Tuesday Reads: War on Women

Posted: May 3, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 42 Comments

Good Morning!!

It has finally happened. Roe v Wade will be overturned, and women will be stripped of their constitutional right to bodily autonomy. Forced birth will be legal in 22 states as soon as the decision is announced. Women will die. This is what Hillary warned us about in 2016. And it’s not just women who will have their rights taken away. Roe v. Wade is based on the right to privacy, which also underlies decisions about civil rights like gay marriage, the right of same sex people to have sex in their own homes, the right of adults to have access to birth control, and the right of people of different races to marry.

https://twitter.com/kriswernowsky/status/1521323384361127937?s=20&t=K8chrhPeQtX59UmB1yXVPw

As Dahlia Lithwick pointed out last year, we are not headed back to the way it was pre-Roe; this is going to be far worse than that. We are likely going to see laws establishing the “personhood” of fetuses. From the Slate article, Dec. 8, 2021

There has been a tendency, in the week since it became clear the U.S. Supreme Court will likely either uphold Mississippi’s unconstitutional 15-week abortion ban or overturn Roe v. Wade outright, to suggest that when this happens, America will return to the days “pre-Roe.” That is intended to mean, one assumes, that we will go back to a patchwork of laws in the various states, and see the grim return of women attempting to terminate their own pregnancies with sometimes lethal results as well as the backroom illegal abortions that were the norm before Roe became law. But it is not quite accurate to say this would be a simple return to life pre-Roe: If the boldest voices in the pro-life movement have their way, America would not so much be reverting to its pre-Roe past but slipping sideways into something that could be—believe it or not—much worse.

Michelle Goldberg made this point two years ago in the New York Times, after Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri passed a raft of (at the time) unthinkably punitive abortion bans immediately after Brett Kavanaugh was seated at the Supreme Court. As she wrote at the time, “it’s important to understand that we’re not necessarily facing a return to the past. The new wave of anti-abortion laws suggests that a post-Roe America won’t look like the country did before 1973, when the court case was decided. It will probably be worse.”

Anyone listening carefully to the newly ascendant views of abortion opponents can hear it—the talk of legal “fetal personhood” and of punishing mothers who endanger an embryo takes us into a new, uncharted, and theological realm that is quite different even from the status quo before Roe….

Prior to Roe, faith groups were hardly monolithic in their opposition to abortion. Many religious leaders stood firmly on the side of the health and welfare of mothers….But in the decades since, hard-line religious opposition to Roe has both solidified and moved the goal posts. Since 1984, the Republican Party platform has called for a constitutional amendment banning abortion nationwide. The ground has shifted.

In other words, this doesn’t necessarily end at “returning abortion to the states.” Talking to the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner this week, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, talked about plans for a nationwide 15-week abortion ban in the years to come. Religious groups that oppose abortion now speak openly of a project set forth by scholars such as John Finnis, a professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, who argued in the Catholic journal First Things that legislators who wrote the 14th Amendment viewed unborn children as persons, such that unborn children would receive the full guarantees of equal protection and due process of the law under the 14th Amendment.

Yesterday, Lithwick wrote: The Supreme Court’s Legitimacy Is Already Lost. Regardless of Roe falling, the leaks, and the Court’s disregard for the public it is supposed to serve, have already gone too far.

If the Supreme Court indeed strikes down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Caseythis June, as the draft opinion leaked to and published by Politico tonight suggests it will, years of conventional wisdom about the court and its concerns for its own legitimacy will be proven wrong. Every single court watcher who spoke in terms of baby steps, incrementalism, or “chipping away” at one of the most vitally important precedents in modern history will have been wrong. Those who suggested that the court would never do something so huge and so polarizing just before the November midterms will have been wrong. And the people who assured us that Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were moderate centrists who cared deeply about the appearance of a non-ideological and thoughtful court, well yeah. They will have been wrong too.

If this draft opinion becomes precedent of the court, the results will be catastrophic for women, particularly for women in the states that will immediately make abortion unlawful, and in those places, particularly for young women, poor women, and black and brown women who will not have the time, resources, or ability to travel out of state. The court’s staggering lack of regard for its own legitimacy is exceeded only by its vicious disregard for the real consequences for real pregnant people who are 14 times more likely to die in childbirth than from terminating a pregnancy. The Mississippi law—the law that this opinion is upholding—has no exception for rape or incest. We will immediately see a raft of bans that give rights to fathers, including sexual assailants, and punish with ever more cruelty and violence women who miscarry or do harm to their fetuses. The days of pretending that women’s health and safety were of paramount concern are over.

Lithwick notes that the American people overwhelmingly support abortion rights, but the extremist on the Court simply don’t care.

…[I]n his draft opinion Justice Alito wants America to know he doesn’t care about voters’ feelings. “We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work,” Alito writes. “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”

Ironically, whoever decided to leak the opinion cared very much about the political implications of the impending decision. It is one of the most brazenly political acts to ever come out of the court, actually. It is perhaps the most emphatic confirmation that there are simply no rules left at an institution that is supposed to be the one making the rules, but is instead currently under unprecedented public scrutiny for its very absence of binding rules. 

https://twitter.com/lyzl/status/1521358662282973184?s=20&t=K8chrhPeQtX59UmB1yXVPw

Lyz Lenz grew up in a right wing “christian” home and is very familiar with the attitudes of right wing “christian” extremists. She writes at her blog Men Yell at Me: This Was Always The Plan.

I grew up one of eight children. We were washed, dressed in coordinating jumpers and shirts, and trotted out on stage at church on Right to Life Sunday, where our mother would testify that we were an example of always choosing life.

We went to rallies, too. Bows in our hair, marching beneath the angry shouts and the ghostly, whale-like images of aborted fetuses that would haunt me at night as I tried to sleep

My whole life, I knew the plan. Vote for politicians who’d nominate justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Abortion was murder. I heard this preached in churches; at Sunday dinners over brisket. I heard the plan at rallies for homeschoolers in D.C., where we’d lobby our senators for more rights for families — or so I was told.

I heard about the plan when, as a teen, I read fundraising fliers for Christian schools that would turn out a whole new generation of lawyers, lawyers with a Godly worldview, who’d overturn Roe v. Wade.

I heard about it again in 2016, when a nice lady from church smiled at me at school drop-off the day after Trump was elected. “I didn’t want to vote for him,” she whispered to me. I was hung over, and sick. “But he will put good judges in place to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Later, when I wrote a book about Christianity and the Midwest, and then another about mythology and motherhood, people at book events, journalists in interviews and editors looking for a hot take would all ask me why people would vote for a candidate like Trump. “To overturn Roe,” I’d say. And they’d scoff. No, no. That can’t be it.

But it is. It’s always been the plan. And it’s never been a secret. The plan has been shouted at rallies. Held up on signs. It’s been plotted and spoken of and written about over and over. 

Click on the link to read the rest. It’s well worth your time.

This is from historian Heather Cox Richardson at her substack blog, Letters from an American: May 2, 2022.

Tonight, news broke of a leaked draft of what appears to be Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s majority decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing access to abortion as a constitutional right.

That news is an alarm like the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision declaring both that Black Americans had no rights that a white man was bound to respect and that Congress had no power to prohibit human enslavement in the territories. The Dred Scott decision left the question of enslavement not to the national majority, which wanted to prohibit it from western lands, but to state and territorial legislatures that limited voting to white men.

According to law professor and legal commentator Neal Katyal, the draft appears to be genuine and shows that in a preliminary vote, a majority of the court agreed to overturn Roe v. Wade. It takes a hard-line position, saying that states can criminalize abortion with no exceptions for rape and incest. This is a draft and could change before actually being handed down, but it has already stirred a backlash. As soon as the draft hit Politico, which published it, security put up fences around the Supreme Court in expectation of protesters and counterprotesters.

We are in a weird moment, in which Democrats are trying to shore up democracy while Republicans are actively working to undermine it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) issued a statement after the draft leaked, calling the draft “one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.” They noted that the justices lied to senators to get confirmed, saying they considered Roe v. Wade settled law, and are now—if the draft is confirmed—stripping away from American women a constitutional right they have held for 50 years.

Richardson ties together the Court’s likely decision to strip women of their rights to the Republican Party’s war on democracy. Read the whole thing at the link above.

Republicans know very well that 70 percent of American voters support abortion rights, so they are instead focusing on the leak instead of the prospect of women once again becoming second class citizens. The Daily Beast: Laura Ingraham Wants FBI to Hunt Down SCOTUS Leaker: ‘Give Me Your Phone!’

The FBI should launch an investigation to find the person responsible for leaking to the press a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, Laura Ingraham said Monday. The leak, which is the first of its kind, should also spur Chief Justice John Roberts to act, she said. “It’s incumbent upon him to bring in every law clerk before him… or the FBI. ‘Give me your phone. We want all your accounts. We’ve got to do our own—look at every device you’ve ever used, and find out who did this.’” The Fox host claimed that “there are names floated out there” for possible leakers but declined to go into detail. Ingraham then said she dreaded the consequences—as others on Fox News did earlier in the night—of the leaker being celebrated by those on the left. “That’s the end of the court,” Ingraham predicted. “Clerks are never going to be able to have this role at the court that they have now. They’re never going to be able to have access to opinions. I don’t know what will happen to the court, period, if that’s the case.”

I’ve been assuming this was leaked by someone who is outraged by the Alito opinion, but check out this Twitter thread from a Yale law professor:

Read the rest of the thread on Twitter.

One more from Aaron Rupar at Public Notice: The very simple reason Republicans are railing against leaks instead of celebrating the seeming demise of Roe.

You’d think Republicans would be taking a big victory lap, considering ending abortion rights is something most of them have campaigned on since the Nixon administration. Instead, however, they’re focusing on railing against whoever leaked the decision, and bemoaning the death of norms.

“To violate an understanding that has held for the entire modern history of the Court — seeking to place outside political pressure on the Court and justices themselves — is dangerous, despicable, and damaging,” lamented Sen. Mike Lee in a statement….

“This is a blatant attempt to intimidate the Court through public pressure rather than reasoned argument,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz. “I hope my fellow former clerks and the entire legal community will join me in denouncing this egregious breach of trust.” [….]

“The Court should not abide this coordinated assault by the left,” added Sen. Josh Hawley in a tweet of his own. “Issue the decision now.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went as far as to suggest the leaker should be charged with a crime, even though legal experts say leaking a SCOTUS draft decision is not unlawful.

They are angry, because they know this decision goes against popular opinion.

Polls consistently show overturning Roe is opposed by a majority of between 58 and 70 percent of Americans….

And ending federal abortion rights isn’t just unpopular in blue states. According to Data for Progress, there isn’t a single state in the union where support for a federal ban on abortion — something antiabortion activists and Republicans are already talking about — has more than 30 percent support….

In short, while railing against abortion rights is a good way to rile up the Republican base, it doesn’t resonate with the general public. And that’s why Democrats are already expressing hope the SCOTUS draft decision could help them in the upcoming midterm elections.

That’s all I have the stomach for this morning. I expect there will be many more reactions forthcoming throughout the day and in the days and weeks to come.

Monday Reads: Changing your Ways, Changing those Surrounding You

Posted: May 2, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , | 30 Comments

Paul Gauguin, Interieur avec Aline Gauguin, 1881

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I spent the weekend avoiding the news mostly.  I did go out to vote for the one thing on our ballot here in Orleans Parish which passed. It was to increase the millage on our property taxes to expand the early childhood education programs here in our schools.  It passed although the number of people voting was small and appeared to be those of us deeply committed to universal preschool.

I got into a discussion with the vote workers.  It ended with they are all our children and they deserve it.  It felt good to vote for the benefit of the village children.  We all raise them.

Then, one of the forgotten headlines brought the news to me. Remember the Opioid Crisis?  It’s still out there. I was spending the evening with my neighbor across the street and decided to check on the ballot returns at about 8 p.m.  I couldn’t do it because I’d accidentally left my phone at home. I crossed the neutral ground about the same time I heard a series of shots coming from the abandoned naval base and the main buildings.  I’m so immune to the sound of gunshots from there I really thought nothing of it.

I couldn’t locate my phone so I went back across the street to have my neighbor call me and then back across again. By that time, I heard a series of 10 shots, coming from back behind my house towards the canal where a large encampment sits at the far end of the old base’s parking lot.  They live in the old gym facilities. They nearly burnt it down a few months ago.  But, that’s another story.

Henri Matisse, Portrait de Marguerite Matisse (The Reader), 1906, Musée de Grenoble, France.

I had just gotten to the sidewalk by my gate when I saw this huge white guy with a white t-shirt and Bermuda shorts on running straight at me followed by his much shorter wife having come from the bar on the corner where the base entrance happens to be.  I asked him what was going on.  His reply was “oh, usual New Orleans shit, I’m just getting my ride and getting out”.  At that time a van showed up in front of my house and he beat your basic beeline into it while his wife waited for him to negotiate the process.  (Such gallantry!)   I shouted these were white mostly rural folks dumped over there from Mississippi and other places because they don’t want to deal with their opioid issues there. I honestly have never met one New Orleans person hanging out there.

By that time, the street was a swarm of police cars and the ladder truck from the fire station down the street where I had voted earlier today. I headed straight for the side door to grab Temple, chase cats to the back, and head for my bedroom.  My evening out was over. The next morning I heard exactly what was going on other than it was a shootout between a man and a woman and was the usual domestic violence scene these days with guns on both sides.  Except, it poured into the street.  To be precise, it poured into my street. 

I know some of the people who live there.  I know some of their parents too that show up to look for proof of life and take the newly born grandchildren from their addicted daughters to raise.  That’s a village over there of someone’s children.

I’ve taken to writing my posts later and later because the news is filled with items that show that we’re not a functioning democracy anymore with a firm social contract to others. It causes me great sorrow and dismay.  Today, was no different.  The headlines are brutal be they from my neighborhood, our country, or our world. Dementia Don showed up in Nebraska Saturday night and created his usual hatefest, liefest, and bizarre mix-up of words.  This, of course, reminded me of that time Ronald Reagan dumped the country’s mentally ill on the sidewalks of America and no one ever looked back.

These series of embarrassing rallies have got to say something about the way Republicans ignore the real problems that people in this country live with day-to-day.  What family would let their elderly father appear in public like this? What merciful group of friends would encourage it?

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Pierre Renoir in a Sailor Suit, 1890,

I continue to think the bullies in this country are getting away with murder while the compassionate among us are derided as snowflakes.  The Supreme Court issued an astounding unanimous vote on a flag display in Boston.  I understand the logic but one of these things is truly not like the others. From USA Today: “Supreme Court: Boston can’t deny Christian flag if it flies other flags on City Hall flagpole. “This case is so much more significant than a flag,” a representative for the Christian group said. “Boston openly discriminated against viewpoints it disfavored,” when it excluded a Christian flag.”

So my first question is WTF is a Christian flag?  I’ve never seen anything like that hanging in front of any church I attended or visited. The second is that I’ve basically come to avoid a lot of Christians these days seeing them mostly as grandstanding bullies and this comes off like that.

As I’ve said before, these folks are not your mother’s Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc. Church ladies who attend their church potluck in the basement over prayers and scripture. Nor are they the social justice arms of the “normal” churches that care about drug addicts, early childhood education, and the provision of appropriate senior care. I’ve got a small group of nuns in a convent around the corner who are likely horrified by the entire flag idea.  These are the ones that provide the local free clinic and the senior living center down the street.  This is the kind of good trouble Christians of my youth used to take on.  We visited rest homes, fed hungry people, and fixed up homes. We never flew flags.  Just did good. But, anyway, here we are.  This is from USA Today.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Boston may not deny a Christian group the ability to raise a flag at City Hall alongside secular organizations that are encouraged to do so to celebrate the city’s diversity.

The unanimous decision was the latest in a series of rulings from the high court favoring the protection of religious groups, though in this case the issue was more about the First Amendment’s protection of free speech than its promise that Americans may practice their religion without government interference.

“We conclude that Boston’s flag-raising program does not express government speech,” Associate Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court. “As a result, the city’s refusal to let (the group) fly their flag based on its religious viewpoint violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”

A mix of conservative and liberal justices joined the court’s opinion, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. There were no dissents.

That vote appeared to reflect the fact that the religious group had support that transcended traditional ideological and partisan lines. The Biden administration, for instance, sided with the group and against Boston in the case.

Vincent van Gogh, Mother Roulin with Her Baby (1888).

Well, I’m sure that’s going to attract all kinds of flags that we never imagined showing up there in Bean Town. I foretell the entire display coming down shortly before the Grand Wizard and other groups have a go at it.   I’m not sure free speech is supposed to be a free-for-all of toxic one-upmanship.

This is not the proper interpretation of free speech or exercise of it either: (via Axios and Mike Allen) “Scoop: Esper says Trump wanted to shoot protesters.”

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper charges in a memoir out May 10 that former President Trump said when demonstrators were filling the streets around the White House following the death of George Floyd: “Can’t you just shoot them?Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

Why it matters: The book, “A Sacred Oath,” contains vivid, first-person revelations by a top Cabinet member, bolstering outsiders’ accounts of extreme dysfunction in Trump’s White House.

That moment in the first week of June, 2020, “was surreal, sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C.,” Esper writes.

  • “The good news — this wasn’t a difficult decision,” Esper continues. “The bad news — I had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid.”

Behind the curtain: The book was vetted at the highest levels of the Pentagon. I’m told that as part of the clearance process, the book was reviewed in whole or in part by nearly three dozen 4-star generals, senior civilians, and some Cabinet members.

  • Some of them had witnessed what Esper witnessed.
  • During the book’s security review, Esper sued the Pentagon over a classification dispute.

Context: Esper enraged Trump by publicly stating in June 2020 that he opposed invoking the Insurrection Act — an 1807 law that permits the president to use active-duty troops on U.S. soil — in order to quell protests against racial injustice.

  • Michael Bender — then with The Wall Street Journal, now with the N.Y. Times — reported last year in his book, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election,” that Trump repeatedly called for law enforcement to shoot protesters during heated meetings inside the Oval Office.

Breakfast in Bed’ Mary Cassatt, 1897

So, the most cogent take on all of this I feel is out there in The Atlantic with this piece by Derek Thompson: “This Is How America’s Culture War Death Spirals. Why Disney vs. DeSantis is the future of politics.”  Declaring an end to the Republican-led culture war might make us more of a compassionate, caring, and functional democracy.

If you’re a conservative wondering where all this Millennial corporate activism is coming from, try to see things from the liberal perspective. Trump is a wannabe authoritarian who desperately tried to overturn a democratic election. He failed, but his clownish followers still stormed the seat of government, apparently thinking they could accomplish by force what the president couldn’t accomplish by law. State-level Republicans are purging bureaucrats who refused to go along with Trump’s attempted cancellation of the election. Meanwhile, Republicans have moved ever further to the right on LGBTQ issues; they are empowering citizens to enforce severe anti-abortion laws in Texas and many other states; and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority may soon overturn Roe v. Wade.

If Republicans have reasons to feel paranoid about liberal companies stomping on their values, Democrats certainly have reasons to feel paranoid about conservative lawmakers flirting with authoritarianism as revenge. Looking around at their political leadership, Democrats are bereft. The president is feckless, the Senate is pathetic, the House of Representatives is powerless, and the courts are strewn with Republican appointees. What lever of power is left? The cultural lever. This is the context in which LGBTQ Disney employees find it necessary to urge their executive team to act as their proxy army in Florida politics.

…

To review, today’s culture-war death spiral is being accelerated by reactive polarization on both sides. Republicans, freaked out by what they see as cultural disempowerment, are yanking politics right; Democrats, freaked out by what they see as political disempowerment, are pulling institutions left.

The Three Ages of Woman,1905, Gustav Klimt,

And ah yes, ladies, they are coming for our birth control, our uterus, and our basic right to our moral agency with aplomb. This is from the Washington Post and Caroline Kitchener: “The next frontier for the antiabortion movement: A nationwide ban. Advocates and some GOP lawmakers have started mobilizing around potential federal legislation to outlaw abortion after six weeks of pregnancy”. These folks are on the edge of the fight against democracy. They are theocratic fascists.

Leading antiabortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.

The effort, activists say, is designed to bring a fight that has been playing out largely in the courts and state legislatures to the national political stage — rallying conservatives around the issue in the midterms and pressuring potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates to take a stand.

The discussions reflect what activists describe as an emerging consensus in some corners of the antiabortion movement to push for hard-line measures that will truly end a practice they see as murder while rejecting any proposals seen as half-measures.

Activists say their confidence stems from progress on two fronts: At the Supreme Court, a conservative majority appears ready to weaken or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that has protected abortion rights for nearly 50 years. And activists argue that in Texas, Republicans have paid no apparent political price for banning abortion after cardiac activity is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy.

While a number of states have recently approved laws to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy — the limit established in the Mississippi legislation at the heart of the case pending before the high court — some activists and Republican lawmakers now say those laws are not ambitious enough for the next phase of the antiabortion movement. Instead, they now see the six-week limit — which they call “heartbeat” legislation — as the preferred strategy because it would prevent far more abortions.

And no matter what lies they spin, that ain’t a heart.  It’s a cluster of vibrating cells.  The good news is that Women’s Groups are not asleep on reproductive rights issues.

BTW, Covid-19 isn’t done with us.  New York Numbers are escalating into the yellow zone and there are still new variants on the horizon?  Will that be the next public health issue thrown on the heap of let’s ignore the opioid crisis, let’s toss grandma out of her facility, and let’s just let women die of childbirth while we discuss pet religious and economic fetishes like tax cuts to rich people and corporations based on something other than science and reality?

Field Workers, Ellis Wilson, circa 1958-41

Oh, and back to my original concern.  States are now determining what they will do with the Opioid settlement today.  It’s time to make sure the people with the issue get the help they need.

The Sackler family and Perdue Pharma are being forced to confront their victims. (Via NPR) 

For the first time during the long legal reckoning over the opioid crisis, members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma heard directly from people who say their company’s main product, Oxycontin, wrecked their lives.

David Sackler, Richard Sackler and Theresa Sackler listened and watched during the roughly two-hour long hearing as people described surviving addiction and spoke of losing loved ones to the epidemic.

The Sacklers spoke briefly to confirm their presence, but did not respond to the testimony.

“You created so much loss for so many people,” said Kay Scarpone, whose son Joe Scarpone, a retired Marine, died of an opioid overdose.

“I’m not sure how you live every day. I hope you ask for God’s forgiveness for your actions. May God have mercy on your souls,” Scarpone said.

Many of the people who testified held up photographs of dead loved ones.

“As a physician and a mother, I have been consumed with grief,” said Dr. Kimberly Blake, whose son Sean died of an opioid overdose.

“In 2020, I was hospitalized with depression because I couldn’t face another Mother’s Day without him,” she said.

Here’s an update of what’s happening from  BioSpace located in Seattle. 

Arguments regarding the Purdue Pharma opioid settlement continue to be heard in court. On Friday, attorneys representing the Connecticut-based company and the Sackler family squared off against the Department of Justice over the question of whether or not legal wording can protect the family from future lawsuits.

On Friday, Bloomberg reported the Department of Justice is wrangling over a cornerstone provision of the settlement agreement that will provide a level of protection for the Sacklers against future opioid-related lawsuits. The settlement agreement locks the Sackler family into paying approximately $6 billion into the nationwide fund that will be used to manage the opioid settlement.

While the deal has been widely supported by state attorney generals, a division within the Department of Justice is questioning if the U.S. Bankruptcy Court has the power to craft an agreement that provides protection against future legal action, such as the one granted to the Sacklers.

The legal question will play out in court and, if the DOJ is correct, could dismantle the opioid settlement and clog up the courts with additional opioid-related lawsuits, according to Bloomberg.

The latest settlement agreement includes a provision that the Sackler family gives up all ownership of Purdue Pharma. It will allow the company to move forward with its reorganization plan and rebrand to Knoa Pharma. A majority of the new company’s profits will be used to lessen the ongoing crisis.

Purdue isn’t the only company to see legal action. Texas-based Natera is the subject of a securities-related class-action lawsuit that alleges the company withheld information regarding the reliability of its prenatal test, Panorama, and screening test for kidney transplant failure, Prospera.

There are updates on many states via Google as well as this site.  I can speak from experience that ensuring these addicts have some form of treatment or care is important.  Most of our major cities have issues that are worse than mine here in New Orleans.

I still try to work and vote local. If we all improve our neighborhoods and care about our neighbors, we build a better world. Most of us don’t need to let our religious flags fly. What we need to do is let our personal values and beliefs take flight with action.  Love one another. Take compassionate action. Be kind to yourself and others.  These are my daily mantras in these difficult days.

Have a good week Sky Dancers!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Shaking the Tree

by Peter Gabriel

Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Waiting your time, dreaming of a better life
Waiting your time, you’re more than just a wife
You don’t have to do what your mother has done
She has done, this is your life, this new life has begun
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Turning the tide, you are on the incoming wave
Turning the tide, you know you are nobody’s slave
Find your sisters or brothers who can hear all the truth in what you say
They can support you when you’re on your way
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Changing your ways, changing those surrounding you
Changing your ways, more than any man can do
Open your heart, show him the anger and pain, so you heal
Maybe he’s looking for his womanly side, let him feel
You had to be so strong
And you do nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all
We’re gonna break it down
We’re gonna shake it down, shake it all around
No no no no no no
No no no no no no
No no no no no no
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
You had to be so strong
You do nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all
We’re gonna break it down
We’re gonna shake it down, shake it all around

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