Independent News
Another problem for Madison Cawthorn could be just around the corner
This post was originally published on this site
A push by voters to bar Rep. Madison Cawthorn from running for office in North Carolina because of his support for insurrectionist activities running up to and on Jan. 6 is not over yet.
A panel of federal appeals court judges in Virginia is now weighing whether an earlier court ruling that blocked a challenge to his spot on the ballot was correctly decided.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, appointed by former President Donald Trump, nixed an attempt by voters calling on the North Carolina Board of Elections to disqualify Cawthorn.
While they argue there is enough “reasonable suspicion” to suggest Cawthorn has violated the 14th Amendment—and specifically, the portion of it that prohibits insurrectionists from occupying or returning to office—Judge Myers disagreed.
He would not rule on whether an insurrection occurred on Jan. 6 or if in his opinion, Cawthorn was privy to its planning, or whether he provided comfort to those who stormed the Capitol. Nor did he say whether Cawthorn was responsible for aiding or abetting the obstruction of Congress as it engaged in a ceremony necessary to the peaceful transfer of power.
Instead, Judge Myers wrote in March, it was about “who decides what must be decided—and who decides who decides.”
Myers March 10 Ruling for C… by Daily Kos
An amnesty law resulting from enmities of the Civil War that restored the rights of many former Confederates to hold office nullified the challenge, the order found. Further, Myers wrote, it would not be permissible for voters to appeal the ruling in the stead of state officials.
On Monday, the three-judge appeals panel sounded dubious over those assertions.
Congress, Cawthorn’s attorney James Bopp noted, has power under the 14th Amendment to grant amnesty with a two-thirds vote.
And further, he argued, the Constitution only allows Congress to decide who is qualified to run for Congress, not state election officials.
But this would present a curious dynamic for state election officials, as well as voters: In the event there is a truly, categorically unqualified person vying for power, under Bopp’s theory, they would be allowed not just to run, but to win.
Then, once in Congress, Congress could decide if they are qualified.
This did not receive a warm reception from Judge James Wynn, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
“What if you decide to run for office at 12 years old or something like?” Wynn said Monday. “You have to wait for Congress [to determine their qualifications and] say they can’t run?”
“It’s amazing how many things we let the voters decide,” Bopp retorted.
He told the court he “couldn’t help” what the Constitution dictates.
Another judge on the panel, the Trump-appointed Julius Richardson, appeared to support Bopp’s argument.
When Wynn remarked that he didn’t think anyone would believe Bopp’s theory that an obviously unqualified candidate would be allowed to not only run, but win a seat in Congress before anyone even so much as raised a question about their legitimacy, Judge Richardson interjected.
“It’s what the Constitution says,” Richardson remarked.
But for the challenger’s attorney Presley Millen, the logic of the Constitution was clear on this matter.
When Congress enacted the insurrection provision under the 14th Amendment, it did so because it did not want former Confederates to serve the still-reeling, newly-reunified body.
“Congress was not leaving it to the voters. The Constitution does not allow voters to send Chileans or teenagers to Congress, and it does not allow them to send insurrectionists,” Millen said.
Cawthorn denies having been involved in any wrongdoing and has defended his remarks on Jan. 6 and in the days leading up to as patriotism.
On the morning of the attack on the Capitol, the Republican lawmaker took the stage where Trump would soon appear and told the masses gathered there that fraud was rampant in the 2020 election.
“The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans, hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice,” Cawthorn said on Jan. 6.
A day before, he put a call out on Twitter for the “New Republican Party” to show up for Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse.
Similar comments continued well after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, as well.
In September 2021, Cawthorn told a group of voters gathered at a Republican Party-hosted event in North Carolina that “anybody who tells you that Joe Biden was dutifully elected is lying to you.”
Courts have tossed lawsuits from the former president claiming election fraud more than 50 times. The Department of Justice, including under the attorney general that Trump appointed, found zero evidence of rampant voter fraud.
Cawthorn, however, said at that same event anyway that U.S. election systems “continue to be rigged” and that elections in America would keep being stolen.
“And it’s going to lead to one place, and it’s bloodshed,” Cawthorn said. “I will tell you as much as I’m willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there is nothing I dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American.”
As Jan. 6 was later discussed, a supporter of Cawthorn’s at the gathering asked the congressman when he expected people to return to Washington.
“We are actively working on that one,” he said.
According to a Rolling Stone article published last October, Cawthorn was one of many right-wing, Trump-supporting Republicans who allegedly engaged with the Trump White House and rally organizers for Jan. 6. That list also included Reps. Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Biggs, and Mo Brooks.
All have denied any criminal activity or wrongdoing.
There is no clarity yet on when the appeals court will rule on the challenge to Cawthorn.
The North Carolina primary is May 17.
Bopp also represents Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who faced a similar legal challenge to her qualifications given her role in supporting Trump’s push to stop the certification of the 2020 election. Both Greene and Cawthorn—as well as Biggs and Gosar—are being zeroed in on by the voting rights nonprofit group, Free Speech for the People.
RELATED STORY: Lawyers in Marjorie Taylor Greene reelection suit file motion to add ‘Marshall Law’ text as evidence
During her hearing, Greene had difficulty recalling nearly everything she said or did before Jan. 6. But her commentary was well documented in interviews, on television, and on social media beforehand.
Greene was, in fact, one of the former president’s most vocal supporters of rampant election fraud.
Bopp last week argued that Greene was a victim of Jan. 6, not a perpetrator.
RELATED STORY: Texts reveal new lows in Trump White House’s push to overturn 2020 election
Former DHS Sec. Chad Wolf buried reports of Russian interference in 2020 election to protect Trump
This post was originally published on this site
Considering the news over the Supreme Court stripping away the rights of half the nation, breaking down the wall between church and state, and then using the bricks from that wall to lay a nice, sturdy path that can be followed to destroy a dozen other rights, it’s easy to understand that a few things might have slipped under the radar lately. But this shouldn’t.
On the surface, this April 26 report from the Inspector General’s Office at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is simply about the fact that data collectors within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) failed to distribute information properly. In other words, “DHS actions related to an I&A intelligence product deviated from standard procedures.” That description makes it sound as if someone failed to check the appropriate boxes on a form and deserves a little slap on the wrist.
Except that’s not the case. The “intelligence product” was the report detailing Russian interference in the 2020 election. The “deviation from standard procedures” was actually a months-long cover-up by Acting Sec. of DHS Chad Wolf designed explicitly to help Donald Trump win reelection by spreading rumors about Joe Biden.
In the process of tracking foreign interference in the 2020 election, DHS had collected information on how Russia was injecting concerns about the health of then-candidate Joe Biden into the campaign. That information was supposed to be included in reports that were regularly briefed to Congress. Only Wolf “asked the product be held because it made President Trump look bad and hurt President Trump’s campaign.”
Actual analysts and agents within DHS did everything right. It was entirely DHS leadership who did something explicitly wrong, for the very specific reason of helping Donald Trump.
Based on our interviews with relevant officials, as well as our document review, it is clear the Acting Secretary asked the Acting USIA to hold the product from its pending release. We interviewed the Acting USIA, who told us the Acting Secretary asked the product be held because it made President Trump look bad and hurt President Trump’s campaign—the concept that Russia was denigrating candidate Biden would be used against President Trump.
Not only did the Wolf engage in a blatant cover-up of Russia’s interference in the 2020 election, by doing so he allowed claims about President Biden’s health—claims that are still widely believed within Republican ranks—to go unchallenged. That these claims were actually coming from a deliberate Russian propaganda campaign was buried. The action also prevented the public from getting confirmation that Russia was once against interfering in the election, as it had in 2016, with the intention of benefiting Trump.
Wolf’s action denied Congress and the public the information that should have been provided concerning Russia’s actions, allowed Russia to continue its interference, and caused damage to President Biden. Trump was protected from the public finding out Russia was again working to protect him. Biden was allowed to be harmed.
Wolf even stepped in to give special attention to the reports in the months before the election, making sure that the reports were reworded in ways that benefited Trump. Reports were altered or delayed, even though Wolf wasn’t supposed to take part in preparing these documents.
The acting secretary participated in the review process multiple times despite lacking any formal role in reviewing the product, resulting in the delay of its dissemination on at least one occasion.
Wolf acted not just to cover up information, but to distort analysis for political purposes.
And that’s not the only time Wolf’s team did something like this. This March 4 report from the DHS inspector general shows another cover-up that took place in DHS at the tail end of Trump’s time in the White House, and at the time Trump and members of his staff were actively working to overturn the outcome of the election that, in spite of Wolf’s efforts, went against Trump.
In this case, the topic was the “wild time” Trump had called for on January 6 and a number of reports captured by DHS analysts indicated this event was likely to generate violence. Again and again, departments at DHS had the knowledge of potential violence on Jan. 6. Again and again, they failed to pass along any warning. And even the report that did go out “was not as widely disseminated as I&A’s typical intelligence products.”
Although an open source collector submitted one product for review on January, 2021, I&A did not distribute the product until 2 days after the events at the U.S. Capitol. Additionally, I&A’s Counterterrorism Mission Center (CTMC) identified indicators that the January 6, 2021 events might turn violent but did not issue an intelligence product outside I&A, even though it had done so for other events. Instead, CTMC identified these threat indicators for an internal I&A leadership briefing, only.
Finally, the Field Operations Division (FOD) considered issuing intelligence products on at least three occasions prior to January 6, 2021, but FOD did not disseminate any such products ultimately. It is unclear why FOD failed to disseminate these products.
Republicans loved to spread the private text messages from Lisa Page and Peter Strzok concerning their feelings about Trump before the 2016 election. Strangely enough, these text messages from the DHS’s Office of the Chief Security Officer have gotten much less air time.
Both the cover-up of Russian interference and the cover-up over Jan. 6 show the extent to which Wolf and others had weaponized DHS into a tool to collect information possibly harmful to Trump and hide it away from the public, Congress, and agencies that might take effective action. They turned the agency that was supposed to reveal the truth in order to protect the nation, into one that is dedicated to suppressing the truth in order to protect Trump.
They turned the Department of Homeland Security into a kind of governmental National Enquirer, capable of finding Trump scandals in advance and sitting on them. And Trump didn’t even have to write a check.
'Hate has no place': This AAPI Heritage Month, let's work on ending anti-Asian hate and bias
This post was originally published on this site
To honor cultural heritage, Daily Kos will be celebrating diversity each month. This month Daily Kos will celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. Like other commemorative months, Asian Pacific American Heritage Month was introduced by officials in Congress. However, it took over a decade to establish the historical month because resolutions to honor the AAPI community continued to be rejected, despite the time frame offered.
New York Rep. Frank Horton and California Rep. Frank Mineta first introduced the idea of designating a week during the first 10 days of May to honor the AAPI community in 1977. They weren’t alone: around the same time, Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye introduced a similar resolution, but neither passed.
RELATED STORY: You won’t have to search too hard to find a safe space here. Look right on the homepage
Despite this, the officials did not give up, Horton then pushed for House Joint Resolution 1007 the following year, which asked then-president Jimmy Carter to declare May 4-10 as Asian Pacific American Heritage Week. This resolution was signed into law by Carter in 1978.
It wasn’t until 1990 that the community was given its own month, when President George H.W. Bush signed a bill passed by Congress. The fight for representation was still not over, though. More than 10 years later, President Barack Obama officially changed the name to Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with the signing of Proclamation 8369.
Announcing the change, Obama wrote, “The vast diversity of languages, religions, and cultural traditions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders continues to strengthen the fabric of American society. … During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we remember the challenges and celebrate the achievements that define our history.”
While many associate “AAPI” with East Asian-identifying individuals, the acronym is used to describe a fast-growing population of 24 million Americans that includes about 50 ethnic groups with roots in more than 40 countries.
According to the Asian Pacific Institute for Gender-Based Violence, the federal government defines the term AAPI to include “all people of Asian, Asian American, or Pacific Islander ancestry who trace their origins to the countries, states, jurisdictions, and/or the diasporic communities of these geographic regions.” As of 2000, “Asian” and “Pacific Islander” became two separate racial categories on the U.S. Census, replacing “Asian Pacific Islander.”
The month of May was chosen to commemorate the contributions of Asian Americans because of its historical significance for the AAPI community. According to Texas A&M, the first Japanese people to immigrate to the U.S. arrived on May 7, 1843. May also marks the anniversary of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, on May 10, 1869. This day was declared Golden Spike Day; the majority of workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants.
While AAPI Heritage Month is an opportunity to celebrate AAPI culture and the contributions Asian Americans have made to America, it is also important to highlight the challenges and issues the community faces.
For generations, Asian Americans have faced hate and discrimination. Stereotypes can be traced to what scholars call the “yellow peril,” an ideology where white folks claimed things from Asia were a great threat to the white world. Historians and other academics found that this ideology, amongst other xenophobia, influenced U.S. policies on the basis “that Chinese people as a race, no matter where they are, are disease carriers.” As a result, anti-Asian laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 were enacted to block Asian immigration.
Additionally, Chinese migrants have historically faced invasive and humiliating medical inspections that other immigrants were not subjected to. During the bubonic plague and severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak, Chinese people faced similar xenophobia, as several were unable to go to work or considered “unclean,” as Daily Kos has reported.
This hate has only increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, which many have misattributed to being spread by AAPI community members in the U.S. An alarming rise in hate crimes and xenophobia toward Asian Americans has been reported. Hate crime data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino found that hate crimes against Asian Americans surged in 2020 in at least 15 cities, Daily Kos reported. As the cities were further reviewed, a new report indicated that crimes against Asian Americans rose by 169% when comparing the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021.
Additionally, data released by the FBI found that hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent in the U.S. rose by 70% last year when compared to the number of such incidents in 2019. The report found that more than 10,000 people reported hate crimes to law enforcement, the highest tally of reported hate crimes since 2008.
Republicans finally get around to pretending they care about life that exists outside the womb
This post was originally published on this site
Republicans woke up Tuesday morning to an uncomfortable reality: They just got everything they said they wanted, even though they very much want to change the subject. For years they’ve been running on banning abortion, some out of real conviction and many because the increasingly extreme base was demanding it. Well, they’ve got it now, and some in the Senate are thinking about how they’re going to have to run state-wide, many in states that are decidedly not so extreme. So they’re now madly scrambling to pay lip service to the idea that they do actually care about life.
Because up until now the truest axiom of Republican politics is that they believe life begins at conception and ceases to matter after birth. Now that their forced birth policy is going to become a reality, some are figuring out they need to at least pay lip service to the idea of making it easier for those children to be raised. Of course, plenty of others aren’t.
In the “we have to look like we’ll do something” campaign are some surprises. “I think that needs to be an important part of the discussion,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) told the Washington Post. “It’s not just a matter of saying, ‘We are pro-life.’ It’s a matter, then, of promoting and allowing these people who are making very difficult decisions with their lives to make sure we can help individuals facing these tough decisions.” Wow. That almost sounds sincere.
Shockingly, Sen. Josh Hawley (Q-MO) claims to be one of those having “preliminary” discussions with colleagues about some kind of child care thing. “I do think if the court does ultimately overturn Roe, it will be a big sea change politically, and I think there will be all kinds of new opportunities to think about what that means for us from a policy perspective, and I hope we’ll come forward with new and interesting policy perspectives.” Note that he’s not actually committing to doing something to support the children he’s all for being forced into the world. He’s saying that it would be a good thing, maybe, to think about it and tell people they’re thinking about it.
They don’t have a good track record. The only Republican who has supported the expanded Child Tax Credit that so successfully, albeit temporarily, lifted millions of children out of poverty (until Democrat Joe Manchin killed it because he thinks all the parents using it are drug users) is Utah Sen. Mitt Romney. He’s pretty much alone among Republican colleagues in wanting to revive it in some form, though now that the ostensibly pro-choice Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) have made such fools out of themselves in helping Mitch McConnell pack the court, they might be looking for cover.
There are those, however, who have absolutely no shame and no problem opining that once that kid is born, it’s on its own. Florida’s Rick Scott—the guy running the recruitment and funding campaign for Senate candidates this cycle—tells the Post he is against any program that might help a non-working parent. So once that baby is popped out, get back on the Amazon warehouse floor, peasant. Retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (PA) has no problem admitting to the Post that the idea that maybe these kids and families need some support hadn’t occurred to him. Ted Cruz (TX) said sure they would think about “policies that make it easier for families to raise kids,” just as long as they are spending no money on it. So, that’s a no from him.
There’s also the faction that’s not going to be content with Roe being overturned—the “states’ rights” folks like Rand Paul (KY) want the entire nation to suffer.
If they do come up with any big ideas for aid to new parents and babies, you can bet it’s going to be at their own expense. Like the really bad idea Marco Rubio (FL) was kicking around when he was trying to get Ivanka to spend time with him: robbing future Social Security payments to provide “paid” family leave.
They’re not going to support additional food or housing assistance or family leave or preschool or expanded Medicaid or a higher minimum wage for parents or, well, anything. Because the majority of them simply don’t care.
RELATED STORIES
Lawmakers in 19 states vow to offer legal refuge for trans youth displaced by Republican hate
This post was originally published on this site
As Daily Kos continues to cover, Republicans are going out of their way to make it difficult, if not impossible, for vulnerable trans youth to survive, much less thrive. We’re seeing conservatives attack trans youth who want to participate in sports teams that align with their gender identity, as well as trans people under 18 who want to access safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming health care, which research shows can be life-saving. We’re also seeing trans adults attacked by legislation that targets birth certificates and other legal identifying documents.
For trans youth in particular, a number of states are pushing legislation that would essentially criminalize gender-affirming care. In more than one case, for example, legislation calls for physicians who provide gender-affirming care to face felony charges, and in others, parents or guardians who enable such care could also face charges. In Texas, as we’ve covered in the past, parents of trans youth say they’ve already had investigations from the state on the basis of child abuse charges—simply because they support the trans young people in their home.
Many families don’t have the resources to move, but some do. That’s why it’s so meaningful to see more than Democratic lawmakers in more than a dozen states trying to offer safe legal refuge for trans youth and families displaced from their homes because of this hateful, discriminatory legislation.
RELATED: Republican who wants to make state book the Bible calls for burning banned books
“We’re sick of just playing defense against what these red states are doing,” Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of California told the Associated Press in an interview. “We’re going on offense, we’re going to protect LGBTQ kids and their families and we’re going to build a rainbow wall to protect our community.”
Wiener is referencing the bill he proposed in March that seeks to make California a refuge state. Since then, lawmakers in both New York state and Minnesota have filed similar legislation. Democratic lawmakers in West Virginia, Washington, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Michigan, Kentucky, Maine, Kansas, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, and Connecticut are hoping to follow suit as well.
Unfortunately, not all of these legislatures are currently in session, so not all of these bills have been filed, but that’s the direction lawmakers are hoping to go in. It’s also fair to point out, unfortunately, that this legislation isn’t likely to pass everywhere, but it’s certainly still worth trying.
To be clear: Trans youth deserve equal rights and protections no matter where they live. No one should have to move in order to have basic safety and access to medical care. It is obscene, unsustainable, and inherently favors people with the most privilege—people who have the funds to up and move, for example, or the job flexibility to do so. Other barriers can include family members with disabilities or other unique medical needs, having more than one child in school, or concerns about immigration or citizenship status.
It’s also important to keep in mind that people can be happy in any town, city, or state. Happy to have their rights taken away? Of course not. But it is perfectly legitimate to want to live in, say, a rural area, an isolated area, or simply a city or suburb that you enjoy but don’t enjoy the politics of the local or state government. Perhaps you have family ties, close friendships, or it’s where you can get the most for your money.
Again: Maybe you just like it. This is perhaps the simplest point, but it’s valuable in a period where sometimes well-intentioned people encourage marginalized folks to just move—maybe they can’t, and also, maybe they don’t want to. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve equal rights and protections.
This is true for people of all ages, but especially for young people who may experience additional stresses and burdens by having to change schools and lose support systems. Yes, they might gain safety and legal protections on the one hand, but unfortunately, bullying and harassment can happen anywhere. It’s never an easy choice, and it’s one no one should have to make. And especially not young people whose priorities should be school and getting to know themselves in a safe environment.
Republicans finally find something they're willing to call an insurrection
This post was originally published on this site
Republicans were irate about the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion striking down Roe v. Wade, and it didn’t take them long to arrive at a talking point that is staggeringly dishonest even by Republican standards: the leak was the real insurrection.
Mind you, Republicans are getting what they want here, in the end of abortion rights at a federal level. Mind you, no one knows who leaked the draft and there are very good reasons to suspect it was a conservative. Mind you, the leak of a draft judicial opinion is not by any definition an insurrection. But, always on the search for ways to downplay the violence of their supporters on January 6 and to make themselves the victims of any event, this is where Republicans landed. For some odd reason, they don’t want people talking about the substance of the issue: widespread abortion bans. It’s almost like they realize that’s not actually going to be popular.
RELATED STORY: Republican lawmakers and sedition supporters are irate that the end of Roe was leaked in advance
“You want to talk about an insurrection?” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “That’s a judicial insurrection, to be taking that out and trying to kneecap a potential majority through kind of extra-constitutional means.”
“For all the left’s cries of ‘threats to democracy’ and ‘insurrection’ about things like uncensored speech on Twitter or literally walking peacefully through a door, what happened Monday night appeared to be a far truer and more dangerous example of treasonous insurrection,” The Federalist railed.
According to right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh, it was “an actual insurrection,” one “100000000 times more serious than the Capitol riot.” Former George W. Bush staffer Ari Fleischer called the leak “an insurrection against the Supreme Court.” It goes on, because that’s how Republican talking points work. They come from everywhere all at once.
We are talking here about the leak of a non-classified draft document a few weeks ahead of when a final version of the document would have been publicly released. It is not the same thing as a mob violently storming the U.S. Capitol to prevent the Congress from doing its job and carrying out the peaceful transition of power. It is not the same thing as a sitting president and his aides trying to pressure state officials to “find” the votes needed to flip an election result.
The Republican hissy fit is ostensibly based on the idea that the leak was intended to intimidate the right-wing justices away from this position, but it sure looks like a big distraction—the dog caught the car and it turns out not to have been as desirable as expected. For that matter, many court observers say it could equally be intended to lock in initial votes to fully overturn Roe and prevent Chief Justice John Roberts from pulling votes to a slightly less extreme position in the interest of protecting the court’s ever-fading legitimacy as an institution.
The leak of the draft is under investigation. If it turns out to have been leaked by a conservative, you can confidently bet that Republicans will launch another distraction. But the real story will remain the tens of millions of people stripped of reproductive rights, the women who die from unsafe illegal abortions, the people whose lives are reshaped by unintended pregnancies for which they have no recourse. This Supreme Court decision—not the leak but the decision itself—kicks off a tragedy that will unfold for years with the most vulnerable as its victims.
RELATED STORIES:
Supreme Court Justice Roberts calls leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion ‘betrayal of confidences’
Fight back! A list of a few reproductive justice organizations you can support today
If SCOTUS kills Roe, many states are poised to swiftly enforce abortion bans, sweeping restrictions
From contraception to LGBTQ rights—Alito’s draft opinion on Roe opens the floodgates
Alito cites racist eugenics theory to support overturn of Roe v. Wade
This post was originally published on this site
If it wasn’t horrifying enough to learn via a leaked draft majority opinion written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that the Supreme Court intends to overturn Roe v. Wade, to make bad even worse, Alito uses a sickening racist theory as evidence to support the legal reversal.
The 98-page draft opinion is a defiant indictment of the 1973 ruling promising federal protections for abortion. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled… It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
If all that isn’t enough, Alito pivots to the white savior role, actually attempting to justify that the removal of reproductive rights somehow aligns with a fight against racism—even citing the same misrepresented statistics used by pro-choice activists advocating for eugenics.
RELATED STORY: Supreme Court Justice Roberts calls leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion ‘betrayal of confidences’
“Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” Alito writes. “It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.”
The National Human Genome Research Institute defines eugenics as a “scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations… Implementation of eugenics practices has caused widespread harm, particularly to populations that are being marginalized.”
Let’s unpack Alito’s argument that abortion is being used to cull the number of Black Americans being born.
First off, using race as pro-life rhetoric is not new. But what it doesn’t take into account is the realities of what Black pregnant people face in birthing health care, or the fact that white America has long sought to wipe out people of color—without ever needing to use abortion as a means.
Black enslaved women were raped by slaveholders and then forced to bear children to increase their property holdings—all while their own children were sold away from them for profit.
Even today, the disparities in prenatal health care and birthing mortality are stunning. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that Black pregnant people are “three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women,” citing “variation in quality health care, underlying chronic conditions, structural racism, and implicit bias” as factors.
”Social determinants of health prevent many people from racial and ethnic minority groups from having fair opportunities for economic, physical, and emotional health,” the CDC adds.
This is in addition to an overall greater lack of health insurance, employment, or food security caused by well-documented socioeconomic disparities between Black and brown families and white Americans.
Black pregnant people don’t need anyone shaming them about abortion, or suggesting that they need the Court to dictate how their bodies are used for the greater good of a nation that mistreated them for centuries.
And, importantly, the racial demographics of abortion Alito refers to as “highly disproportionate” aren’t as disparate as he suggests. According to a 2019 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Black Americans account for 38% of abortions, while white people account for 33%—as I said, hardly “highly disproportionate.”
In another passage, Alito writes that societal norms around pregnancy when parents aren’t married “have changed drastically” since Roe v. Wade was enacted and argues there’s now a higher demand for adoption.
Let’s unpack. Adoption numbers are actually declining. Creating a Family reports that the number of children adopted via public child welfare was 57,881 in 2020.
“In 2007, the total number of adoptions was 133,737. The numbers for 2014, the last year that the full range of data was available, fell to 110,373. Of those adoptions, 41,023 were adoptions within the family (where the child is related to the adopting family) and 69,350 were unrelated adoptions,” according to the Creating a Family website.
So forgive me if I don’t buy the bull**** of Alito’s argument that ending Roe v. Wade is good for Black folks or the new changing demographics of partnerships in the U.S. and the demand for more adopted children.
Support for the reversal of Roe includes Justices Alito, and unsurprisingly, Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, the Politico report reads.
Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan were said to be crafting dissents.
The Supreme Court is expected to make the final decision in late June.
J.D. Vance is the Ohio Senate candidate Mitch McConnell deserves, however McConnell feels about it
This post was originally published on this site
Donald Trump must be feeling pretty good following the Ohio Senate primary in which his chosen one, J.D. Vance, triumphed over a crowded field. In addition to Trump’s endorsement, Vance had $15 million in outside money from Peter Thiel. But he was also hammered by outside advertising from the Club for Growth, hitting him for his past negative statements about Trump. And, following Vance’s win, Axios reports that the Club for Growth isn’t the only part of the Republican establishment unhappy about the situation.
“The Republican establishment privately regards Vance with the same disgust many felt toward Donald Trump when he entered the White House on Jan. 20, 2017,” according to Jonathan Swan and Lachlan Markay. We know how that worked out: Trump took over the party and few Republicans would speak out against him publicly, sitting back and playing along as long as they thought it contributed to Republican power.
RELATED STORY: Trump-endorsed rich guy J.D. Vance wins massively expensive Ohio Senate primary
One key issue where Vance could make life difficult for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wing of the party is Ukraine. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” he said on Steve Bannon’s podcast before Russia invaded, and he hasn’t changed his position since, with campaign sources telling Axios it was because people who don’t want the U.S. supporting Ukraine are likely to vote on that position, while few voters who otherwise liked Vance would vote for someone else just because he opposed any intervention.
Vance’s history shows he’s a raging phony. He didn’t just go from mild criticism of Trump to sucking up for Trump’s endorsement. His turnabout took him to the endorsement after having said, in 2016, he “loathed” Trump, and tweeted, “What percentage of the American population has @RealDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?” That tells you what kind of a craven slimeweasel we’re talking about. And it tells you that as long as Trump remains his best bet for power, he will be committed to being as disgusting as possible. For example:
And also:
So, yeah. Mitch McConnell and a lot of other high-ranking Republicans should be nervous. If J.D. Vance wins—which, given the recent rightward shift in Ohio, is likely—they’re getting a colleague whose commitment to his own personal advancement above any principle makes him willing to do his level best to out-Trump Trump. But, as we know, McConnell et al’s ruthless pursuit of power means they won’t try to limit the rise of someone like Vance as long as they think he might be even a little bit useful. They all deserve each other.
Data collection company sells the information of people who visit abortion clinics
This post was originally published on this site
We all know that our whereabouts can be easily tracked on our cell phones, and that the data can then be sold. But, according to Vice, there’s a company that also tracks visits you make to a health care clinic—including those that provide abortion care.
Being tracked is frightening enough, but all of this becomes even more terrifying after a draft opinion from Supreme Court Justice Alito leaked to Politico indicating that the Court may very well overturn Roe v. Wade, which would remove federal abortion protections and ban or partially ban abortion in at least 13 U.S. states.
Gathering this data could be a very effective tool for anti-abortion rights activists who’ve had health care clinics, providers, and pro-choice organizations in their crosshairs for decades. But giving them the option to simply purchase this information from companies is a scary reality.
RELATED STORY: Legendary reproductive justice activist advises women to start talking openly about abortion
Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher who closely tracks data selling, says, “It’s bonkers dangerous to have abortion clinics and then let someone buy the census tracks where people are coming from to visit that abortion clinic… this is how you dox someone traveling across state lines for abortions—how you dox clinics providing this service.”
SafeGraph is one such tracking company. Essentially, Safegraph gathers location data from the apps we download onto our phones. The apps come with an unseen code and that code sends our location to companies to sell for a fee. Vice reports that SafeGraph recently sold $420,000 worth of data to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to help them track how well COVID-19 lockdown measures were working.
“SafeGraph’s Patterns dataset includes visitor and demographic aggregations for points of interest (POIs) in the US. This contains aggregated raw counts of visits to POIs from a panel of mobile devices, answering how often people visit, how long they stay, where they came from, where else they go, and more,” according to the SafeGraph website.
Vice reports the data costs around $160 for a week’s worth of information, and “Planned Parenthood” is considered a “brand” that can be tracked.
“SafeGraph is going to be the weapon of choice for anti-choice radicals attempting to target ‘out of state clinics’ providing medical care,” Edwards said.
As Mother Jones reports, anti-choice groups have long had a serious surveillance game. Documenting who comes and goes from abortion clinics, maintaining databases, and tracking license plate numbers of patients and providers. Now, add some high-tech data tracking, and you’re able to follow people, even if they cross state lines into states where abortions are available.
As we reported in September of 2021, since SB 8 went into effect in Texas, banning almost all abortions in the state, pregnant Texans began driving from places as far south as Galveston or Corpus Christi to seek abortions in Oklahoma and Kansas.
“It’s not good,” Communication Director Zack Gingrich-Gaylord of the Trust Women Clinic in Oklahoma City told KFOR. “These are patients who would otherwise be going to seek care in their own communities. The surrounding states are not that big and they don’t have that many clinics. So it’s creating a significant strain on the neighboring states to Texas.”
With his right-wing court poised to end abortion rights, McConnell's desperate to change the subject
This post was originally published on this site
Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had an urgent message for his conference Tuesday: Whatever you do, don’t talk about the Supreme Court’s draft opinion destroying abortion rights.
Chastising his GOP colleagues at their weekly luncheon, McConnell told them, “You need, it seems to me, a lecture to concentrate on what the news is today: Not a leaked draft, but the fact that the draft was leaked.”
As my Daily Kos colleague Hunter detailed, Republicans spent Tuesday fixated on the leaking of the bombshell opinion as a “stunning breach” by “the Left” to “intimidate sitting Supreme Court justices.”
The harm done to the high court and its justices by the leak was apparently deeply enraging and irreparable. But being forced to carry a fetus to term because the Supreme Court says so? Meh. Republican senators reserved all their outrage for the nine Americans who donned fancy black robes while deciding that the government does indeed have the right to dictate people’s health care decisions.
The emphasis on the leaking (versus what was leaked) was an interesting fixation for a party that has devoted much of its last five decades to clearing the way for the demolition of Roe v. Wade.
But McConnell just might be the ultimate example of the dog that caught the car. Sure, he wants Roe shredded along with basically every other decision supported by a solid majority of Americans. But McConnell surely doesn’t want it shredded before the midterms. By Jove, he can practically taste that Majority Leader goodness.
Except now the fringe court for which he stole two seats might be complicating Senate Republicans’ path back to the majority. Here’s a little glimpse of why McConnell and his conference had a cow after the leaked opinion surfaced in Politico.
Data for Progress notes that public support for a federal ban on abortions doesn’t exceed 30% in any single state.
YouGov’s G. Elliott Morris tweets that the “latest public polls from Pew, Gallup, YouGov, and CNN, all from the last year, found that between 58% and 70% of Americans oppose the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, including roughly three-fourths of Independents and nearly a majority of Republicans.”
We’re going to find out a lot more about polling on this topic over the coming months. But one of the most interesting footnotes is that the vast majority of voters truly didn’t believe the Supreme Court would overturn Roe. Just 20% or even fewer voters believed that, according to Democratic pollster and president of Impact Research, Molly Murphy. So this Supreme Court ruling gutting Roe will truly come as a shock to the electorate. And Republicans clearly know it.