“The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine.” No one knows the source for this quote–one candidates is Sun Tzu and another is Sextus Empricus. But it looks like that is what is happening now in the many legal investigations of Donald Trump. Frankly, I’ve let go of frustration over how slowly the wheels are turning, because I believe there is progress being made. I’m not convinced Trump will ever go to prison, but I think he will finally pay a price for his crimes against our country. Here’s the latest:
Donald J. Trump is set to be questioned under oath on Thursday in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the latest in a series of legal predicaments entangling the former president, who also faces a separate 34-count criminal indictment unsealed last week.
Ms. James’s civil case, which was filed in September and is expected to go to trial later this year, accuses Mr. Trump, his family business and three of his children of a “staggering” fraud for overvaluing the former president’s assets by billions of dollars. The lawsuit seeks $250 million that it contends they reaped through those deceptions, made in Mr. Trump’s annual financial statements — and asks a judge to essentially run him out of business in the state if he is found liable at trial.
Ms. James’s office plans to question Mr. Trump as part of the discovery phase of the case, in preparation for the trial.
The former president, who spent the night at his Manhattan residence in Trump Tower, arrived at the attorney general’s office shortly before 10 a.m. As a crowd chanted “New York hates you,” Mr. Trump’s motorcade drove into the parking garage underneath the office building at 28 Liberty Street….
This is the second time that lawyers for Ms. James, a Democrat, are questioning Mr. Trump under oath: He also sat for a deposition in the summer of 2022, shortly before the attorney general filed her lawsuit. During that deposition, Mr. Trump lashed out at Ms. James, accusing her of being motivated by politics and then invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination hundreds of times over the course of four hours.
Depositions are held in private, so the specifics of his testimony will not be immediately known. But as of Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump was not expected to assert his Fifth Amendment right, people familiar with his thinking said.
Because he was in the White House or on the campaign trail for several years — and no longer running his company — Mr. Trump might try to avoid providing direct answers to Ms. James’s questions, instead giving insubstantial responses. He might say, for example, that he does not recall a particular incident or was not present for it. He could also claim that he delegated the valuation of his assets to employees.
Trump vented his anger and frustration in ugly, deranged posts on his Twitter clone, Truth Social. Examples:
Federal prosecutors probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have in recent weeks sought a wide range of documents related to fundraising after the 2020 election, looking to determine if former president Donald Trump or his advisers scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money, eight people familiar with the new inquiries said.
Franco/Flemish School; Justice; The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology; unknown British artist
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office has sentsubpoenas in recent weeks to Trump advisers and former campaign aides, Republican operatives and other consultants involved in the 2020 presidential campaign, the people said. They have also heard testimony from some of these figures in front of a Washington grand jury, some of the people said.
The eight people with knowledge of the investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.
The fundraising prong of the investigation is focused on money raised during the period between Nov. 3, 2020, and the end of Trump’s time in office on Jan. 20, 2o21, and prosecutors are said to be interested in whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated wire fraud laws, which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people out of money.
The subpoenas seek more specific types of communications so that prosecutors can compare what Trump allies and advisers were telling one another privately about the voter-fraud claims with what they were saying publicly in appeals that generated more than $200 million in donations from conservatives, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.
Former President Donald Trump is launching a $500 million lawsuit against his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, alleging that he violated attorney-client privilege when he issued a tell-all book about the hush payment he helped Trump faciliate to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
But that claim doesn’t make any sense for Trump, said former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo on CNN’s “OutFront” on Wednesday — because it implicitly requires Trump to admit that everything Cohen said, which he is now denying by pleading not guilty to criminal charges against him in New York, is actually true.
“When you look at this, Trump is alleging that Michael Cohen broke attorney-client privilege, he’s talking about all these falsehoods that he put out there,” said anchor Erica Hill. “Is there a legal merit here? I mean, does he have a case?
“It’s an interesting case here because, on the one hand, he’s saying everything is false, right?” said Agnifilo. “So if he was breaching attorney-client privilege, you’re doing that by telling things that were said to you in confidence. But so, is he saying things that Michael Cohen is saying are true because I told him in confidence, and now he’s breached that privilege? Or is he saying that the things are false? Because if they’re false, why didn’t he bring a defamation claim? So it kind of makes no sense.
“It really reads to me like he’s just trying to put his defense in the criminal case out and try and get his statements out there in the court of public opinion.”
She added: “I also think it’s worth noting that there is a little bit of witness intimidation going on here as well. And he’s just using the court system like he seems to want to do, by going after his foes and adversaries.”
UPDATE: Trump’s lawsuit against Michael Cohen has been assigned to Darrin GAYLES — appointee of Barack Obama pic.twitter.com/PBiyxpxTQN
A federal appeals court panel on Wednesday rejected a bid by former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro to retain hundreds of government records despite a judge’s order to return them promptly to the National Archives.
“There is no public interest in Navarro’s retention of the records, and Congress has recognized that the public has an interest in the Nation’s possession and retention of Presidential records,” the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded in a unanimous two-page order.
The Justice Department sued Navarro last year, seeking to reclaim hundreds of records — contained in Navarro’s personal ProtonMail account — that the government said should have been returned to the National Archives after the Trump administration came to an end in January 2021.
Justica Justice, by Fabiano Millani
Navarro acknowledged that at least 200 to 250 records in his possession belong to the government, but he contended that no mechanism exists to enforce that requirement — and that doing so might violate his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected that claim, ordering Navarro to promptly return the records he had identified as belonging to the government.
But Navarro appealed the decision, rejecting the notion that the Justice Department had any legitimate mechanism to force him to return the records. And he urged the court to stay Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling while his appeal was pending. But the appeals court panel — which included Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, both appointees of President Barack Obama, and Judge Neomi Rao, an appointee of President Donald Trump — rejected Navarro’s stay request.
Within minutes, Kollar-Kotelly put the squeeze on Navarro, ordering him to turn over the 200 to 250 records “on or before” Friday. She also ordered him to perform additional searches or presidential records that might be in his possession by May 8, with further proceedings scheduled for later in the month.
I’m not sure if these records are related to the January 6 investigation, but Navarro has claimed that giving them up will violate his Fifth Amendment rights.
The flurry of filings is the latest twist in a saga that began when the National Archives discovered that Navarro had relied on a ProtonMail account to do official government business — the result of a congressional investigation into the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Navarro is also trying to fend off criminal charges for defying a different congressional investigation — the probe by the Jan. 6 select committee — into his role in strategizing to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election. He faces charges for contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena issued by the select committee, a case that has been repeatedly delayed amid battles over executive privilege and immunity for presidential advisers.
In its brief order rejecting Navarro’s stay, the appeals court panel concluded that returning the documents would not violate Navarro’s protection against self-incrimination.
Allegory of Justic, by Gaetano Gandolfi
The wheels of justice are grinding slowly in the Trump investigations, but it looks like they are moving more quickly than the fight for women’s rights their own bodily autonomy. This decision makes no sense to me.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone can still be used for now but reduced the period of pregnancy when the drug can be taken and said it could not be dispensed by mail.
The decision late Wednesday temporarily narrowed a ruling by a lower court judge in Texas that had completely blocked the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the nation’s most commonly used method of abortion. Still, preventing the pill from being sent by mail amounts to another significant curtailing of abortion access — less than a year after the reversal of Roe v. Wade resulted in more than a dozen states effectively banning abortion outright.
The case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We are going to continue to fight in the courts, we believe the law is on our side, and we will prevail,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday, speaking to reporters from Dublin during a visit by President Joe Biden.
Opponents that brought the Texas lawsuit against the drug last year cast the decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as a victory.
Abortion rights groups expressed relief that the FDA approval would remain in place for now but criticized the court for reinstating restrictions on the drug. Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider that operates six clinics in five states, said in a tweet they were continuing to offer mifepristone in clinics and through virtual services while reviewing the decision that came down shortly before midnight Wednesday.
For goddess sake! Just leave women alone to decide on their medical care in consultation with their doctors!! It’s time to ban Viagra, which is far more dangerous than Mifepristone.
The leader of a small online gaming chat group where a trove of classified U.S. intelligence documents leaked over the last few months is a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The national guardsman, whose name is Jack Teixeira, oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.
Two U.S. officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to Airman Teixeira about the leak of the government documents to the private online group. One official said Airman Teixeira might have information relevant to the investigation.
Federal investigators have been searching for days for the person who leaked the top secret documents online but have not identified Airman Teixeira or anyone else as a suspect. The F.B.I. declined to comment.
Starting months ago, one of the users uploaded hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings into the small chat group, lecturing its members, who had bonded during the isolation of the pandemic, on the importance of staying abreast of world events.
The New York Times spoke with four members of the Thug Shaker Central chat group, one of whom said he has known the person who leaked for at least three years, had met him in person, and referred to him as the O.G. The friends described him as older than most of the group members, who were in their teens, and the undisputed leader. One of the friends said the O.G. had access to intelligence documents through his job.
While the gaming friends would not identify the group’s leader by name, a trail of digital evidence compiled by The Times leads to Airman Teixeira.
The Times has been able to link Airman Teixeira to other members of the Thug Shaker Central group through his online gaming profile and other records. Details of the interior of Airman Teixeira’s childhood home — posted on social media in family photographs — also match details on the margins of some of the photographs of the leaked secret documents.
The Times also has established, through social media posts and military records, that Airman Teixeira is enlisted in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Posts on the unit’s official Facebook page congratulated Airman Teixeira and colleagues for being promoted to Airman First Class in July 2022.
I interviewed the same guy this weekend, basically everything in the Post article corroborates my investigation here (a single citation or hyperlink would have been nice, but oh well)https://t.co/3AFDoXB9Kmhttps://t.co/Xn36OFzkgL
I’m going to focus on the abortion battle today. I think it is completely inappropriate for abortion to even be a public issue in the first place, but of course regulating women’s bodies and lives has been a goal for powerful men since ancient times.
I was around before abortion became legal in this country–in fact I was around before birth control was legal for unmarried women. For me it feels like what is happening now is an incredible betrayal. Although women have never been treated in our culture as fully equal with men, the Roe v. Wade decision made it possible for women to make great strides in education and work. Now, nearly fifty years later, the progress toward equality has been halted. Women of child-bearing age are being treated like broodmares once again.
The good news is that the majority of U.S. voters are not on the same page with right wing Republicans and the justices they have managed to put on the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court. We saw this in Kansas when voters rejected a referendum to make abortion illegal in the state. We saw in the mid-term elections when voters clearly saw abortion as one of the top issues. We saw it during the latest midterm elections, when abortion was shown to be a significant issue for voters. We saw it recently in Wisconsin, where voters election Janet Protasiewicz, a pro-choice Democrat, to the State Supreme Court, giving liberals a majority.
Conservatives are finding out the hard way that abortion isn’t a 50-50 issue anymore.
Janet Protasiewicz’s 11-point blowout victory this week for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin was just the latest example of voters who support abortion rights outnumbering — and outvoting — their opponents. There was little polling in Tuesday’s race, but in a 2022 midterm exit poll of the state, a combined 63 percent of Wisconsin voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while only 34 percent thought it should be illegal in all or most cases.
Moreover, for the 31 percent of 2022 voters who said abortion was their most important issue — second only to inflation at 34 percent — they overwhelmingly backed Democratic Gov. Tony Evers (83 percent) and Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes (81 percent), who lost narrowly to GOP Sen. Ron Johnson.
Going back to the 1990s, Gallup polling showed Americans divided roughly evenly between those who called themselves “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” Exit polls from the 1990s and 2000s showed voters who said abortion or “moral values” were most important to their vote supported Republican candidates in greater numbers.
But those surveys were conducted when a right to an abortion was law of the land. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year ending that constitutional right has exposed Americans’ broad opposition to the strict abortion bans adopted or proposed in GOP-controlled states. And it’s revealed that public surveys on the matter probably need more nuanced questions now.
There’s a long history of abortion polling. In the 2000 presidential election, the Los Angeles Times national exit poll found more George W. Bush voters rated abortion as one of their two most important issues than Al Gore voters, and voters were divided 50-50 on whether abortion should remain legal or be made illegal (though with exceptions).
That poll offered three options when measuring voter sentiment on abortion: keep it legal, make it illegal with exceptions or make it illegal with no exceptions.
Now, a four-point question probably best measures where Americans sit on the issue: legal in all cases, legal in most, illegal in all and illegal in most. The 2022 national exit poll used this device, finding that 29 percent of voters believed abortion should be “legal in all cases,” while another 30 percent thought it should be “legal in most cases.” That left 26 percent who thought it should be “illegal in most cases” and only 10 percent who said it should be “illegal in all cases.”
That leaves roughly six-in-10 voters supporting legal abortion in most cases — with the median voter supporting some restrictions — and just over a third who want it to be entirely or mostly illegal.
NY Magazine cover, by Barbara Kruger
The recent decision by reactionary Trump judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas is getting very bad reviews. Kacsmaryk claimed to have the power to tell scientists at the FDA that mifepristone, an abortion pill that has been approved and shown to be safe for more than 20 years, should be banned nationwide. Some recent reactions:
Congratulations are in order for Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The competition is fierce and will remain so, but for now he holds the title: worst federal judge in America.
Not simply for the poor quality of his judicial reasoning, although more, much more, on this in a bit. What really distinguishes Kacsmaryk is the loaded content of his rhetoric — not the language of a sober-minded, impartial jurist but of a zealot, committed more to promoting a cause than applying the law.
Kacsmaryk is the Texas-based judge handpicked by antiabortion advocates — he is the sole jurist who sits in the Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas — to hear their challenge to the legality of abortion medication.
And so he did, ruling exactly as expected. In an opinion released Friday, Kacsmaryk invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug mifepristone and, for good measure, found that abortion medications cannot be sent by mail or other delivery service under the terms of an 1873 anti-vice law.
Even in states where abortion remains legal. Even though study after study has shown the drug to be safe and effective — far safer, for instance, than over-the-counter Tylenol. Even though — or perhaps precisely because — more than half of abortions in the United States today are performed with abortion medication.
My fury here is not because I fear that Kacsmaryk’s ruling will stand. I don’t think it will, not even with this Supreme Court. Indeed, another federal district judge — just hours after Kacsmaryk’s Good Friday ruling — issued a competing order, instructing the FDA to maintain the existing rules making mifepristone available. Even Kacsmaryk put his ruling on hold for a week; the Justice Department has already filed a notice of appeal; and the dispute is hurtling its way to the Supreme Court. (Nice work getting yourselves out of the business of deciding abortion cases, your honors.)
No, my beef is with ideologues in robes. That Kacsmaryk fits the description is no surprise. Before being nominated to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2017, Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the conservative First Liberty Institute. He argued against same-sex marriage, civil rights protections for gay and transgender individuals, the contraceptive mandate and, of course, Roe v. Wade.
At his confirmation hearings, Kacsmaryk testified that federal judges are bound “to read the law as it is written and not read into it any policy preference that they might have had before they were judges.”
Well that was a blatant lie. Read the whole article at the WaPo.
The conservative legal movement has long had two key goals: to limit access to abortion and to restrict the authority of administrative agencies.
The decision last week by a federal judge in Texas invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s approval 23 years ago of the abortion drug mifepristone checked both of those boxes. The ruling, if it stands, would not only thwart access to the pills, used in more than half of pregnancy terminations, but also undermine the F.D.A.’s authority to approve and regulate other drugs.
At first blush, all of that might seem to make the decision’s chances of surviving review by a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices quite promising.
But legal scholars said on Monday that the poor quality, breathtaking sweep and unknown collateral consequences of the Texas decision might cause at least some of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices to wait for a case that would allow them to take more measured steps.
“If you’re a justice looking for a case in which to undermine the administrative state, this is not a particularly elegant one,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor and historian at the University of California, Davis. “Everything about this case makes it an imperfect vehicle, except for the fact that it’s about abortion and the administrative state. This is boundary testing.”
Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, said the new case, should it reach the Supreme Court, might meet a reception similar to that of the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act. In 2021, by a vote of 7 to 2, the court said that the 18 Republican-led states and two individuals who brought the case had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.
Despite the conservative majority’s misgivings about the health care law, Professor Adler said, “when push came to shove and they were presented with a fundamentally deficient legal theory, only two justices were willing to give that legal theory the time of day.”
History may repeat itself in the Texas case, he said. “I view some of the administrative law aspects of this case to be similar,” he said, noting that there were significant threshold issues involving the plaintiffs’ standing to sue, whether they had exhausted other avenues for relief and whether they had taken too long to bring an action.
The pharmaceutical industry plunged into a legal showdown over the abortion pill mifepristone on Monday, issuing a scorching condemnation of a ruling by a federal judge that invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug and calling for the decision to be reversed.
The statement was signed by more than 400 leaders of some of the drug and biotech industry’s most prominent investment firms and companies, none of which make mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen. It shows that the reach of this case stretches far beyond abortion. Unlike Roe v. Wade and other past landmark abortion lawsuits, this one could challenge the foundation of the regulatory system for all medicines in the United States.
“If courts can overturn drug approvals without regard for science or evidence, or for the complexity required to fully vet the safety and efficacy of new drugs, any medicine is at risk for the same outcome as mifepristone,” said the statement.
What the DOJ is doing:
Also on Monday, the Justice Department filed a motion asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to stay the ruling by Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas until the department’s appeal of the case could be heard. Judge Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who has written critically of Roe v. Wade, had issued only a seven-day stay of his ruling to allow the government a chance to appeal.
“If allowed to take effect, the court’s order would thwart F.D.A.’s scientific judgment and severely harm women, particularly those for whom mifepristone is a medical or practical necessity,” said the Justice Department motion, which noted that mifepristone was also used in treating miscarriages.
It added: “This harm would be felt throughout the country, given that mifepristone has lawful uses in every state. The order would undermine health care systems and the reliance interests of businesses and medical providers.”
The appeals court gave the plaintiffs, a coalition of groups and doctors who oppose abortion, until midnight Tuesday to file a response.
The 67-page document, written by right-wing Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, cited Wikipedia and is full of inaccuracies and falsehoods about the health effects of medical abortion, experts told Insider on Friday.
Kacsmaryk in the ruling cited multiple studies to back up claims that have been widely scrutinized or do not hold up to scientific consensus.
“When you’re issuing a ruling that’s going to impact people nationally, one would hope that that ruling would be evidence-based and that it would look at the body of evidence instead of cherry-picking studies that are really not in line with the scientific consensus on the topic,” M. Antonia Biggs, Ph.D. and social psychologist at ANSIRH previously told Insider.
For example, one study, with ties to anti-abortion nonprofit the Charlotte Lozier Institute, relies on the anonymous experiences of users on one particular website. The study uses 98 blog posts made over the course of 10 years. The authors note that the small sample group is one of the study’s limitations.
In comparison to the study, in 2020, 620,327 legally induced abortions were reported to CDC.
However, despite the limited scope of the study, the conservative Christian judge writes that “eighty-three percent of women report that chemical abortion ‘changed’ them — and seventy-seven percent of those women reported a negative change” — citing the study of 98 anonymous blog posts.
In another example, the judge cites an analysis that suggests a link between negative mental health outcomes and abortion written by abortion researcher Priscilla Coleman whose study has been denounced for years by abortion researchers and whose other work has previously been retracted by leading journals.
Julia Steinberg, an expert on mental health and abortion, told Reuters in 2012 that most women in the study who experienced mental health issues after having an abortion had also experienced them before the abortion. The Guttmacher Institute also debunked the study in a letter.
Clearly, Kacsmaryk is woefully unqualified to be a federal judge.
In interviews, several legal and medical experts said Kacsmaryk’s decision was unprecedented and clearly ideological. His language and reasoning, they said, closely mirrored arguments and concepts put forward by the anti-abortion movement — at the expense of scientific consensus in some instances.
The experts pointed to several key examples of the extreme nature of Kacsmaryk’s 67-page ruling, including his use of politicized terminology and apparent endorsement of the contentious idea of “fetal personhood.” Here are the parts of the ruling experts found most striking….
In his ruling Friday, Kacsmaryk used various terms closely associated with the anti-abortion movement, according to the experts who were interviewed. Notably, Kacsmaryk referred to the two-pill regimen that is the most common way to terminate a pregnancy in the U.S. as “chemical abortion,” rather than “medication abortion.” The plaintiffs in the suit, a group called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, use the same term in their filings and messaging.
“‘Chemical abortion’ is absolutely not a scientific or medical term. It is something that has been utilized and propagated by those who want to ban abortion or restrict abortion,” said Dr. Jenni Villavicencio, an OB-GYN who is the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ lead for equity transformation.
Villavicencio characterized “chemical abortion” as an “emotive” term meant to inspire fear about the risks of ending a pregnancy.
She also highlighted Kacsmaryk’s references to a fetus as an “unborn human” or an “unborn child.”
Kacsmaryk wrote that mifepristone “blocks the hormone progesterone, halts nutrition, and ultimately starves the unborn human until death.” [….]
Kacsmaryk’s references to an “unborn child” align with other parts of his decision in which he suggests that any potential “side effects” or “significant complications” caused by mifepristone should apply to both the pregnant woman and “to the unborn humans extinguished by mifepristone.”
Such wording, experts said, references the concept of “fetal personhood”: the idea promoted by the anti-abortion movement that a fetus should be recognized as a person with constitutional rights from the moment of conception. Under that theory — which many legal analysts and abortion rights advocates oppose — an abortion would be considered murder.
On Friday, a Trump-appointed judge with a long history of anti-choice activism ordered the FDA to take a medication that is safely used to perform most abortions off the market, based on the thinnest of legal rationales. The same day, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gaslit the nation by saying he’d seen no need to disclose the hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of largess he received from a right-wing billionaire.
These two apparently disparate events are fruit of the same poison tree. They each reflect a fundamental problem with the GOP’s decades’ long effort to remake the nation by packing the federal courts with extremists: A judiciary at odds with, and even contemptuous of, most of the nations’ citizens is not sustainable.
A brief history of SCOTUS’s decline since Bush v. Gore
During what can now fairly be titled the federal courts’ “Trump Era,” Americans’ trust in the judicial branch has plummeted. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s overruling Roe, 58 percent of the nation now disapproves of how the Supreme Court is handling its job, and less than half the country has confidence in the institution. This is hardly a surprise; indeed, what’s surprising is how long it has taken most of the nation’s citizens to realize that the packed Supreme Court has become a partisan tool of the Republican Party, and a direct adversary to the nation’s foundational principles of democracy and civil rights.
Even before Trump and Mitch McConnell packed the Supreme Court with a right-wing supermajority, GOP-appointed justices were pursuing a brazenly anti-democratic project, which only became more audacious as each judicial attack was met with little pushback.
Even before Trump and Mitch McConnell packed the Supreme Court with a right-wing supermajority, GOP-appointed justices were pursuing a brazenly anti-democratic project, which only became more audacious as each judicial attack was met with little pushback.
In addition, the court ruled in 2019 that the US Constitution places no limits on the partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts that, in states like Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Tennessee, has so diluted the votes of many citizens as to make a farce of the democratic process. In addition, it appears several justices are interested in a dubious reading of the Constitution that would prevent governors and state courts from addressing such largely GOP-driven gerrymandering, even when it squarely violates the state constitutions state courts and elected officials are charged with enforcing.
The Roberts court also set out to open political campaigns to brazen corruption by gutting campaign finance laws, including in the 2010 Citizens United case, which voided key limits on dark money in political campaigns, as well as a 2021 decision that protected the identities of many dark money donors from even being disclosed. But these deeply partisan decisions proved only to be a preamble for what was to come.
As the two years since Trump’s failed insurrection against democracy have demonstrated, the vast majority of GOP “leaders” either support, or are unwilling to oppose, the Republican Party’s movement toward outright authoritarianism. And that same tendency is evident in the rulings of Trump Era judges.
In last year’s Dobbs decision, the Trump Era Supreme Court supermajority used a case that was initially about a 15-week abortion ban to overrule Roe entirely. As I observed after a draft of the decision was leaked, it was all but inevitable that the GOP, along with the Court, would be met with a public backlash. But that backlash is only leading to a doubling down upon extremism, including among some right-wing jurists.
It should not be surprising, however, that extremists the GOP has installed in the judiciary — chosen for their ideological fervor, not their political savvy — are determined to use their lifetime judicial appointments to impose right-wing economic, political and social policy agendas on the nation, whether the nation wants them or not.
It’s not at all surprising that the right wing courts are so focused on controlling women’s bodies. I’m feeling discouraged and overwhelmed with rage and fear over what is happening, but it does seem as if a majority of Americans are now pro-choice, and they are voting on these issues. So there’s hope. Please share your thoughts on these articles and feel free to discuss any other issue that is important to you.
Take care, Sky Dancers!
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The actions of Republicans in the Tennessee legislature resemble the attempts of White Southern Redeemers to take back the South at the end of the 19th century.
These new Redeemers are using their power as a tool of intimidation. What other conclusion can be drawn from the inappropriate and disproportionate response to a decorum infraction?
Four people were killed and eight others were injured, including two police officers, when a gunman opened fire Monday morning inside a bank building in downtown Louisville.
Louisville Metro Police said officers responded to the scene around 8:30 a.m. at 333 E. Main St. — at the Preston Pointe building near Louisville Slugger Field — on reports of a “active shooter.” Police spokesman Col. Paul Humphrey said the first responding officers arrived to hear the sound of gunshots still firing inside.
The eight injured were taken to University of Louisville Hospital. Speaking around 11 am., Humphrey said the suspected shooter, who police believe was either a current or former employee at Old National Bank, was “dead on the scene.”
This is some live footage provided by a bystander.
… a new reality playing out in hospitals in antiabortion states across the country — where because of newly enacted abortion bans, people with potentially life-threatening pregnancy complications are being denied care that was readily available before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
When abortion was legal across the country, doctors in all states would typically offer to induceor perform a surgical procedure to end the pregnancy when faced with a pre-viability PPROM case — which is the standard of care, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and an option that many women choose. Especially before the 20-week mark, a fetus is extremely unlikely to survive without any amniotic fluid.
But in the 18states where abortion is now banned before fetal viability, many hospitals have been turning away pre-viability PPROM patients as doctors and administrators fear the legal risk that could come with terminating even a pregnancy that could jeopardize the mother’s well-being, according to 12 physicians practicing in antiabortion states.
The medical exceptions to protect the life of the mother that are included in abortion bansare often described in vague language that does not appear to cover pre-viabilityPPROM, doctors said. That’s because the risks of the condition are often less clear-cut than other medical emergencies, such as an ectopic pregnancy, in which a fertilized egg grows outside of the uterus, dooming the fetus and posing an immediate danger to the mother’s life.
A 2022 study on the impact of Texas’s six-week abortion ban found that 57 percent of pre-viability PPROM patients in Texaswho were not given the option to end their pregnancies experienced “a serious maternal morbidity,” such as infection or hemorrhage,compared with 33 percent of PPROM patients who chose to terminate in states without abortion bans. According to 2018 ACOG guidance, “isolated maternal deaths due to infection” have been reported in early PPROM cases.
Women in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after giving birth, according to a report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute shared first with AXIOS.
This statistic is not likely to improve given the number of hospitals and doctors bailing on maternal and obstetric care. CNN reports “Maternity units are closing across America, forcing expectant mothers to hit the road.” That’s some quixotic headline, isn’t it?
The Chartis report says that the states with the highest loss of access to obstetrical care are Minnesota, Texas, Iowa, Kansas and Wisconsin, with each losing more than 10 facilities.
Data released last fall by the infant and maternal health nonprofit March of Dimes also shows that more than 2.2 million women of childbearing age across 1,119 US counties are living in “maternity care deserts,” meaning their counties have no hospitals offering obstetric care, no birth centers and no obstetric providers.
Maternity care deserts have been linked to a lack of adequate prenatal care or treatment for pregnancy complications and even an increased risk of maternal death for a year after giving birth.
Money is one reason why maternity units are being shuttered.
According to the American Hospital Association, 42% of births in the US are paid for by Medicaid, which has low reimbursement rates. Employer-sponsored insurance pays about $15,000 for a delivery, and Medicaid pays about $6,500, according to the Health Care Cost Institute, a nonprofit that analyzes health care cost and utilization data.
“Medicaid funds about half of all births nationally and more than half of births in rural areas,” said Dr. Katy Kozhimannil, a public health researcher at the University of Minnesota who has conducted research on the growing number of maternity care deserts.
…
More stringent abortion laws may be playing a role in the closures, too.
Bonner General said in a news release last month that due to Idaho’s “legal and political climate, highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care.”
According to the Guttmacher Institute, Idaho has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country: a complete ban that has only a few exceptions.
Idaho requires an “affirmative defense,” Guttmacher says, meaning a provider “has to prove in court that an abortion met the criteria for a legal exception.”
No matter the reason, Kozhimannil said, closures in rural communities aren’t just a nuisance. They also put families at risk.
Shortly after, the couple says their baby developed jaundice, a common liver condition in newborns that often resolves itself without treatment.
Temecia and her husband, Rodney Jackson, said they were following their midwife’s care protocol for their baby’s jaundice, which was to care for her at home rather than admit her to the hospital.
After a routine doctor’s visit, the couple alleges their child’s pediatrician called Dallas Child Protective Services (CPS) because the parents were going to continue to follow their midwife’s guidance. Days later, Desoto police officers and CPS agents arrived at the couple’s home, demanding they turn their daughter over to authorities.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Saturday he is seeking the pardon of an Uber driver convicted of murder a day earlier in the July 2020 shooting death of a man at a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Austin, the state capital.
Abbott, in a post on Twitter, said he will pardon Daniel Perry, 37, a U.S. Army sergeant, as soon as a request from the parole board “hits my desk.”
The Republican governor noted that he can grant pardons only on the recommendation of the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles, but that he is allowed to request pardons.
Then we come to Saturday. That is when GOP Texas Governor Gregg Abbott announced he would pardon a man convicted just 24 hours before of murdering a US military veteran who had taken part in a 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest. Why is Abbott–who only pardoned two people in all of 2022—so anxious to pardon the killer who shot 28 year-old Air Force veteran, Garrett Foster to death in the middle of a Texas street? Simple, because he was being “goaded” to do so by right wing figures from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to Kyle Rittenhouse to the chair of the Texas GOP.
Gov. Abbott pardoning a man convicted of MURDERING a BLM protester–who posted before the shooting he was going to kill someone–sends a dangerous message. Abbott is saying you can literally KILL people the GOP disagrees with politically and we will protect you.
The facts of the case are, for the most part, straightforward. On the night of July 25, 2020, defendant David Perry was working as an Uber driver in Austin during the time of protests surrounding the gruesome murder of George Floyd. As the Austin police detailed, Perry was driving his car when he approached BLM protesters blocking the traffic. At first, Perry honked at protesters as they walked through the street but then seconds later, Perry ran a red light, driving his car into the crowd.
That is when Perry and Foster—both white and both legally armed–came to meet. Foster was openly carrying his AK-47 when he and other protesters approached Perry’s car.
However, at this point there were conflicting accounts as to whether Foster had raised his weapon to point at Perry or if Perry shot first. Witnesses testified at trial that Foster had been pushing the wheelchair of his quadruple-amputee fiancée, Whitney Mitchell—who is pictured above— and never raised his assault rifle before Perry killed him. Perry claims he shot in self-defense after Foster pointed his weapon at him.
It’s undisputed, though, that Perry fired five shots from his .357 revolver through his car window killing Foster. Perry drove away but later did call the police to admit he killed Foster, claiming self-defense.
During the trial, the key question for the jury was whether Perry’s shooting was justified under the state’s “stand your ground” law–which allows deadly force to be used by a person who feels their life is in danger. Prosecutors argued Perry had instigated the incident and introduced messages that suggested the shooting by Perry was not spur of the moment, but pre-mediated.
One of the most damning was Perry’s Facebook message to a friend before the shooting that he might “kill a few people on my way to work. They are rioting outside my apartment complex.”
During Perry’s 8-day trial, dozens of witnesses testified and forensic evidence was presented. The jury—after deliberating for 17 hours– rendered a unanimous verdict finding Perry guilty of murder.
That is when Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and others on the right began to publicly pressure Gov. Abbott to in essence overturn the jury verdict by issuing a pardon because they didn’t agree with it. On his Fox News show Friday night shortly after the verdict, Carlson called on Abbott to pardon Perry, arguing the defendant had acted in self-defense—despite the jury unanimously rejecting that very defense. Carlson even attacked the prosecutor by employing the common anti-Semitic refrain from the right that he was a “Soros-funded DA”—as in Jewish billionaire George Soros supporting him. Carlson wrapped up by declaring that the verdict “means that in the state of Texas, if you have the wrong politics, you’re not allowed to defend yourself.”
Carlson is lying. Perry had the ability to fully defend himself in his trial. But the jury unanimously rejected Perry’s defense and found him guilty of murder.
Guns have moral agency but women do not. Welcome to Christo-Fascism 101 for Wipopo.
Today’s cartoon has a backstory. The MAGAt I drew has been in many of my cartoons the last couple of years. He trolls a group of friends of mine on FB with right wingnut memes. Yesterday, my toons triggered him so much he actual made a meme. Living proof The Right Can’t Meme. pic.twitter.com/uvA9WzcxTm
Wherever they go, they create a hell realm. They don’t seem to get that looks pleasant compared to being in their company and listening to them. I’d rather be anywhere than near just one of them. Let’s get them out of government ASAP before they kill everything!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Life will kill you That’s what I said Life will kill you And then you’ll be dead Life will find you Wherever you go Requiescat in pace That’s all she wrote
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This has been one hell of a week. It was just a few days ago that Donald Trump was charged with 34 felony counts and arraigned in a Manhattan court, but that earthshaking event has been eclipsed by subsequent shocking news stories
There was the Tennessee legislature’s racist treatment of two young black representatives–Justin Jones and Justin Pearson–ending in their expulsion from the state legislature for protesting last week’s school shooting in Memphis; the election in Wisconsin that put a Democrat on the state supreme court, giving liberals a majority for the first time in many years; the stunning revelations about Clarence Thomas’s acceptance of millions of dollars worth of gifts from wealthy Republican donor Harlan Crow; and finally the insane ruling by Texas judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk that could ban the abortion pill mifepristone nationwide.
Two more stories to watch broke yesterday: Elon Musk has banned linking to Substack newsletters in a move that could actually kill Twitter, and a number of classified U.S. documents that reveal top secret information have been published on line.
Few weeks may beas revealing of the current state of American politics as the one that just passed. In New York, Wisconsin and Tennessee, what transpired highlighted the raging battle underway over the direction of the country, a struggle that seems destined only to intensify as the 2024 election approaches.
The action came with such speed and from enough varying angles that, even for those paying close attention, it was sometimes difficult to absorb and process one event before the nexttook precedence. At this week’s end came dueling decisions from two federal judges who issued contradictory rulings late Friday about access to an abortion drug, creating a legal standoff over mifepristone that seemed destined for the Supreme Court.
Americans may be exhausted by the turmoil and chaos of the Trump years, but there seems no slackening or pulling back. Each event in the past week seemed to reinforce the overall stakes. There could be more such weeks ahead. Each iteration of this past dizzying week was a reminder of how much the coming election in 2024matters and how unsettled things remain.
Former president DonaldTrump faces more possible indictments, federally and in Georgia, which could addboth strength and weakness to his political profile while further roiling the electorate. Republican legislatures continue to push boundaries on abortion, with legislation calling for bans after six weeks of pregnancy in contradiction of public sentiment. Racial politics remain at the forefront, and there seems no likelihood of a calming on that front as Republicans attack Democratic “wokeness” and Democrats fight against efforts to minimize the power and voice of Black voters.
For Republicans, last week’snews was almost uniformly bad, although some in the party probably do not see it that way. The damage inflicted by past and present actions continues to define a new Republican Party, one that has been consolidating power in many red states but vulnerable elsewhere — especially in states that could decide the next presidential election.
The world of politics experienced a collective shock this week as Tennessee Republicans expelled two young, Black, Democratic House members for protesting gun laws on the chamber floor after a deadly school shooting in Nashville.
But for those who have closely watched the chamber in recent years, the events were of little surprise. The place has been defined by partisan vitriol, pique, scandal, racism and Olympic-level pettiness for years.
I know. I covered it.
The protest and subsequent expulsion over decorum rules took place in a chamber where a GOP member, for years, rang a cowbell every day of session as a raucous, attention-grabbing substitute for applause.
When I covered the Tennessee Capitol from 2018 to 2021, the family-values espousing Republican House speaker had to explain why his text message trail included discussions of pole-dancing women and his chief of staff’s sexual encounters in the bathroom of a hot chicken restaurant.
After a Republican lawmaker was accused of sexually assaulting 15- and 16-year-old girls he had taught and coached, he was made chairman of the House education committee.
Protesters filled the halls week after week, year after year, calling for the removal of the bust of the Ku Klux Klan’s first Grand Wizard, a piece of art featured prominently between the House and Senate chambers. Democrats pushed for its removal, while Republicans resisted.
A Democrat who declined to support the current speaker’s reelection had her office moved into a small, windowless room. In a twist of fate, that same Democrat, Rep. Gloria Johnson, a white woman, narrowly escaped expulsion on Thursday. (Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson fared differently.)
And then, of course, there was the famous peeing incident, where a legislator’s office chair was urinated on in an act of intraparty retribution over shitposting. The actual identity of the Republican urinator is a closely-held secret among a small group of operatives who have bragged about witnessing it. But it’s generally accepted that former state Rep. Rick Tillis, a Republican and the brother of U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, did indeed have his chair peed on in the Cordell Hull legislative office building.
About 500 people packed the chapel at Fisk University, a historically Black college in Nashville, Tennessee, and sang the civil rights anthem This Little Light of Mine while they waited for US vice-president Kamala Harris to appear. When she did, the crowd erupted in cheers.
Harris and her listeners were there to show support for her fellow Democrats and state lawmakers Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson – Jones and Pearson were ousted from the Republican-controlled Tennessee house of representatives after joining a protest in favor of gun control at the capitol in Nashville, and Johnson narrowly survived an expulsion vote.
“We are here because [Jones, Pearson and Johnson] and their colleagues in the Democratic caucus chose to show courage in the face of extreme tragedy,” Harris said, alluding to how the targeted representatives stood with gun control advocates after the killings of three students and three staffers at the Covenant elementary school in Nashville on 27 March. “They chose to lead and show courage and say that a democracy allows for places where the people’s voice will be heard and honored and respected.”
The vice-president said they also added another chapter to a vibrant local history of civil rights activism that previously saw sit-ins at segregated lunch counters led by the late US congressman John Lewis and his movement colleague Diane Nash, saying it was on their “broad shoulders upon which we all stand”.
Pussy Willow Cats, by Svetlana Petrova of Fat Cat Art
What the Tennessee Three did:
Harris’s visit punctuated a dramatic week for the so-called “Tennessee Three”, who faced expulsion proceedings after talking without being given the floor by the Republican house speaker Cameron Sexton. Johnson, Jones and Pearson said they spoke out in that manner because capitol staff had cut their microphones off when they attempted to bring up gun control and regulation efforts in response to the shooting deaths at Covenant.
Jones and Pearson led chants from protesters in favor of their proposed measures with a bullhorn while Johnson stood by them silently in solidarity.
Their colleagues then drew up papers to expel all three from the seats in the chamber to which they were democratically elected. Votes on Thursday left Jones and Pearson – two Black men and the house’s youngest members – ousted while Johnson, a 60-year-old white woman, managed to keep her seat by a single vote.
“A democracy says you do not silence the people, you do not stifle the people, you do not turn off their microphones when they are speaking,” Harris said, outraged. “These leaders had to get a bullhorn to be heard.”
In a statement, Thomas said “colleagues and others in the judiciary” not only blessed his cozy relationship with the Texas real estate developer but determined that he didn’t have to publicly disclose the gifts on his annual financial disclosure statements.
Legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, however, said Thomas’ explanation raises a lot more questions than answers.
“And these are questions that he should answer under oath, under penalty of perjury,” said Lisa Graves, the former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy.
“He needs to name every person he spoke with who gave him such advice, and whether they’re in government or outside the government,” Graves told USA TODAY. “Because I would be shocked if he actually told any official the specifics of what he was doing and that they said it was okay not to disclose it.” [….]
Ethics and legal experts told USA TODAY on Friday that Supreme Court law and policy is indeed vague when it comes to such gifts. While the justices are required to report gifts they have received on their annual financial disclosure reports, an exemption is allowed for hospitality from friends.
Several ethics experts, including Graves, said the hospitality exemption intended for the receipt of small personal gifts from longtime friends, not lavish gifts like weeklong resort stays and international jet and yacht trips….
Late Friday, congressional Democrats responded by calling on Chief Justice John Roberts to launch an investigation into Thomas’ “unethical, and potentially unlawful, conduct at the Supreme Court.”
“We believe that it is your duty as Chief Justice ‘to safeguard public faith in the judiciary,’ and that fulfilling that duty requires swift, thorough, independent and transparent investigation into these allegations,” the lawmakers, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), wrote in a letter.
Crow, the billionaire heir to a real estate fortune, has said that he’s filled his property with these mementoes because he hates communism and fascism. Nonetheless, his collections caused an uproar back in 2015 when Marco Rubio attended a fundraiser at Crow’s house on the eve of Yom Kippur. Rubio’s critics thought the timing was inappropriate given, you know, the Hitler stuff.
“I still can’t get over the collection of Nazi memorabilia,” says one person who attended an event at Crow’s home a few years ago and asked to remain anonymous. “It would have been helpful to have someone explain the significance of all the items. Without that context, you sort of just gasp when you walk into the room.” One memorable aspect was the paintings: “something done by George W. Bush next to a Norman Rockwell next to one by Hitler.” They also said it was “startling” and “strange” to see the dictator sculptures in the backyard.
In 2014, when Crow’s house was included in a public tour of historic homes, a reporter from the Dallas Morning News visited. Apparently, Crow was visibly uncomfortable with questions about his dictator statues and Hitler memorabilia, preferring to discuss his other historical collections: documents signed by the likes of Christopher Columbus and George Washington; paintings by Renoir and Monet; statues of two of Crow’s heroes, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
But despite Crow’s discomfort, the reporter did manage to see the garden of dictator statues, describing it as a “historical nod to the facts of man’s inhumanity to man.” Among the figures in the “Garden of Evil” are Lenin and Stalin, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk thinks he knows more than the FDA scientists
The status of a key abortion medication was cast into uncertainty Friday night when rulings from two federal judges reached contradictory conclusions, with one jurist blocking U.S. government approval of the drug while the other said the pill should remain available in a swath of states.
The dueling opinions — one from Texas and the other from Washington state — concern access to mifepristone, the medicationused in more than half of all abortions in the United States and follow the Supreme Court’s elimination of the constitutional right to the procedure last year. It appears inevitable the issue will move to the high court, and the conflicting decisions could make that sooner rather than later.
The highly anticipated and unprecedented ruling from Texas puts on hold the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, which was cleared for use in the United States in 2000. It was the first time a judge suspended longtime FDA approval of a medication despite opposition from the agency and the drug’s manufacturer. The ruling will not go into effect for seven days to give the government time to appeal.
U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a nominee of President Donald Trump with long-held antiabortion views, agreed with the conservative groups seeking to reverse the FDA’s approval of mifepristone as safe and effective, including in states where abortion rights are protected.
“The Court does not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly,” Kacsmaryk wrote in the 67-page opinion. “But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions.” He added that the agency had faced “significant political pressure” to “increase ‘access’ to chemical abortion.”
In a competing opinion late Friday, a federal judge in Washington state ruled in a separate case involving mifepristone that the drug is safe and effective. U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, ordered the FDA to preserve “the status quo” and retain access in the 17 states — along with D.C. — that are behind the second lawsuit, which seeks to protect medication abortion.
On Friday evening, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas issued an unprecedented decision withdrawing the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, the first drug used in medication abortion, 23 years after it was first approved. His order, which applies nationwide, marks the first time in history that a court has claimed the authority to single-handedly pull a drug from the market, a power that courts do not, in fact, have. Kacsmaryk’s ruling is indefensible from top to bottom and will go down in history as one of the judiciary’s most shocking and lawless moments. It goes even further than expected, raising the possibility that he will impose “fetal personhood,” which holds that every state must ban abortion because it murders a human. Within an hour of its release, the decision also spurred the start of a constitutional crisis: A federal judge in Washington swiftly issued a dueling injunction compelling the FDA to continue allowing mifepristone in 17 states and District of Columbia, which brought a separate suit in Washington.
Kacsmaryk stayed his decision for one week to let the Biden administration appeal, but his ruling stands a good chance of being upheld at the radically conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If his order takes effect, the FDA will be faced with competing, mutually exclusive court orders requiring the agency to simultaneously suspend mifepristone nationwide and preserve access to the drug in 18 blue jurisdictions. The agency cannot comply with both orders at once. And because Kacsmaryk’s is broader, covering all 50 states, it guarantees that mifepristone will be suspended in much of the country. Only the Supreme Court can resolve this looming crisis, and it has a very limited window of time in which to do so. It has been less than a year since the court claimed to rid itself of the abortion issue. Now it must decide whether American patients will lose access to an abortion drug that has been on the market for 23 years and proven safer than Tylenol—on the order of a single, rogue judge.
It is probably impossible to count how many errors, exaggerations, and lies Kacsmaryk, a Donald Trump appointee, put in his decision. The judge appears to have largely copied and pasted the briefs filed by the anti-abortion group that filed the suit, the Alliance Defending Freedom, rephrasing their arguments as his own analysis. (This was predictable—Kacsmaryk himself is a staunch anti-abortion activist—and might be why ADF handpicked him specifically to hear the case for them.) His decision repeats the ridiculous and objectively false conspiracy theory about mifepristone—that the FDA illegally rushed its approval in 2000 at the behest of former President Bill Clinton, the pharmaceutical industry, and population control advocates. Kacsmaryk flyspecked the FDA’s assessment of the drug, concluding that its studies were insufficient and that the agency “acquiesced to the pressure to increase access to chemical abortion at the expense of women’s safety.” And he claimed that he had authority to revisit an FDA approval that occurred 23 years ago because the agency happens to have changed rules around the dispensation of the drug several times since.
This is all completely absurd, an outrageous abuse of power that no judge has ever even attempted before. Challenges to agency actions have a six-year statute of limitations. That means plaintiffs get a full six years to file a lawsuit, after which point they’ve waited too long. It has, just to reiterate, been more than two decades since the FDA approved mifepristone. Kascmaryk ignored that limitation in his quest to block the drug because, he insisted, the agency hadn’t responded quickly enough to citizen petitions opposing the drug. That is not the law.
A new batch of classified documents that appear to detail American national security secrets from Ukraine to the Middle East to China surfaced on social media sites on Friday, alarming the Pentagon and adding turmoil to a situation that seemed to have caught the Biden administration off guard.
The scale of the leak — analysts say more than 100 documents may have been obtained — along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be hugely damaging, U.S. officials said. A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence.
The latest documents were found on Twitter and other sites on Friday, a day after senior Biden administration officials said they were investigating a potential leak of classified Ukrainian war plans, include an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defense capabilities. One slide, dated Feb. 23, is labeled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning it was not meant to be shared with foreign countries.
The Justice Department said it had opened an investigation into the leaks and was in communication with the Defense Department but declined to comment further.
A bit more:
Early Friday, senior national security officials dealing with the initial leak, which was first reported by The New York Times, said a new worry had arisen: Was that information the only intelligence that was leaked?
By Friday afternoon, they had their answer. Even as officials at the Pentagon and national security agencies were investigating the source of documents that had appeared on Twitter and on Telegram, another surfaced on 4chan, an anonymous, fringe message board. The 4chan document is a map that purports to show the status of the war in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the scene of a fierce, monthslong battle.
But the leaked documents appear to go well beyond highly classified material on Ukraine war plans. Security analysts who have reviewed the documents tumbling onto social media sites say the increasing trove also includes sensitive briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East and terrorism.
Russia or pro-Russian elements are likely behind the leak of several classified U.S. military documents posted on social media that offer a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday, while the Justice Department said separately it was probing the leak.
The documents appear to have been altered to lower the number of casualties suffered by Russian forces, the U.S. officials said, adding their assessments were informal and separate from the investigation into the leak itself….
An initial batch of documents circulated on sites including Twitter and Telegram, dated March 1 and bearing markings showing them classified as “Secret” and “Top Secret.”
Later on Friday, an additional batch appearing to detail U.S. national security secrets pertaining to areas including Ukraine, the Middle East and China surfaced on social media, the New York Times reported….
The U.S. Justice Department said late on Friday it was in touch with the Defense Department and began a probe into the leak. It declined further comment.
A leak of such sensitive documents is highly unusual.
“We are aware of the reports of social media posts and the Department (of Defense) is reviewing the matter,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said.
A CIA spokesperson said the agency was also aware of the posts and was looking into the claims.
On Wednesday, the newsletter service Substack announced that it had built a Twitter competitor. On Thursday, Twitter prevented Substack writers from sharing tweets in their newsletters. And on Friday, Twitter took steps to block Substack newsletters from circulating on the platform.
Marc Chagall, The cat and the two sparrows
Twitter’s move to swat an upstart was an abrupt deviation from normal behavior among internet companies and publishers. It also provided more grist for critics who say that while Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has often hailed the importance of free speech, he has not shied from restricting competitors and content that he doesn’t like.
The new fight with a young company is the latest controversy in MTr. Musk’s chaotic ownership of Twitter, which he acquired about six months ago. He has laid off more than 75 percent of its employees, has been sued by commercial landlords for failing to pay office rent and has lost advertisers.
While Mr. Musk has long clashed with mainstream news outlets, targeting Substack largely affects independent writers, some of whom depend on Twitter to drive readers to their work….
Substack’s founders, Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi, said in a statement that they were “disappointed” by Twitter’s decision to stifle engagement with any tweets that featured a Substack link.
“Writers deserve the freedom to share links to Substack or anywhere else,” they said. “This abrupt change is a reminder of why writers deserve a model that puts them in charge, that rewards great work with money and that protects the free press and free speech.”
Read more at the NYT.
One hilarious result of this decision by Musk is that Matt Taibbi–Musk’s chosen “Twitter Files” propaganda author–has left Twitter because his mainly uses it to drive readers to his Substack page. Musk responded by unfollowing Taibbi. This guy really is worse than Trump.
After the Federal Trade Commission launched a probe into Twitter over privacy concerns, Twitter’s negotiations with the FTC do not seem to be going very well. Last week, it was revealed that Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s request last year for a meeting with FTC Chair Lina Khan was rebuffed. Now, a senior Twitter lawyer, Christian Dowell—who was closely involved in those FTC talks—has resigned, several people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.
Dowell joined Twitter in 2020 and rose in the ranks after several of Twitter’s top lawyers exited or were fired once Musk took over the platform in the fall of 2022, Bloomberg reported. Most recently, Dowell—who has not yet confirmed his resignation—oversaw Twitter’s product legal counsel. In that role, he was “intimately involved” in the FTC negotiations, sources told the Times, including coordinating Twitter’s responses to FTC inquiries.
The FTC has overseen Twitter’s privacy practices for more than a decade after it found that the platform failed to safeguard personal information and issued a consent order in 2011. The agency launched its current probe into Twitter’s operations after Musk began mass layoffs that seemed to introduce new security concerns, AP News reported. The Times reported that the FTC’s investigation intensified after security executives quit Twitter over concerns that Musk might be violating the FTC’s privacy decree….
If the Times’ report is accurate, it’s unclear who will replace Dowell as Twitter’s senior product counsel overseeing FTC negotiations. Musk recently stopped relying on his personal lawyer to chip in at Twitter, but the Times reported that he has seemingly continued to seek guidance from lawyers at SpaceX, one of his other companies.
While the FTC probe remains ongoing, Musk’s layoffs have seemingly ensured that Twitter’s legal woes will continue compounding. Not only is Twitter seeking legal action against the suspected ex-employee who leaked Twitter source code on Github, but Twitter is also currently involved in individual arbitration with hundreds, if not thousands, of ex-employees who were not allowed to join a class-action lawsuit over allegedly missing severance payments and lost wages.
Click the link to read the rest.
I know I’ve given you a lot of reading material, so take what you want and leave the rest. I hope you all have a nice Easter weekend, however you choose to celebrate or not celebrate. The good news is that Spring is on the way.
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This mural of Lady Justice was painted by W. T. Reed and is located in the courtroom of the Pike County Courthouse in Waverly, Ohio. Captured by Photographer Doris Rapp.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
During the Cold War and Jim Crow periods, pressured by right-wingers and hyper-religionists, our country gravitated from our country’s traditional motto to the theocratic statement “In God (sic) we Trust.” This happened in 1956. The symbolism of “out of many, one” was evidently too woke for them back then. It sounded too much like godless communism.
I think the big assumption was that you could tell a communist by their choice to not drag religion into everything in the tradition of the First Amendment of our Constitution. You may remember the crap the Republicans gave President Obama while visiting Jakarta in 2019 when he spoke of E Pluribus Unum as the motto under which our country was founded. It was placed on “The Great Seal” of the United States in 1782.
Moreover, in the 1770s and ’80s Congress opposed a theistic motto for the nation, and many of the founders worked hard to prevent one from being established.
In July 1776, almost immediately after signing the Declaration of Independence, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were tasked with designing a seal and motto for the new nation. In August John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he had proposed the “Choice of Hercules” as the image for the seal. Adams believed that individuals should choose to lead moral personal lives and to devote themselves to civic duty, and he preferred a secular allegory for that moral lesson.
The other two committee members proposed images that drew on Old Testament teachings, but neither shared the beliefs of those today who assert the role of God in our national government. Benjamin Franklin, a deist who did not believe in the divinity of Christ, proposed “Moses lifting up his Wand, and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharaoh, in his Chariot overwhelmed with the Waters.” This motto he believed, captured the principle that “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”
Thomas Jefferson, who later created his own Bible by cutting out all mentions of the miracles of Jesus Christ (as well as his divine birth and resurrection), envisioned “The Children of Israel in the Wilderness, led by a Cloud by day, and a Pillar of Fire by night, and on the other Side Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon Chiefs, from whom We claim the Honour of being descended and whose Political Principles and Form of Government We have assumed.” Of all of his accomplishments, Jefferson selected just three for his tombstone, one of which was writing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which established a separation of church and state.
The three men worked in consultation with an artist, Eugène Pierre Du Simitière, who rejected all of the ideas of the three committee members. His own first attempt was also rejected by Congress. It would take years and several more committees before Congress would approve the final design, still in use today, of an American bald eagle clutching thirteen arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other.
Only the motto “E Pluribus Unum” (“from many, one”) survived from the committee on which Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin had served. All had agreed on that motto from the beginning.
The current motto, “In God We Trust,” was developed by a later generation. It was used on some coinage at the height of religious fervor during the upheaval of the Civil War.
It was made the official national motto in 1956, at the height of the Cold War, to signal opposition to the feared secularizing ideology of communism.
In other words, “In God We Trust” is a legacy of founders, but not the founders of the nation. As the official national motto, it is a legacy of the founders of modern American conservatism — a legacy reaffirmed by the current Congress.
The northwest mural, overlooking Main Street, features a Black “Lady Justice” with a scarf covering her eyes, a sword in her right hand, and the scales of justice in her left, ready to deliver “fair and true justice.” Victor Ash. University of Houston-Downtown
It always amazes me when the Tea Party completely misses the history of that event. Republicans tend to do that. Then, there’s the Second Amendment, where the modern, very recent interpretation written by Justice Scalia (Heller, 2008) was textualized and still is controversial. However, it still stands because, well, that’s why Republicans keep stacking the court. They want to interpret the US Constitution free of all that debate and writings we have to read from historical documents which clearly indicate how absolutely wrong they all are. But that doesn’t matter to them. They are all convinced that Right-Wing Christian Nationalism is the only interpretation of anything. There are many deep pockets in Right-Wing America to fund the attack on our Constitutional Republic and small d democracy.
Did you watch any of the Tennesse house’s sham “trial” yesterday? It belonged more to Wonderland than the United States judicial system. I was expecting someone to shout “off with their heads” or, more appropriately, “lynch them” to the young black men that dare represent and join their constituents to protest gun violence. Four of five seconds in the legislature well defined their sin.
The event struck me in the same way that watching southern law enforcement turn fire hoses on children during the Civil Rights actions. I was unsurprised to hear that one of them uttered the word uppity. Gerrymandering by such states is the only way they get what they want. Tennessee and Wisconsin showed us that this week.
The Tennessee GOP’s shocking expulsion of two Black state representatives— Justin Jones and Justin Pearson—from the legislature for simply breaking House rules of decorum was about one thing: Preserving white supremacy.
That is not just my view but also Democratic Tennessee State Senator London Lamar who appeared on my SiriusXM show Thursday night. When I asked how much of the GOP’s expulsion of these two state reps was motivated by white supremacy, the Senator bluntly responded: “All of it.” (The clip is at the bottom of the page.) Senator Lamar also explained how white GOP leaders in the Tennessee legislature have long prevented discussions on racism, even noting that on Thursday a GOP Senator introduced legislation to ban local governments in the state from studying reparations. “This State still very much has issues with racism,” the Senator added.
There is a connection between the Tennessee GOP controlled state legislatures only expelling the two Black state reps—and not the white rep who engaged in the same conduct—and the Jan 6 attack. That terrorist attack incited by Trump was also about preserving white supremacy.
A few facts back that up. First, polls have found that nearly two-thirds of Republicans agree with a core belief of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that alleges Democrats are encouraging demographic change in the country to replace “more conservative white voters.” As a 2022 poll found, 68 percent of Republicans responded that they believed that the recent shift in U.S. demographics is “not a natural change but has been motivated by progressive and liberal leaders actively trying to leverage political power by replacing more conservative white voters.”
Fox News Tucker Carlson—who I have long referred to as “Tucker Klansman”— has worked tirelessly to promote that belief in the years before the Jan 6, 2021 attack. Carlson began in 2019 on his top rated show—along with his guests—to fuel the flames of white victimhood by claiming Democrats want to literally replace white Republicans. Donald Trump also continually played on the white right’s fears with talk of “invasion” of immigrants flooding America and bringing crime.
Jan 6 was a manifestation of that fear of the white right losing power. Just look at who carried out the attack. While The Proud Boys and members of white right militias got the headlines, a study by the University of Chicago looking at the people arrested tells us more about what truly fueled this: the fear of white people being replaced. This report found that “the No. 1 belief among insurrectionists—shared by fully 75 percent of respondents—is the “great replacement” of the electorate by the Democratic Party.”
That helps explain why the majority of those arrested did not come from deep Red areas but from places with the greatest demographic change. As Robert A. Pape, a professor at University of Chicago who led the study noted, the majority of those arrested for the Jan 6 attack came from counties that had lost white population share. The greater the decrease in “non-Hispanic whites,” as the researchers described, the more likely the county was to have spawned an alleged rioter.
More than half of the people arrested for the Jan 6 attack—per Pape’s report—hail from counties where Biden won, adding to the sense that these right wing conservatives were literally losing power.
Justice is Blind. This mural was created by Ronald McDowell, who was commissioned by Jefferson County Court House, Birmingham, Alabama. 2018
Tennessee, the founding location of the KKK, is still dealing with leaving its past. You may think I was using the term lynching gratuitously earlier. But maybe you didn’t know this. This is from the AP. It’s dated March 2, 2023. “Tennessee GOP lawmaker apologizes over ‘hanging’ comment.”
A Tennessee Republican lawmaker on Thursday apologized after asking earlier this week if “hanging by a tree” could be added to the state’s execution methods. This comment has shocked Black lawmakers who point to the state’s dark history of lynching.
Rep. Paul Sherrell, who is white, first made the remark Tuesday as a separate lawmaker was introducing legislation to include the firing squad to execute death row inmates.
“I think it’s a very good idea, and I was just wondering about… could I put an amendment on that it would include hanging by a tree, also?” Sherrell asked.
At the time, no one on the legislative committee reprimanded or pushed back against Sherrell’s comments. However, his words gained traction throughout the week, which led to the Republican’s apology on the House floor Thursday.
In December 1966, the United States Supreme Court unanimously decided a case called Bond v. Floyd. Julian Bond was a Black man elected to the Georgia legislature.
Several months after his election in June 1965, a civil rights organization that Mr. Bond belonged to issued an anti-war statement about Vietnam, which he subsequently endorsed in statements to the press. White members of the Georgia House challenged Bond’s right to be seated, charging that his statements aided our enemies, violated the Selective Service laws, discredited the House, and were inconsistent with the legislator’s mandatory oath to support the Constitution.
Bond filed a challenge in the House to the petitions against seating him, alleging they were violations of his First Amendment rights and they were racially motivated. The House committee hearing his challenge concluded that Bond should not be seated. He filed a lawsuit, and a three-judge panel in the federal district court in Georgia ruled against him 2-1. Bond filed an appeal under a provision that permitted him to go straight to the United States Supreme Court. While the appeal was pending, he was re-elected to the Georgia House in a special election, and, again, the House refused to seat him. He was elected again in the regular election in 1966, and the Supreme Court decided his case shortly afterwards.
The unanimous Supreme Court decision in Bond’s favor relied upon a famous First Amendment case, New York Times v. Sullivan,holding that although a state may impose a requirement that legislators take an oath of allegiance, it cannot limit their capacity to express views on local or national policy. “[D]ebate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” the Court wrote, citing the decision in Sullivan.
The Court’s opinion in Bond concluded with these words: “Legislators have an obligation to take positions on controversial political questions so that their constituents can be fully informed by them, and be better able to assess their qualifications for office; also so they may be represented in governmental debates by the person they have elected to represent them. We therefore hold that the disqualification of Bond from membership in the Georgia House because of his statements violated Bond’s right of free expression under the First Amendment.”
Detroit Artist Fel3000ft. ‘The Justice Wall’.2020
No wonder the Republican states want to hide Black History. They’re trying to repeat the worst, hoping we all live in a vacuum or won’t pay attention to what they say and do. However, the GOP is losing elections. The most recent election in Wisconsin for a position on its Supreme Court illustrates how even a highly gerrymandered state can still deliver a message and progress when voting. Patrick Marley from the Washington Post writes this: “With liberals in charge, Wisconsin Supreme Court could rule on these issues.”
Democrats made clear to voters that the Wisconsin Supreme Court election this week centered on one key issue: giving liberals a majority on the court so they can overturn the state’s abortion ban.
But the race was also about getting the votes to redraw gerrymandered legislative and congressional districts. And protecting the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. And, potentially, a long list of other issues.
Wisconsin has a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature, so many of its most consequential disputes are resolved by the state Supreme Court. Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal, beat former justice Daniel Kelly, a conservative, by 11 points. When she is sworn in on Aug. 1, liberals will obtain a 4-3 majority, ending a 15-year run of conservative control of the court.
All shall be equal before the law – Graffiti in Cape Town, South Africa
The author follows with a list and discussion of issues that will be decidedly different due to the change. Abortion and redistricting sit right at the top. This epic headline comes from Axios. “The GOP’s epic losing streak.”
If Republicans step back and look beyond the legal and social-media spectacle of Donald J. Trump, they’ll see screaming political sirens everywhere they gaze.
Why it matters: The GOP’s political trouble has been unfolding slowly but unmistakably, starting even before Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020.
First, the 2018 House elections were a disaster for Republicans: Democrats had a net gain of 40 seats to take over the House — their largest gain since the post-Watergate election of 1974.
Then Trump lost the presidency.
Next, Republicans blew two runoff elections in Georgia and lost control of the U.S. Senate. The runoffs took place a day before Trump backers stormed the Capitol.
Then, Republicans won the legal fight over abortion as Trump-appointed justices helped to ensure the reversal of Roe v. Wade. But the GOP lost a series of political battles over it afterward — a reflection of polls indicating that most Americans support abortion rights. GOP-led state legislatures have shown no signs of slowing their push to enact stricter abortion bans, suggesting continuing political backlash.
Republicans put high-profile election deniers on the 2022 midterm ballot in key state and federal races — only to see several lose winnable elections.
Republicans blew a chance to control the Senate by nominating too many hard-to-elect-in-a-swing-state Trump facsimiles. Their hopes of a big House majority were erased for the same reason, creating constant headaches for new Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Just this week, progressive Democrats triumphed in two of this year’s most consequential elections. Brandon Johnson, a teachers’ union organizer, was elected Chicago mayor. In swing state Wisconsin, Democrat-backed Janet Protasiewicz flipped the state Supreme Court to liberals in a landslide, after leaning into her support for abortion rights.
Senate Republicans have been gifted a historically favorable 2024 map — but hard-right candidates who appeal to the GOP base again threaten to inject uncertainty into at least five winnable races.
Trump is driving an agenda dominated by vengeance and victimhood, diverting Republicans from the inflation- and crime-centered messages that helped them in the midterms.
Reality check: Trump, if anything, is stronger and more likely to win the GOP nomination than he was after the November midterms.
This brings me to the poster child for Republican corruption. That would be Uncle Clarence Thomas. BostonBoomer gave us a thorough examination of his ongoing luxury trips on the way to the gates of hell. This is written by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern for Slate. “Clarence Thomas Broke the Law, and It Isn’t Even Close It probably won’t matter. But it should.”
ProPublica’s scrupulously reported new piece on Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong luxury travel on the dime of a single GOP megadonor will probably not shock you at all. Sure, the dollar amounts spent are astronomical, and of course the justice failed to report any of it, and of course the megadonor insists that he and Thomas are dear old friends, so of course the superyacht and the flights on the Bombardier Global 5000 jet and the resorts are all perfectly benign. So while the details are shocking, the pattern here is hardly a new one. This is a longstanding ethics loophole that has been exploited by parties with political interests in cases before the court to curry favor in exchange for astonishing junkets and perks. It is allowed to happen.
We will doubtless spend a few news cycles expressing outrage that Harlan Crow has spent millions of dollars lavishing the Thomases with lux vacations and high-end travel and barely pretended to separate business and pleasure, giving half a million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas in 2011 (which funded her own $120,000 salary). But because the justices are left to police themselves and opt not to do so, we will turn to other matters in due time. Before the outrage dries up, however, it is worth zeroing in on two aspects of the ProPublica report that do have lasting legal implications. First, the same people who benefited from the lax status quo continue to fight against any meaningful reforms that might curb the justices’ gravy train. Second, the rules governing Thomas’ conduct over these years, while terribly insufficient, actually did require him to disclose at least some of these extravagant gifts. The fact that he ignored the rules anyway illustrates just how difficult it will be to force the justices to obey the law: Without the strong threat of enforcement, a putative public servant like Thomas will thumb his nose at the law.
If there is a single image that captures this seedy state of affairs, it is a painting of Thomas hanging out with Leonard Leo (Federalist Society co-chair and judicial power broker) and Mark Paoletta (who has served as chief counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence and general counsel of Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget). Both are political operatives, though Crow assures us that they would never dare talk about Thomas’ work. This image should be enough to shock anyone into taking action against the spigot of dark money that flows directly from billionaire donors into the court, its justices, and their spouses’ pockets. Continuing to live as though there is nothing to be done about any of this is a choice. We make it every day.
In addition to working in the Trump-Pence administration, Paoletta serves as the Thomases’ longtime fixer, attack dog, and booster. He represented Ginni Thomas when she spoke to the Jan 6. committee about her support for overturning the 2020 election. He also edited a biography of Clarence Thomas based on an almost comically obsequious documentary (in which he was also involved). So it should not be a surprise that Paoletta has also testified against any ethics reform measures for the Supreme Court, dismissing the reform movement as part of “the coordinated campaign by some Democrats and their allies in the corporate media to smear conservative Justices with the goal of delegitimizing the court.”
The lack of a binding ethics code for justices redounds to Paoletta’s benefit: ProPublica reports that he joined the Thomases on a trip through Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands on the Crows’ yacht. At the time, Paoletta was serving in the Trump administration, and was therefore subject to far stricter ethics rules than the justice; he told ProPublica that he reimbursed Crow for the trip, although he would not give a price tag. (It is an extraordinary feat for a public servant to be able to afford a private international yacht adventure; it also proves that even in government posts that actually have enforceable ethics rules, those rules may not be up to the job of policing corruption.)
Go read the rest! This needs to change.
Anyway, that’s it for me today. This is a long post. I hope you can get through it without losing your lunch.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Black Rage is founded on two-thirds a person Rapings and beatings and suffering that worsens Black human packages tied up in strings Black rage can come from all these kinds of things Black rage is founded on blatant denial Squeezed economics, subsistence survival Deafening silence and social control Black rage is founded on wounds in the soul
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I’m going to focus on the abortion battle today. I think it is completely inappropriate for abortion to even be a public issue in the first place, but of course regulating women’s bodies and lives has been a goal for powerful men since ancient times.
At first blush, all of that might seem to make the decision’s chances of surviving review by a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices quite promising.
Also on Monday, the Justice Department filed a motion asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to stay the ruling by Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas until the department’s appeal of the case could be heard. Judge Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who has written critically of Roe v. Wade, had issued only a seven-day stay of his ruling to allow the government a chance to appeal.
Even before Trump and Mitch McConnell packed the Supreme Court with a right-wing supermajority, GOP-appointed justices were pursuing a brazenly anti-democratic project, which only became more audacious as each judicial attack was met with little pushback.
AXIOS reported the findings of a report in January.
Black women are at highest risk. Here’s an additional hurdle with a racists bent. 
The details of the murder are absolutely horrifying. 
I know. I covered it.
Interesting story about Thomas’ “dear friend” Harlan Crow at The Washingtonian: 
Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: 
The scale of the leak — analysts say more than 100 documents may have been obtained — along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be hugely damaging, U.S. officials said. A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence.
