and be hostages to someone who wants to use trade as a political tool,” she added.
Clouthier’s remarks centered on what would ultimately benefit Mexico as a sure bet, so it makes sense that she would shirk Abbott’s volatility and route the T-MEC Corridor through Santa Teresa, New Mexico, which sits just 20 miles west of downtown El Paso, according to the Dallas Morning News. New Mexico officials hailed the development, with Border Industrial Association President Jerry Pacheco telling the paper that already he’s seen the difference in how Mexico interacts with New Mexico based on Abbott’s decisions. The brief period of added inspections, which lasted from April 6 to April 15, led to hours of backups for border crossings, wasting both time and money. Pacheco said that during that time—and even now—communities in Mexico and the U.S. are finding that Santa Teresa is a faster route comparatively.
“It’s been very interesting, but since Gov. Abbott’s truck inspections went away, our traffic numbers remain higher than normal in terms of northbound cargo shipments, which leads me to believe that what I thought would be a temporary fix is actually going to stick in the long term,” the Santa Teresa-based Pacheco told the Dallas Morning News. Pacheco admitted that the T-MEC project is still in its early stages but that New Mexico being brought up as a key component of the route is “a positive thing.”
The Supreme Court has gone completely rogue, and promises worse. Expanding it is the only answer
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The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to strike down a half century of precedent on abortion. We knew that was likely coming, but the leaked draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito makes it starkly clear that the extremist court majority is laying down a foundation for an even more radical remaking of American society. The decision as Alito has written it takes aim as well at LGBTQ rights and marriage equality, legalized contraception, the right not to be forcibly sterilized, and interracial marriage. All lack “any claim to being deeply rooted in history,” Alito says.
That court majority is the result of a concerted effort by Mitch McConnell to pack the court. In an unprecedented and unprincipled and unconstitutional maneuver, he denied the duly elected President Barack Obama a Supreme Court seat. He was ruthlessly focused on this outcome: a court that would upend decades of progress for all American citizens who are not rich white males.
They’ve already eviscerated voting rights. All our other rights are going to start falling like dominoes now. This McConnell- and Trump-packed court is drunk on power and set to do what hard-right activists have been aiming to do for decades: cement the hard-right minority rule across the nation.
That’s the kind of single-minded ruthlessness we need to see from Democrats. So far, it’s missing.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning that he will bring the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation the House passed back in September to codify abortion rights, to the Senate floor. “A vote on this legislation is not an abstract exercise,” he said.
Except that it is. What makes it abstract is that it won’t pass without ending the filibuster, which won’t happen with the current 50-50 split and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. What makes it abstract is that, even if it does pass, legislating Roe is not enough because of this:
Activist Trump judges would make damned sure that new law was stopped, knowing that the Supreme Court would uphold their decisions. Schumer ignores that reality, and isn’t actually looking at taking action that would safeguard our rights—fixing the Supreme Court—but taking action aimed at the next election. He said so. “The elections this November will have consequences, because the rights of 100 million women are now on the ballot.”
Meanwhile, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin told reporters that “there’s no discussion among Senate Democrats about expanding court, but there’s talk of other legislative action to respond to Alito draft opinion on Roe v. Wade.” Once again, legislation that would not survive with this Supreme Court.
Democratic leadership simply isn’t keeping up with reality. It’s going to take just as much creativity and ruthlessness as the right has shown to fix this, to save this country. Alito’s opinion, as drafted and there’s no reason to think it won’t be final, is an absolute clarion call for swift, dramatic action.
Even if that action fails in the immediate term, it’s what the American people need to see from Democrats. Voters need to see a fight. They need to know that Democrats will do whatever it takes to protect them.
What it will take isn’t even a radical thing—expanding the Supreme Court is perfectly constitutional. The court doesn’t have to be nine people. The seats on the court don’t have to be permanent. None of that is prescribed in the Constitution. Expanding and reforming the court is simply the necessary response to the very dire and imminent threat.
The last thing that we need to see from elected Democrats and the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC crew are appeals to vote harder and send more money. The case for why Democrats need to be elected in greater majorities is clear, but we need to see what Democrats are going to do with the blood, sweat, tears, and money we’re expected to pony up. Show us you’ll fight.
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Fight back! A list of a few reproductive justice organizations you can support today
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While many of us were just getting ready for bed Monday night, we learned of a leaked draft of an opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito indicating that the court has plans to overturn Roe v. Wade. The 98-page document, obtained by Politico, was drafted in February and poses one of the most direct hits on abortion since Roe’s 1973 decision.
RELATED STORY: Legendary reproductive justice activist advises women to start talking openly about abortion
“The looming loss of reproductive rights is widespread, with 13 states having trigger laws that will ban abortion the moment the court allows it. But as of now, Roe v. Wade remains the law (except in Texas, which the Supreme Court allowed to implement a six-week abortion ban last fall), and it will do so until a final, non-draft, not-leaked opinion is officially released,” Laura Clawson writes for Daily Kos.
Here’s a list of some organizations fighting for reproductive rights and the right to safe and legal abortion.
Whole Woman’s Health Alliance (WWHA) is a nonprofit offering abortion services and advocacy to eradicate the stigma around abortion. WWHA also provides financial support for patients who cannot afford the entire cost of abortion via the Stigma Relief Fund. WWHA also works in states with the strictest regulations on abortion. Part of the organization’s work is fighting anti-abortion lawmakers, working with other abortion providers, and as allies and co-plaintiffs in lawsuits in states such as Texas and Indiana. WWHA has clinics in Virginia, Texas, Indiana, and Minnesota.
Jane’s Due Process helps young people in Texas “navigate parental consent laws” and obtain an abortion or birth control. Additionally, they provide free legal support and education on sexual and reproductive health.
Cobalt is a nonprofit dedicated to abortion access in Colorado.
“This is exactly what we feared and why it was so important for Colorado to protect the fundamental right to abortion in Colorado law with the Reproductive Health Equity Act,” Cobalt President Karen Middleton said.
“We have warned legislators and the public alike that the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, and this further confirms it. Regardless of what the Supreme Court ultimately decides with a final decision, because of RHEA, Coloradans have the right to abortion access affirmed in our state law. This makes the urgent need to put the right to abortion in our Constitution in 2024 even more of a priority, and to hold accountable those who didn’t support abortion access with RHEA in 2022,” Middleton added.
SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective is an Atlanta-based membership organization dedicated to fighting for reproductive issues impacting marginalized communities. Launched in 1997 by 16 organizations of women of color, SisterSong is the largest national multi-ethnic reproductive justice collective. The organization’s mission is to “strengthen and amplify the collective voices of Indigenous women and women of color to achieve reproductive justice by eradicating reproductive oppression and securing human rights.”
Carolina Abortion Fund (CAF) was founded in 2011 by a group of “clinic defenders who were tired of seeing patients delaying or canceling their appointments just because they couldn’t afford the full cost out of pocket.” CAF operates a confidential helpline to help those in North and South Carolina access safe abortion care.
Arkansas Abortion Support Network (AASN) was founded in 2016. It’s an all-volunteer nonprofit comprised of three abortion organizations that help escort patients to Arkansas’s only abortion clinic, provide for costs of procedures, and offer travel, lodging, and child care.
“It’s important to know that abortion is still legal, if not easily accessible, in Arkansas. It’s important to know that this opinion is a draft and not a final decision… It’s also important to know that this is serious and very scary. This draft opinion seems unlikely to change and Roe will fall next month,” a statement from AASN reads. Adding: “We expect the need for abortion funding to go through the roof. Not only will all Arkansans in need of abortion care be forced to travel out of state, increasing logistical costs, but the remaining clinics will be overwhelmed and will likely have to schedule abortions further out, increasing the cost of the procedure.”
Upon learning of the drafted decision by Justice Alito obtained by Politico Monday, NARAL Pro-Choice America Mini Timmaraju wrote:
“This is the most ominous and alarming sign yet that our nation’s highest court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion as we know it and ripping away our freedom to decide if, when, and how to raise our families. While this is a draft opinion and abortion is still legal, we need to brace for a future where more and more people are punished and criminalized for seeking and providing abortion care. Now more than ever, we must support those working to provide abortion care and elect champions who will relentlessly fight for reproductive freedom and take bold action to safeguard abortion rights.”
The National Network of Abortion Funds helps provide financial and logistical access to abortions for those who need it. Access can include funding for an abortion, transportation, child care, translation, doula services, and a place to stay if a pregnant person is forced to travel to get an abortion.
A statement from Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America:
“Let’s be clear: Abortion is legal. It is still your right.
“This leaked opinion is horrifying and unprecedented, and it confirms our worst fears: that the Supreme Court is prepared to end the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade. While we have seen the writing on the wall for decades, it is no less devastating and comes just as anti-abortion rights groups unveil their ultimate plan to ban abortion nationwide. Understand that Planned Parenthood and our partners have been preparing for every possible outcome in this case and are built for the fight. Planned Parenthood health centers remain open, abortion is currently still legal, and we will continue to fight like hell to protect the right to access safe, legal abortion.”
Advocates for Youth, founded in 1980, the nonprofit fights for sexual health, rights, and justice for young people. One of the programs Advocates for Youth created is called Abortion Out Loud. It began as a storytelling campaign with over 1,500 shared stories, used to educate policymakers on decisions about abortion access.
“As I have shared my story around the country, more often than not, other people offer up theirs in response. The result is a bond stronger than the anti-choice rhetoric or the fear of retaliation or violence that too often finds its way into the political debate. In its place is empathy for the complexity of our lives, for the commonalities that bind us, for the need to keep abortion care safe and available,” says Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth.
Ukraine update: Surprise Ukrainian gains north of Kharkiv could impact Battle for Donbas
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The big story today is that something not small happened over the last week. Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine moved to what is being called the Battle of the Donbas, most actions seem to have taken place at a rate that roughly approximates the growth of fingernails. Here and there Russian forces have managed to advance, but far more often attempts to dislodge Ukrainian forces from towns and villages have been repulsed.
Sadly, because the area of the battle is close to the Russian border, Russia is able to defend the airspace with both planes and anti-aircraft systems working from across the border. That makes it difficult for Ukrainian aircraft to operate in the area and give Ukraine the kind of air support that would allow them to make large-scale counter attacks. So Russia keeps shelling, then tries to move forward. Then it shells some more. Russian losses are terrible. Ukrainian losses are also painfully high. But Ukraine has multiple prepared positions against just this kind of attack, and Russia has nothing like the ratio of forces necessary to overwhelm Ukrainian positions.
So, in most of eastern Ukraine, the fields are getting heavily fertilized with blood, and the muddy roads are getting heavily strewn with wreckage, but not much else is happening that looks like progress for either side.
Which only serves to make what’s happening north of Kharkiv more exciting.
Over the last week, Ukraine has mounted a steady counteroffensive directed at troops north of Kharkiv and west of the Siverskyi Donets River. Starting with Russian forces right on the doorstep of the battered city, Ukraine has pushed back through the suburbs, then into outlying towns and villages along multiple roadways. On the west, they’ve pressed in to take the town of Udy, less than 5 miles from the Russian border.
In what may be one of the most impressive moves of the second phase of the war, Ukrainian forces bypassed Russian forces in multiple villages, took a series of small roads, and entered the town of Staryi Saltiv on Sunday—a move so unexpected that when I first got reports of Ukrainian forces in the town, I disregarded them. After all, there were several other areas with Russian occupation “in the way.”
But the Ukrainian move into Staryi Saltiv was real, and though fighting in the town continues, it seems that Russian forces that were south of that location, but on the west bank of the Donets, have gone missing. In other words, they’ve withdrawn north or south before they could be cut off and chopped up in an isolated position. As a result, a whole chain of villages appears to have come back into Ukrainian-controlled territory without the need for a step-by-step fight.
Reports have indicated that the troops assigned to this area by Russia just are not very good, or that some of them are forced conscripts put in place by the Luhansk “republic.” Whatever the case, Ukraine has been able to shift them roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) since the counterattack out of Kharkiv began.
However, it’s not clear that this will continue. Russian forces may be falling back in chaos, with Ukrainian forces chasing them to the border. On the other hand, they may be falling back behind lines being held by more stalwart troops, where they can get their act together and be plugged back into the line.
For Russia, the threat is not so much that Ukrainian forces will march to the border and just keep going. The threat is right there in Staryi Saltiv. That’s because this town is the site of a highly strategic bridge crossing. If that bridge is intact, and Ukrainian forces could push over the Donets, they would be in the rear—and sitting on the supply line—of a whole series of Russian-held towns to the south. If they could push 15 miles north from there, they could reach Vovchans’k, a critically important road and rail junction. All the men and material coming in from Belgorod (20 miles northwest) passes through this point.
These actions seem improbable. Even laughable. But then, so did the possibility of Ukraine suddenly showing up in Staryi Saltiv in the first place. Right now, pro-Ukraine Twitter is full of tweets like this one:
Meanwhile, pro-Russian Twitter is full of claims that the territory taken by Ukraine had “no military value,” that Russia only fell back to more important positions, and that by doing so it freed up forces to be used elsewhere.
Right now, the fog of war over what’s happening at Staryi Saltiv is a real pea-souper. But as we go through today, maybe it will be possible to tell what’s happening. If Ukraine continues to advance along those other roads moving north of Kharkiv, it may signal a general Russian withdrawal from the area west of the Donets. If Ukraine reports that it has put forces on the east side of that bridge, it will be a genuinely big deal—one that’s likely to demand Russia turn some force around from other efforts to secure its rear.
One thing to watch for soon: Look for what happens in the town of Shestakove and village of Fredirivka north of Kharkiv. These towns are sitting on a much better roadway between Kharkiv and Staryi Saltiv. If Ukraine really intends to move a lot of force in that direction, expect these towns to become the focus of some attention Real Soon Now.
North Carolina, Virginia officials use polluters' ghostwritten letters to boost fossil fuel projects
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A series of natural gas projects are receiving support from mostly Republican officials in Virginia and North Carolina, who mainly signed off on the ghostwritten language of lobbyists and consultants working with pipeline firms to make their plans a reality. According to Huff Post, at least two Transco pipeline expansion projects and two pipeline replacement projects had the support of lawmakers who submitted letters to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission containing language proposed by Williams Companies Inc. and TC Energy Corporation. This information came to the Huff Post courtesy of a public records request filed by the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog organization dedicated to combatting fossil fuel misinformation.
In at least one instance, officials barely changed a thing when presented with a draft letter. Mecklenburg County, Virginia, Administrator Wayne Carter proposed “minor tweaks,” according to Huff Post, before signing off on and submitting a letter of support for Williams Companies’ Southside Reliability Enhancement Project, which would impact 117 acres of land and include the building of a new compression station in Mecklenburg County, pipeline replacements, and upgrades to an existing station in North Carolina. Carter received the letter from Advantus Strategies President Robert Crockett, who’s a lobbyist for Williams Companies. Republicans like Virginia state Sen. Frank Ruff and state Delegates Tommy Wright Jr. and Les Adams all submitted FERC letters with identical or similar language found in Carter’s letter.
As Huff Post notes, Ruff and Wright “submitted nearly identical letters to FERC in March in support of Williams’ separate Commonwealth Energy Connector Project, another Transco expansion aimed at increasing natural gas supply to southeastern Virginia.” It’s worth noting that Williams Companies is one of a few dozen oil and gas companies that donated thousands of dollars to Ruff’s past political campaigns. The list is much shorter for Wright, though Williams Companies ranks as one of his top oil and gas industry campaign donors. The problem extends into North Carolina, where some of these pipeline expansions would be headed.
Lobbyist Wayne King, a former North Carolina Republican Party vice chairman, successfully got some of his talking points to be included verbatim in letters of support for the Transco pipeline projects from Republicans Tim Moore, who is state House Speaker, and Mooresville Mayor Miles Atkins. Republican state Sen. Bob Steinburg also piggybacked off those same Williams Companies talking points. Unsurprisingly, Moore received campaign donations from Williams Companies in the past and therefore was fairly sympathetic when approached by King. Perhaps Atkins and Steinburg are hoping for similar benefits. There’s plenty more similar corruption for similar projects to dig into in the Huff Post article, which is most certainly worth a read.
Morning Digest: Join us for our liveblog tonight as the 2022 primaries resume in Ohio and Indiana
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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
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Leading Off
● Primary Night: Strictly Come Vancing: After a two-month break, the 2022 primary season picks are back with a vengeance Tuesday in Ohio and Indiana, and we’ve put together our preview of the night’s key races in both states.
Polls close at 6 PM ET in the portion of Indiana located in the Eastern Time Zone, while the rest of the state follows an hour later. Voting concludes in Ohio at 7:30 PM ET, and our live coverage will begin then at Daily Kos Elections. You can also follow us on Twitter for blow-by-blow updates, and you’ll want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states. (Next week will bring us contests in Nebraska and West Virginia.)
The main event is Ohio’s massively expensive Republican primary for the state’s open Senate seat, where venture capitalist J.D. Vance is hoping that a late endorsement from Donald Trump will put him over the top (even if Trump himself hasn’t bothered to remember Vance’s name), but it’s far from the only primary on tap. Buckeye State Republicans are taking part in their race for governor as well, where a recent poll finds incumbent Mike DeWine beating former Rep. Jim Renacci with a plurality of the vote.
There’s also several big House contests to see. Over in Ohio’s 11th District, Rep. Shontel Brown faces a Democratic primary rematch against former state Sen. Nina Turner, a prominent Bernie Sanders supporter whom she defeated in last year’s special election in an upset.
In the Toledo-based 9th, meanwhile, two Republican state legislators are competing to go up against 20-term Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in a newly-gerrymandered constituency. And in south-central Indiana’s 9th, former Rep. Mike Sodrel is hoping to return to the House 16 years after he was ejected from it, but he has to get past several fellow Republicans first. You can find details on these contests, as well as a whole lot more, in our preview.
Senate
● NC-Sen: Rep. Ted Budd’s allies at the Club for Growth are out with a new survey from WPA Intelligence that shows him defeating former Gov. Pat McCrory 43-23 in the May 17 Republican primary, which is an improvement from the congressman’s 44-31 edge a little less than a month ago.
● NH-Sen: Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan is using her first TV ad of the campaign to tell the audience, “I am taking on members of my own party to push a gas tax holiday, and I am pushing Joe Biden to release more of our oil reserves. That’s how we lower costs and get through these times.”
Governors
● GA-Gov: Republican firm InsiderAdvantage’s new poll for Fox5 Atlanta shows Gov. Brian Kemp fending off former Sen. David Perdue 54-38 in the May 24 Republican primary, which is a big improvement from the incumbent’s 44-35 lead two months ago. Every poll we’ve seen in the last few weeks has found Kemp taking the majority he needs to avert a June runoff.
● HI-Gov: Former Ultimate Fighting Championship champion B.J. Penn has declared that he’ll seek the Republican nomination to lead heavily Democratic Hawaii, an announcement that the mask and vaccine mandate foe naturally made to podcaster Joe Rogan. The UFC forbade Penn from fighting again in 2019 after videos showed him involved in a bar brawl, though he was not arrested or charged.
● ID-Gov, ID-AG: Idaho Dispatch last month released a mid-April survey from Zoldak Research, a firm we haven’t previously encountered, that shows incumbent Brad Little turning back Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin 60-29 in the May 17 Republican primary. We haven’t seen any other polls all year testing Little’s prospects against McGeachin, a far-right favorite who sports Trump’s endorsement.
But the news isn’t good for five-term Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, as Zoldak shows former Rep. Raúl Labrador narrowly leading him 36-33. The Club For Growth, which is running commercials attacking Wasden, publicized an internal back in March that had Labrador ahead by a large 35-14 in the GOP nomination contest.
● KY-Gov: State Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles said Saturday that he was entering next year’s Republican primary to take on Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. Quarles’ only notable intra-party foe so far is state Auditor Mike Harmon, who has struggled to raise money, but considerably more Bluegrass State Republicans are eyeing the contest: Secretary of State Michael Adams, who himself hasn’t quite ruled it out, mused, “I think we’re going to need more paper for the ballots.”
And while we hadn’t previously heard state Sen. Ralph Alvarado mentioned as a possibility, the Associated Press reports that he’s indeed considering. Alvarado became incumbent Matt Bevin’s running mate in 2019 after the then-governor ejected Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton from his ticket, but the duo narrowly lost to Beshear and Jacqueline Coleman.
● MA-Gov: Suffolk University, working on behalf of the Boston Globe, is out with the first survey we’ve seen of the general election to succeed retiring Republican incumbent Charlie Baker, and it finds Massachusetts Democrats well-positioned to retake the governorship after eight years. Attorney General Maura Healey leads both former state Rep. Geoff Diehl and wealthy businessman Chris Doughty 54-27 and 55-25, respectively, while state Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz outpaces them 45-29 and 43-27.
The school also tests out an extremely hypothetical scenario where Baker runs for re-election as an independent and has him beating Healey 37-28, with 17% going to the Trump-endorsed Diehl. Baker, though, has shown no obvious interest in abandoning either his party or his retirement plans.
● WI-Gov: Democratic incumbent Tony Evers has launched a $3.5 million opening ad buy, and his first spot commends him for saving jobs, improving public schools and roads, and working “with Republicans and Democrats to pass middle class income-tax relief.”
House
● AL-05: The May 24 Republican primary for this safely red open seat was a pretty low-key affair until last week, but that all changed when former Department of Defense official Casey Wardynski’s allies at the nihilist House Freedom Caucus dropped $192,000 on TV spots, plus another $83,000 on digital ads, attacking Madison County Commission Chairman Dale Strong. Wardynski and Strong are the only candidates who have brought in a serious amount of money in the contest to succeed Senate candidate Mo Brooks.
The commercial accuses Strong of voting to put a tax increase on the ballot and having “stood with the radical woke left and supported relocating an historic Civil War statue in Madison County.” (Strong maintains that he took action to protect that Confederate monument from damage.) The Freedom Caucus then goes after the commissioner for daring to donate to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney but not Trump. The ad does not mention Wardynski, who recently made a remarkably stiff appearance in his own spot.
● CA-13: Financial advisor Phil Arballo’s first commercial for the June 7 top-two primary goes after his fellow Democrat, Assemblyman Adam Gray, from the left. The ad features several local people arguing that the assemblyman has aided oil companies while benefiting from their donations, and that he “even stood with Donald Trump when Trump let polluters put our water at risk.” The final third of the commercial praises Arballo, who was the 2020 nominee in the old 22nd District, as someone who “rejects corporate PAC money.”
● Colorado: The deadline to turn in petitions to make Colorado’s June 28 primary passed all the way back on March 15, but because the state takes several weeks to verify signatures, we only now have an official list. Several people also reached the primary ballot by competing at their party conventions (also known as the party assemblies), a process we explain here. We mentioned which major candidates were still in the running following the assemblies for Senate and governor, as well as for the 5th, 7th, and 8th Congressional Districts, though a few contenders were in limbo as they waited for their petitions to be verified.
We now know, however, that business owner Andrew Heaton will indeed be competing in the GOP primary for the safely red 5th in the Colorado Springs area, which is potentially good news for Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn. Both Heaton and Navy veteran Rebecca Keltie have brought in almost no money, but their presence could cost state Rep. Dave Williams some anti-incumbent votes. In the open 7th, by contrast, the GOP is set for a three-way race because both attorney Brad Dempsey and construction company owner Carl Andersen failed to turn in enough signatures, though both are challenging the secretary of state’s ruling in court.
Finally, the state’s list confirms that far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert’s only Republican primary opponent in the 3rd District will be state Sen. Don Coram, though it’s hard to see the moderate state legislator prevailing. Redistricting extended Trump’s margin of victory in this western Colorado constituency from 52-46 to 53-45, but three Democrats are hoping they’ll have an opening against Boebert: Former Aspen City Councilman Adam Frisch, social worker Sol Sandoval, and businessman Alex Walker.
● FL-04: State Rep. Jason Fischer announced Monday that he was joining the Republican primary for the open 4th District, a Jacksonville-area seat that Trump would have taken 53-46.
● FL-15, FL-07: Retired Navy Captain Mac McGovern, who launched a bid for the old 7th District in January before redistricting was completed, said Monday that he’d compete in the August Republican primary for the new 15th instead.
● FL-27, FL-Sen: Two local Democratic elected officials announced over the weekend that they’d take on freshman Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar in the new 27th District: Miami Commissioner Ken Russell and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins. The new GOP gerrymander shifted this Miami-based seat from a 51-48 Biden constituency to one that Trump would have taken 50-49.
Russell, who serves on the local equivalent of the city council, had been waging a longshot campaign against Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, but he’d struggled to gain traction in the August primary against 10th District Rep. Val Demings. Russell, however, said Sunday he would run against Salazar instead: The commissioner ended March with $285,000 in the bank that he can use on his new House race, though the GOP congresswoman had $1 million available.
That same day, Higgins’ campaign manager also confirmed his boss would challenge Salazar. Higgins pulled off an upset victory in 2018 to claim her seat on the county commission in a special election, a victory that flipped the body to a Democratic majority. She went on to win a close race for a full four-year term in 2020, though she’ll need to step down to campaign for Congress under Florida’s resign-to-run law. (Russell, who is termed out next year, already said he’d resign to pursue his aborted Senate bid.)
● NC-13: The Club for Growth, which supports law student Bo Hines in the packed May 17 Republican primary, is running a negative ad here for the first time by targeting self-funding attorney Kelly Daughtry. The Club tells the audience that Daughtry donated to a Democrat, Mark Davis, running for the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2020 “when Republicans were fighting to take back the court.”
There actually weren’t enough seats on the ballot that year for Republicans to win a majority on the body even though they won all three of the 2020 contests, including the Davis race, though the Club doesn’t let that stop them from continuing to blame Daughtry for what happened next. The narrator instead continues, “The Democrats kept control, then used their Supreme Court majority to block Republican redistricting plans and draw districts benefiting the Democrats.”
● NE-02: Donald Trump used his Sunday rally for gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster to bash Rep. Don Bacon ahead of next week’s Republican primary for this competitive seat and to implore his audience to vote for roofer Steve Kuehl. “Now I don’t know Steve,” Trump continued, who he said was a nice guy he just met. “Good luck, Steve, whoever the hell you are.” Plenty of local GOP voters will be asking who the hell Kuehl is too, since he ended March with a negative balance in his campaign account.
Trump, naturally, said he wasn’t actually endorsing Kuehl, which is a good way for him to avoid a dreaded L on his precious win-loss primary record. Over in the real world, though, telling voters to vote for a candidate is an endorsement no matter what Trump and his minions actually insist on labeling it.
● OR-06: Protect Our Future PAC has thrown down another $735,000 to aid economic development adviser Carrick Flynn, which brings the crypto-aligned group’s total investment to $8.76 million with two more weeks to go before the Democratic primary.
● TX-34 (special): Republican Mayra Flores and the NRCC have released the first poll we’ve seen of the June 14 all-party special election primary, a Ragnar Research internal that shows Flores and Democrat Dan Sanchez advancing to an all-but-assured runoff in the current version of this 52-48 Biden seat. Flores outpaces Sanchez 24-19, with two other candidates, Democrat Rene Coronado and Republican Juana Cantu-Cabrera, taking 9% and 7%, respectively. A hefty 41% are undecided, which makes it especially hard to draw any conclusions from this survey.
● WV-02: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin not only has endorsed Rep. David McKinley ahead of next week’s Republican primary against fellow incumbent Alex Mooney, he’s also starring in a commercial praising McKinley. The senator begins by telling the audience that, as someone who opposed the Biden administration’s Build Back Better program, he knows that Mooney “and his out of state supporters” are lying when they say McKinley supported the program. “David McKinley has always opposed reckless spending,” says Manchin, while “Alex Mooney has proven he’s all about Alex Mooney.”
It’s very rare for a high-profile politician, even a conservative Democrat like Manchin, to take sides in the other party’s primary, much less cut an ad for it, though McKinley’s camp is arguing he’ll be an asset with GOP voters. An unnamed source at the McKinley campaign told columnist Steven Allen Adams, “In our polling, Manchin has consistently been in the mid to high 60s favorables among Republican primary voters,” though they didn’t actually release any polls.
Mooney, by contrast, is only too happy to publicize his own internal from Public Opinion Strategies showing him defeating McKinley 50-30, which is nearly double his margin from just a few weeks ago. The last survey we saw giving McKinley the lead, by contrast, was a March poll for the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce that gave him a small 38-33 edge; the group went on to endorse McKinley after those numbers were released.
Obituaries
● Bob Krueger, whose brief tenure as an appointed senator in 1993 made him the last Texas Democrat to serve in the upper chamber, died Sunday at the age of 86. Krueger previously was elected to represent the 21st District, which at the time was a geographically vast seat covering much of West Texas, in 1974 and 1976, but he gave it up to challenge Republican Sen. John Tower in 1978.
Lone Star State Democrats were still the dominant faction in this conservative state at the time, but Krueger had a difficult task ahead of him unseating Tower, whose win in the 1961 special election to succeed Vice President Lyndon Johnson made him the first Republican to win a direct election to the Senate in any of the 11 former Confederate states since the passage of the 17th Amendment half a century earlier. The Washington Post wrote weeks before Election Day, “With Tower and Krueger agreeing on most economic and oil-and-gas issues, the glitter foreseen for this campaign has turned to ho-hum boredom, a far greater hazard for Krueger than Tower.”
Krueger’s team tried to go after the incumbent by mailing out a newspaper column that, while it didn’t name Tower directly, implied the senator was a womanizer; Tower’s camp, in turn, asked why the 43-year-old Democrat was unmarried. The result turned out to be tight, but Tower held off Krueger 50-49; that same evening, Bill Clements was pulling off a similarly narrow win to become Texas’ first GOP governor of the 20th century.
Krueger ran again in the 1984 race to succeed the retiring Tower only for future Rep. Lloyd Doggett to narrowly deny him a place in the runoff. Krueger, however, eventually returned to office in 1990 by winning a spot on the powerful Railroad Commission. He held that job in 1993 when Gov. Ann Richardson appointed him to succeed Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, who resigned to become Bill Clinton’s first treasury secretary, after a long process where she would mention a name and see what the reaction was; one Democratic state representative explained Krueger was ultimately chosen because he “has statewide name ID, and no one has strong objections to him.”
The new senator, though, soon had to defend his seat in a special election that occurred as Clinton’s weak numbers were accelerating Texas Democrats’ decline in the state. Krueger and his allies argued the state needed to maintain a Democratic senator, while Republican state Treasurer Kay Bailey Hutchison used every chance she had to tie him to the administration: It was Hutchison’s strategy that resonated, and she scored a 67-33 victory. Krueger, who never sought elected office again, went on to serve as Clinton’s ambassador both to Burundi, where he survived a 1995 attack on his convoy that killed one person, and Botswana.
Ad Roundup
- OH-Sen: Protect Ohio Values – pro-J.D. Vance (R)
- PA-Sen: Mehmet Oz (R) – anti-Dave McCormick (R)
- AL-Gov: Kay Ivey (R-inc)
- AL-Gov: Lindy Blanchard (R) – anti-Ivey (R-inc)
- GA-07: Lucy McBath (D-inc)
- NJ-07: Tom Kean Jr. (R)