13 October 20
When the Promises of the Campaigns Evaporate
A lot of things get said in a campaign season. A lot gets forgotten when it’s over. After the confetti is swept up someone has to have a good memory and a sense of justice.
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13 October 20
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Sean Wilentz | The Sedition of Donald Trump
Sean Wilentz, Rolling Stone
Wilentz writes: "Before Donald Trump got himself infected with the coronavirus, he had firmly secured his place as the worst president in American history."
Now, after mocking Joe Biden at their first debate for mask wearing, Trump has proved to be a reckless superspreader, risking the lives of donors at a New Jersey fundraiser and the Secret Service agents sworn to protect him by demanding a bizarre motorcade photo op outside of Walter Reed hospital. One aide and associate after another of those exposed to him — and his wife — have fallen victim to the virus. Trump’s coronavirus policy, or rather the absence of it, had already been shown to have morbid consequences. Herman Cain, the former pizza king, could testify about that had he not died due to complications from the virus after attending Trump’s ill-fated Tulsa rally crammed with shouting, barefaced fanatics.
After demanding to be released from the hospital, Trump put on a display worthy of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, except that it wasn’t a parody. Clearly struggling for breath, the president first told the nation that Covid-19 was no big deal — “Don’t be afraid” — playing the he-man while spewing the deadly virus. The next day, Trump tweeted that there would be no further talk about a bill to stimulate the economy until after the election. The New York Stock Exchange averages immediately collapsed. But this unhinged performance is in keeping with the president’s attitude toward the contagion from the beginning, a toxic mixture of denial and presumed invulnerability.
Since Covid hit, Trump’s refusal to call the pandemic a siren-howling public-health emergency, coupled with his know-nothing disparagement of medical science, has led directly to the soaring death count, now well over 210,000 Americans, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The escalating number of fatalities of Americans from the coronavirus outstrips the number of U.S. combat deaths in World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and every war since combined. However Trump fares with the virus, whether he suffers its symptoms for months or recovers, his legacy is already written in stone as one of catastrophic and lethal failure.
That’s for starters. Trump’s racist rhetoric and shout-outs to white nationalists have cleaved the nation in two, driving political polarization with an intensity not seen since the Civil War. His explicit encouragement of violence and armed demonstrations has menaced the rule of law. His brazen attempt to shake down the president of Ukraine (“Do us a favor, though”), in order to manufacture dirt against his chief political opponent — the event that triggered Trump’s impeachment — almost surely would have led to his removal from office but for the cynicism, cowardice, and partisanship of the Senate Republican majority. His amply documented obstruction of justice in connection with the Russia investigation — 10 offenses, according to the Mueller report; the corruption of his office to enrich himself and his family in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause; his purposeful sabotage of the First Amendment by demonizing the free press as enemies of the people — all this and more add up to not just the worst performance of any American president, but the most subversive conduct since Jefferson Davis, who was not a president of the United States.
Trump’s subversion is an immediate existential crisis for American democracy, the worst since the Civil War. He has deliberately tried to discredit and delegitimize democracy itself. By repeatedly trashing the upcoming election as rigged and corrupt, raising baseless wild charges about voting by mail, Trump has poisoned the political wells. By instructing the neo-fascist and anti-Semitic Proud Boys to “stand back” and “stand by,” and instructing his goon squads to descend on the polls to intimidate voters, he has openly called for disrupting the election. By refusing to pledge to a peaceful transition of power should he lose the election, Trump has revealed his plan for a coup d’etat, with the connivance and unswerving support of the Republican Party.
Before Trump fell ill, he openly disclosed his plot, what looked like the last option left to him to snatch a victory despite almost certain defeat. Claiming that the Democrats were out to steal the election and getting his frenzied supporters to turn out, vote, and prevent others from voting, Trump prepared the hardcore MAGA base to unleash orchestrated chaos in the streets in case he lost, a standard tactic in banana republics. The obscene scramble to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court — a cynical move to solidify a right-wing majority on the court — was, again by Trump’s own admission, an equally important element in his mind for the projected coup. Should Trump fall short, as current polls show him doing, then his campaign, against the backdrop of civil chaos, would try and throw the election into either the House of Representatives, where the GOP controls the majority of states and thus the outcome, or the courts, where they can expect that, eventually, the Supreme Court, packed with his appointees and other right-wingers, will simply declare Trump the winner. Complicit GOP leaders and officeholders would absolve themselves of responsibility by throwing up their hands and saying the law, then, must be followed, knowing full well the final decision had been politically preordained. The Republican theft of the presidency in 2000 would look like a dry run for the overthrow of American democracy in 2020.
The president’s illness has not put that strategy on hold, only made it more urgent. His wild performance in the first debate — which repelled voters who saw him unfiltered for 90 minutes and was sufficient to double Biden’s lead — only makes Trump more dependent than ever on undemocratic tactics. The situation around the election is so volatile that no projection appears too dire. But when historians look back on the 2020 election, it will be important for them to recognize that Trump’s plot was taking shape before the virus intervened. This is not lurid speculation. An earlier plan, which was exposed, involved smearing Biden, and it provoked Trump’s impeachment. Since then, Trump has developed a conscious and deliberate strategy to discredit and overturn the popular vote in the election and even the Electoral College in order to keep himself in power.
Trump may never have thought he could actually pull this off. If the scheme faltered, he might fall back on using a coup threat as an opening bid in a negotiation for a pardon for all of his federal crimes, as well as his crimes against New York state law. The exposure of his tax returns by The New York Times had shown that he paid virtually no taxes and is a terrible businessman. More important, though, it showed that even if Trump recovers, he may well be in profound legal trouble, along with members of his family, potentially facing charges of bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and much more. If so, as seems likely, Trump has always known he’s guilty, and he knows that he and Ivanka and Don Jr. and Eric might also end up in prison. When the virus struck, he was already a truly desperate man, facing not simply an election but also his own existential crisis, one just as severe as the one afflicting the nation. From his bed in the Walter Reed Medical Center, even suffering symptoms his chief of staff called “concerning,” Trump was spreading lies and sowing chaos. So, as we hurtle toward Election Day, the question remains: How did we get to this point? How has Donald Trump managed to take the nation to the brink, holding on to power despite his manifest abuses of the public trust?
First, there is his base, which has become a true cult worshipping its Dear Leader, whipped up by an elaborate propaganda apparatus of Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and conspiracy-spouting websites. Fear of that fevered base, inhabiting its own media bubble, and the immense power of unregulated dark money from special interests, has turned whatever is left of the national Republican Party into a subsidiary of Trump Inc., with the Senate GOP majority ceding Trump enormous power as well as a firewall against congressional checks and balances. When talking about the Republicans, though, it’s important not to forget the long-standing party fixtures outside of Congress that have also done their utmost to secure Trump’s power. Of those insider subversives, none has been more essential to protecting, guiding, and sustaining Trump’s regime — and his election plot — than Attorney General William P. Barr.
When Barr replaced the utterly unqualified lunkhead serving as acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, in February 2019, the sigh of relief from Washington’s quarters of conventional wisdom was almost audible. Whitaker’s predecessor, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, had infuriated Trump by recusing himself from investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sessions had in turn acquiesced in the appointment of a special counsel, former FBI director Robert Mueller. As soon as the 2018 midterms were done, Trump fired Sessions and appointed Whitaker as his temporary replacement. But eventually Trump picked Barr — and the choice may have appeared to be a nod to the old establishment.
Barr had no apparent ties to Trump, for whom personal loyalty is everything; and he had previously served as President George H.W. Bush’s attorney general. The elder Bush, who had just died, had not only refused to support Trump’s election, but actually voted for Hillary Clinton. So Trump choosing Barr didn’t seem entirely to add up, if you thought of him as a traditional Bush man.
Barr seemed to be what is approvingly called in Washington an institutionalist, meaning in this case the type of conventional GOP operator who privately loathed Trump. What most observers had forgotten is that back in 1992, Barr had helped successfully shut down once and for all the investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal that for a time had threatened to topple Ronald Reagan and to upset George H.W. Bush. Now Barr was about to go to full-scale war in the service of Donald Trump — and his own ideas about America as a degenerate liberal culture in need of a right-wing judiciary and an autocratic president.
Inside of two years, Barr has become the most aggressively political attorney general in American history. Of course, there have been rotten attorneys general before: Richard Nixon’s consigliere, the taciturn John Mitchell, a convicted felon in the Watergate affair; Ronald Reagan’s ethically challenged California buddy Ed Meese, who resigned under a cloud amid the Wedtech scandal. And before them there was Harry Daughtery, Warren G. Harding’s attorney general, boss of the “Ohio Gang,” who was implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal.
Since his appointment, Barr has rushed forward as Trump’s public savior, making havoc of the rule of law he claims to revere and using the full weight of his office to deflect trouble and advance Trump’s political fortunes. Barr deliberately thwarted potential checks and balances on the president’s corruption, inflamed the civil strife on which Trump feeds, and both launched and cooperated with investigations of dedicated public officials for maximum political effect on the eve of the election. If Trump grabs another term, he will have Barr to thank possibly more than anyone. And if that happens, what’s left of the Justice Department as an institution above partisan politics, serving the public trust, will almost certainly and completely collapse. A survey of the damage done so far makes that clear.
Barr’s first outrage was to scuttle the Mueller report. Exploiting his authority under the special-counsel law, Barr held on to the report for a month, preventing the press and the public from reading it, while he and his staff heavily redacted the two volumes of official findings. It was the old strategy of redact-and-delay that Nixon’s men deployed to try squelching the Watergate investigation by hiding the material that proved Nixon’s guilt. The strategy hadn’t worked then, but Barr would make it work now. In defense of Trump, Barr was acting out Nixon’s revenge. He issued a statement effectively exonerating the president before releasing the heavily redacted yet still very damning report a few weeks later. The delaying tactic had its desired effect, and the damaging details of Trump’s extensive attempts to obstruct justice and a clear willingness to play ball with foreign operatives to win an election were muted. If anyone had been able to do for Nixon what Barr did for Trump, Nixon’s crimes would never have been exposed.
Barr has effectively served as Trump’s mouthpiece, repackaging White House talking points with an air of blunt authority, dismissing any and all serious charges against the president as “bogus,” and, in true Trumpian fashion, turning the tables and accusing the accusers of fabricating accusations against Trump and therefore committing crimes against the American people. Not finished after having gotten Trump off the hook for the Mueller report’s findings, Barr has also used the power of the Justice Department to try to eradicate every trace of the president’s Russian scandal.
First up was the case of Michael Flynn, the retired lieutenant general and rabid Trump supporter who Trump tapped to be his national security adviser. In the interim between the election and the inauguration, Flynn had had improper contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in which they discussed possible relief of sanctions imposed on the Russians by the Obama administration. Exposure of the contacts led Flynn to abruptly resign, and in time he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI twice, a federal crime. But Trump was unrelenting in trying to get Flynn in the clear.
This past May, it looked as if Trump just might have to pardon Flynn, which would have caused political blowback. Barr, though, did the job for him by simply having the Justice Department drop the charges, over the stern objections of a federal judge, who happened to be a Reagan appointee. Another former federal judge, brought in to review the matter, called it “a corrupt and politically motivated favor” that was “unworthy of our justice system.”
Barr’s role in the case of Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime dirty trickster, crony, and connection to Wikileaks — and through that to Russian military hacking operations, according to U.S. intelligence — was even messier. Early in 2020, Barr, goaded by the president, personally intervened to ensure that Stone — convicted of seven felony counts in connection with the 2016 campaign — received little or no jail time. The affair shook the Department of Justice to its core. The entire federal prosecution team on the case quit in protest, and more than 2,000 former department officials called for Barr’s resignation. Reportedly, Barr balked at an outright commutation of Stone’s sentence, but he had set the stage. Trump then commuted Stone’s sentence.
Meanwhile, Barr pushed ahead with continuing efforts to criminalize the intelligence community’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. In May 2019, a month after the release of the blacked-out Mueller report, Barr announced he had appointed U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham as special prosecutor to investigate the FBI’s probe into the Trump-Russia connection. The Durham investigation amounted to putting Trump’s conspiracy theories into action, placing “deep state” villains in the inquiry’s crosshairs. The probe was going to be payback time.
At around the same time as the Flynn and Stone stories were breaking, Barr summarily removed the U.S. attorney for the powerful and famously independent Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman. A Republican, named by Trump to the position on an interim basis in 2018, and a former associate of Trump’s fixer Rudy Giuliani, Berman had proved dangerously professional and unreliable to Trump, beginning with the investigation into and flipping of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney.
The plan was to fire Berman, who Barr had already told aides needed to be reined in, and have Trump’s hand-picked nominee for the post step in right away. Initially, Barr lied to the press, saying that Berman had resigned his post. Speculation about what the rush was all about focused immediately on pending Southern District investigations of Trump’s friends and associates, including the funding of the inaugural committee and financial dealings with the Turkish Halkbank, as well as two close and shady associates of Giuliani in his Ukraine capers indicted for fraud. In the end, Berman put up a fight and, though he finally left his job, his next-in-line, and not Trump’s favorite, took over. The plan was foiled, but Berman was still purged.
The historic events of the late spring and summer opened up new fronts and new opportunities for Trump and his attorney general to begin a great campaign for law and order. After George Floyd was killed on May 25th, mass protests against racial injustice swept the country. Three days later, the death toll in the United States from the Covid-19 pandemic surpassed 100,000, prompting the Centers for Disease Control to redouble its public appeals for social distancing and wearing face masks. At that very moment, Biden’s lead over Trump in national polls, noticeably widened.
Trump’s response to the pandemic was to belittle the science and to encourage resistance to the public-health appeals for masks, social distancing, and lockdowns. Then he sought to distract attention from the pandemic by casting the Black Lives Matter demonstrations as the work of lawless violent radicals and fomenting a Nixon-style “law and order” panic campaign. Third, he tried to throw the entire election into disarray with groundless claims that voting by mail would be subject to massive fraud.
Barr not only followed Trump every step of the way, but often led the way. He set the Justice Department in conflict with public-health officials. In April, as some states began relaxing public-health measures, he directed the nation’s federal prosecutors to look out for any state and local anti-Covid -ordinance that “crosses the line” into alleged infringements of constitutional rights, and to “address that overreach in federal court.” He called proposals for a national lockdown the worst abuse of civil liberties in all of American history, apart from slavery.
There has been no more steadfast peddler of falsehoods about mail-in voting than the attorney general. In September, he declared flatly that “there’s no more secret vote, there’s no secret vote,” with mailed ballots, adding with dark emphasis that “the government and the people involved can find out and know how you voted.” That kind of talk is typical from a barroom loudmouth, not an attorney general of the United States. In fact, there are numerous safeguards to mail-in voting to protect voters’ privacy. Those safeguards are familiar to voters in the several states who have adopted mail-in voting for years. They are of course familiar to the attorney general, who has also voted by mail.
But Barr’s handling of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations was his most daring authoritarian intervention. The battle of Lafayette Square on June 1st will stand in Trump administration history as the most notorious incident, when Barr ordered the forceful clearing of peaceful demonstrators across from the White House, after which he marched with Trump over to St. John’s Church, where the president held aloft a Bible fetched from Ivanka’s purse for a publicity shot. More than 1,250 former Justice Department workers called for an internal investigation of the attorney general. Barr brushed off the criticisms by pointing to Black Lives Matter demonstrations that had turned violent, claiming the crowd had been warned three times to depart, warnings that video showed were inaudible, and that tear gas had not been used on the crowd, which was false.
That infamous display of power fit a larger pattern of incitement on Barr’s part, making a tense situation worse with unnecessary force and inflammatory rhetoric. In Portland, Oregon, for example, where there were unquestionably violent protests that called for arrests, the Justice Department upped the ante by sending in armed, unidentified federal officers to roam the city’s downtown, shoving demonstrators into unmarked cars, police-state style. Later, Barr pressed federal prosecutors to charge demonstrators with sedition, a major crime against the United States rarely if ever mentioned in peacetime.
Barr’s crackdown was intended to distract from Trump’s dismal record confronting the pandemic, all while Trump encouraged menacing bands of armed right-wingers. Trump’s summons to militias began long before his callout to the Proud Boys. “Liberate Michigan,” the president tweeted in all caps in April, when rifle-toting MAGA troops shut down the state’s Legislature over Michigan’s Covid restrictions.
These two words were seditious in the most exact sense, a president instructing armed American citizens to attack their own government. His acts amounted to an assault by the president himself on the Constitution’s clause that guarantees states “a Republican Form of Government,” including against “domestic violence.” And chillingly, they may well have encouraged, if not incited, the right-wing militia plot, now revealed by the FBI, to kidnap Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer, storm the state capitol, and overthrow the state government. (In character, Trump the inflamer reacted to news of the plot by attacking Whitmer as an ingrate who has done “a terrible job” on Covid.) Yet Trump’s April tweet — perhaps the most literally subversive utterance by any president in our history — has proven to be but a forecast of the grander subversion taking place right now.
How, then, did William Barr, the respected conservative lawyer and public servant, come to this abysmal bottom? Like so many Republicans who have come into Trump’s orbit, he has been seduced into loyalty, but that barely scratches the surface of his motives. Barr has not become captive to Trump’s agenda; like other longtime Republicans, Barr has an agenda of his own. Trump uses Barr, just as Barr uses Trump. Barr’s agenda is a very distinct agenda, nothing so crass as merely more tax cuts for the rich, or so mundane as “America First.” It is a vision of the United States as a Christian nation — a certain kind of Christian nation with a certain kind of Christianity.
There have been several strong articles about Barr’s emergence as a right-wing enforcer. One of the best, by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, reports on Barr’s youth in Manhattan as a boyhood tormentor, described by one schoolmate as a “classic bully,” “power abuser,” and “sadistic kid,” with a special hatred for liberal causes and a “vicious fixation on my little Jewish ‘commie’ ass.” Milbank notes that research shows childhood bullies are likely to become adult bullies, which may help explain not just Barr’s current performance but also his and Trump’s mutual admiration. It may also account for Barr’s deepening adulation for Trump as a “statesmanlike” leader — this with regard to the White House’s raw politicized handling of the pandemic — coupled with his accusations that Trump’s critics have launched a “jihad” against him, equating political opponents to Islamic terrorists. Through Barr, Trump gets the kind of competent legal muscle that Giuliani never could give him, while Barr gets to be the all-important henchman, operating as the power behind the throne.
But Barr has ideas as well as a temperament, described recently in The Atlantic by Donald Ayer, a former U.S. attorney under George H.W. Bush. After closely examining the attorney general’s 30-year paper trail, Ayer finds that Barr holds two primary propositions to be at the heart of everything. The first is that the founders established the United States as a religious and more specifically Christian nation, dedicated to, in Barr’s words, “a transcendent moral order with objective standards of right and wrong,” divulged by God through his church. The second is that contrary to what Barr calls the “civics-class version” of the Constitution, the founders, by resolving in favor of a single executive officer, invested the president with extremely broad authority.
According to Barr, “Judeo-Christian” government prevailed in this country until the tumult of the 1960s — which to Barr amounted to a wave of soul-destroying licentiousness — when, allied with unremitting attacks on sacrosanct presidential power, the immoral left began toppling the founders’ design. The enemy — a militant secularism, rooted not in the word of God but in the humanism of the Renaissance and the rationalism of the Enlightenment — has unleashed moral chaos. Simultaneously, Barr writes, “a steady grinding down of the executive branch’s authority, that accelerated after Watergate” has reduced the presidency to a wisp of what the founders envisaged. Trump — the candidate who paid hush money to a porn star — may not be a perfect vessel, but he stands strong against the immoralists, the Democrats, who Barr says want to create a “progressive utopia” stripped of God’s blessings. For Barr this nightmare scenario must be stopped at all costs.
To a historian, a lot of this is crackpot stuff. The founders, although for the most part self-designated Christians, were devotees of precisely the secular rationalism and humanism that Barr calls the root of all evil. Although some were likely to invoke God’s grace and even speak in providential terms, this had nothing to do with founding a Christian nation. Had they wanted that, they wouldn’t have framed and ratified a godless Constitution. Likewise, Barr’s account of the presidency is perfectly wrong: Far from a powerful and omnipotent presidency falling into ruin in the 1960s, the presidency, with a few major exceptions like Abraham Lincoln, was fairly weak until Theodore Roosevelt took the job, and the greatest expansion of presidential authority came not with the founding but in the 20th and 21st centuries and the advent of the imperial presidency.
Whatever Barr is driving at has little or nothing to do with what the American Revolution established, nor with any kind of government this nation has ever known. It more closely resembles a theocracy, overseen by a president who more closely resembles an elected monarch. Trump, for his part, would prefer a kind of Putin-like kleptocracy. Barr’s vision, if you can call it that, is an Americanized version of something more akin to Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Spain. This is a counterrevolutionary doctrine and it is now in command of the Department of Justice, aiming for much, much more power. Its first order of business is to return Donald Trump to the White House by any means necessary.
After Trump fell ill, Barr, who himself is quarantining as of press time, continued the plot to cast doubt on the popular vote, to hype the bogus Durham investigation, and to proclaim the election one between orderly Americanism and the massive threat of Antifa anarchy. This is Barr’s last chance to shape an authoritarian presidency, a federal bench and Supreme Court that will be a right-wing conservative bastion for a generation to come, and a very different country.
Trump and Barr have made the election into a test of democracy. If the United States is to survive as it has existed since 1787, Trump must not simply be defeated, but repudiated. There can be no forgiveness in the name of some fanciful national unity for all the criminal carnage that Trump has done, before as well as during his presidency. Failure to attack the roots of a far greater seditious threat more than a century and a half ago, in the form of the Confederate States of America, has led directly to our current traumas, allowing a bacillus of racism and authoritarianism to survive, mutate, and reinfect our politics. That bacillus is now virulent as Trumpism.
Trump and his accomplices have not merely betrayed American principles. Some of our previous presidents and political leaders have done that. But Trump, with his threats and his rhetoric, his self-dealing and his contempt for the rule of law, has crossed a very dangerous line. Should the American majority prevail, and should he survive, Trump must be held to full account at the bar of history as well as the bar of justice. Should the majority fail, the American experiment in free government will be so badly damaged as to be unrecognizable.
Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on October 12, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
ALSO SEE: 5 Takeaways From Monday's Senate Hearing on
Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett
The Surreal - Yet Normal - Start to Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing
Li Zhou, Vox
Zhou writes: "The opening day of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing felt both surreal and oddly routine."
The hearing is far from business as usual — but its first day often felt like it was.
About a week and a half after two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee tested positive for the coronavirus, masked lawmakers gathered to make opening statements, with some including Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Kamala Harris (D-CA) appearing remotely. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — one of the Republican lawmakers to be recently diagnosed with coronavirus — returned to make his statement in person after being cleared by the Capitol’s attending physician, who noted that he did not need to take an additional test (Lee has not shared whether he has recently tested negative).
But even as it proceeded without delay, the hearing was far from business as usual: It’s taking place as Republicans try to push through a nominee as quickly as they can ahead of the election, despite taking a completely different position in 2016. And it’s occurring amid concerns about coronavirus exposure at the Capitol. “This isn’t the way we should do it,” said Leahy. “We should not be holding this hearing when it’s plainly unsafe to do so.”
Little about the panel — beyond its format — spoke to how abnormal it was, however.
Instead, even as Democrats took issue with Republicans’ approach, much of the hearing proceeded as if it were ordinary, contrary to what many progressive activists hoped to see. As Democrats tried to emphasize how Barrett would threaten the Affordable Care Act if she ascends to the high court, Republicans touted her credentials as a Notre Dame law professor and misleadingly deflected concerns about her nomination as attacks on her Catholic faith.
Barrett, meanwhile, had an opportunity to make her opening statement, during which she described her interpretation of the Court’s role as a body that’s not intended to create policy — a commonly used Republican talking point. “The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people,” Barrett said. “The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try.”
Democrats have said they’re aiming to sway potential Republicans on Barrett’s nomination by highlighting the stakes of this Supreme Court seat — something they did Monday by using the photos and stories of real people who could be affected by an ACA rollback. “We can’t afford to go back to those days when Americans could be denied coverage or charged exorbitant amounts,” said ranking member Dianne Feinstein, while speaking about a California constituent named Christina Monroe Garcia, who was able to obtain cataract surgery after gaining insurance coverage through the ACA.
Lawmakers including Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Harris emphasized, too, that this hearing was taking place against the backdrop of a rushed process and an ongoing stalemate over stimulus, which Republicans have not prioritized to the same degree as a judicial nominee. “Nothing about this is normal,” said Booker.
Democrats focused on the real people the ACA case could impact in their opening statements
If the Affordable Care Act is overturned in an upcoming Supreme Court case, more than 20 million people could lose their health insurance and roughly 100 million people with preexisting conditions could once again be discriminated against by insurance providers. Democrats sought to make this possible fallout clear via their statements. If Barrett is confirmed, one of the first cases she could rule on could determine whether the ACA is able to stand.
One after another, Democrats named constituents in their home states, including Connor, a 10-year-old in Connecticut with muscular dystrophy, who has been able to access the treatments he needs as a result of the ACA’s protections for individuals with preexisting conditions. “It has protected Connor from losing insurance because of this insidious disease that he never caused,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
Democrats are focusing on the ACA as their chief message both because of the need to defend the policy and because they have public opinion on their side. According to a late September survey from Morning Consult, 62 percent of voters support the Affordable Care Act, and 79 percent of voters back health insurance protections for people with preexisting conditions.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) in her remarks also spoke about her personal experiences with Covid-19, which both her husband and her father were diagnosed with, and urged voters to call Republican senators regarding their concerns about the Supreme Court nomination. “This isn’t Donald Trump’s country. It is yours. This shouldn’t be Donald Trump’s judge. It should be yours,” she said.
As Vox’s Ian Millhiser has written, Barrett has previously criticized Supreme Court decisions to uphold the ACA including Justice John Roberts’s reasoning for doing so in NFIB v. Sebelius in 2012. “Chief Justice Roberts pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute,” Barrett has written.
Republicans emphasized Barrett’s qualifications — while misleadingly accusing Democrats of attacks on her religion
Republicans also returned to the same themes repeatedly throughout the hearing, highlighting Barrett’s professional qualifications for the role including her tenure as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (who died in 2016), and her work as a law professor at Notre Dame University, while frequently referencing her family as well. If confirmed, Barrett — a parent of seven — would be the first mother of school-age children to sit on the high court.
“Her students ‘express awe with the power of judge Barrett’s intellect and with her professionalism,’” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). “To sum up, Judge Barrett’s qualification and character are impeccable.”
Republicans also repeatedly and misleadingly suggested that opposition to Barrett was driven by concerns with her religion, which Democratic lawmakers broadly did not mention. “They are attacking you as a mom and a woman of faith because they cannot attack your qualifications,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), even though neither of these issues was raised.
Republicans took this approach because religion was a central issue during Barrett’s circuit court confirmation in 2017, when comments made by Feinstein at the time seemed to suggest that Democrats were scrutinizing Barrett’s religion and not its relationship with her potential work as a judge. At the time, Feinstein noted that the “dogma lives loudly within you,” a statement that Republicans have pointed toward as anti-Catholic sentiment.
“This committee isn’t in the business of deciding whether the dogma lives too loudly in someone,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE). Barrett has previously written about how her faith relates to potential judicial decision-making about capital punishment, and Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet is among those who have argued that it’s fair game to ask Barrett about these writings, without perpetuating anti-Catholic sentiment.
Senators will have ample time on Tuesday and Wednesday to question Barrett directly about her stances on a wide range of issues, though whether this upcoming session will affect a vote on her nomination is an open question.
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber, meaning four lawmakers would have to defect from the party line in order for Barrett’s nomination to fail — since Vice President Mike Pence can break a 50-50 tie. It’s an unlikely scenario, but trying to convince a handful of their GOP colleagues to vote against the nomination will be a key aim of Democrats’ arguments in the hearing this week.
Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, front right, speaks next to members of the Michigan Liberty Militia during the 'American Patriot Rally-Sheriffs speak out' event at Rosa Parks Circle in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, Monday, 18 May, 2020. (photo: MLive/Grand Rapids Press)
Michigan Sheriff Urged to Resign After Ties to Domestic Terrorists in Governor Kidnapping Plot Emerge
James Crump, The Independent
Crump writes: "Michigan residents have called for Barry County sheriff Dar Leaf to resign, after it emerged that he had shared a stage with one of the men arrested in the alleged foiled plot to kidnap governor Gretchen Whitmer."
William Null, a member of the Michigan Liberty Militia group, was arrested alongside 12 others last Friday in relation to the alleged plot to kidnap the governor at her summer home.
Mr Null has been charged with material support for terrorist acts and possessing firearms in commission of a felony, WWMT reported.
Following the suspect’s arrest last week, it was reported that sheriff Leaf had shared a stage with Mr Null at a protest against Ms Whitmer’s stay at home order in May, alongside other members of the militia group.
A protest with at least 160 attendees is now scheduled in Hastings, Michigan, on Tuesday, to call for Mr Leaf to be removed from his post, according to Newsweek.
The protest has been organised by Olivia Bennett, who is running for the position of Barry County commissioner.
She told Michigan Live on Monday: “We are not accusing [Sheriff Leaf] of having known about the kidnapping plot and we are not accusing him of being a part of it at all.”
Ms Bennett added: “Some people in this county have tried to make the connection and have said we should investigate Dar for that, but that is not where I'm at or what I am suggesting at all.
“What I am suggesting is his actions and his words embolden people who would attempt to do such things.”
Mr Leaf, who has allegedly refused to enforce Ms Whitmer’s coronavirus measures, spoke about Mr Null and his brother Michael, who was also arrested in relation to the failed plot, on Friday.
He told Fox17: “I was shocked, did not see this coming with those guys, but still we can't convict them in the media here, they do have a right to a fair trial.”
When asked if he had any regrets about being on stage with one of the men charged in the alleged plot, he did not express any remorse and went on to question whether the group were actually trying to carry out an “arrest”.
“It’s just a charge,” he said. “Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt?”
Mr Leaf added: “In fact, these guys are innocent till proven guilty so I'm not even sure if they had any part of it.”
Mr Null is facing 20 years in prison for the alleged plot, and is being held on a $250,000 (£191,312) bond.
State and federal law enforcement officials have claimed that the group planned the alleged kidnapping plot for two months prior to their arrest.
The FBI said the men planned to capture Ms Whitmer before 3 November’s national election and “try” her in Wisconsin.
The group allegedly felt that Ms Whitmer had “uncontrolled power” over coronavirus measures, and they had planned “various acts of violence,” for their plot, according to the Associated Press.
Speaking about their arrest, Detroit US attorney Matthew Schneider told reporters on Friday: “All of us in Michigan can disagree about politics, but those disagreements should never, ever amount to violence.
“Violence has been prevented today.”
There are unauthorized ballot drop boxes in Los Angeles, Orange, and Fresno counties. (photo: The Week)
Confirmed, Verified Voter Fraud in California
Peter Weber, The Week
Weber writes: "California Secretary of State Alex Padilla's office has received complaints about what appear to be unauthorized ballot drop boxes in Los Angeles, Orange, and Fresno counties, and it appears from social media posts that California Republicans have set them up to collect ballots."
alifornia Secretary of State Alex Padilla's office has received complaints about what appear to be unauthorized ballot drop boxes in Los Angeles, Orange, and Fresno counties, and it appears from social media posts that California Republicans have set them up to collect ballots, The Orange County Register reported Sunday night. The metal boxes, which purport to be "official," have been reported at local political party offices, churches, and headquarters for GOP candidates.
"Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes — especially those misrepresented as official drop boxes — is not just misleading to voters, it's a violation of state law," Padilla said, and a felony conviction would land perpetrators in prison for two to four years. County elections officials and registrars are solely empowered to set up and maintain drop boxes in accordance with strict state security rules.
The California Republican Party did not respond to the Register's requests for comments, nor did individual GOP operatives who have implicated themselves on social media. But the state GOP has "been defending the practice in replies on Twitter, alleging the process was made legal under a 2016 law that allows California voters to designate a person to return their ballot for them," the Register reports. "The GOP calls the practice 'ballot harvesting' and blames it for losses to the Democrats in OC and other places in 2018." State officials say unauthorized drop boxes would violate that law since there's no designated person to sign for the ballot, as required.
Slate judiciary staff writer Mark Joseph Stern sees something a little more nefarious than just trying to make it more convenient for Republicans to vote. "California Republicans are allegedly creating fake drop boxes and tricking voters into depositing their ballots in them," he tweeted. "Apparently they're trying to prove voter fraud is real by committing actual election fraud."
Republicans in Texas, Ohio, and other states are currently fighting to limit ballot drop boxes to one per county. Republicans in Southern California are trying to win back a slate of congressional seats they lost in the 2018 midterms. And if they are using fake official drop boxes, they are breaking the law, Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said Sunday. "It would be like me installing a mailbox out on the corner — the post office is the one that installs mailboxes." Read more at The Orange County Register.
Demonstrators for and against abortion rights rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 2020. (photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)
The Fight for Reproductive Justice in a Post-Ginsburg World
Jordan Smith, The Intercept
Excerpt: "The Trump administration has already offered the eight-member court an opportunity to restrict abortion access amid the pandemic."
riaku Njoku was outside the U.S. Supreme Court alongside a crowd of activists and advocates for abortion rights as the nine jurists inside heard oral arguments in a case that, depending on its outcome, could destroy access to abortion in Louisiana.It was a crisp morning in early March, mere days before the coronavirus pandemic would see the country all but completely locked down. Njoku, one of the founders of Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, a nonprofit that provides assistance to individuals seeking abortion care across six states in the Deep South, was rallying outside the court with her sister. “There was so much energy,” she recalled.
It was nearly four years to the day since the last time Njoku had been in front of the high court. That morning, in early 2016, the court was considering the constitutionality of a set of abortion restrictions in Texas that had shuttered half the state’s clinics. At the time, there were just eight justices on the bench; Antonin Scalia had died several weeks earlier. In the end, Anthony Kennedy joined the four more liberal justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to strike down the restrictions, which included a requirement that abortion providers have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The court found no evidence that this was necessary to ensure patient safety.
Now, Njoku was back in the same space rallying for the same cause: The restriction at issue in the Louisiana case was identical to the admitting privileges requirement the court had invalidated in Texas. “It was a full-circle moment, where it was almost four years to the day; I’m back here again, literally fighting for … the same thing,” she said. “I was like, ‘They have to uphold this precedent.’”
By then, Kennedy had left the bench and President Donald Trump had installed two new conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who were appointed precisely because of their hostility to abortion. In the end, the court did strike down the Louisiana law, with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the deciding vote — albeit with an opinion suggesting the court would be open to upholding additional restrictions in the future.
When the decision was announced, Njoku realized that it wasn’t exactly a game-changing victory. Anti-abortion lawmakers have passed more than 450 abortion restrictions over the last decade, many of which still stand, making access to abortion difficult, if not nearly impossible, for millions of people. This is especially true for people of color, LGBTQ people, poor and low-income people, and people in rural areas, who are routinely hit hardest by restrictions on reproductive care, as well as broader inequalities within the health care system. These inequalities have been widely exposed not only by the pandemic, but also through a summer of civil rights protests that have thrown new light on the country’s continuing legacy of racial oppression.
And with Ginsburg’s death in September, the fight for reproductive justice faces new threats as Republicans scramble to fill her seat with appeals court jurist Amy Coney Barrett, who in 2006 signed on to a call for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, which described its legacy as “barbaric.” According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, if that were to happen, 24 states would prohibit abortion altogether.
If Barrett is seated, not only is the future of legal abortion in jeopardy, but also access to the larger health care system; the Supreme Court is slated to hear yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Act on November 10. “Yes, this is a huge blow, but it doesn’t stop the fact that we still have to do work on the ground, as grassroots organizations, as people who are directly impacted by whatever this administration has done or that prior administrations have done,” Njoku said. “We have to continue fighting until we get to that future of reproductive justice where we’re able to access whatever health care that we need without any bias or barrier.”
The Shadow Docket
While Ginsburg’s seat is still vacant, the Trump administration has already offered the eight-member court an opportunity to restrict abortion access amid the pandemic.
At issue is how medication abortion is provided to people seeking to terminate a pregnancy in its earliest stages. Available through 10 weeks’ gestation, medication abortion is a two-drug regimen that has been available in the U.S. for 20 years and used by more than 4 million people. Medication abortion accounts for 60 percent of all early terminations and nearly 40 percent of all abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
It works like this: Patients first take mifepristone, a drug that blocks progesterone, a hormone needed to maintain pregnancy; 24 to 48 hours later, the patient takes a second drug, misoprostol, which creates contractions in the uterus that expel its contents. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, medication abortion is very safe and serious complications are extremely rare. Importantly, medication abortion allows patients the ability to terminate a pregnancy in the privacy of their own home or wherever they choose to be.
Nonetheless, access to medication abortion has been restricted in ways that are medically unnecessary. The needless barriers amid a pandemic place individuals at greater risk of contracting Covid-19, according to a federal lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the Trump administration in May on behalf of several doctors’ organizations and a leading reproductive justice group.
Medication abortion is constrained by what the FDA calls a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, a “drug safety” program designed to control the administration of “certain medications with serious safety concerns to help ensure the benefits of the medication outweigh its risks.” Where medication abortion is concerned, the REMS has several elements that are onerous in normal times and two that are particularly problematic amid a pandemic: that patients must be handed mifepristone by a medical provider in a clinical setting and that the clinician must collect a physical signature from the patient at the time the drug is dispensed.
While in-person dispensing is required, patients are still in charge of administering the protocol themselves at a time and place of their choosing. And any complications that may arise — such as excessive bleeding — wouldn’t occur until roughly two days later, after the patient ingests the second drug, misoprostol, which is not subject to the REMS. “Of the 20,000 drugs regulated by the FDA, mifepristone is the only one that patients must receive in person at a hospital, clinic, or medical office, yet may self-administer unsupervised,” reads the lawsuit.
So, even as state and federal health officials have implored people to avail themselves of telemedicine as much as possible, abortion patients have been singled out for disparate treatment, said Julia Kaye, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “When you’re forcing patients to make unnecessary, in-person trips to a health center during a pandemic, that imposes Covid-19 risks, and there’s simply no justification for it,” she said, “particularly where the federal government has taken extraordinary action to suspend other kinds of in-person requirements.” The government has even suspended in-person requirements for controlled substances, including opioids. “And I think it’s important to note that the Covid-19 risks here are greatest for communities of color who make up a majority of impacted abortion patients and who are suffering severe illness and death from Covid-19 at vastly disproportionate rates,” Kaye added.
Indeed, back in April, as ARC-Southeast was working to help patients secure abortion access during the worsening pandemic, Njoku recalls reading about the staggering impact the virus was having on Black people; in Georgia alone, they accounted for 80 percent of those hospitalized with Covid-19. “I was like, y’all, this is the great unraveling that’s happening in our society,” she said.
In July, a district judge in Maryland agreed with the medical experts and issued a preliminary nationwide injunction blocking enforcement of the in-person requirements during the pendency of the case. The Trump administration balked and asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay; that request was denied.
But instead of allowing the case to play out, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene. “Given that surgical methods of abortion remain widely available, the enforcement of longstanding safety requirements for a medication abortion … does not constitute a substantial obstacle to abortion access,” the administration’s petition reads, “even if the Covid-19 pandemic has made obtaining any method of abortion in person somewhat riskier.”
Attempts to truncate the normal course of litigation by running directly to the Supreme Court and forcing cases onto the so-called shadow docket has become a hallmark of the Trump administration, even though it is a move that is supposed to be reserved for extraordinary circumstances. In deciding these cases, the court often issues an order without the full facts before it, without hearing arguments, and without issuing opinions. “It typically offers no explanation for its reasoning, even when dissenting justices voice serious objections, and even when the court is effectively overturning the unanimous decisions of lower courts,” David Cole, the ACLU’s national legal director, wrote in the Washington Post. In the case of the medication abortion challenge, the court could effectively ensure a higher risk of viral transmission with the stroke of a pen.
After pending on the docket for about six weeks, the Supreme Court finally weighed in on October 8, allowing the stay to remain in effect — at least for now. In a short order, the court sent the question of whether the stay should be lifted back to the Maryland court for further consideration, essentially postponing any action until after the November election. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Clarence Thomas, penned a dissent saying that the court should have granted the administration’s request.
Had the court granted that request, Kaye said, it would have sent a “chilling signal about what lies ahead” with a post-Ginsburg court. And though the court’s decision to “stay out of this particular abortion fight at this particular moment … is certainly a win for patients in the short term,” she added, “it’s hardly an indication that the right to abortion is secure.”
A Solution in Search of a Problem
As the pandemic raged this spring, Dr. Honor MacNaughton worried about her patients. MacNaughton, a plaintiff in the ACLU case, is a family physician working in a safety-net hospital system in the Boston area. Her patients are mostly lower-income and people of color, groups disproportionately impacted by the virus. “As our health care system was closing down to in-person visits, and we were trying to do everything we could to limit exposure to the virus, it seemed so wrong to require people to still come, in person, to pick up a medication,” she said.
She’d long known that the REMS was “problematic” and that two decades of data demonstrated the safety of mifepristone for pregnancy termination and miscarriage management. “I think from a medical standpoint, there’s enough evidence for us to feel really confident that the in-person visit isn’t required,” she said. Since the Maryland court issued its injunction, providers across the country have, for the first time, been able to provide the medication without that constraint. “Being able to provide this care since the injunction has been a ray of hope,” MacNaughton said. “It’s given me a glimpse into what more equitable or stigma-free care could look like.”
Kirsten Moore, head of Expanding Medication Abortion Access, which was created in part to push for the REMS to be rescinded, has long known that medication abortion is burdened by unnecessary restrictions. She was formerly head of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, which was founded in 1988 to help bring medication abortion to the U.S. and later successfully pushed for emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill, to be made available over the counter.
When medication abortion was approved by the FDA in 2000, Moore said that advocates assumed the restrictions would be revisited as safety data developed. That has not happened. “We’re still jumping through the same hoops today that we had to when it was first approved,” she said. “That doesn’t make sense, right?”
For both Moore and MacNaughton, the disconnect between science and public policy demonstrates that the REMS is about something else altogether — a solution in search of a problem.
Of course, the same could be said about most restrictions on abortion access. Lawmakers often peddle these restrictions, like the hospital admitting privileges requirement, as a way to ensure patient safety, even though the alleged benefits fail to materialize. Forty-four states have passed one or more restrictions on abortion access. Twenty-six states mandate delays for patients seeking care; in South Dakota, the 72-hour waiting period doesn’t include weekends or state holidays, so a patient could end up having to wait a week before being seen. Thirty states mandate pre-abortion counseling and many incorporate junk science, including, for example, that abortion leads to a greater risk of breast cancer. Several states require providers to counsel patients that medication abortion can be reversed, even though there is no sound science to back up this claim. Taken together, these restrictions have made abortion all but inaccessible across a wide swath of the country, often forcing women to travel long distances across state lines to receive care.
For those who live in the six states served by ARC-Southeast — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee — these struggles are common. “Every single one of those states experiences some level of reproductive oppression, whether it comes from the legislature or just ideas of shame, stigma, and fear around abortion,” Njoku said. She notes that her clients face obstacles to accessing all kinds of basic health care services. None of the states has had any sort of Medicaid expansion; roughly half of Georgia’s 159 counties are without an OB-GYN. “These are all the things that we’ve always had to navigate,” she said. “Yes, Roe v. Wade is a great gift. It made abortion legal, but the reality is that it did not make it accessible.”
And since Trump took office, lawmakers in states hostile to abortion rights have taken more direct aim at the heart of Roe and its promise of the right to pre-viability abortion.
In 2019 alone, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Ohio all banned abortion beginning at six weeks — the point at which fetal cardiac activity can be detected and long before many people even know they’re pregnant. Alabama went a step further, passing a law that would ban nearly all abortion. Missouri passed a law to ban abortion at eight weeks, while both Arkansas and Utah have banned abortion at 18 weeks.
Other states have passed bans that interrogate a person’s reason for seeking an abortion and would bar access if it’s based on the sex or race of the fetus or on a diagnosis of Down syndrome or other fetal abnormality. A district court in Missouri has blocked that state’s “anti-discrimination” law banning abortion based on a Down syndrome diagnosis, but on September 24, the state’s solicitor general told a panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the law should be allowed to go into effect in part because individuals with Down syndrome are on the “brink of complete elimination.”
“Since 1973, in Roe v. Wade, the court has given the right to the individual to decide whether or not they want to choose to become a parent at that point in time,” said Helene Krasnoff, vice president of public policy litigation and law at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. These laws “literally fly in the face of that,” she said. They represent another way in which the Supreme Court “can really undermine the protections that we have enjoyed, and that Ruth Bader Ginsburg upheld for so many years, without actually outright overruling Roe.”
Currently, there are 17 abortion-related challenges to various state restrictions pending in federal appeals courts or before the Supreme Court.
The Future We’re Fighting For
Nothing about the growing storm around reproductive rights is new to Njoku. “A lot of folks have been talking about this post-Roe reality,” she said. “That’s an actual lived reality in states like Texas and Mississippi and really the states we work in in the Southeast. … We’ve been preparing for things like this because we’ve been living in this context.”
ARC-Southeast has received nearly 16,500 requests for support since they began operations in the summer of 2016. More than 60 percent of clients are already parents. From July 2019 through June 30, ARC-Southeast provided nearly $450,000 in abortion funding and “practical support.” As the pandemic has continued, jobs have been lost, and politicians across the country have tried to use the public health crisis as a pretext to further block abortion access, Njoku said the organization has provided funding not only for abortion, transportation, and lodging, but also for car repairs, food, and even masks. Njoku has seen patients from Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia come to her region for care, and ARC-Southeast has helped patients to travel as far away as New Mexico, Colorado, and Maryland to get the care they need.
Njoku has been encouraged not only by the donations coming in to support ARC-Southeast’s work, but also with a seeming awakening among many that abortion rights have to be viewed within a larger framework — that a right without access means nothing, and that people of color are disproportionately impacted by lack of access to basic health care and the racism built into many of the nation’s social systems. “The future that we’re fighting for is more than just whether or not abortion is legal,” she said.
There’s no doubt that the nomination of Barrett presents a threat to that future. According to an analysis by the Center for Reproductive Rights, Barrett has signaled that she believes the Supreme Court should weigh in on the legality of banning abortion based on a patient’s reason for seeking it, and has suggested that abortion restrictions should be allowed to take effect while questions about their legality are sorted out in court. In Texas, the restrictions ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court were initially allowed to take effect, leading to widespread clinic closures; many never reopened.
And while the Affordable Care Act for the first time created gender parity in health coverage and opened access to maternity care and no-cost birth control, Barrett has expressed skepticism about the legality of the law. In 2012, she signed a letter opposing the ACA’s birth control mandate that called contraception and sterilization “gravely immoral and unjust” and incorrectly described the morning-after pill as an “abortion-inducing drug.”
Still, Njoku is steadfast in her determination to press forward. “Even in the midst of so much pain and so much trauma,” she said, “in the midst of all of this, we still have people who are willing to continue doing this fight no matter what.”
A young woman holds a sign that reads, 'The government doesn't take care of me, it kills me,' Cauca Valley, Colombia, Sept. 24. 2020. (photo: EFE)
Colombia: Paramilitaries Murder Community Leader Oswaldo Rojas
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The paramilitaries abandoned the leader's body in a teak tree plantation near the Curvara River basin where he worked the land and developed social actions."
he Justice and Peace Commission reported that the paramilitary group "United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia" (AGC) killed community leader Oswaldo Rojas in the Choco Department.
"On Saturday, people on motorcycles forcibly took Rojas out of his workplace tied up. Hours later, the residents of Carmen del Darien heard gunshots," the Commission stated.
On one occasion, agriculture businessmen intervened 60 hectares of Rojas' property. Later, the small house that he still owned was looted along with its cattle, fruit trees, and agricultural inputs.
Rojas' community has lived under constant threat from the AGC members. Weeks before his murder, the paramilitary group claimed that the leader, who was suspected of having ties to the now extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), "will rest in peace underground."
In 2016, AGC took territorial control amid the presence of the National Police's military units in the region.
"This proves the government's lack of action to stop the paramilitaries, who are massacring our rural communities with total impunity," the Commission added.
Dog sledding. (photo: Arctic/Getty Images)
Acknowledging Indigenous Land Is the First Step in Taking Better Care of It
Nikoosh Carlo, Grist
Carlo writes: "Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are inextricably linked in the battle against climate change."
n September, Schitt’s Creek, a sitcom created by the Canadian actor Dan Levy and his father, Eugene, won nine Emmys. Levy’s newly raised profile called attention to his efforts to learn about Indigenous culture and history in Canada with the help of a free online course at the University of Alberta. Back in August, he invited people to join him via an Instagram post that was liked by thousands.The course is part of an effort in Canada to face an ugly history of nation building that continues to impact people today and that we must also confront in the U.S. Another piece of this effort is a formal land acknowledgement at the start of events or performances, such as the one offered at this year’s Academy Awards by the Maori director Taika Waititi.
“The academy would like to acknowledge that tonight we have gathered on the ancestral lands of the Tongva, the Tataviam and the Chumash. We acknowledge them as the first peoples of this land on which the motion picture community lives and works,” Waititi said. Likewise, the new policy platform introduced at this year’s (virtual) Democratic National Convention acknowledged “that we gather together to state our values on lands that have been stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations who have been here since time immemorial.”
A land acknowledgement highlights the ongoing stewardship by Indigenous peoples, uplifts Indigenous voices, and helps audiences and institutions reconsider their roles within a broader community. It’s a sign of respect that’s common in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, tribal nations, and increasingly in the U.S. It’s also a step toward recognizing that multiple perspectives are needed to address climate change.
Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and leadership can drive innovative climate solutions. For example, in the southwestern Alaska village of Igiugig, people are piloting sustainable microgrid projects to replace fossil fuels with wind turbines and non-dam river technology to power a community farm. At a global level, Indigenous organizations work alongside the eight nations in the Arctic Council to address sustainable development and environmental protection. One of these organizations, Gwich’in Council International, leads efforts to coordinate wildland-fire emergency response across international boundaries. For a problem that is burning out of control worldwide, only cross-cultural cooperation can offer hope for the future.
Indigenous peoples in Alaska, where there are over 200 federally recognized tribes making up approximately 15 percent of the population, have thrived in the extreme lands and waters of the Arctic for millennia.
As a child, I lived a few blocks from my grandparents, aunties, and uncles, who ensured that we harvested, ate, and shared traditional foods: salmon, moose, berries. In the blueberry patch, I heard the stories of our ancestors and learned that we are all connected in community. Indigenous peoples have a connection to the land that has made us expert observers and caretakers of the environment — a connection I feel more keenly in these pandemic times.
There’s a model for mutual respect and cooperation in traditional Alaska Native practice. It begins with how we introduce ourselves to each other — think of it as our own personal land acknowledgment:
My name is Nikoosh Carlo. I am Koyukon Athabascan, born and raised in Fairbanks and Tanana, at the confluence of the Tanana and Yukon Rivers. I am the oldest daughter of Gail and Wally Carlo from North Dakota and Tanana. My grandparents were Poldine and Bill Carlo from Nulato and Rampart, Alaska.
When others introduce themselves to me, I’m actively listening for family lineages and places so I can understand how we are connected. These introductions ground us in our history and shared values, and guide how we might work together.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are inextricably linked in the battle against climate change. We can tackle it together if we build a foundation of mutual respect. It starts with acknowledgment: of land, of history, and of Indigenous leadership. Healing the environment can also heal communities.
