James.galbraith

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
It is my sincere hope that some sexual encounter will be ruined by a fit of giggles resulting from this comic.

Today's News:

How thin can one person’s skin possibly be? Sen. Susan Collins tested the limits of that question with her response to a sidewalk chalk message asking her to vote for the Women’s Health Protection Act, codifying the abortion rights of Roe v. Wade into law.

“Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —–> vote yes, clean up your mess,” the chalk message outside Collins’ home in Bangor, Maine, read. They said please, in a medium that causes no damage, and she called the police.

RELATED STORY: Schumer announces abortion rights vote, 'pro-choice' Collins immediately declares her opposition

“The message was not overtly threatening,” a police spokesman said. You think?

That didn’t stop Collins from talking like she was bravely maintaining her composure in the face of a grave infringement, saying, “We are grateful to the Bangor police officers and the City public works employee who responded to the defacement of public property in front of our home.”

Lia Russell of the Bangor Daily News reports, deadpan, “The sidewalk message was not visible on Monday afternoon.” Because it was chalk.

Collins’ whole victim act is a blatant ploy to distract from the fact that she got us here. Collins was part of the Republican push to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing extremists, and now that the court is on the brink of officially striking down Roe v. Wade in the harshest and most extreme way while also teeing up the evisceration of a series of other rights and protections, she wants us to be talking not about the fact that she claimed to believe Brett Kavanaugh when he told her he wouldn’t overturn Roe but about the freaking sidewalk chalk outside her house.

It would be absurd if it weren’t such a clear illustration of how Collins has been fully complicit as the Republican Party has done its level best to destroy the government and the nation. She is right there with them 99 out of 100 steps of the way, and then the media uses that one step Collins didn’t take to paint her as some kind of principled moderate. People are going to suffer and die because of votes Collins took—and ones she didn’t—and she’s trying to play the victim over a chalk “please.”

RELATED STORIES:

Collins and Murkowski are shocked—SHOCKED!—that Supreme Court nominees lied to them

McConnell tried to tamp down GOP talk of passing a federal abortion ban. He failed

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A viral video of a man in New York telling abortion rights activists he “owns” their bodies and that he, and others like him, will impregnate people as they wish if Roe v. Wade is overturned, pretty much sums it up for those of us interested in preserving the rights to our own human bodies: This is about control. 

Last week, a draft opinion from the Supreme Court was leaked showing that the conservative-dominated high court is now poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, a law that for nearly five decades has empowered women and people who can become pregnant to take their health care—and their future—into their own hands. 

The draft leak sparked protests throughout the nation and over Mother’s Day weekend, demonstrations had not abated. This was especially true in New York City, where protesters for and against abortion rights—and reportedly, some alleged members of a white nationalist movement—showed up in large numbers at the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Church. 

Related story: Supreme Court in disarray: New leaks reveal Roberts’ own preferred Roe reversal

Anti-abortion activists have demonstrated at the site before and at a nearby Planned Parenthood. Groups defending access to clinics, like the grassroots network New York City for Abortion, hold counterprotests at the church and at the area clinic on the first Saturday of every month. 

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court's leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats are doing now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

This weekend, as pro-abortion rights activists showed up at the Basilica to demand that Roe remain law of the land, their chants of “Not the church, not the state, the people must decide their fate,” were met with a telling rebuke. 

A man wearing a sweater with a New York City Fire Department logo and “America First” cap taunted them and gestured to them as he spoke:

“I am the people. I am the people. I am the people. The people have decided. The court has decided. You lose. You have no choice. Not your body, not your choice. Your body is mine and you’re having my baby,” he said. 

As the clip went viral, the FDNY responded on Monday saying the man was not a firefighter or affiliated with the department. 

“A video circulating from a protest in Manhattan over the weekend shows an individual wearing a FDNY sweatshirt. The individual in the video is not a member of the FDNY. The comments made do not represent the views of the FDNY. The matter is under investigation," said Frank Dwyer, the department’s deputy commissioner for public information.

Independent video journalist Sandi Bachom of New York covered the protests at Old St. Pat’s on Sunday. She told Daily Kos Monday that when she arrived on site, she asked the man wearing the blue “America First” hat if he was a member of the “Groyper” movement and if he was part of the group that chanted “Christ is King.”

The man said yes, Bachom said.

The Anti-Defamation League has identified “Groypers” as a loosely-organized white supremacist group that presents its racist ideology with more “nuance than other groups in the white supremacist sphere.”

They use Christianity as an effective cover to espouse these views, the ADL notes, and often argue that they are trying to preserve a “true America” with “traditional” Christian values. 

Groypers describe themselves as being part of the “America First” movement. When a question of the group’s rhetoric or conduct is raised, Groyper figurehead Nick Fuentes has deflected, telling reporters he considers the word “racist” to be an “anti-white slur.” 

Notably, Fuentes, along with Patrick Casey, the leader of the “America First” movement, were both subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee this January. Chairman Bennie Thompson noted in letters to Fuentes and Casey that both of the men were present on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 and also participated in various pro-Trump events in Washington in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack, including at the “Million MAGA March” on Nov. 14, 2021. 

At that rally, where Trump’s election fraud lies were on bold display, Fuentes told the crowd to “storm every state capitol until Jan. 20, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years,” Thompson wrote. 

Fuentes also attended the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in Georgia on Nov. 19, alongside right-wing conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Ali Alexander. At another function on Dec. 12, 2020,  Fuentes told a crowd gathered there that the Republican Party should be entirely destroyed since it failed to overturn the election for Trump. The safe harbor deadline for states to submit votes passed just a few days before Fuentes made these remarks.  

Meanwhile, much, if not the same ideology that drove extremists and insurrectionists on Jan. 6 to forcibly stop the transfer of power and subvert the will of some 80 million fellow Americans is shaded here.    

Abortion, for now, is still legal in the United States. However, if Roe is struck down, a large number of states have “trigger” laws already on the book and they will work rapidly to stifle access to what can be—and routinely is—a safe, humanely performed reproductive health service.

As things tend to go with prohibition and as historical data has shown, bans on abortion do not stop people from getting abortions—the supposed thrust of the anti-abortion movement.

The reversal of Roe or the tightening of restrictions through near total-bans or total bans will only make getting an abortion more dangerous. 

Though the Supreme Court has not yet rendered a final decision—it is expected sometime in June—some blue-leaning states like New York and California are already rolling out proposals aimed at people who could be forced to flee their home states in search of safe abortion access. 

On Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that lawmakers have proposed legislation that would infuse abortion care providers there and other related nonprofit organizations with more cash in order to expand access even further to the uninsured or to those with a low income. 

In California, the state’s legislature rolled out a suite of bills in recent days aimed at creating a “sanctuary status” for individuals seeking an abortion and other reproductive health care. At least two dozen more bills are still yet to be proposed,  ABC News reported Monday.

Related story: If SCOTUS kills Roe, many states are poised to swiftly enforce abortion restriction bans, sweeping restrictions

There is just one Democratic House member left who is opposed to abortion rights. Texas' Rep. Henry Cuellar remains just terrible, and he faces a primary runoff election against fellow Democrat Jessica Cisneros later in the month. Cuellar also is clinging to office despite his home and offices being raided by the FBI in January as part of an apparent corruption investigation.

Now that the Supreme Court appears poised to mandate religious Alitoism as the only valid set of American moral beliefs, erasing federal abortion rights outright, Cuellar's level of terribleness takes on a new urgency—and there's a lot of it! At Jezebel, Susan Rinkunas walks us through the 2019 lawsuit against Cuellar filed by his one-time acting chief of staff.

In August of 2018, Kristie Small sent an email to Cuellar requesting maternity leave; Small was in her third trimester of pregnancy at the time. Not only did Cuellar refuse to sign off on the leave, he then fired her. Cuellar claimed that Small was working under a 90-day "probationary" period at the time to justify the firing. He also asked his staffers for written statements criticizing her job performance—after her request for leave and subsequent firing.

Two weeks after being fired, Small's pregnancy ended with a stillbirth.

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court's leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats are doing now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

Jezebel's reporting adds the wrinkle of Cuellar's attempted coverup, in the form of asking his staff to give him after-the-fact performance reviews justifying Small's firing, but the lawsuit against Cuellar was reported on at the time. Cuellar settled the lawsuit after a judge found that Small's case raised "legitimate questions" and could proceed to a jury trial, but we don't know anything about that settlement because it imposed a gag order on Small and because, more broadly, our governing class is made up of extremely terrible people and making sure you don't hear details about the terribleness remains, as extremely icky Rep. Madison Cawthorn found out when he publicly claimed his fellow House Republicans were inviting him to drug orgies, one of the nation's top priorities.

But the short version is that Henry Cuellar remains a nasty piece of work, for a supposed Democrat, and that women continue to face rampant discrimination in the workplace for having the audacity to bear children, which Cuellar himself insists they must do while not inconveniencing him, personally.

If you're in Cuellar's district, vote. The Democratic primary runoff is on May 24. Please, please rid us of this congressional boil.

Click here to help Jessica Cisneros reach voters in TX-28 and defeat Henry Cuellar. The runoff is only a couple weeks away!

RELATED STORIES:

Watch Elizabeth Warren’s case for booting the last forced birther Democrat in the House

Cisneros calls out Cuellar as the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House

We're headed to overtime in the race to unseat the last anti-choice Democrat in the House

The FBI just raided this conservative House Democrat's home. Fortunately, we have a better choice

Investors are divided about whether technology companies are set for a deep retrenchment or if growth is simply slowing from pandemic highs. From a report: The technology industry, which powered the U.S. economy during the pandemic and grew at tremendous scale during a decade of ultralow interest rates, is confronting one of the most punishing stretches in years. Global powerhouses and fledgling startups are feeling pain from a variety of economic, industry and market factors, spawning postpandemic turbulence in e-commerce, digital advertising, electric vehicles, ride-hailing and other segments. Companies that emerged as job-creating juggernauts in the past two years -- collectively adding hundreds of thousands of workers to their payrolls in engineering, warehouse and delivery jobs -- have begun to freeze hiring or even lay off employees. Concerned that some of the forces that have propelled tech ever upward have begun to fade, investors have sent share prices for a number of companies, including Lyft and Peloton plunging on disappointing financial results or other news. The stocks of Netflix, Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Amazon.com all are down more than 30% this year, exceeding the more-than-13% drop in the S&P 500. Investors are divided on the question of whether the slowdown is temporary -- as well-positioned companies work through a period of stagnation after expanding ultrafast in recent years -- or if these are the early signs of a deeper retrenchment for the industry and its investors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sorry not sorry

There's now another big leak from The United States Supreme Court, and this one's being unapologetically linked to the court's conservative wing. The Washington Post has a new story in which multiple sources describe how Chief Justice John Roberts was planning to further carve away at Roe v. Wade by giving the court's approval to the Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks, but wanted to dodge overturning Roe completely.

The Supreme Court's other conservatives, however, essentially told him to pound sand. They wanted a full end to Roe, which is Justice Alito got the plum role of writing a hard-edged, theocratic-premised decision declaring federal abortion rights to be dead based squarely on the premises of his own personal religion and the rantings of an infamous 17th century misogynist and witch hunter.

This is not new news: That Roberts was not on board with the full ramifications of what the Alito wing of the court is pressing for was evident from Alito's draft opinion, which would not exist if Roberts was in the majority because Roberts would never have assigned the most controversial decision of his tenure to the archconservative crackpot Alito to begin with. Alito is known for authoring spite-riddled opinions riddled with dishonesty and omissions to get to his desired end point, which is often simply a long-winded declaration that my personal religious beliefs are supreme and your religious traditions are invalid. He is the voice of the reactionary Republicanism that justifies coup attempts and declares that laws mean different things based on whether a Republican or a non-Republican will be inconvenienced by them. An extremist, through and through.

What's more interesting is that now the court is leaking again, and this time it's quite obviously an intentional leak by conservatives to either prop up Roberts' fast-eroding dignity or to further brag of the conservative wing's willingness to erase Roe outright.

"But as of last week, the five-member majority to strike Roe remains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter," reports the Post. Oh, so now numerous people "close to the court" are leaking information about the court's private deliberations and politics—and we're even allowed to know that it is in fact "conservatives" close to the court who are doing the leaking.

"A person close to the court’s most conservative members said Roberts told his fellow jurists in a private conference in early December that he planned to uphold the state law and write an opinion that left Roe and Casey in place for now. But the other conservatives were more interested in an opinion that overturned the precedents, the person said."

That's a pretty huge leak! (In the before times, it would have been considered such an abhorrent breach of current deliberations that the Post would seek out a conservative crank like Michael Luttig to moan about the "historic" and "tragic" breach of the "confidential deliberative process"—which the Post does, at the end of the piece, so Luttig can say those things about the original Alito leak but not this one. Conspicuously: Not this one.)

So now we've got a whole set of conservatives privy to the court's internal deliberations who are all coming out at once to assert that Roberts wanted to again sabotage Roe by chipping away at its foundations, allowing Mississippi to enact an encompassing 15-week ban despite Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but he was unanimously rejected by the court's other conservatives who all voted to erase Roe entirely.

The motive that comes easiest to mind, when wondering why so many people close to the court are willing to leak deliberations to the press even as John Roberts orders an investigation into the leak of the Alito draft, is legacy-polishing. Roberts may be pressing this new leak himself, in an attempt to distance himself from the extremists and signal to Republican powerbrokers in the Senate and elsewhere that no, he indeed tried to stop his fellow conservatives from doing the most election-rattling thing, and he is still committed to his own brand of judicial activism that knocks away precedents incrementally rather than all-at-once. It is an approach that has allowed Roberts to claim plausible deniability even as the extremism of the opinions themselves keep getting ratcheted up, and one that has damped public anger at his party's reactionary actions by premising each one on an assortment of caveats that muddle the true scope of the outcome.

In this scenario, it's Roberts who is pressuring his allies to leak to the press for entirely self-serving reasons. He's long been devoted to preserving the alleged independence and dignity of the court—even as Republican presidents and senators stuff his court with new members who don't give a damn about those things but instead were chosen for their willingness to embrace extremist opinions—and could be pushing this story as pushback to calls to expand the court, impose term limits, or make other reforms to bring the court into something even vaguely resembling the modern era.

But that's a pretty weak reason for once again shattering the supposed all-important prohibition against leaking internal court decision-making, and there's another possible motive for the leak, from other possible leakers. It is possible the Alito draft was leaked by some conservative close to the court, perhaps some conservative anti-abortion extremist and activist who is married to one of the most conservative justices and who has already shown a willingness to break the laws in any manner the extremists desire, or maybe even not that person, and it is possible that this new leak featuring multiple "conservative" court sources is a simple case of bragging.

The court's most extremist members won, and there's not a damn thing anyone on the court or off it can do about it, and because of that one of the defining culture wars of the last half century is about to be "won" by its devoted soldiers. It doesn't require much imagination to believe that the court's conservatives have been bragging mightily among themselves and to their allies about this outcome, and it doesn't require much imagination to believe that those they've bragged to—are even now gearing up for very gaudy victory celebrations.

So yes, perhaps those allied with the court's most reactionary justices would be quite happy to leak to the press that John Roberts tried everything in his power to keep the extremists from taking the "boldest" possible action, and not only did the reactionaries reject him, the group even assigned the ever-nasty Alito to write the nastiest majority opinion he and his clerks could muster.

We now know for a fact that multiple "conservatives" close to the court are leaking like the Moskva. Will condemnations again roll in? Will Roberts launch a second investigation to parallel the first?

Well, no. But we still know that it's court-connected "conservatives" doing the leaking because that's how they're willing to identify themselves to us. We just don't know whose boots they're trying to polish by doing it.

A Republican state representative in New Hampshire has gone viral for yelling at a crowd of abortion rights protesters. Representative Susan DeLemus of New Hampshire was seen yelling “Shame on you for killing babies!” at a crowd of activists outside the New Hampshire State House on Thursday.

DeLemus who supports anti-abortion policies has previously expressed regretting her own abortion. As pro-choice activists chanted “Shame on you,” she yelled “You’re a murderer!” while pointing at individual protesters. DeLemus then pointed to herself and shouted, “I am a murderer!” and “I murdered my own baby!” before yelling “Shame on you!” back at the crowd.

"Shame on you! Shame on you, shame on all of you, shame on you for killing babies!” DeLemus was filmed saying.

The protests follow a leaked draft opinion indicating the U.S. Supreme Court’s possible decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The draft comes at the same time New Hampshire is debating a number of anti-abortion bills.

According to Fosters Daily Democrat, DeLemus also recalled an abortion she had decades ago in 2012 when a bill regarding abortion was up for discussion during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in February.

"I was selfish," she said. "I had no right to take that baby's life, and I had no right to steal that baby from my husband."

Co-founder of Sister District, Gaby Goldstein, joins The Downballot to discuss what Democrats in the states are doing to protect abortion rights

The video of DeLemus losing it has gone viral on social media prompting her to explain why she reacted the way she did. DeLemus claimed she was triggered when she heard people yelling at her for saying that abortion was murder.

“My feeling is shame on you and shame on me because I murdered my own baby by aborting it,” DeLemus said Thursday in an interview after the incident, Foster’s Daily Democrat reported. “I stole that baby's life from my family and from the community. I stole that person's life, I took it for my own convenience, which I think that happens a lot with people who get abortions. Anyone who's had an abortion, or anyone who supports abortion in my eyes, is a murderer or is pro-abortion, pro-death, pro-ending the life of a baby.”

She added that while the protesters have the right to be pro-choice, she has her own views she is passionate about.

“Just because it's legal, abortion doesn't mean that I did not kill another human being, and that's my stance,” DeLemus said. “That was what the yelling was about. I raised my voice and tried to be loud to be heard by the chanting crowd.”

As the video went viral DeLemus was criticized for her actions not only by Twitter but by other representatives, even those in her district.

“Representative DeLemus is playing a dangerous game with bodily autonomy, choosing to ignore the majority of Granite Staters who oppose abortion restrictions and the 95% of people who do not regret their abortions,” said Palana Hunt-Hawkins, a former Rochester city councilor and board member of 603 Forward and Women's Foundation. “While I have sympathy for her regret, I have zero sympathy for an elected official who chooses to engage in yelling matches and accuse her constituents who support reproductive freedom of being ‘murderers’.”

Activists also expressed how the incident reflects how some individuals seeking abortions and reproductive health care are treated, and often threatened.

“This incident demonstrates why it is so critical for reproductive health centers to have all options available to ensure patient and public privacy and safety,” said Kayla Montgomery, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund. “No one should face threats, intimidation, or shame when accessing health care, including safe, legal abortion.”

But of course, this isn’t the first time DeLemus made headlines for her extremist views. Daily Kos readers may remember her name for appearing on not one but two CNN interviews as a passionate Trump supporter.

According to Daily Kos, CNN hosted a panel of  “average” Republican women to understand why they voted the way they did. DeLemus was a part of the group, but it was not made known to viewers that she was a religious extremist or an elected official.

DeLemus' husband is Jerry DeLemus, who was sentenced to 87 months in prison in 2017 for his involvement in the Bunkerville standoff, during which he organized armed patrols as part of rancher Cliven Bundy’s armed standoff with U.S. agents in Nevada in 2014, Vox reported. DeLemus attempted to have her husband pardoned during Trump’s last days in office, but failed.

Elected in 2012, she was one of many state lawmakers who attempted to remove Obama’s name from state ballots because she believed he wasn’t born in the U.S.

“It just makes me want to throw up,” DeLemus had said at the time, according to the Atlantic. “Let’s just bury the Constitution now and have a funeral.”

America's law schools "would be given a green light to end admission test requirements," reports the Washington Post, "under a recommendation from a key committee of the American Bar Association that is scheduled for review in a public meeting this month." The proposal still faces layers of scrutiny within the ABA and would not take effect until next year at the earliest. If approved, it could challenge the long-dominant role of the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT, in the pathway to legal education. Some context from The Week US: Like the SAT in undergraduate admissions, the LSAT has been accused of racial bias and promoting a destructive obsession with rankings. Critics also argue that the LSAT, which was designed to predict academic performance, has little connection to professional accomplishment.... The incentives for law schools to dump the LSAT aren't only political, though.... [L]aw schools face declining applications after a pandemic-driven spike in interest. That's partly because word is getting out that the legal profession isn't as glamorous or lucrative as people imagine or the media depict. Accepting alternate exams, such as the GRE, or going test-optional altogether can help pump up enrollment, particularly at marginal institutions. The article points out that admitted law students will still eventually have to pass the official certifying "bar exam" before they're ever allowed to actually practice law.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Daily Kos has covered at length, Republicans are making it exceptionally difficult for LGBTQ+ students, teachers, families, and frankly, people in general. This sad fact is unfortunately especially true in the state of Florida, with a special thanks to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the discriminatory Don’t Say Gay bill into law. In short, the legislation bars public school staff, including teachers, from discussing LGBTQ+ topics or identities in the classroom. Defendants of the legislation argue the measure applies just to elementary schoolers, but verbiage in the law is general enough that it can be argued at any grade level. Either way, it’s discriminatory and unacceptable as there is no reason children can’t learn about the existence of LGBTQ+ folks.

And all of this hate is already impacting schools. One middle school teacher, who openly identifies as pansexual, has already lost her job for discussing sexuality with her students, who are middle schoolers. Scott worked as an art teacher and allowed students to create flags that reflected any part of their identities, including creating entirely original flags.

Once she hung the art on the door of her classroom, Scott says, she lost her job. If you’re wondering if parents complained about the art and discussion, you’re right.

RELATED: Lawmakers in 19 states vow to offer legal refuge for trans youth displaced by Republican hate

“They said it would be in the best interest if I got rid of them now,” Scott told local outlet CBS Miami about the school district’s reaction to the paintings. She told the outlet that the administration told her they were releasing her from her contract. According to the outlet, the Lee County school district says Scott was fired over not following the curriculum as mandated by the state.

Vivian Topping, director of advocacy and civic engagement at the Equality Federation, and Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights

“A discussion happened in class and because of that …” Scott told local outlet NBC 2. “Now I’m fired.” According to Scott, some of the students created flags reflecting gay, nonbinary, and bisexual orientations. Scott shared with the outlet that during the discussion of identities, Scott explained that she is pansexual (generally meaning one experiences attraction regardless of someone’s gender identity or gender presentation) and that she is married to a man. According to students in the class, some said they understood what her identity meant, and some said they were confused by it.

Union President Kevin Daly told CBS Miami that the district was able to legally fire Scott because, during her probationary period as a first-year teacher, she was not yet part of the union. 

Daly told NBC 2 that teachers should really consider Scott’s dismissal as a wake-up call for how things are going in Florida.

“There is kind of a heightened state of where is the boundary?” Daly told the outlet. “And what are employees supposed to do? Or allowed to do, when a topic comes up in discussion.”

According to Republicans, teachers are clearly supposed to stay in the closet and keep quiet, increasing the odds that young people will internalize this behavior and stay in the closet as well. Otherwise, say goodbye to your job!

And regardless of a student’s orientation or identity, the removal of a trusted adult after that sort of discussion has got to be scary. If nothing else, it certainly suggests these discussions (and people who have them) are dangerous and somehow inappropriate or wrong.

“I would like to see a statement from the school board recognizing they have to have a mental health counselor come in and speak with the children impacted by their actions toward this teacher,” Crystal Czyscon, an LGBTQ+ advocate, told NBC 2, stressing that she’s worried about how LGBTQ+ students in Scott’s classes might feel as a result of Scott’s abrupt removal for this reason.  

Oh, and all of this happened just days before DeSantis signed the Don’t Say Gay bill into law back in March. Looks like a warning if I’ve ever seen one … 

Contribute now to support abortion funds providing financial assistance to people seeking abortion care

Biden is limited on abortion rights. There’s still a lot he could try.

In the days since a leaked opinion showed the Supreme Court appears on track to overrule Roe v. Wade, a sort of acceptance seems to have set in among government officials.

Democrats are constrained in Congress, due to both their narrow Senate majority and the disagreement within their caucus about abortion rights, so any federal legislation is likely off the table for now. The White House, too, is starting to signal that its options are limited, with outside advisers telling the Washington Post about the obstacles ahead.

This response speaks to real challenges that lawmakers are running up against, and the legal pushback the White House could encounter on any executive actions. But it’s still been disappointing for advocates, who want the Biden administration to take more creative approaches that could keep up the fight on abortion access.

There are no silver bullets here. Anything the administration tries would almost certainly be contested, often in courts full of Republican appointees. And while they might help on the margins, none of the actions available would fully restore abortion rights in states where they’re being threatened.

“I think whatever comes next is a novel legal tactic. I would be really pessimistic that the courts, stacked that they are, would be receptive, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” says Khiara Bridges, a UC Berkeley law professor and faculty director for the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice.

In a press statement on Tuesday, Biden said he’d called on the White House Gender Policy Council and the White House counsel to “prepare options for an administration response.” He noted, too, that the administration would have its plans ready when a Supreme Court decision is finalized. “We will be ready when any ruling is issued,” Biden emphasized. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

According to experts and advocates who spoke with Vox, here are a few avenues the administration could consider.

Increase access to medication abortion by challenging state laws

The administration could take on state laws that are limiting people’s access to medication abortion, also known as the abortion pill. This “pill,” which actually includes two medications — mifepristone and misoprostol — was first approved by the FDA in 2000 and used in 54 percent of abortions in 2020.

If successful, this could allow people in all states, even places where there are abortion bans, to obtain a medication abortion up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy.

The FDA has already issued regulations that make it easier to obtain a medication abortion. In April 2021, it approved changes that enabled people to receive a prescription via telemedicine and get medication through the mail, a regulation the agency made permanent in December.

Nineteen states, however, have passed laws that directly contradict the FDA’s regulations, requiring people to consume abortion pills with a clinician present.

Legal experts argue that the Department of Justice could challenge these laws since federal regulations supersede state policies. If Roe falls, this would also mean that such challenges could attempt to preserve access to medication abortion in all states, even those that try to implement wholesale bans.

“A similar argument previously worked for a different drug,” write Drexel University law professor David Cohen, University of Pittsburgh law professor Greer Donley, and Temple University law professor Rachel Rebouché, in a New York Times op-ed outlining potential executive actions. In 2014, a pharmaceutical company challenged Massachusetts’s attempt to regulate an opioid drug differently from the federal government, and won.

In this scenario, the legal challenge could be brought by the Department of Justice, a manufacturer of medication abortion, or abortion providers. When asked about this option, a Biden adviser told the New York Times that the president wouldn’t be telling DOJ what to do.

This approach, like any that Biden takes via executive action, is poised to face significant opposition. One gray area, says Boston University law professor Nicole Huberfeld, is the jurisdiction states have over what physicians and providers are able to do, since the FDA’s authority doesn’t cover limits a state places on doctors and pharmacists.

Were the challenge to succeed, however, it could mean that people in all 50 states would be able to access medication abortion.

“We are well aware that these could be challenged and they could lose, but there’s no reason to cut off options before you try them and let the other side win before you even fight the battle,” Cohen told Vox.

Allow clinics to establish themselves on federal lands

In states that have imposed abortion bans, the federal government could also try to lease out federal lands and allow clinics to operate on them.

Because federal lands aren’t subject to states’ civil laws, and there’s room to interpret criminal laws, clinics could theoretically establish themselves on places like military bases and tribal lands, without having to deal with a state’s bans. “Even though the land is inside the border of a state, it wouldn’t be governed by the laws of a state,” says Bridges.

Any activity on these lands would instead be governed by federal law, meaning providers who operate there and people who travel there for abortions wouldn’t have to face state penalties. Cohen notes that there are past cases when a state’s right-to-work laws have not applied to how companies approach unionization if they are located on federal lands.

The exact approach, though, is untested and is also poised to get legal pushback from those who are opposed.

Enforce Medicaid coverage in states that try to implement outright bans

Because of the Hyde Amendment, federal funds can’t be used for most abortions, though there are exceptions for rape, incest, and cases when a pregnant woman’s life is endangered. In practice, this has meant that Medicaid isn’t able to cover many abortions, though it can still be used in rare instances. (States can also use their own Medicaid money to cover abortions, but the federal government has little say in how these funds are applied.)

Some states, including Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana, have trigger laws that would go into effect if Roe is overturned. These laws would ban abortion even in the cases of some of the exceptions outlined in the Hyde Amendment. The Arkansas law, for example, makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

For bans like these, the administration could argue that federal Medicaid funds should still be used to cover abortions in the narrow areas where they apply. The Department of Health and Human Services could encourage states to maintain coverage of abortion in these specific cases, as well as abortion services.

“The states are supposed to cover abortion services allowed by the Hyde Amendment under Medicaid,” says University of Pennsylvania law professor Allison Hoffman. “HHS could encourage them to do so. HHS could also try to enforce a state’s violation of federal law by not covering it.”

This policy wouldn’t apply to many abortions, and could also face legal challenges, but it could ensure that a segment of people would still be able retain access.

Such enforcement would likely come in the form of a warning that HHS issues to states, says Boston University law professor Nicole Huberfeld. The agency is unlikely to withhold Medicaid funding because of the damage that would cause to providers and recipients, she notes.

Advocates want more from the White House

Advocates have long rebuked the White House for not doing enough on abortion rights, both at the bully pulpit and in policy implementation. Biden, for example, said the word “abortion” publicly for the first time since he took office just this week.

In addition to executive actions, activists have pushed the president to be more vocal about his support on the subject in general. “If he won’t even talk about abortion (no votes or budget needed) or give us a plan he’s won’t go bold to protect us,” We Testify executive director Renee Bracey Sherman posted on Twitter on Wednesday.

Biden has been hesitant to embrace abortion rights for much of his career. He questioned the initial Supreme Court decision on Roe and once voted for an amendment that would have allowed states to overturn it, changing course in 1983. Similarly, on the Hyde Amendment, he previously favored keeping it and relented after severe blowback from his party.

Biden’s reluctance to use the term “abortion” is also tied to what he sees as politically tenable. “Longtime advisers said that Mr. Biden’s position on the issue was clear and that he preferred to use words like ‘privacy’ rather than ‘abortion’ because it appealed to a wider swath of the public,” the New York Times’s Peter Baker reported.

Advocates note that they’re merely urging the administration to consider all the channels that are available, even if prospects look bleak.

“We’ve seen over the past few years and the pandemic what the federal government could do,” says Morgan Hopkins, the executive director of campaigns at advocacy group All Above All. “People who need abortions deserve that kind of energy.”

An outright Nazi insurrectionist standing trial over his involvement in the Capitol attack will benefit greatly from a Trump-appointed judge’s decision to bar prosecutors from entering evidence about his extremism. Prior to his involvement in the insurrection, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli was such a blatant Nazi that dozens of coworkers testified about his admiration for Hitler and calls for genocide against Jewish people. Hale-Cusanelli was known for sporting a Hitler-style mustache at times and was such a blatant white supremacist that his own lawyers proposed voir dire questions like, “Do you think someone who impersonates Adolf Hitler, satirical or otherwise, is a person who would want to overthrow the government?”

Questions like that will be notably absent in the trial against Hale-Cusanelli, who faces charges of civil disorder, aiding and abetting, obstruction of an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, impeding ingress and egress in a restricted building, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and demonstrating in a Capitol building. The Army reservist, who was kicked out of the military following his arrest last year, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden’s logic on preventing jurors from getting to know the real Hale-Cusanelli—an avowed Nazi and white supremacist who flat-out admit he wished that Hitler “finished the job”—is because it may make jurors more inclined to find him guilty. “The visceral reaction to the defendant’s statements is exactly the kind of response that could induce the jury into finding him guilty,” McFadden said during a conference ahead of the trial, which is set to begin on May 23.

McFadden, a Trump-appointed judge who’s publicly stated that non-violent insurrectionists shouldn’t get “serious jail time,” has issued some interesting rulings when it comes to folks who stormed the Capitol. He issued the first acquittal of an insurrectionist last month, claiming that video evidence showed police allowed Matthew Martin to enter the Capitol, therefore he was in the clear to go on in and threaten our democracy. “People were streaming by and the officers made no attempt to stop the people,” McFadden said. Martin claimed he was waved into the rotunda by an officer, which—regardless of law enforcement’s perceived gestures—doesn’t negate the fact that it’s illegal to storm the Capitol.

It’s worth noting that, in the case of Hale-Cusanelli, being an outright Nazi absolutely would further indict him. Countless comparisons have been made about the insurrection being the U.S. equivalent of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, an attempted coup in which Hitler’s lies fomented an angry mob of supporters who violently pushed for a “national revolution” to advance their anti-Semitic white supremacist agenda. The primary difference in terms of consequences for the Beer Hall Putsch is that Hitler actually faced them: He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in prison. Donald Trump, the ex-president who conned his supporters into storming the Capitol over baseless claims of a rigged election, remains free and has faced few consequences. Given McFadden’s conduct as more and more insurrectionists are tried for their crimes, Hale-Cusanelli and his ilk may not have much to worry about when it comes to being found guilty.

It seems that Republican nominees are just getting worse and worse. Another problematic Republican has won a local primary election this week, but this one has been charged with murder. Despite being incarcerated in the Boone County Jail since March, Andrew Wilhoite of Lebanon, Indiana, won the primary election for Clinton Township Board on Tuesday.

According to Boone County election data, Wilhoite ran uncontested and received 60 votes. Two other Republican candidates for the three seats received 106 and 100 votes each. While no Democratic candidates were on the ballot in the Clinton Township Board primary, candidates from other parties could still make the ballot by November, WXIN reported. If not convicted, Wilhoite is expected to be seen on the November ballot.

Wilhoite was charged in March in connection with killing his wife, Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite, after she had completed her last chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. According to the Lebanon Reporter, Elizabeth Wilhoite was allegedly seeking a divorce after confronting Wilhoite about having an affair when the two got into an argument.

Co-founder of Sister District, Gaby Goldstein, joins The Downballot to discuss what Democrats in the states are doing to protect abortion rights

According to the Indiana State Police, as the argument escalated Wilhoite “allegedly struck her in the head” with a cement, gallon-sized flower pot. He then allegedly placed her body in his car and dumped her body in a nearby creek. 

“She’s fighting to stay alive, to see her kids grow up. To have it end like this, it’s just a tragedy that no one should have to go through. It just shouldn’t be that way,” a childhood friend of Elizabeth’s, Mary Smith, told local news outlet WRTV.

Wilhoite’s arrest was detailed on social media weeks before the election.

"The investigation continued into the evening and, eventually, Andrew Wilhoite, Nikki's husband, was arrested for murder by the Indiana State Police and Nikki Wilhoite's body was found in a creek within a few miles of the Wilhoite residence," a Facebook post by the Boone County Sheriff’s office said. It explained how the missing person report escalated into a domestic homicide investigation.

While Wilhoite initially lied about his wife’s whereabouts to detectives, he later admitted to killing her, NBC News affiliate WTHR reported. When police officials found her body, officials noted that despite being submerged in at least three feet of water, the cause of death was not drowning,

“All signs point to that she died at home,” Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood said in March. “Nothing indicates that she drowned.”

Indiana state election officials have confirmed that it is legal for people charged with a felony to run for local office, but they become ineligible if they are convicted.

“There is no legal reason he can’t be a candidate,” Brad King, co-director of the bipartisan Indiana Election Division, told the Tribune-Star. “Under our system, you are innocent until you are proven guilty. If a person is convicted of a felony, then they are no longer eligible to be a candidate and are ineligible to hold office.” He noted that if convicted, depending on the time of the conviction, the person can be replaced on the ballot by the political party that has a vacancy. 

According to King, if the election takes place before Wilhoite’s trial, Wilhoite can take his oath of office in jail. Wilhoite also has the ability to remove his own name before the June 15 deadline.

This situation may be a first. Boone County Republican Chairwoman Debbie Ottinger told the Tribune-Star that she cannot remember a time when an incarcerated candidate has won a primary.

“Our hope is that he asks to be removed from the ballot and we can just replace him,” she said, “but I don’t know if anyone has talked to him about that.”

According to The Washington Post, while a date has not been set for Wilhoite’s murder trial, it is expected to begin in late August. If convicted of first-degree murder, the 40-year-old could face life in prison or even the death penalty, state law says.

The state of Tennessee just turned its clocks back to a time before clocks, apparently, as the governor signed a law making it a Class E felony with a $50,000 fine for anyone to get an abortion pill through the mail, the Tennessean reports.

According to HB 2416, abortion pills may only be given to a patient in a doctor’s office by a physician. A doctor “must examine the patient in-person” and “inform the patient that the patient may see the remains of the unborn child in the process of completing the abortion.”

A medicated abortion has become the most common method in the U.S. in terminating early-term pregnancies up to 10 weeks. According to The New York Times, the  Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permanently approved abortion pills by mail and through telehealth consultation in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

RELATED STORY: ‘I chose to have an abortion,’ New York AG tells pro-choice protesters: ‘I make no apologies

The new law states: “A manufacturer, supplier, pharmacy, physician, qualified physician, or other person may not provide an abortion-inducing drug via courier, delivery, or mail service.”

Lee’s signature comes just days after a draft opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court indicating a ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico.

The bill additionally reads that all patients receiving abortion pills are required to return for a two-week follow-up visit with the provider.  

The original bill would have come with a 20-year prison sentence, but has since been amended.

One of the line items in the bill also covers “informed consent counseling services” about “abortion pill reversal,” a myth that has been widely dismissed as false.

“Anti-abortion advocates and lawmakers insist that abortion reversal should be offered to any pregnant person seeking a medical abortion; however, offering this procedure is extremely problematic. Studies supporting this procedure are not backed by an institutional review board or ethical review committee, raising concern for the protection of human subjects in these hormonal experiments,” according to Planned Parenthood.

“Mifepristone alone does not terminate pregnancies - in fact, as many as half of women who take only mifepristone continue their pregnancies. Therefore, there is no data to support that the injection of progesterone is what is “reversing” abortions. Forcing doctors to share this information supports the narrative that people often regret their abortion, which is not the reality,” the Planned Parenthood website reads.

In 2019, Tennessee passed a “trigger law” bill banning all abortions in the state 30 days after the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Including Tennessee, there are 13 states across the nation that have signaled their readiness to ban abortions in the same way.

Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

They ask the Supreme Court to substitute its judgment for that of the people and their representatives all the time.

Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade obviously doesn’t understand the law when it comes to discriminating against people who are pregnant. Well… this is Fox News we’re talking about.

HuffPost reports that Kilmeade, a Fox & Friends host, babbled on Thursday about the recent hire to a new advisory board of the Homeland Security Department—the Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who apparently is (brace yourself) pregnant. Kilmeade just couldn’t seem to wrap his head around the complexity of that fact.

In addition to being pregnant, Jankowicz, is a disinformation expert, a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy fellow, an advisor to the Ukrainian government, and a frequent speaker on issues about Russian and Eastern European disinformation issues. Can’t imagine why she was hired?

RELATED ISSUE: Newsmax host has the caucasity to accuse Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of leaking Alito opinion

“Then, we find out who is in charge of it ... Nina Jankowicz, who’s about eight-and-a-half months pregnant, so I’m not sure how you get a job, and then you just, you can’t do a job for three months… I’m not faulting her, but I don’t know why you would give someone a job that you think is so important,” Kilmeade driveled.

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court's leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats are doing now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

Surprisingly, his co-host Ainsley Earhardt challenged Kilmeade on his comments, saying, “Well, I’ll defend her on that one, Brian… She has the right to have a baby and have maternity leave.”

Of course, Kilmeade stood his shaky ground, answering with: "No, I know, but if you really want to have someone head up and organization, this is the face of the organization.”

Kilmeade, a father of three, has made no bones about proclaiming himself as “pro-life.” But, his recent comments come just days after a draft opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court indicating a ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico.

If Roe is rolled back, citizens in 13 U.S. states will be severely impacted—forced and unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and criminalization for birth control or traveling to other states for safe and legal abortions.

Kilmeade’s comments only highlight how out of touch conservatives are on the issue of abortion and on maternal rights. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation without a mandated paid family leave policy or paid maternity leave. And according to Paid Leave US, one in four working mothers are forced to return to work within two weeks of childbirth.

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Hot on the heels of the leaked draft Supreme Court decision on abortion Monday evening, the Republican Senate campaign arm leaked its response. “Be the compassionate, consensus-builder on abortion policy,” it advised. “Forcefully refute Democrat lies regarding GOP positions on abortion and women’s health care,” it adds. Republicans do not want to take away contraception, mammograms or other health care, and especially “Republicans DO NOT want to throw doctors and women in jail.”

“Mothers should be held harmless under the law,” the memo says. Louisiana Republicans clearly did not get the memo. They’re definitely all about calling abortion homicide and locking up both the doctor and the patient. And while they’re at it, they’re going to ban contraception. It’s definitely not just Louisiana, as Politico finds.

Mandatory minimum sentences for abortion providers in some states will go into effect immediately following the official Supreme Court reversal of Roe and Casey. In all, 22 states have trigger laws not just banning abortion, but punishing doctors and others who either perform or help facilitate abortions, ranging in sentences from one year to 15 years. In Texas, a provider could be locked up for life. That’s not just the provider, by the way: performing, inducing, or attempting an abortion in which “an unborn child dies as a result of the offense” will be a felony punishable by life in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

That sure does sound like throwing doctors and mothers in prison. That’s what Alabama and South Carolina intend to do, too, though the punishment isn’t life. Alabama bans abortion and abortion pills and will put the provider in jail for up to 12 months or sentence them to hard labor, as well as fine them up to $1,000. In South Carolina, the person ending their pregnancy by any means faces as much as two years in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court's leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats are doing now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

This isn’t just some dystopian fantasy cooked up by liberals trying to scare women. “People have been arrested and jailed for ending a pregnancy in states as diverse as California, Texas, Georgia and Indiana—a trend legal groups expect to increase exponentially if the Supreme Court adopts the draft opinion.”

California, people. California, where a woman was sentenced to a 11-year prison term for delivering a stillborn baby, a victim of the war on drugs and the war on women combined. She served four years after pleading involuntary manslaughter to avoid a life sentence for murder. Her sentence was overturned in March.

This is reality, and it is about to get a whole hell of a lot uglier. Texas opened the door with setting up their bounty scheme, siccing people on their fellow citizens to get the payout for reporting abortions. Idaho loved that idea so much they upped the bounty, setting up a system in which a relative of a rapist can claim an interest in forcing a resulting pregnancy.

“Even if a bill doesn’t allow pregnant people to be charged directly, we’re concerned about the ways increased surveillance could lead to people being criminalized for an abortion or another kind of pregnancy loss,” Farah Diaz-Tello, the senior counsel and legal director of the group If/When/How, said in an interview with Politico. “These bills create an environment where a person’s private health information, their affect and demeanor and whether they are sufficiently distraught, could all become evidence in a case against someone else. They could still be treated as a suspect.”

It’s, as one lawyer put it, turning “every uterus” into “a potential crime scene.” The trauma of miscarriage and stillbirth, the use of any drug or alcohol during pregnancy, using emergency contraception, using a IUD, or even attempting a pregnancy using in-vitro fertilization in the case of Louisiana—all that could become criminalized under these trigger laws.

This is not what Sen. Mitch McConnell wants anyone to know about. It’s not what he wants Republicans to talk about. He’s done his damnedest to change the subject: “Not a leaked draft, but the fact that the draft was leaked,” he insisted. So much for that.

Meanwhile, his team is plotting federal legislation to ban abortion everywhere, because “states’ rights” isn’t really a thing when it’s blue states. There can be no safe haven for people who don’t want to be incubators, for rape or incest victims, for people who are facing death from an ectopic pregnancy.

McConnell’s plan to make this election about nothing and win back the Senate sure is blowing up in his face. That doesn’t mean a cakewalk for Democrats in November, not if they don’t get really ferocious really quick about protecting our rights. But it sure does give Democrats a fighting chance.

RELATED STORIES

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The right-wing extremists—Proud Boys and white nationalists and far-right populists, some of them associated with Trumpist Kari Lake’s GOP gubernatorial campaign—who turned out to counter-protest abortion rights protesters in Phoenix on Tuesday were not just there to cause violence and threaten women and “leftists,” though they succeeded well enough at that. They were also packing heat.

One of the men—Michael Merritt Graham, 34—was carrying a .45 caliber Glock 36 pistol when state troopers arrested him after observing him punch two protesters. Arizona Mirror reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reported that Graham had tucked the pistol into the waistband of his pants, out of view, but also witnessed other counter-protesters “openly carrying firearms.”

This was not an anomaly, but rather fits a growing pattern of violent and threatening authoritarian aggression directed at women’s rights activists—along with an increased animus directed at the LGBTQ community—that has broken into the open since the news this week that the Supreme Court is preparing to gut abortion rights in the U.S. Right-wing extremists not only are avidly celebrating the news, they are openly planning violence in response to the predictable protests in defense of abortion rights.

Graham was wearing an InfoWars T-shirt with the slogan “Baby Lives Matter” on it. Before the violent confrontations, he and an anti-LGBTQ/anti-masking provocateur named Ethan Schmidt-Crockett had brandished bullhorns to harass the protesters, who had turned out by the thousands to protest the imminent demise of the 50-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. They were joined by a cluster of about 20 other young men who mocked the protesters from the edge of the crowd.

Graham was among roughly 20 counterprotesters who showed up to the event where over 1,000 protesters marched in support of abortion rights in the wake of a leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the landmark court decision of Roe v. Wade and strip the right of women to seek an abortion that was established nearly 50 years ago.

The men had attempted to provoke violence throughout the evening; at one point, Schmidt walked straight into the crowd while recording video and mocking the protest in a blatant attempt to create a confrontation. Eventually, they succeeded when Graham ripped a protester’s sign out of his hands and threw it to the ground; according to state troopers, when the protester reached down to retrieve it, Graham punched the man in the face and bloodied him.

As he attempted to leave, Graham “sucker-punched” another protester named Jace Robert Denis, 20, who responded by chasing after Graham. The troopers then arrested both men. Schmidt was also briefly arrested but then released with no charges.

Nick Martin reports that Schmidt-Crockett has developed a social media following as a far-right provocateur, primarily for harassing people in various public settings for wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has filmed himself harassing cancer patients—who he describes as his favorite targets, since they are “weak and vulnerable and easy targets.”  

He recently filmed himself harassing churchgoers at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix, and was asked to leave multiple times but refused. This is consistent with his criminal record, which includes third-degree criminal trespass for refusing to leave businesses when requested, for which he then violated probation multiple times. He was arrested last June for extreme drunken driving and posted video showing his ankle monitor and telling the audience, “I drive better when I’m drunk.”

Schmidt-Crockett proudly promotes his antics in online videos. In one he can be seen throwing up a Nazi salute while confronting Black lawmaker wearing a mask, telling him it’s a “slave muzzle.” In another, he rants at length about his support for Russia in its war on Ukraine, calling for the assassination of Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelenskyy. At the end, he throws up another Nazi salute and shouts, “Heil Putin!”

More recently, he’s become threatening and aggressive toward the LGBTQ community. In one of his videos, he can be seen attacking a Pride display in a Target store, calling it “disgusting … it’s devil worship.” He’s also posted videos and texts saying he’s “going hunting for LGBT pedophiles” and “non binaries,” saying ominously: “We’re hunting for you.”

Joining Schmidt-Crocket and Graham in the crowd of counter-protesters were members of the American Populist Union (APU), a white nationalist group closely aligned with Nick Fuentes’ America First and its “Groyper army.” Kyle Clifton, who posts white nationalist propaganda on Instagram, was one of the APU members present.

According to MacDonald-Evoy, Clifton arrived with a group of staffers from far-right GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s campaign, some of whom handed out Lake campaign signs. Matthew Martinez, Lake’s field manager, was among them.

The APU’s Twitter account has recently embraced the Supreme Court’s imminent ruling with typically ominous rhetoric:

Roe v Wade must be overturned, but let's stop pretending that abortion is a "states' issue."

Abortion is murder, and it should be federally illegal in all 50 states.

Overturning Roe v Wade is just the beginning, not the end.

Elsewhere, Proud Boys could be seen hovering around crowds of angry abortion rights protesters. Outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., Proud Boys were spotted trolling protesters who had arrived to voice their anger, but no violence erupted.

These same violent neofascist elements have exploded with joy and anticipation online, as Tess Owen reports for Vice—eagerly awaiting fresh opportunities to target their “leftist” enemies. Most of them, unsurprisingly, are dipping into the usual cesspool of misogynist and violent language about women and sex, particularly on Telegram.

“Hahahaha fuck you whores,” wrote Tulsa’s Proud Boy chapter.

“BEGIN PREEMPTIVELY ROASTING HOES NOW,” Nick Ochs, who founded Hawaii’s Proud Boy chapter, posted.

“Happy ‘whores on suicide watch’ day, boys!!!!” wrote someone in a white nationalist channel.

At other extremist platforms like Gab, the story was the same. “The same people who openly want vaccine mandates are the same people who want to normalize pedophilia, are the same people who want to legalize baby murder,” wrote one verified Gab user. “Leftism is literally satanism.”

The eliminationist references to Satanism and witches were everywhere. On Twitter, one user with a crucifix and an American flag in his handle wrote: “Witches (many beyond their child-bearing years) are in absolute despair at the prospect of fewer child sacrifices occurring in America. Abortion is their most unholy sacrament with Satan, their husband.”

QAnon cultist Lauren Witzke, the former GOP nominee for Delaware’s Senate seat, posted an image from the protest outside the Supreme Court to her Telegram channel, urging readers to “check out the witches gathering.” Another leading QAnon figure, Ghost Ezra, has also been posting voluminously since Monday on the repeal of Roe v. Wade, as Alex Mendela reports. Notably, Ezra’s posts are typically dripping with antisemitic paranoia, claiming that only Jews were upset by the decision—and connecting abortion with the Canaanite god Moloch and Ba’al, which references a core belief of the racist Christian Identity movement.

The appearance not merely of Christian Nationalist beliefs within the ranks of the online far right, but of Christian Identity—the bigoted theological movement claiming that white people are the true “Children of Israel,” that Jews are the literal descendants of Satan, and that all nonwhite people are soulless “mud people”—has been a building trend in the past couple of years, and now appears poised to break out in far-right civil violence over abortion.

Many of them are clearly eager for just that. When the news of the ruling broke on Monday, a Nevada Proud Boys chapter exulted on Telegram: “BRO LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOO.” They contrived a poll asking whether any protests that break out over the collapse of abortion rights should be called “Hoe rights,” “Slut riots,” or “Baby Save Bash 2022.”

This is not a new thing for the Proud Boys, who are better known for deliberately creating violence targeting urban leftists, particularly the antifascists who turned out to oppose them at various provocations/rallies. Less than 10 days ago—but before news of the ruling had broken—they turned up at a Sarasota, Florida, women’s rights rally to harass people attending the “March for Our Futures” there, which featured a number of pro-LGBTQ groups as well.

A dozen uniformed police kept them away from the marchers. Marcher Kate Tardif of Naples, a self-described “60-something,” told a reporter: “It was a little scary walking through [the Proud Boys] to get where we were going, and there were a lot of police.”

The Proud Boys’ signs conflated women’s rights with child sex abuse, comparing the discussion of LGBTQ-friendly topics with young children to “grooming” them. One cardboard sign read: “Stop grooming children! Respect a parent’s rights!” Another read: “No groomers in Florida!”

We have known for some time that violent street groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have shifted their post-Jan. 6 strategy from a focus on large national events to small, mostly local opportunities to attach themselves to various right-wing causes. These events are generally organized as right-wing protests related to COVID-19 restrictions, or the supposed infiltration of critical race theory (CRT) into school curricula, or abortion rights—generally any cause will suffice. Once attached, the thuggish elements bring threats, intimidation, and actual violence.

One of their chief avenues for this strategy is to hook up with Christian-nationalist groups organizing religious events of various kinds, ranging from anti-pandemic health measure protests to anti-abortion “Church at Planned Parenthood” gatherings, which themselves are an aggressive and invasive form of protest. Proud Boys also have found opportunities to harass school boards, health boards, and city and county councils as part of their explicit assault on American democratic institutions in the name of “patriotism.”

Unsurprisingly, it’s exploded into violence, as it did July 14, 2021, in Salem, Oregon, when a group of about 20 Proud Boys, armed with holstered handguns, paintball guns, bats, and body armor gathered outside a Planned Parenthood clinic where protesters were demonstrating against abortion laws, and were met by a crowd of at least 40 counterprotesters. The opposing sides ended up brawling, and Salem police arrested two people.

The threatening language now emanating from the “Patriot” movement and its acolytes in places like Coeur d’Alene, Idaho—where a militia-oriented biker group’s members have vowed to “go head to head” with the city’s Pride event in June, though a spokesman recently tried to backpedal on the threat—reflects how widespread this kind of anti-abortion extremism has become, primarily through neofascist movements like the Proud Boys and the Groypers whose racial and ethnic animus have often been considered defining features, but for whom in reality misogyny and a reflexive loathing of women is even more foundational.

Misogyny has always been a central component of fascist politics, and so the “manosphere” has long played a key role in organizing some of the most vicious violence that has emanated from the extremist right over the past decade. The trend has seemed to spiral into an even more toxic phase over the past couple of years, fueled in part by the public’s increasing time online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. An MIT study published last year found that there appeared to be a serious spike in interest in so-called “incel” (“involuntary celibate”) groups that promote a nihilistic view of society.

As Helen Lewis explained in The Atlantic in 2019, the realm of online misogynists is in many regards the beating heart of the radical right, since they generate many of the core ideas of white nationalism and other extremist belief systems, including the belief that “feminization” is destroying Western civilization and that women need to be subservient to men in order to create a strong society. They also all promote the idea that the world can only be saved by strong men committing acts of violence.

This is why, as they prepare to take to the streets in protest of the loss of abortion rights, progressive factions need to make careful preparations for the likelihood they will be targeted by these neofascists. The calm before the storm we’ve been experiencing may be about to expire.

Shortly after news leaked that the Supreme Court was poised to shred Roe v. Wade, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave his Republican caucus its marching orders. The news was, he said, "Not a leaked draft, but the fact that the draft was leaked."

Translation: Whatever you do, don't talk about the substance, people. The American public doesn't need any reminders that our right-wing court is about to upend reproductive law as we have known it for 50 years.

But after railing about what a "stunning breach" the leak was for roughly 48 hours, Senate Republicans got back to showing their true colors. Returning the abortion issue to the states is just a pit stop, but it will never suffice as a destination for them or their extremist GOP base.

"We need to discuss what the role of the federal government will be in this," Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa told NBC News. "I know that states will enact different laws — that would likely happen should the deliberations go the way that everybody thinks they will."

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court's leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats are doing now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

But that complicated patchwork of abortion restrictions and rights isn’t a long-term solution for forced birthers. Indeed, Ernst, who's a member of the GOP leadership, says Senate Republicans are weighing whether Congress should enact abortion restrictions nationwide.  

"We're debating now," Ernst said. "We're going to continue to debate that. I think that's important that we do that, to debate it."

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was a little more decisive.

"I have supported numerous federal bills, and I'm sure there will be more pieces of federal legislation that are considered," Cruz said.

But it was Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota who really put a point on why nothing short of a federal ban will do for Republicans.

“Just take my state of North Dakota. Having a North Dakota child killed in the womb in Fargo versus Moorhead, Minnesota, you know, on the other side of the Red River — I don’t find a lot of solace in that just because it didn’t happen in my state,” Cramer told NBC. “I think you could expect that pro-life activists would push for federal protections. I mean, I wouldn’t take that off the table.”

This is precisely the conversation and the midterm messaging McConnell was desperate to avoid—the reality that Republicans ultimately want to codify an abortion ban into federal law. On Tuesday, McConnell sought to pour cold water on discussion of federal restrictions by vowing to preserve the filibuster—the 60-vote threshold—for passing legislation if Republicans reclaim the Senate majority in November. In other words, don't worry, we'll never find 60 votes to outlaw abortion nationwide.

When asked if he would protect the filibuster at all costs, McConnell shot back, "Absolutely. ... We don’t want to break the Senate, and that’s breaking the Senate.”

You read that right. McConnell, who stole two seats on the Supreme Court—and eliminated the filibuster to do it—is now worried about the integrity of the Senate.

Lest anyone forget, McConnell built the monster that is getting ready to declare open season on every right and protection afforded to anyone who isn't white, male, and hetero. That, in turn, will instantly make the Supreme Court one of the least trusted institutions in the country, courtesy of McConnell and Senate Republicans.

As Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said, "The abomination of that leaked opinion is coming to find every one of us."

Make no mistake: That's the GOP project now. They’re coming for us, and they will be using every tool at their disposal to do so—be it the high court, the House, the Senate, or the White House. And when the time is right, McConnell won't think twice about killing the filibuster to achieve his legislative ends, just like he didn't think twice about killing the filibuster to pack the high court with right-wing justices.   

Ernst, Cruz, and Cramer know that. So does McConnell, he just wishes his caucus members weren’t giving away the game before November.

Justice Alito is a staunch opponent of LGBTQ rights, but he may not have the votes to turn back the clock.

Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, which was leaked to Politico and revealed to the public Monday night, is more than just an attack on abortion. It is a manifesto laying out a comprehensive theory of which rights are protected by the Constitution and which rights should not be enforced by the courts.

And Alito’s opinion is also a warning that, after Roe falls, the Court’s Republican majority may come for landmark LGBTQ rights decisions next, such as the marriage equality decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) or the sexual autonomy decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003).

To be clear, the leaked opinion is a draft. While Politico reports that five justices initially voted to overrule Roe, no justice’s vote is final until the Court officially hands down its decision. And even if Alito holds onto the five votes he needs to overrule Roe, one or more of his colleagues in the majority could insist that he make changes to the opinion.

Alito’s first draft, however, suggests that the archconservative justice feels emboldened. Not only does he take a maximalist approach to tearing down Roe, but much of Alito’s reasoning in the draft opinion tracks arguments he’s made in the past in dissenting opinions disparaging LGBTQ rights.

The Constitution is a frustrating document. Among other things, it contains multiple provisions stating that Americans enjoy certain civil rights that are not mentioned anywhere in the document itself. The Ninth Amendment, for example, provides that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Over time, the Supreme Court has devised multiple different standards to determine which of those unenumerated rights are nonetheless protected by our founding document. Some of these standards are very much at odds with each other.

The central thrust of Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case seeking to overrule Roe, is that only rights that are “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” are protected. This method of weighing unenumerated rights is often referred to as the “Glucksberg” test, after the Court’s decision in Washington v. Glucksberg (1997).

Though Alito’s Dobbs opinion largely focuses on why he believes that the right to abortion fails the Glucksberg test, there is no doubt that he also believes that other important rights, such as same-sex couples’ right to marry, also fail Glucksberg and are thus unprotected by the Constitution. Alito said as much in his Obergefell dissent, which said that “it is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights” that are sufficiently rooted in American history and tradition.

Notably, the majority opinion in Obergefell rejected Alito’s claim that all unenumerated rights flow from Glucksberg. The Glucksberg approach, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the Court in Obergefell, “is inconsistent with the approach this Court has used in discussing other fundamental rights, including marriage and intimacy.”

Alito has also shown no signs that he respects Obergefell as a precedent that should be followed even if he disagrees with it. That said, we do not yet know if Alito has five votes to overrule Obergefell (or to attack older precedents such as Lawrence); it’s possible that some of the Court’s other Republicans would join with its three Democrats to preserve marriage equality.

Alito’s draft Dobbs opinion, in other words, probably should be read as an opening bid to his colleagues. How far will they go with him in attacking other rights?

Justice Kennedy built decisions like Lawrence and Obergefell on a foundation of sand

For many years, Justice Anthony Kennedy was the pivotal figure in the legal struggle for gay equality. Obergefell and United States v. Windsor (2013), which held that the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages, were both 5-4 decisions authored by Kennedy. Kennedy also penned the Lawrence opinion and the Court’s decision in Romer v. Evans (1996), the first Supreme Court decision establishing that the Constitution places limits on the government’s ability to target gay or bisexual individuals.

Given his longtime role as the Court’s voice on gay rights, it’s tempting to think of Kennedy as a staunch supporter of these rights (I use the word “gay” and not “LGBTQ” because Kennedy’s four opinions concerned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and not gender identity). But the reality is almost certainly more nuanced. Decisions like Obergefell and Windsor were the products of an uneasy alliance between the conservative Kennedy and his four liberal colleagues. And, in closely divided cases, majority opinions are often assigned to the justice who is most on the fence — on the theory that this justice is unlikely to flip their vote if they can tailor the majority opinion to their own idiosyncratic views.

The result is that Kennedy’s great gay rights decisions were poorly argued. They ignore longstanding doctrines that could have provided a firm foundation for a rule barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Instead, they often substitute needlessly purple prose for the meat-and-potatoes work of legal argumentation.

In Lawrence, for example, Kennedy tells us that “when sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring,” and that “as the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.” But he does little to tie his decision to foundational legal doctrines, thus leaving the rights protected by Lawrence more vulnerable to being overturned by a dedicated, conservative majority.

The strongest argument that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates the Constitution, meanwhile, is rooted in the Constitution's provision stating that no one shall be denied the “equal protection of the laws.” As the Court held in Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center (1985), this provision provides heightened constitutional protection to groups that have historically faced discrimination because they possess a trait that “frequently bears no relation to ability to perform or contribute to society.” And there’s no reasonable argument that sexual minorities are not such a group.

By the mid-20th century, for example, many city police forces employed “morals squads” that arrested hundreds of gay men every year. In 1952, Congress prohibited gay men and lesbians from immigrating to the United States. A year later, President Dwight Eisenhower signed an executive order barring gay people from the federal workforce and requiring federal contractors to discharge employees who engage in “sexual perversion.”

Congress did not lift the ban on gay immigrants until 1990. The ban on gay federal employees wasn’t fully lifted until 1998.

But Kennedy largely ignored this equal protection argument, and instead grounded decisions like Lawrence and Obergefell in a weaker unenumerated rights framework. Obergefell, for example, did not hold that marriage discrimination is unconstitutional because it is discrimination. It held that same-sex couples benefit from an unenumerated “right to marry.”

One problem with this approach is that it was clear, by the time Lawrence and Obergefell were decided, that the Court’s right flank was eager to narrow the scope of unenumerated rights and apply the “history and tradition” framework that Alito relies on in Dobbs. Glucksberg, after all, was decided six years prior to Lawrence.

By adopting the weaker unenumerated rights framework, in other words, Kennedy tied gay rights to a legal regime that was already under attack from the Court’s right flank.

It was inevitable that, if conservative Republicans took over the Court, they would swiftly move against Roe v. Wade. Because Lawrence and Obergefell are doctrinally similar to Roe, that means this inevitable attack on abortion rights also endangers LGBTQ rights.

Alito is the Court’s staunchest opponent of LGBTQ rights

Alito is the Court’s consummate legal strategist, constantly looking for ways to move the law to the right, and ever eager to bury bones in one opinion that can be dug up in a future case to score another conservative victory.

Writing for the Court in Knox v. SEIU (2012), for example, Alito asserted that previous Court decisions permitting public-sector unions to charge nonmembers for certain services the union provides to those nonmembers were “something of an anomaly.” This swipe at unions bore fruit in Janus v. AFSCME (2018), which overruled the decisions Alito criticized in Knox and cut off an important source of union funding.

Alito’s Dobbs opinion, with its exclusive reliance on the Glucksberg framework to determine which unenumerated rights are protected by the Constitution, reads much like Alito is trying to run the same play that he successfully pulled off in Knox — slipping language into one opinion that can be used to justify another conservative victory in a future decision.

Much of the draft Dobbs opinion tracks Alito’s analysis in his Obergefell dissent. Like the abortion opinion, Alito’s dissent against marriage equality claims that the only unenumerated rights protected by the Constitution are “those rights that are ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’”

Alito then spends the bulk of his opinion claiming that “traditionally,” the right to marry “was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite-sex couple can do: procreate” — an argument that, if taken seriously, would also prohibit people who are post-menopausal or who have undergone a vasectomy or hysterectomy, among other things, from being married.

Alito’s disdain for LGBTQ rights is apparent in his Obergefell dissent, a rhetorical choice that sets him aside even from several of his fellow Republican justices. Some of Alito’s conservative colleagues, who dissented in major LGBTQ rights decisions, went out of their way to state in those dissents that they bear no personal animus toward sexual or gender minorities.

Dissenting in Lawrence, for example, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear that he thinks that the so-called sodomy law at issue in that case is “uncommonly silly” and that, if he were a Texas state lawmaker, he “would vote to repeal it.” Similarly, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that existing civil rights laws prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ employees, Kavanaugh concluded his Bostock dissent by declaring his respect for the “extraordinary vision, tenacity, and grit” of “gay and lesbian Americans” who’ve “worked hard for many decades to achieve equal treatment in fact and in law.”

Alito’s Obergefell dissent, by contrast, treats the moral case for LGBTQ equality as so insignificant that it must bow to concerns that conservatives might be made to feel bad if same-sex couples are allowed to marry. The Obergefell decision, Alito complains, “will be used to vilify Americans” who believe that same-sex couples do not deserve equal rights. And people who express anti-LGBTQ views “will risk being labeled as bigots.”

Of course, the First Amendment protects the right of all Americans to disparage their political opponents, and to use strong language such as the word “bigot” when criticizing someone’s political viewpoint. And the Supreme Court has never held that someone’s constitutional rights must be diminished due to fears that someone, somewhere, might say something mean about people who oppose those rights. Imagine if the Court had backed away from Brown v. Board of Education (1954) due to fears that white supremacists might be shunned or condemned.

In any event, Alito appears to believe that it is more important to protect social conservatives from being made to feel bad than it is to protect LGBTQ Americans from systemic discrimination by their own government. This blinkered approach is likely to drive his approach to LGBTQ rights in the future.

But will Alito have five votes to overrule cases like Obergefell?

It’s likely that a majority of the current Court believes that cases like Lawrence and Obergefell were wrongly decided. After all, of the four justices who dissented in Obergefell, three are still on the Court. Two of the justices in the majority, meanwhile, were replaced by conservative Trump appointees.

But the principle of stare decisis — the doctrine that courts typically should be bound by their previous decisions — is supposed to foster stability in the law, and it’s also supposed to discourage justices from tossing out precedents simply because those justices disagree with them. So anti-LGBTQ litigators need to do more than simply convince a majority of the justices that Obergefell should have come down the other way when it was originally decided. They also have to convince at least five justices to overturn the legal basis for hundreds of thousands of Americans’ existing marriages.

It would be shocking if any of the liberal justices — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and incoming Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — vote to overrule decisions like Obergefell. Chief Justice John Roberts also appears to have made his peace with marriage equality. Roberts joined the majority opinion in Pavan v. Smith (2017), which reaffirmed Obergefell’s holding that same-sex couples must enjoy the exact same marital rights as opposite-sex couples.

Meanwhile, in a 2020 opinion joined by Alito, Thomas complained that Obergefell has “ruinous consequences for religious liberty.” Three justices — Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch — dissented in Pavan. That suggests that Alito has two natural allies in the fight against LGBTQ rights.

To sustain decisions like Obergefell and Lawrence, in other words, defenders of those decisions likely need to pick up either Kavanaugh or Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s vote to prevail.

At his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh endorsed Alito’s view that Glucksberg provides the proper framework for determining which unenumerated rights are protected by the Constitution. But Kavanaugh has also written that Supreme Court precedents should only be overruled if they are “grievously or egregiously wrong.” And that the Court should ask whether overruling a past decision would upset “legitimate expectations of those who have reasonably relied on the precedent” — such as the expectations of same-sex couples who are already married.

Barrett, meanwhile, has explicitly opposed same-sex marriage in the past. In 2015, for example, she signed onto a letter to Catholic bishops embracing the church’s conservative stance on marriage disclination. According to that letter, the church’s teachings on topics that include “marriage and family founded on the indissoluble commitment of a man and a woman ... provide a sure guide to the Christian life, promote women’s flourishing, and serve to protect the poor and most vulnerable among us.”

Similarly, according to the LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal, Barrett also gave a presentation in 2016 “in which she expressed that marriage should not be viewed as a fundamental right for same-sex couples and instead should be decided on a state-by-state basis.”

But Barrett has also warned that stare decisis should not simply be ignored. In a 2016 article co-authored with scholar John Copeland Nagle, Barrett conceded that there are some past decisions that “no serious person would propose to undo even if they are wrong.” And, in a 2017 essay, Barrett suggested that the Court should avoid hearing cases that involve “the most potentially disruptive challenges to precedent.” (As a general rule, four justices have to agree to hear a case before it receives a full hearing from the Supreme Court.)

But, if Barrett’s plan is to simply dodge cases attacking decisions like Obergefell, that plan is unlikely to work for very long. Eventually, a panel of right-wing appellate judges could force the Court’s hand by issuing a decision permitting a state to ban same-sex marriages, daring the Supreme Court to leave that decision in place.

A Supreme Court showdown over LGBTQ rights, in other words, is probably inevitable. And lawyers eager to ban marriage equality or criminalize gay sex most likely start with at least three justices in their pocket.

But it is not yet clear whether they have five.

By JM McNab Published: May 05th, 2022

There’s a scene in the Bible where Lot offers up his daughters to be raped by a mob in order to protect two angels he’d invited into his home. Turns out the rapists had actually wanted to rape the angels, but Lot decided that would be be gauche, since they were invited guests. So, yeah—he offered the raping rabble his daughters. And Lot explicitly sweetened the deal by revealing that his daughters were both virgins. Lot, by the way, is portrayed in no uncertain terms as the hero of his tale. As if that weren’t already totes obvious, right?

And that’s not even the most unnerving story in that book. Believe me. So keep that in mind as you lay your stupefied peepers on this hot heap of Christian right hypocrisy.

Kansas U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall waded into the culture wars on Wednesday and demanded changes to television ratings so parents could shield their children from LGBTQ representation in shows.

Marshall was the lead author on a letter to the TV Parental Guidelines Advisory Board asking them to add a new rating to inform parents whether a show contains content related to sexual orientation or gender identity.

So does this mean we’re going to start putting warning labels on the Bible to shield kiddos against its contents? Because it could really use some. Believe me. 

Co-founder of Sister District, Gaby Goldstein, joins The Downballot to discuss what Democrats in the states are doing to protect abortion rights

Of course, the Bible also mentions homosexuality, but so far Marshall et al. aren’t excoriating its many publishers. Though, as far as I can tell, the only difference between the gay characters in the Bible and those in Disney’s shows is that Disney doesn’t explicitly endorse stoning their characters to death. But apparently gruesome Bronze Age executions are far less problematic than two girls holding hands in a copse of cartoon daisies. Well, at least according to these assholes they are:

The letter — also signed by fellow Republican Sens. Steve Daines of Montana, Mike Braun of Indiana, Mike Lee of Utah and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota — requested a response from the board by May 18 and asked for an in-person briefing about updating the guidelines. The board said it is currently reviewing the letter.

Now, unless you’ve been going out of your way to ignore your surroundings (and I wouldn’t blame you if you have), you know that conservatives are currently engaged in a holy war with Disney over the company’s positive LGBTQ portrayals. The company has harshly criticized Florida’s new “Don’t Say Gay” Law, which seeks to prevent children from knowing that Liberace—or anyone else, for that matter—was, or is, gay. Apparently, it’s too much for kids to hear that their nice neighbors Stephen and Joseph like each other the same way Mommy likes Daddy, so we need to keep them blinkered for as long as possible.

Republicans are also taking aim at trans kids because they’re not already vulnerable enough, apparently. From the senators’ smoldering pile of vicious piffle:

Recently, a video emerged showing a prominent executive at children’s entertainment giant Disney saying she supports having "many, many, many LGBTQIA+ characters in our stories." To the detriment of children, gender dysphoria has become sensationalized in the popular media and television with radical activists and entertainment companies. This radical and sexual sensation not only harms children, but also destabilizes and damages parental rights. This same company has concerningly denounced and vowed to work to repeal a recently passed Florida parental rights law that bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Sexual orientation and gender identity instruction often entails a discussion concerning an individual’s pattern of emotional, romantic, and sexual attraction. Parents all over the country have rightfully expressed outrage over its inclusion in the classroom.

Translation: We’re gonna get eliminated if people focus on the latest Roe ruling, so let’s distract them with more disingenuous, poorly understood culture war nonsense. 

Needless to say, LGBTQ advocates are less than impressed with Marshall’s fake-Christian crusade. “We’ve seen enough of Kansas politicians beating up on trans kids and the LGBT community,” said Equality Kansas Executive Director Tom Witt. “We certainly don’t need Washington, D.C., senators joining in to use these kids as political punching bags.”

Meanwhile, super-Christian Mike Huckabee is currently pushing this wholesome offering:

Hmm, The Kids Guide to President Trump, huh? Does it include all the rape accusations or just the family-friendly ones? Somehow I doubt Huckabee thought that through. Maybe someone needs to ask him ASAP.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE. 

Consider supporting my work so I can continue creating it: Patreon, Nick Anderson Newsletter, or another option

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I have a feeling some philosopher made the same point somewhere with less butt stuff.

Today's News: