#supreme court also says their decision is in no way reversible

[poseidonsbastardson]

If anyone tells you Cyprus is a democratic republic, please laugh in their face.

It's a fucking Junta-esque oligarchy.

[halfricanloveyou]

it’s okay to be angry and hate this shit and you’re right about this but you NEED to vote. local and state laws are always included in the elections. and biden is bad but when you don’t vote people like trump get elected into office and do things like turn the supreme court into a republican majority and take away abortion rights and actively support multiple state level and national level candidates who’s platforms are based on hate, which influences hateful people to vote FOR those candidates.

voting CAN fix this but you all have to register and vote. and show up to every single election every time. you have to research your local and state candidates on TOP of the ones running for president. you have to vote in the primaries.

it’s not like you can go and get mad and storm government buildings to guillotine public officials. if you try you’ll be up against the US military. the only reason the last attack on the capitol was successful is because if they succeeded in killing democratic officials it would benefit the party that holds the most power. and right wing candidates love to spend trillions on the military (and let’s be real, even the democrats do but the republicans do it to a higher degree) so guess who the military is going to protect? guess who the military is going to target as the enemy? do you really think any number of everyday citizens you can try to rally would stand a chance?

biden won’t fix this. your rage and your feelings of helplessness won’t fix it either. voting WILL. you just fall for the propaganda being spread that it’s pointless to vote because persuading far left anti fascists to feel that way keeps them out of the polling lines.

“nothing you do will change the system so why bother voting? it will always be this way, so any candidate that has a platform you support will never win and won’t be able to make change anyways” is also facist propaganda. it’s just targeted towards the opposition instead.

NPR is a great resource to keep informed on political issues. despite what right wing racists claim, it’s fairly unbiased and goes into detail to get the full story without leaving parts out intentionally to turn their stories into propaganda. and please just fucking vote. don’t listen to anyone who tells you it’s pointless and won’t fix anything so you might as well not bother. they’re fucking stupid and they are literally spreading facist propaganda. revolution is great but educating yourself and the people around you is far far more effective than getting angry at people online.

right now it’s almost halfway through 2023, and 2024 is an election year in the US. I have started to see a growing proliferation of posts suggesting that there is no difference between the republican and democratic parties–the exact same kind of posts I saw an awful lot of before the last major election here. I am unfollowing folks who post or reblog these sort of posts, as I consider these posts to be fascist propaganda framed as leftist discourse, designed to suppress anti-fascist votes and voters. 

[simply-ivanka]

Trump and the Lawfare Implosion of 2024

Will his prosecution end up putting him back in the White House?

Wall Street Journal

By Kimberley A. Strassel

What’s that old saying about the “best-laid plans”? Democrats banked that a massive lawfare campaign against Donald Trump would strengthen their hold on the White House. As that legal assault founders, they’re left holding the bag known as Joe Biden.

In Florida on Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed indefinitely the start of special counsel Jack Smith’s classified-documents trial. The judge noted the original date, May 20, is impossible given the messy stack of pretrial motions on her desk. The prosecution is fuming, while the press insinuates—or baldly asserts—that the judge is biased for Mr. Trump, incompetent or both. But it is Mr. Smith and his press gaggle who are living in legal unreality, attempting to rush the process to accommodate a political timeline.

What did they expect? Mr. Smith waited until 2023 to file legally novel charges involving classified documents, a former president, and a complex set of statutes governing presidential records. The pretrial disputes—some sealed for national-security reasons—involve weighty questions about rules governing the admission of classified documents in criminal trials, discovery, scope and even whether Mr. Smith’s appointment as special counsel was lawful. Judge Cannon notes the court has a “duty to fully and fairly consider” all of these, which she believes will take until at least July. This could push any trial beyond the election.

Mr. Smith’s indictments in the District of Columbia, alleging that Mr. Trump plotted to overturn the 2020 election, have separately gone to the Supreme Court, where the justices are determining whether and when a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts while in office. A decision on the legal question is expected in June, whereupon the case will likely return to the lower courts to apply it to the facts. That may also mean no trial before the election.

A Georgia appeals court this week decided it would review whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue leading her racketeering case against Mr. Trump in light of the conflict presented by her romantic relationship with the former special prosecutor. The trial judge is unlikely to proceed while this major issue is pending, and the appeals process could take up to six months.

Which leaves the lawfare crowd’s last, best hope in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s muddled charges on that Trump 2016 “hush money” deal with adult-film star Stormy Daniels. That case was a mess well before Judge Juan Merchan allowed Ms. Daniels to provide the jury Kama-Sutra-worthy descriptions of her claimed sexual tryst with Mr. Trump, during which she intimated several times that the encounter was nonconsensual.

Mr. Trump is charged with falsifying records, not sexual assault, and even the judge acknowledged the jury heard things that “would have been better left unsaid.” He tried to blame the defense for not objecting enough during her testimony, but it’s the judge’s job to keep witnesses on task. Judge Merchan refused a Trump request for a mistrial, but his openness to issuing a “limiting instruction” to the jury—essentially an order to unhear prejudicial testimony—is an acknowledgment that things went off the rails. If Mr. Trump is convicted, it’s also a strong Trump argument for reversal on appeal.

Little, in short, is going as planned. The lawfare strategy from the start: pile on Mr. Trump in a way that ensured Republicans would rally for his nomination, then use legal proceedings to crush his ability to campaign, drain his resources, and make him too toxic (or isolated in prison) to win a general election. He won the nomination, but the effort against him is flailing, courtesy of an echo chamber of anti-Trump prosecutors and journalists who continue to indulge the fantasy that every court, judge, jury and timeline exists to dance to their partisan fervor.

These own goals are striking. Mr. Smith wouldn’t be facing delays if he’d acknowledged up front the important constitutional question of presidential immunity, or if he’d sought an indictment for obstruction of justice and forgone charging Mr. Trump with improperly handling classified documents, which gets into legally complicated territory. The federal charges might carry more weight with the public had Mr. Bragg refrained from bringing a flimsy case that makes the whole effort look wildly partisan. And Ms. Willis’s romantic escapades have turned her legal overreach into a reality-TV joke.

Democrats faced a critical choice last year: Try to win an election by confronting the real problem of a weak and old president presiding over unpopular far-left policies, or try to rig an outcome by embracing a lawfare stratagem. They chose the latter. Perhaps a court will still convict Mr. Trump of something, although that could play either way with the electorate. Lawfare as politics is a very risky business.

[madamspeaker]

In an interview for a forthcoming book, Mrs. Clinton also suggested that if Donald Trump won in November “we may never have another actual election.”

Hillary Clinton criticized her fellow Democrats over what she described as a decades-in-the-making failure to protect abortion rights, saying in her first extended interview about the fall of Roe v. Wade that her party underestimated the growing strength of anti-abortion forces until many Democrats were improbably “taken by surprise” by the landmark Dobbs decision in 2022.

In wide-ranging and unusually frank comments, Mrs. Clinton said Democrats had spent decades in a state of denial that a right enshrined in American life for generations could fall — that faith in the courts and legal precedent had made politicians, voters and officials unable to see clearly how the anti-abortion movement was chipping away at abortion rights, restricting access to the procedure and transforming the Supreme Court, until it was too late.

“We didn’t take it seriously, and we didn’t understand the threat,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Most Democrats, most Americans, did not realize we are in an existential struggle for the future of this country.”

She said: “We could have done more to fight.”

Mrs. Clinton’s comments came in an interview conducted in late February for a forthcoming book, “The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America.”

The interview represented Mrs. Clinton’s most detailed comments on abortion rights since the Supreme Court decision that led to the procedure becoming criminalized or restricted in 21 states. She said not only that her party was complacent but also that if she had been in the Senate at the time she would have worked harder to block confirmation of Trump-appointed justices.

And in a blunt reflection about the role sexism played in her 2016 presidential campaign, she said women were the voters who abandoned her in the final days because she was not “perfect.” Overhanging the interview was the understanding that had she won the White House, Roe most likely would have remained a bedrock feature of American life. She assigned blame for the fall of Roe broadly but pointedly, and notably spared herself from the critique.

Some Democrats will most likely agree with Mrs. Clinton’s assessment. But as the party turns its focus to wielding abortion as an electoral weapon, there has been little public reckoning among Democrats over their role in failing to protect abortion rights.

Even when they held control of Congress, Democrats were unwilling to pass legislation codifying abortion rights into federal law. While frequently mentioned in passing to rally their base during election season, the issue rarely rose to the top of their legislative or policy agenda. Many Democrats, including President Biden, often refused even to utter the word.

Until Roe fell, many in the party believed the federal right to an abortion was all but inviolable, unlikely to be reversed even by a conservative Supreme Court. The sense of denial extended to the highest ranks of the party — but not, Mrs. Clinton argued, to her.

“One thing I give the right credit for is they never give up,” she said. “They are relentless. You know, they take a loss, they get back up, they regroup, they raise more money.” She added: “It’s tremendously impressive the way that they operate. And we have nothing like it on our side.”

Mrs. Clinton did not express regret for any inaction herself. Rather, she said her efforts to raise alarms during her 2016 campaign went unheeded and were dismissed as “alarmist” by voters, politicians and members of her own party. In that race, she had talked about the threats to abortion rights on the campaign trail and most memorably in the third presidential debate, vowing to protect Roe when Mr. Trump promised to appoint judges who would overturn it.

But even then, internal campaign polling and focus groups showed that the issue did not resonate strongly with key groups of voters, because they did not believe Roe was truly at risk.

Now, as the country prepares to face its third referendum on Mr. Trump, she offered a stark warning about the 2024 election. A second Trump administration would go far beyond abortion rights to target women’s health care, gay rights, civil rights — and even the core tenets of American democracy itself, she said.

“This election is existential. I mean, if we don’t make the right decision in this election in our country, we may never have another actual election. I will put that out there because I believe it,” she said. “And if we no longer have another actual election, we will be governed by a small minority of right-wing forces that are well organized and well funded and are getting exactly what they want in terms of turning the clock back on women.”

Mrs. Clinton described those forces and her former opponent as part of a “global phenomena” restricting women’s rights, pointing to a push by Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, pressing women to focus on raising children; the violent policing of women who violate Iran’s conservative dress code; and what she described as the misogyny of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“Authoritarians, whether they be political or religious based, always go after women. It’s just written in the history. And that’s what will happen in this country,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Mrs. Clinton viewed her remarks as another attempt to ring an alarm before the 2024 election.

“More people have got to wake up, because this is the beginning,” she said. “They really want us to just shut up and go home. That’s their goal. And nobody should be in any way deluded. That’s what they will force upon us if they are given the chance.”

But she also seemed to expect that many would dismiss her concerns once again. “Oh, my God, there she goes again,” she said, describing what she anticipated would be the reaction to her interview. “I mean, she’s just so, you know, so out there.”

But she added: “I know history will prove me right. And I don’t take any comfort in that because that’s not the kind of country or world I want for my grandchildren.”

Nearly eight years after her final campaign, Mrs. Clinton remains one of the most prominent women in American politics, and the only woman in the country’s history to capture the presidential nomination of a major party.

Her life encapsulates what could be seen as the Roe era in American life. She embodies the professional and personal changes that swept the lives of American women over the past half-century. Roe was decided in 1973, the same year Mrs. Clinton graduated from law school. Its fall was accelerated in 2016 by her loss to Donald J. Trump, which set in motion a transformation of the Supreme Court.

Had Mrs. Clinton won the White House in 2016, history would have turned out very differently. She would most likely have appointed two or even three justices to the Supreme Court, securing an abortion-rights legal majority that probably would have not only upheld Roe but also delivered rulings that expanded access to the procedure.

Instead, Mrs. Clinton said Democrats neglected abortion rights from the ballot box to Congress to the Supreme Court.

Along with her prediction for the future, Mrs. Clinton offered a detailed assessment of the past. For her, the meaning of the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was clear — and devastating.

“It says that we are not equal citizens,” she said, referring to women. “It says that we don’t have autonomy, agency and privacy to make the most personal of decisions. It says that we should be rethinking our lives and our roles in the world.”

She blasted Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in the case, saying his decision was “terrible,” “poorly reasoned” and “historically inaccurate.”

Mrs. Clinton accused four justices — John G. Roberts Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — of being “teed up to do the bidding” of conservative political and religious organizations and leaders — though she believed many Democrats had not realized that during those justices’ confirmation hearings.

“It is really hard to believe that people are going to lie to you under oath, that even so-called conservative justices would upend precedents to arrive at ridiculous decisions on gun rights and campaign finance and abortion,” she said. “It’s really hard to accept that.”

Yet, she also had tough words for her former colleagues. In the Senate, she said, Democratic lawmakers did not push hard enough to block the confirmation of the justices who would go on to overturn federal abortion rights. When asked in confirmation hearings if they believed Roe was settled law, the nominees noted that Roe was precedent and largely avoided stating their opinion on the decision.

Those justices “all lied in their confirmation hearings,” she said, referring to Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett, all of whom were appointed by Mr. Trump. “They just flat-out lied. And Democrats did nothing in the Senate.”

She added: “If I’d still been in the Senate, and on the Judiciary Committee, I think, you know, I hope I would have tried to do more about what were just outright prevarications.”

It is unclear how Democrats could have stopped those justices from reaching the bench given that they did not control the Senate during their confirmation hearings. When Mr. Trump took office, Republicans also had unified control of 24 state legislatures, making it all but impossible for Democrats to stop conservatives from pushing through increasingly restrictive laws.

For years, she said, Democrats failed to “invest in the kind of parallel institutions” to the conservative legal establishment. Efforts to start the American Constitution Society, she said, never quite grew as large as the better established Federalist Society, a network of conservative lawyers, officials and justices that includes members of the Supreme Court.

“I just think that most of us who support the rights of women and privacy and the right to make these difficult decisions yourself, you know, we just couldn’t believe what was happening. And as a result, they slowly, surely and very effectively got what they wanted,” she said. “Our side was complacent and kind of taking it for granted and thinking it would never go away.”

Mrs. Clinton was born in 1947, when abortion was criminalized and contraception was banned or restricted in more than two dozen states. In Arkansas, where she practiced law while her husband served as governor, she watched the rise of the religious right and the anti-abortion movement.

From the time she arrived in Washington as first lady, Mrs. Clinton fought openly for abortion rights. She famously declared that “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights” in a 1995 speech at the World Conference on Women in Beijing. When she became a senator, Mrs. Clinton voted against the partial-birth abortion ban, unlike more than a dozen of her fellow Democrats. As Barack Obama’s secretary of state, she made a mission of expanding women’s reproductive health across the globe.

In 2016, Planned Parenthood endorsed her candidacy, the first time the organization waded into a presidential primary. In her campaign, Mrs. Clinton promised to appoint judges who would preserve Roe, opposed efforts in Congress to pass a 20-week abortion ban and pushed for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which banned the federal funding of abortions.

Even her language was updated. For years, when it came to abortion, she championed her belief in a phrase popularized by her husband during his 1992 presidential campaign: “safe, legal and rare.”

In a private, previously unreported meeting recounted in the book, campaign aides told Mrs. Clinton to drop the phrase during her 2016 run. Her staff explained that increasingly progressive abortion-rights activists thought calling for the procedure to be “rare” would offer a political concession to the anti-abortion movement. And with so many new restrictions being passed in conservative-controlled states, abortion was increasingly difficult to obtain, particularly for poorer women, making “rare” the wrong focus for their message. Abortion should be “safe, legal, accessible and affordable,” they told her.

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” she said in response at the time. “That’s stupid.”

In the interview, Mrs. Clinton said she quickly came to embrace the shift in language. What she and other Democrats had tried to do in 1992 with “safe, legal and rare” was “send a signal that we understand Roe v. Wade has a certain theory of the case about trimesters,” she explained. But by 2016, the world had changed.

“Too many women, particularly too many young women did not understand the effort that went into creating the underlying theory of Roe v. Wade. And the young women on my campaign made a very compelling argument that making it safe and legal was really the goal,” she said. “I kind of just pocketed the framework of Roe.”

Still, Mrs. Clinton felt like many of her warnings over the issue were ignored by much of the country.

When she delivered a speech in Wisconsin in March 2016, arguing that Supreme Court justices selected by Mr. Trump could “demolish pillars of the progressive movement,” Mrs. Clinton said that “people kind of rolled their eyes at me.”

Mrs. Clinton said she saw her defeat in that election as inextricable from her gender. As she has in the past, she blamed the former F.B.I. director James Comey’s last-minute reopening of the investigation of her private email server for her immediate defeat. Mr. Comey had raised questions about her judgment and called her “extremely careless” but recommended no criminal charges.Other political strategists have faulted her message, strategy and various missteps by her campaign for her loss in 2016.

“But once he did that to me, the people, the voters who left me, were women,” she said. “They left me because they just couldn’t take a risk on me, because as a woman, I’m supposed to be perfect. They were willing to take a risk on Trump — who had a long list of, let’s call them flaws, to illustrate his imperfection — because he was a man, and they could envision a man as president and commander in chief.”

Mrs. Clinton said she was shocked by how little the reports of Mr. Trump’s sexual misconduct and assault seemed to affect the race. They did not disqualify him from the presidency, at least not among most Republicans and conservative Christians. But his promises to appoint justices that would reverse Roe helped him win, she said.

“Politically, he threw his lot in with the right on abortion and was richly rewarded,” she said.

[pannaginip]

Baby Hero was born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a condition that affects the production of hormones in his body. Having CAH makes Hero intersex, and the type of CAH he has requires lifetime medication.

The couple is also able to secure some financial help from the Department of Social Welfare and Development. But explaining her son’s condition to the personnel handling her requests is always a pain, as they often don’t understand what CAH is.

The plight of the intersex community rarely comes into the national spotlight. But one time it did was when the Supreme Court (SC) sided with Jeff Cagandahan in a 2008 landmark ruling that paved the way for the community’s rights.

In 2003, at a regional trial court (RTC) in Laguna, Jeff filed for changes in his birth certificate, namely the change of his name from “Jennifer” to “Jeff,” and his gender from “female” to “male.”

The RTC sided with Jeff, though the Office of the Solicitor General tried to reverse the decision. In the end, the SC upheld it, saying that Jeff let nature take its course in allowing his body to reveal male characteristics. He was allowed to change his name and gender in his birth registry.

“Respondent is the one who has to live with his intersex anatomy. To him belongs the human right to the pursuit of happiness and of health. Thus, to him should belong the primordial choice of what courses of action to take along the path of his sexual development and maturation,” the decision read, penned by the late former associate justice Leonardo Quisumbing.

Jeff later on co-founded Intersex Philippines, and currently serves as a co-chair of Intersex Asia. Intersex Philippines has over 200 members.

Though it’s been more than a decade since Jeff’s legal victory, the lack of public awareness about intersex people and their concerns generally remained in the Philippines, even among medical professionals.

For instance, while there are plenty of endocrinologists across the Philippine health system, Jeff said that it is difficult to find “intersex-friendly” endocrinologists, who do not push intersex people to undergo procedures to conform with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Access to medicine remains the biggest challenge for intersex people in the Philippines, according to Jeff. Based on their group’s research, just one specialty compounding pharmacy, Apotheca, produces the medicines that most in their community need. It’s Metro Manila-based, which makes it even harder for those in the provinces to access them.

Jeff constantly receives reports of children with life-threatening intersex variations who succumb to their condition, as their parents were unable to acquire the medications that could have kept them alive.

According to Intersex Philippines, some intersex children undergo irreversible, unnecessary surgeries and treatment without their consent. Some also experience emotional harm from this treatment.

In November 2023, Bataan 1st District Representative Geraldine Roman filed the Cagandahan Bill in Congress, which seeks to make what Jeff achieved more accessible to intersex Filipinos.

While Republic Act No. 9048, enacted in 2001, allows Filipinos to correct clerical and typographical errors in their civil registry offices without judicial orders, the bill said that this does not “explicitly address the unique circumstances of intersex individuals.” Having their legal documents amended to align with their identities would acknowledge an intersex person’s right to self-determination, it said.

2024 Apr. 6

[schraubd]

As They Do

The ongoing fallout of the Dobbs decision, and the way it's made manifest the GOP's extreme and retrogressive anti-abortion priorities, has caused no small amount of soul-searching amongst Republican politicians. We saw, for example, a slew of Arizona Republicans race to disavow their own hand-packed-picked supreme court's decision to resurrect a pre-statehood near-total ban on abortion. Donald Trump also came out and said he opposed a national abortion ban. What should voters make of this about-face? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why not? Because Republicans are, to be blunt, lying. No matter what they say, no matter what press releases they write, no matter what interviews they give, when push comes to shove, they will absolutely either endorse or acquiesce to the most draconian possible limitations on female reproductive autonomy. That's the full truth. The list of supporting evidence on this is essentially endless, but I'll just give two examples: Exhibit A: Arizona, where the GOP-controlled legislature -- fresh off their oh-so-pained public squirming over the aforementioned state supreme court ruling -- has continued to block legislative efforts to actually, you know, repeal the offending law. Exhibit B: Florida, where Senator Rick Scott rapidly backtracked from his own heresies calling for greater moderation on abortion after that state's supreme court reversed decades-long precedent clear the way for abortion bans by clarifying that of course he'd support even a six-week ban if given the opportunity. These are two among many. I suspect that over the next few months, we will continue to see more Republican rhetoric that gestures at some sort of "moderate" or "compromise" position on abortion, occurring right alongside more extreme tangible implementations of the right's extremist anti-choice agenda (what's going to happen when the Supreme Court permanently allows states to murder pregnant women in defiance of federal law). Even as rhetoric, it's hollow -- the "exceptions" they promise are nugatory or impossible to implement, the "deals" on offer are to impose unwanted bans on blue states while letting red states be as extreme as they desire -- but more than that they're lies. No matter what they say, no matter what they earnestly promise, no matter what soul-searching they might promise, where Republicans are in charge what they will do is push for and defend the most draconian abortion bans they can possibly get away with. There's no lever that will get Republicans to behave differently; no weird trick that can change their minds. Where they have power and hold office, this is what they will do. Our only option is to deprive them of that power. No matter what they say, no matter what they believe, anyone who is taking any steps right now to assist Republicans taking or keeping office is tacitly endorsing extreme abortion bans. There's no way around it. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/CTdAlLR

[pipthegreat]

love your au, heres a random ass thing about politics

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the Biden administration’s challenge to a transgender care ban in Tennessee, delving into the complicated and politically fraught issue of gender-affirming care in a substantive way for the first time.

The state law, enacted last year, bans hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors and imposes civil penalties for doctors who violate the prohibitions. It is among a growing number of state laws enacted in recent years targeting transgender care.

Nearly half of US states have enacted bans on transgender care for minors, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

The case will be heard this fall.

“The Supreme Court was always going to have to resolve how state bans on gender-affirming medical care can be reconciled with its approach to sex-based discrimination,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “Today’s grant sets up this issue as one of the early blockbusters for the Court’s upcoming term.”

Laws in Kentucky and Tennessee were challenged by the Biden administration and families of transgender minors. The Supreme Court only agreed to hear the challenge filed by the Biden administration in Tennessee.

In September, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati reversed a district court ruling that blocked the gender-affirming care ban from being enforced. In other words, the appeals court allowed the ban to take effect.

Republican lawmakers who support the ban say decisions about care should be made after an individual becomes an adult. Opponents argue that in addition to violating the civil rights of trans youth, the laws also run afoul of parents’ rights to make decisions about their child’s medical care.

Tennessee’s law says that medical providers cannot perform procedures that “enable a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or “treat purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”

The legal fights over similar bans have been moving through federal courts for more than a year. In April, the Supreme Court allowed Idaho officials to temporarily enforce a strict statewide ban on gender-affirming care for most minors, although it did so on a temporary basis without resolving the underlying questions posed by the case.

Several groups that advocate for transgender youth called on the Supreme Court to strike down Tennessee’s law.

“It’s simple: Everyone deserves access to the medical care that they need, and transgender and non-binary young people are no exception,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “No politician should be able to interfere in decisions that are best made between families and doctors, particularly when that care is necessary and best practice.”

Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, criticized state lawmakers for using the bans to “fuel divisions for their own political gain.”

“It’s crucial to recognize that for trans youth and their families, this isn’t about politics,” Cameron-Vaughn said. “It’s about the fundamental freedom to access vital, life-saving healthcare.”

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, said his office looks forward to defending the law.

“This case will bring much-needed clarity to whether the Constitution contains special protections for gender identity,” he said.

Why thank you kind sir

[dwtdog]

just going to put all my election thoughts under the cut 👍 i’ll probably add to it lol idk i just need somewhere to organize my thinking

the most shocking thing to me is that. it was a decisive victory. there’s no one thing u can point a finger at and say oh this is why this happened etc. it’s as simple as th e country is leaning further right, mostly on policies like immigration and the economy, but not on more civil related things (and it doesn’t matter that most people would maybe be fine with continuing civil right as they are bc republicans have more sinister plans that they aren’t running on but will still implement.) so the senate house and presidency r all going to be red. trump is going to put younger conservative judges on the courts. this will have a big lasting impact. the only hope i see from it is that it may in a way push the country away from its conservative leaning if they go too far and push that base away bc i DO think that while majority are leaning further right on some policies, a lot of them r still going to be unpopular. i also rlly hope that people will see after these four years that its trump who is fucking up the economy and that the gains he claims are coming from dem terms. i hope the electorate can wake up to that. i hope they see the true nature of these people and i hope we elect a strong blue president in four years who will be willing to go hard to reverse the change that will come in these next four years. i hope the dems don’t see this as indication that they should go further right, but i fear that that may be the most likely outcome- and that it could lose them the 2028 election. i think there is going to be a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of people saying things aren’t as bad as u think, that ur overreacting. i dont think that’s true. i think there is going to be a lot of damage done here. we can recover. and we will but this won’t go without hurt.

the only thing i can truly hope is that the dems in power rn do what they can. they should pack the supreme court, force legislation. push the executive power while they can bc u know trump sure as hell will be

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution

* * * * *

No More Mifepristone

Joyce Vance

On the Friday before Easter, just after the end of the workweek in Texas, a federal judge in Amarillo decided that Mifepristone, one of two key drugs used for medicated abortion, should be banned. This despite 20 years of data showing it’s safe and effective. Mifepristone has a lower rate of complications than Tylenol.

The judge also entered a stay, which means his order won’t go into effect for seven days. He did it to give the government an opportunity to appeal. But if neither the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, deeply conservative after a tranche of Trump appointments, nor the Supreme Court orders a lengthier extension, legal access to Mifepristone will come to an end. Not just in Texas, but nationwide.

The government didn’t need seven days. It filed its appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals a few hours after the decision.

DOJ was prepared to file immediately because they understood the inevitable ruling in this case. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who the plaintiffs judge-shopped for by filing this case in the Amarillo division where virtually all cases are assigned to him, has a background of deep antagonism to letting pregnant people make their own decisions. Kacsmaryk’s legal ruling affects the entire country, not just Texas. A federal district judge in Washington State entered a ruling ordering the FDA to keep Mifepristone on the market, just moments after the Texas ruling. But Kacsmaryk entered a nationwide injunction that rescinds the FDA’s approval of Mifepristone nationwide—even in states where abortion is still legal and without exception for the mother’s health.

That’s not the legal landscape the Supreme Court said it was creating when it ended 50 years of abortion rights under Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case. When the Court decided Dobbs, it said decisions about whether and under what circumstances abortion should be legal would be left up to each state. But now, Judge Kacsmaryk has made that decision for all of us—you and me, for our mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and friends, regardless of medical necessity or our personal religious and moral beliefs. Judge Kacsmaryk knows best.

Challenged legal rulings are typically stayed to preserve the status quo while appeals work their way through the courts. But the post-Trump, uber-conservative Supreme Court has always had a different jurisprudence when it comes to abortion, permitting restrictive measures like Texas’s SB-8 vigilante-justice law to go into effect while the appeal was pending. Nothing says “result-oriented” like special rules for anti-abortion litigants (to say nothing of reversing the long-standing precedent of Roe that had worked well to balance rights and did not meet the Court’s test for when precedent should be reversed). It’s tempting to think the Court might decide the Mifepristone decision is a bridge too far, if not based on legal principles and the expectations it set when it decided Dobbs, then out of purely pragmatic political considerations some of Justice Clarence Thomas’s billionaire friends might want to see in order to avoid steep Republican losses at the polls following yet another anti-abortion decision. But it’s difficult to imagine this Court walking it back so close to its goal of extinguishing abortion rights. DOJ has strong arguments to make on appeal—compelling ones on threshold issues like whether the plaintiffs had standing to bring this case, as well as on the merits. Whether the Court will give them a fair hearing is an entirely different matter.

Soon we’ll find out if the Court meant it when it said abortion would be up to the states. Or if one judge in Texas can resurrect the long-disfavored Comstock Act and terminate people’s rights across America. The Act is an 1873 law that makes it illegal to advertise or mail anything, including information, related to preventing contraception or producing abortion (as well as outlawing sending “obscene, lewd or lascivious,” “immoral,” or “indecent” publications). The Comstock Act fell into disuse because of its effect on First Amendment rights—it involves prior restraint by the government on speech. The prohibition on materials and items related to contraception was removed after the Supreme Court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which held that Connecticut’s “mini-Comstock” law unconstitutionally invaded the privacy rights of married couples. Be concerned about where a resuscitation of this law could lead.

Restricting abortion today does not seem to be about good-faith conservative values and protecting the sanctity of life. It’s hard to believe that a party that denies access to basic medical care and education and that lets schoolkids die at the hands of mass shooters in the name of the Second Amendment is deeply committed to unborn children, unless it’s become somehow morally righteous to protect them only until they leave the womb. Ending abortion is a political rallying cry, used to bring voters to the polls and raise money, with a healthy side effect of owning uppity liberal women.

It’s really not that difficult: If you’re against abortion, don’t get one. We live in a pluralistic society and there are religions other than conservative Christianity, for instance Judaism, that command their followers to protect the life of a mother over that of an unborn fetus. Somehow their rights are now ignored, while a minority that has gained control of the Supreme Court dictates to the rest of us.

Interestingly, banning Mifepristone isn’t just part of the trend to make abortion less available; it’s also part of the trend to make it less safe and to endanger women’s lives. I spoke with Jesanna Cooper, a friend and a doctor in Birmingham, who is an experienced Ob-Gyn. She told me, “The take-home is that without mifepristone, more people will hemorrhage and/or get septic from incomplete expulsion of the products of conception.” Using Misoprostol, the other drug used in a medication abortion procedure, alone is “less effective,” she says. It involves the “same amount of pain but [is] more likely to be incomplete, which can be dangerous.” It doesn’t sound very pro-life.

More information about the two drugs, if you want to read some of the science, is here.

In 1996 then-Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D-CO) tried to convince the House to take the Comstock Act off the books. They didn’t. But her floor speech has resonance today. She explained that the Act was named for a man named Anthony Comstock, who “was one of these people who decided only he knew what was virtuous and right, and somehow he managed to convince all sorts of people that this was correct.” That sounds familiar.

She continued, “Anthony Comstock was a religious fanatic who spent his life in a personal crusade for moral purity—as defined, of course, by himself. This crusade resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a multitude of Americans whose only crime was to exercise their constitutional right of free speech in ways that offended Anthony Comstock. Women seemed to particularly offend Anthony Comstock, most particularly women who believed in the right to plan their families through the use of contraceptives, or in the right of women to engage in discussions and debate about matters involving sexuality, including contraception and abortion.” We don’t need a new Anthony Comstock, and we don’t need Judge Kacsmaryk to dictate health care—or the absence of it—to people across the country.

You know what the solution is: go vote. Democrats will need sufficient majorities in both houses of Congress to restore protections for abortion. It’s not enough to win the House or the Senate; Democrats must take both to ensure access to abortion, and 2024 is not that far off.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

[Civil Discourse With Joyce Vance]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ian Millhiser at Vox:

Thursday’s argument in Trump v. United States was a disaster for Special Counsel Jack Smith, and for anyone who believes that the president of the United States should be subject to prosecution if they commit a crime. At least five of the Court’s Republicans seemed eager to, at the very least, permit Trump to delay his federal criminal trial for attempting to steal the 2020 election until after this November’s election. And the one GOP appointee who seemed to hedge the most, Chief Justice John Roberts, also seemed to think that Trump enjoys at least some immunity from criminal prosecution. Much of the Court’s Republican majority, moreover, seemed eager not simply to delay Trump’s trial until after the election, but to give him extraordinarily broad immunity from criminal prosecution should he be elected once again. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, argued that when a president exercises his official powers, he cannot be charged under any federal criminal statute at all, unless that statute contains explicit language saying that it applies to the president.

As Michael Dreeben, the lawyer arguing on behalf of Smith’s prosecution team, told the Court, only two federal laws meet this standard. So Kavanaugh’s rule would amount to near complete immunity for anything a president did while exercising their executive authority. Justice Samuel Alito, meanwhile, played his traditional role as the Court’s most dyspeptic advocate for whatever position the Republican Party prefers. At one point, Alito even argued that permitting Trump to be prosecuted for attempting to overthrow the 2020 presidential election would “lead us into a cycle that destabilizes ... our democracy,” because future presidents who lose elections would mimic Trump’s criminal behavior in order to remain in office and avoid being prosecuted by their successor. In fairness, not all of the justices, or even all of the Republican justices, engaged in such dizzying feats of reverse logic. Roberts did express some concern that Trump lawyer John Sauer’s arguments could prevent the president from being prosecuted if he took a bribe.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, meanwhile, pointed to the fact that Sauer drew a distinction between prosecuting a president for “official” behavior (which Sauer said is not allowed), and prosecuting a president for his “private” conduct (which Sauer conceded is permitted). Barrett also argued that many of the charges against Trump, such as his work with private lawyers and political consultants to overthrow the 2020 election, qualify as private conduct and thus could still be prosecuted. Still, many of the Republican justices, including Barrett, indicated that the case would have to be returned to the trial court to determine which of the allegations against Trump qualify as “official” and which qualify as “private.” Barrett also indicated that Trump could then appeal the trial court’s ruling, meaning that his actual criminal trial would be delayed for many more months as that issue makes its way through the appeals courts.

In that world, the likelihood that Trump will be tried, and a verdict reached, before the November election is approximately zero percent. The Court’s decision in the Trump case, in other words, is likely to raise the stakes of this already impossibly high-stakes election considerably. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned, the risk inherent in giving presidents immunity from the criminal law is that someone like Trump “would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon.” It’s unclear if the Court is going to go so far as to definitively rule that the president of the United States is allowed to do crimes. But they appear likely to make it impossible for the criminal justice system to actually do anything about Trump’s attempt to overthrow the election — at least before Trump could be elected president again.

Gleaning off of yesterday's oral arguments at SCOTUS on the Trump v. United States immunity case, it appears that the radical right-wing black robed tyrants will give Donald Trump a win in some fashion.

The out-of-control radical right-wing majority on SCOTUS is yet another argument to expand the court to dilute their anti-American influence on the court.

See Also:

HuffPost: Supreme Court Conservatives Likely To Give Trump What He Wants In Immunity Case: Further Delay

Salon: SCOTUS majority abandons conservative principles to mount bizarre defense of Trump’s immunity claim

[foreverlogical]

Well-known political expert, author, journalist, and CEO David Rothkopf is blasting conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court after their disastrous rulings last week, warning the Court is now a “threat to democracy” and suggesting some justices should be “considered” for impeachment.

Rothkopf, also a national security and foreign policy commentator, is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the author at least seven books, including American Resistance.

“Watching debates about Supreme Court here and elsewhere is the latest study in GOP efforts to normalize the unconscionable, the corrupt, and the contra-constitutional. This is a court in which a majority of those on the right took their seats under questionable circumstances,” Rothkopf said at the start of a lengthy thread on Twitter.

“Of them, a cloud of corruption hangs over Thomas & Alito. Kavanaugh took [his] seat despite allegations against him that were not properly investigated. Questions surround his payoff of personal debts. Gorsuch’s ascension is also clouded by questions surrounding Kennedy’s departure,” he says.

READ MORE: ‘Treacherous March of Normalization’: ABC News Slammed for ‘Puff Piece’ Profile on Moms for Liberty

Justice Clarence Thomas has been under fire for months over his relationship with billionaire GOP donor and businessman Harlan Crow, who reportedly has had business before the high court. The far-right wing justice and his wife, Ginni Thomas, (who has been accused of working to undermine the 2020 presidential election results,) may have received gifts totaling over $1 million in luxury vacations, travel, food, lodging, and clothing. Experts say Thomas was required to disclose portions of those gifts and that he did not.

Justice Samuel Alito is also the beneficiary of luxury travel, including a fishing trip to Alaska courtesy of another billionaire, and a trip to Rome during which he delivered a highly-criticized speech just days after delivering his opinion striking down Roe v. Wade. That trip was reportedly paid for by a religious liberty organization whose leader reportedly bought Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Indiana home.

Indeed, Rothkopf also skewers Justice Barrett, or at least her confirmation.

“Barrett received her seat in a rush to judgment that was unlike any we have ever seen and completely contrary to the way the GOP Senate treated prior Dem nominees (Garland). In the time since the majority took over, they have cast aside one core principle after another,” he observes.

READ MORE: ‘Tyranny’: Legal Expert Says Ruling in Favor of Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination Makes It ‘Impossible’ to Respect Supreme Court

“Stare decisis went out the window. (Precedents were ignored without any sound justification.) Promises to honor past decisions as established law (like Roe) proved worthless. Past claims that the right valued originalism and condemned judicial activism were wholly ignored,” Rothkopf charges.

“When precedent went against them, absurd arguments drawing on ancient and irrelevant legal decisions were used to supersede the clear intent of the framers and decades, sometimes centuries of legal precedent.”

Last week, he says, we saw “a decision on affirmative action that ignored precedent, reality, and justice and contained, in its carve-out for military academies, a sub-decision that refuted the logic of the main opinion. In the case of reversing the Biden student loan decision,” Rothkopf writes, “a brand new doctrine was presented out of whole cloth. The decision regarding the ‘right’ of a website designer to refuse to do work for a ‘gay’ couple was based on both a lie and a hypothetical, should never have been taken on as a case and was grossly wrong on the law,” he adds.

Rothkopf appears to believe the conservative justices will not stop.

“These judges are acting with impunity because they believe a GOP controlled Senate will never challenge them and that a fundamental flaw in the way the Constitution grants power to underpopulated states assures that the document that was created to evolve never will,” he writes.

And he suggests some of the Supreme Court’s justices might need to be impeached.

“They also know that Senate rules essentially mean they can act with impunity despite their wholesale corruption and the fact that several of them should, in all likelihood, be seriously considered for impeachment.”

READ MORE: Sotomayor Slams ‘Embarrassing’ SCOTUS Anti-LGBTQ Decision That Marks ‘Gays and Lesbians for Second-Class Status’

Pointing to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, he adds: “This is, as [she] has said a constitutional crisis. This is an illegitimate, rogue institution that is seeking to reverse decades of progress and impose the will of a white, wealthy, Christian, male, straight minority on the majority of Americans.”

“This is a moment that calls for action on the part of Democrats in power to use their ability to call Senate hearings and to challenge this extremist cluster of judicial terrorists wherever possible. But more than that, it demands absolutely clarity from the voting public,” he says.

Rothkopf warns conservatives in the Court are poised to do even more damage to democracy and the American people.

“Unless Democrats win the presidency, hold and increase their majority in the Senate and retake the House, this tiny band of malevolent and dangerous actors will gut many of the most important provisions of the past century and a half of American law.”

“They will destroy lives and put millions of others at risk. Next year’s election must be in part, about this threat to democracy even as it is also about the threat posed by GOP presidential candidates. Stop. Consider the consequences.”

He warns minority Americans will continue to see their civil rights “stripped” away.

“Consider the basic rights that will be stripped away from women, people of color, our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, voters, and all who believe in the ideals that have guided American leaders as we have struggled to perfect our nation,” he says. “The only people who can save us are you and your fellow voters. The only way to do so is to mobilize, be active, donate to candidates and remain committed to defending our country against the threat posed by the MAGA GOP in our legislature and our judiciary. Starting right now.”

[fideidefenswhore]

Okay I’ve been thinking about this as an alternate history thing but do you think there was a way the country/court could have sided decisively with Anne and Henry in The Great Matter? <3

Decisively? I mean, they weren't decisively against either, in the wash. There's been a real push towards rehabilitating Chapuys as a credible source, and I wouldn't go as far as to say no credence should be given towards his dispatches at all, but what's elided in this push is that the reason he's not treated as one is he so often spoke in absolutes, and the world simply does not, and did not, exist in absolutes.

To speak to one example of how history is spoken of in absolutes that weren't there...this idea that Tudor England was universally pious or 'more religious' than we are today. Granted, in general terms, we live in a more secularized society, but you look at things like parish records from the time and church attendance was at times, stunningly low, people fined for such absences, frequently. The world then was much like it was today, there were people of different denominations that were extremely devout, moderately devout, passably devout, and there were even people that didn't believe in God, or were apathetic about whether or not there was one.

As such, that's also the terms of which we should discuss the GM. There were people that were very invested, people that would Die On Their Hills, but odds are a wide swath didn't care too particularly much; it's dissent that's recorded because it's dissent that was punished, not compliance. Many that speak of the 'tyranny' of the creation of the Church of England, Henry's title as supreme authority of such, the investment of Anne as Queen and Elizabeth as heiress, elide that all of these were affirmed by Parliament. That means they had representative sanction by majority. It's the same, for that matter, to the disinheritance and illegitimacy of Mary & Elizabeth in much firmer language in 1536 than of 1534.

Anyway, for Chapuys, his absolutes also (because, well...of course they do) always have evidence to the contrary (often, even contradicted by himself):

Every man of any position here is in despair that the Pope does not proceed against the King, and that commerce is not forbidden in Flanders and Spain, knowing that if speedy remedy is not taken, nothing can be done either for the good ladies, whose lives are in danger, or for religion.

But elsewhere, Chapuys speaks of men that are in 'the Lady's party' (an earlier one was Nicholas Harvey, the husband of Bridget Wingfield, her friend, another was Nicholas Hawkins, a cleric and diplomat, just to name some outside her family). These men had titles ('of any position'). Thus, it does not compute that "every man of any position [in England]" wished for the Pope to enforce an interdict in England, for certainly those of 'the Lady's party' would not. 'Most men of any position' could be exaggeration, but 'every man' is demonstrably false.

Anyway, to answer the counterfactual of it all:

Certainly it was unpopular in some quarters regardless, so as far as I see it, there's two ways it could have been less so 1527-32:

Dark, but...Catherine dies. There's still going to some nose-holding from council even if Henry gives respectable measure to a period of mourning, those that want Henry to wed for another foreign alliance, but no one can contend that he's risking Imperial invasion by his repudiation of Charles V's aunt.

Well, the most obvious one: Clement declares the union invalid on the grounds of some flaw in the dispensation, etc. This might not actually make Henry feel totally secure, though (he was still hoping for this as possibility as late as 1533); and there is an intriguing possibility that we would still see similar political moves regardless as an 'insurance policy' of sorts. There was a precedent for Popes reversing annulments, so there was always a chance that could happen.

[whereareroo]

USE YOUR VOTE TO BE HEARD

WF THOUGHTS (10/20/24).

Are you pro-choice or pro-life? Are you pro-choice or pro-life? Are you pro-choice or pro-life? That’s the question we hear over and over again in 2024. Even if the question isn’t asked, people are always trying to determine if you’re pro-choice or pro-life. Isn’t that an odd way to identify people?

In our superheated political environment, everything is reduced to slogans and catch phrases. That’s a really dumb way to discuss complicated issues. Complicated matters cannot be resolved by slogans or catch phrases.

The use of manipulative language also thwarts rational discussion about complex matters. Neither side wants to use the word “abortion.” The pro-life crowd thinks that the word “abortion” isn’t negative enough. My Pastor likes to talk about the “execution of defenseless children.” The pro- choice crowd thinks that the word “abortion” is too negative. They prefer language like “reproductive rights for women.” Playing games with rhetoric doesn’t solve anything. I’m OK with the word abortion. We’ve been using that word for 50 years.

It’s almost impossible to discuss a complicated issue when one side continually spreads false information. The pro-life crowd regularly claims that late term abortions are a regular occurrence in America. They even claim that abortions occur after delivery. Both claims are absolutely false. The fact is that 99% of abortions occur before the 21st week of pregnancy. Viability is at 23 or 24 weeks. No abortions occur after the live delivery of a baby. That’s called murder. The truth doesn’t stop the pro-life crowd from spreading false information.

The pro-lifers also rely upon a false narrative about the women who get abortions. Usually by the use of innuendos, they imply that these are “loose” women who cheerfully use abortion as a form of birth control. Gimme a break! No woman plans to get an abortion. No woman is excited about getting an abortion. No woman is happy about getting an abortion. Any woman who gets an abortion is shattered. She’s heartbroken. The disparagement of these broken women is deplorable. How do these pious pro-lifers go to church on Sunday?

In 1973, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court created a very reasonable legal framework regarding abortion. I will provide a very simplistic summary. A pregnant woman had full control over healthcare decisions related to her body, including abortion, until her fetus became viable. (Today, the experts say that viability occurs at 23 or 24 weeks.) After viability, the potential life of the fetus was given priority and states could restrict or ban abortion. That imperfect formula worked well in America for 50 years. Obviously, no woman was ever forced to have an abortion. Women who made a difficult decision in favor of abortion had a reasonable time to implement their decision. In June of 2022, the world was turned upside down. The abortion issue was placed back on the political table when, soon after the addition of new conservative members appointed by Donald Trump, the Supreme Court reversed itself and overturned Roe. A political firestorm ensued and it continues.

That’s why, after a hiatus of 50 years, people are again asking: “Are you pro-choice or pro-life?” It’s a stupid question. It wrongfully presumes that you must be one or the other. Why can’t you be both? Ever since Roe was overruled in 2022, every poll has indicated that most of America is BOTH. Overwhelmingly, Americans think that Roe struck the right balance. They’re pro-choice until the point of viability. They’re pro-life after that. According to the polls, 75% of Americans think we should go back to something like the Roe formula. It’s rare for 75% of Americans to agree on anything.

Since Roe was overruled, seven states have voted on ballot measures regarding abortion rights. In all seven states, including three conservative states (Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana), the citizens voted to protect abortion rights. Ten more states will vote on the issue this November. Voters are demanding to be heard. So far, the voters have supported reasonable abortion rights 100% of the time.

If citizens generally agree about how to handle abortion, why isn’t the problem resolved? Because conservative politicians, who have been using this issue as a political sword for 50 years, aren’t listening to their constituents. Instead of resolving the issue by compromise, conservative politicians keep the issue alive to keep their extremist supporters happy. It’s a political game. Unless voters unite and do something about this, I fear that it will remain a political game for decades. We’ve seen the same situation with reasonable restrictions on guns. About 80% of Americans favor reasonable restrictions on guns, but the politicians ignore their constituents to please lobbyists and small political factions.

Right now, most of the women who elect to end a pregnancy will overcome the post-Roe roadblocks and get an abortion in a state that still protects reproductive rights. These women are the forgotten pawns in this political game. After making a heartbreaking decision, they’re forced to walk through a political minefield. It’s sad, inhumane, and dangerous to the health of these women.

About 20 years ago, after a prayer service, Pope John Paul II took time to speak to women who were suffering in the wake of their heartbreaking decision. This is what he said: “I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. The Church is aware of the many factors which may have influenced your decision, and she does not doubt that in many cases it was a painful and even shattering decision. The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace.” Pope Francis regularly makes similar statements. Many of us believe that religious teachings should not be imposed upon others via law. At the same time, there is much to learn from these Popes.

Popes are not fans of abortion. Nonetheless, they’re able to address the surrounding issues with compassion and without hostility. Why can’t we do the same? Why are good citizens allowing themselves to be held hostage by the political rhetoric and political games of politicians? Let’s ignore the smokescreens created by the extremists and reinstate the Roe formula. As I said above, most citizens are pro-life and pro-choice. Do we want to fight over this for decades?

Don’t be afraid to be both pro-life and pro-choice. Most of America is with you. Use your voice at the ballot box. Let’s stop the political games and move forward.

[dankusner]

Blacklock for Texas Supreme Court, Place 2

The Texas Supreme Court is the highest appellate court for civil cases in the state.

Justice Jimmy Blacklock of Place 2 is running for re-election against state District Judge DaSean Jones, a Democrat.

We recommend that voters return Blacklock to the court for another term.

In an interview, Blacklock, 44, told us he had written more than 100 opinions.

He advocated for conservative causes before ascending to the bench, and he espouses a traditionally conservative judicial philosophy.

Blacklock told us he construes the law based on the plain language of statutes, and if there is a question about the meaning of the Texas Constitution, he considers the original intent of its authors.

Despite his reputation, as well as the high court’s, for conservatism, Blacklock has on occasion bucked Texas GOP leaders when his reading of the law demanded it.

He was the author of the Texas Supreme Court’s strongly worded decision striking down Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to reverse a ban on guns at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas.

That’s worth noting given the attorney general’s willingness to politically undermine judges who rule against him.

In a separate ruling, Blacklock wrote that the state’s child welfare agency can investigate families that provide gender-affirming care to their children but that neither Gov. Greg Abbott nor Paxton had the power to direct the agency’s actions.

Abbott first appointed Blacklock to the Supreme Court in 2018.

The justice’s critics have argued that because he had worked so closely with Abbott — as his general counsel in the governor’s office and also in the attorney general’s office — that Blacklock was beholden to the governor.

But Blacklock told us in an interview that state officials don’t always get their way, and his rulings bear that out.

Jones, who presides over the 180th state District Court in Harris County, said he views the law as a “living document” and that he is mindful of societal changes.

In addition to his legal experience, he pointed to more than 20 years of service in the military.

In an interview, Jones, 46, rejected news coverage that identified him as a “socialist.”

He said the Houston Democratic Socialists of America endorsed him for the bench in 2018 but that he hasn’t been a member of the group in years.

Jones has also drawn scrutiny for decisions to lower bail for suspects accused of violent crimes or to release them on personal bond.

He told us news coverage was inaccurate and missed important context, and he cited Texas laws that say courts cannot require excessive bail or use bail as “an instrument of oppression.”

We were not convinced that voters should replace Blacklock with Jones.

We give our nod to the incumbent.

[biblenewsprophecy]

DNC, LGBTQ, and Russia’s ‘safe haven’ offer

COGwriter

Here is a report about something in the Democratic National Party platform:

DNC policy platform slammed over ‘explicit’ Title IX protections for LGBT students: ‘Flagrant lawlessness’

August 19, 2024

The Democratic National Convention released the final 2024 Democratic Party platform Sunday night, … The latest party platform mimics the Biden administration’s attempted rule making on Title IX to widen the definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity.  …

Matt Sharp, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nonprofit that also focuses on parental rights issues, said the decision to include transgender protections in the Democratic Party’s platform “flies in the face of growing opinion” about expanding the definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity.

“I think it’s really concerning to see the DNC platform sort of keep going down this same path that courts time and time again have pushed back on, have not allowed to move forward, and that ultimately the American public is not in favor of,” Sharp said.

Sharp pointed out how efforts to redefine sex and sexual discrimination go all the way back to President Barack Obama’s administration. Once Trump took office, he rolled back the rule, but then it was put back in place by Biden.

“This has been a continuing pattern for several administrations to push this, but not only are the courts rebuffing it, but that the American public themselves are too, and we’re seeing it through more and more courageous female voices standing up against this,” Sharp said.

Reed D. Rubinstein, senior vice president at America First Legal, … The left has fought this reality for well over a decade — it has repeatedly attempted and repeatedly failed to amend Title IX in Congress. Twice, it has attempted to change the law by administrative fiat. To protect girls’ sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms, the Trump administration reversed the Obama administration’s ‘Dear Colleague’ letter that asserted ‘sex’ and ‘[gender identity’ are coextensive],” Rubinstein told Fox News Digital in a statement.

“The Trump administration issued a Title IX rule that survived every single left-wing court challenge. Now, the courts have stopped the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to rewrite the statute by regulation. But the Supreme Court, unanimously, has made it clear the word ‘sex’ in Title IX does not mean ‘gender identity,’ but rather, biological sex, male or female. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dnc-policy-platform-slammed-over-explicit-title-ix-protections-lgbt-students-flagrant-lawlessness

Democratic National Committee delegates on Monday evening by voice vote adopted the party’s 2024 platform at their convention, 08/19/24 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dnc-adopt-platform-echoes-biden-harris-call-arms/story?id=112948166

So, the DNC platform pushing gender abomination changes to Title IX was approved. That platform also promotes abortion.

Last Friday, the US Supreme Court knocked down the Biden-Harris Administration’s attempt to do the same to redefine sex under Title IX (see US Supreme Court rules on gender for showers at schools, etc.). But the DNC still wants to support that abominable immorality that goes against the word of God–promoting that will not end up well (cf. Romans 1:18-32).

Anyway, yes, the attempts to do this do go back to the Obama-Biden Administration–and Barack and Michelle Obama are scheduled to speak at the DNC today.

The Bible warns against promoting evil and perversity, as well as despising the word of God:

20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight! (Isaiah 5:20-21)

12 Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel:

“Because you despise this word, And trust in oppression and perversity, And rely on them, 13 Therefore this iniquity shall be to you Like a breach ready to fall, A bulge in a high wall, Whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant.  (Isaiah 30:12-13)

Woe to those that do such things.

Promoting LGBTQ+ matters during the Obama-Biden Administration was a major turning point that harmed US-Russian relations.

Consider that Barack Obama had fairly positive relations with Russia just prior to his re-election in 2012. Now the US and Russia do not.

What happened after 2012?

Notice something that Hillary Clinton (who spoke at the DNC last evening) wrote about that happened with Russia when she was Secretary of State:

When I pressed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to do more to protect the rights of LGBT people, the normally cool and restrained diplomat turned nasty. …

Meanwhile, I looked for ways to make progress closer to home, by better supporting LGBT members of the State Department. . . . I supported the State Department’s annual Pride event, hosted by a group called GLIFFA, Gay and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies. (Clinton HR. Hard Choices. Simon & Schuster, 2014, pp. 577-578)

After that meeting, USA-Russian relations went downhill. Russia told the US that it would not promote the LGBTQ+ agenda.

Hillary Clinton bragged about the use of the USA’s “soft power” around this time, which many have considered as bullying as well as interference in the internal affairs of their nations.

The bullying of the US by Hillary Clinton did not persuade Russia, so the US took steps against Russia since that time.

So, would one expect that Russia and others would be taking steps?

Yes. Notice the following:

Putin’s Masterplan For The Collapse Of America

June 21, 2024

In a startling move, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been quietly steering Russia away from the global liberal order for years, foreseeing a looming catastrophe. Russian economist Sergei Glazyev revealed how Putin’s strategy, starting with forming the Eurasian Economic Union in 2014, aims to create a new power center to rival the US and Europe. Glazyev warns of an imminent US economic collapse due to unsustainable financial practices, predicting global repercussions akin to the Great Depression. As Russia prepares by ditching the dollar and international treaties, the world braces for unprecedented change. https://greatgameindia.com/putins-masterplan-for-the-collapse-of-america/

That said, a reader tipped me off to the following ‘safe haven’ decree from Russia:

August 19, 2024

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has signed a new decree aimed at making his country a ‘safe haven’ against neoliberal Western ideals.

Putin has signed a decree that Russia will welcome foreigners who want to escape Western liberal ideals.Applicants may include those from countries unaligned with “Russian spiritual and moral values.”The application process has been simplified, and visas will be issued as soon as next month.

Russia, in many ways an authoritarian state, has designated itself as a “safe haven” for citizens of Western countries looking to escape “destructive neoliberal ideas.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that Moscow will assist any foreign nationals who want to apply for temporary residence in Russia “outside the quota approved by the Russian government and without providing documents confirming their knowledge of the Russian language, Russian history and basic laws,” Russian state media reported Monday.

People interested in temporary residency may apply for visas through a simplified and expedited process. Russia will begin issuing three-month visas as early as next month.

They can request residency based on the rejection of their home countries’ “destructive neoliberal ideals,” which differ from “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.” Russia is expected to produce a list of which countries are included in this exception, TASS said in its report on the new decree. https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-russia-safe-haven-for-people-escaping-western-liberal-ideals-2024-8

Russia has been the main large nation that has opposed the LGBTQ+ agenda. While homosexuality is legal in Russia, promoting it–particularly to children–is illegal.

Furthermore, back in December 2021, Vladimir Putin publicly denounced the multi-fluid gender nonsense that many in the West (like the DNC) promote:

President Putin: I Will Never Allow the ‘New World Order’ To Pervert Nature – There Are Only TWO Genders

December 24, 2021

Speaking to journalists at an end-of-year press conference, Putin warned that the elites in the West are deliberately trying to pervert nature by claiming that men can be women and women can be men.

“It’s inevitable [that these concepts will arrive in Russia],” Putin warned. “If someone thinks men and women are the same thing, let them think that, but let us think about common sense.”

“I believe that the traditional approach is correct. Male is male, female is female, mother is mother, and father is father. I sincerely hope that our society has the moral armor to protect us against this,” Putin added.

He also spoke about the far-left movement in the US to allow inmates to legally change their gender to female in order to enter women’s prisons.

“To fight against that, we should not just shout and point fingers, but we should support our own traditional values,” he declared.

Rt.com reports: Putin’s statement isn’t the first time a senior Russian politician has spoken out against modern, progressive ideas in regards to gender issues. Earlier this month, Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko said that it is “unacceptable” to impose foreign values on a country without taking into account its history, faith, religion, and national characteristics.

“They are trying to impose alien values on us. And not only on us but on the advancement in the world in general,” she said. “It’s sexual minority rights. There are already 85 genders in Europe. It is unacceptable for us.” https://newspunch.com/president-putin-i-will-never-allow-the-new-world-order-to-pervert-nature-there-are-only-two-genders/

As far as the Putin Administration goes, it has been consistently supporting the idea of biblical marriage as well as not pushing the LGBTQ+ agenda.

Vladimir Putin has been the most powerful political leader in the world to take a stand against several parts of the LGBTQ+ agenda, vulgarity (see Russia’s Vladimir Putin takes a stand against vulgar language), and some other sins that plague Western society (see also ‘Ukraine Invasion Splits Orthodox Church, Isolates Russian Patriarch’ & ‘President Putin: I Will Never Allow the “New World Order” To Pervert Nature – There Are Only TWO Genders’).

As far as economic issues go for the USA, consider that around 605-625 B.C. Habakkuk wrote a short book of the Bible that has a lot of implications for the time that we are now in. Here is something related to debt accumulation that Russia has warned about:

6 “Will not all these take up a proverb against him, And a taunting riddle against him, and say, ‘Woe to him who increases What is not his — how long? And to him who loads himself with many pledges’? 7 Will not your creditors rise up suddenly? Will they not awaken who oppress you? And you will become their booty. 8 Because you have plundered many nations, All the remnant of the people shall plunder you, Because of men’s blood And the violence of the land and the city, And of all who dwell in it. (Habakkuk 2:6-8)

Actually, with an admitted debt of over $35 trillion dollars and plans to increase that much further, the USA has increased pledges more than any nation in the history of the planet. Yes, one day the US will collapse.

Russia sees that a collapse of the US dollar and the US economy will come.

Notice more about steps it is taking:

June 21, 2024

It was precisely in order to minimize the costs of the coming catastrophe, as Glazyev said, that Putin began preparing Russia for it a long time ago. An important step in this direction was taken in 2021. It was then that the dedollarization campaign in the Russian Federation received a powerful impetus – the country began to actively get rid of this currency in gold and foreign exchange reserves and in foreign trade. https://greatgameindia.com/putins-masterplan-for-the-collapse-of-america/

As far as gold goes, the Bible shows that it will be valuable after the US is gone (cf. Daniel 11:39-434; Revelation 18).

Notice also:

“Now it is becoming clear to everyone that it is no longer possible to avoid the outbreak of a catastrophe in the United States, which will subsequently spread throughout the world and become global in nature. The only thing you can do is prepare well for it. This is exactly what Putin has been doing for several years now. Russia has already completely gotten rid of the dollar in the structure of its state reserves and transferred all foreign payments with all our key foreign partners to national currencies,” the specialist said.

According to him, when the American economy begins to collapse under the weight of accumulated problems and contradictions, when the entire global dollar system collapses, Russia will be safe, because by this time our country will have completely freed itself from all obligations associated with being in a controlled state. USA is part of the world. 06/21/24 https://greatgameindia.com/putins-masterplan-for-the-collapse-of-america/

The article related to Sergei Glazyev did not mention the BRICS alliance that Russia is a major part of.

Related to BRICS and the USA dollar, notice the following which is in my book Lost Tribes and Prophecies: What will happen to Australia, the British Isles, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the United States of America?:

Those in Iran and some of the Arab lands, along with nations such as Brazil, China, and India have discussed plans for the removal of the dominance of the U.S.A. in global trade as well. The former (again current) President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, even claimed that eliminating the U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status was one of the reasons that the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) was formed in the first place. [i] Others have  noted that bypassing the USA dollar is still an object of BRICS—and officially BRICS nations “are currently working on setting up a new global reserve currency,”[ii] which may have gold-backing.[iii] The expansion of BRICS (which is in progress) may ultimately even hurt Australian trade as well as “severely weaken primacy of the US Dollar as an international currency.”[iv]

The Bible clearly warns against cheapening the money supply and encourages having money hold its value (Proverbs 25:4 Isaiah 1:25, Ezekiel 22:18-22). Debt is also warned against (Habakkuk 2:6-8). Yet policies enacted under the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations, following certain other administrations, have ignored these warnings.

[i] Escobar P. BRICS was created as a tool of attack: Lula. Asia Times, August 28, 2019

[ii] BRICS developing new global reserve currency – Putin. RT, June 22, 2022

[iii] Helms K. Economists Discuss Russia, China Potentially Developing Gold-Backed Currency. BRICS Information Portal, November 11, 2022

[iv] Hunter M. BRICS Is Becoming The Big Kid On The Block: Implications For Australia – Analysis. Eurasia Review, November 1, 2022

One day the US dollar will be toppled. But let me add that the Bible teaches that a coming European power will accumulate gold too (cf. Daniel 11:38,43; see also The Plain Truth About Gold in Prophecy. How Should a Christian View Gold?).

Based upon several biblical prophecies, I have long written that the Asians and Europeans will cooperate, for a time, and eliminate the USA and its Anglo-Saxon descended allies.

And yes, from a physical perspective, it will be safer for most people to be in Russia than in places like the USA and UK during the coming Great Tribulation.

And while some may want to blame Russia for what is coming, the US through its bullying, pushing perversion, political inference, violence, and debt accumulation has been setting itself up for its destruction.

The collapse of the US is coming.

This Summer, we put together the following video:

14:37

America’s Collapse and Russia’s Preparations

For the first time ever, the USA is no longer listed in the top ten nations when it comes to global competitiveness. Reasons include lack of social cohesiveness, a polarized political landscape, a slow-moving legislative process, debt, sanctions policies, and immorality. While US President Barack Obama had very cordial relations with Russia in late 2012, that changed afterwards after then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to push aspects of the LGBTQ+ agenda on Russia. After Russia’s Sergey Lavrov would not accept such interference in its internal affairs, the USA turned against Russia in many ways. The Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal reported that the USA, through its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), supported the anti-Russian forces in Ukraine against its pro-Russian president in 2014 and supported assassinations, Neo-Nazi Ukrainians, and paramilitary actions against pro-Russian Ukrainians thereafter. Because of USA actions, Russian President Vladimir Putin began a series of actions, starting with the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union, and then more involving the BRICS nations to separate Russia from the West. He also moved towards dedollarization and the accumulation of gold as he and other Russian leaders see that the USA is setting itself up for collapse because of its bullying tactics, increasing debt, and various monetary policies. Some assert that Russia will be in the best position when America collapses. Steps away from the petrodollar by Saudi Arabia and others are putting the US dollar at greater risk for collapse. Is the USA’s reliance and promotion of oppression and perversity prophesied factors in its coming destruction? Dr. Thiel and Steve Dupuie discuss these matters and more.

Here is a link to our video: America’s Collapse and Russia’s Preparations.

Vladimir Putin sees the proverbial handwriting on the wall and has taken steps.

Do you see? Have you taken the proper spiritual steps?

Related Items:

USA in Prophecy: The Strongest Fortresses Can you point to scriptures, like Daniel 11:39, that point to the USA in the 21st century? This article does. Two related sermon are available: Identifying the USA and its Destruction in Prophecy and Do these 7 prophesies point to the end of the USA?

Who is the King of the West? Why is there no Final End-Time King of the West in Bible Prophecy? Is the United States the King of the West? Here is a version in the Spanish language: ¿Quién es el Rey del Occidente? ¿Por qué no hay un Rey del Occidente en la profecía del tiempo del fin? A related sermon is also available: The Bible, the USA, and the King of the West.

Is God Calling You? This booklet discusses topics including calling, election, and selection. If God is calling you, how will you respond? Here is are links to related sermons: Christian Election: Is God Calling YOU? and Predestination and Your Selection; here is a message in Spanish: Me Está Llamando Dios Hoy? A short animation is also available: Is God Calling You?

Christian Repentance Do you know what repentance is? Is it really necessary for salvation? Two related sermons about this are also available: Real Repentance and Real Christian Repentance.

About Baptism Should you be baptized? Could baptism be necessary for salvation? Who should baptize and how should it be done? Here is a link to a related sermon: Let’s Talk About Baptism and Baptism, Infants, Fire, & the Second Death.

Russia and Ukraine: Their Origins and Prophesied Future Russia in prophecy. Where do the Russians come from? What about those in the Ukraine? What is prophesied for Russia and its allies? What will they do to the Europeans that supported the Beast in the end? There is also a video sermon available: Russia in the Bible and in Prophecy as are two video sermonettes Russia, Ukraine, Babylonian Europe, and Prophecy and Ukraine in Prophecy?

Is Russia the King of the North? Some claim it is. But what does the Bible teach? Here is a link to a video, also titled Is Russia the King of the North?

Ezekiel 38: For Russia & Iran in Our Day? Is Ezekiel 38 about to be fulfilled? Are we close to the battle with Gog and Magog? Four related videos are available: Ezekiel 38 Gog and Magog War: Is it Soon?, Ezekiel 38: For Russia, Ukraine, & Iran Now?, Russia, Iran, Syria, & the Bible (Code), and Gog, Magog, Vladimir Putin, and Ezekiel 38?

Lost Tribes and Prophecies: What will happen to Australia, the British Isles, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the United States of America? Where did those people come from? Can you totally rely on DNA? Do you really know what will happen to Europe and the English-speaking peoples? What about the peoples of Africa, Asia, South America, and the islands? This free online book provides scriptural, scientific, historical references, and commentary to address those matters. Here are links to related sermons: Lost tribes, the Bible, and DNA; Lost tribes, prophecies, and identifications; 11 Tribes, 144,000, and Multitudes; Israel, Jeremiah, Tea Tephi, and British Royalty; Gentile European Beast; Royal Succession, Samaria, and Prophecies; Asia, Islands, Latin America, Africa, and Armageddon;  When Will the End of the Age Come?;  Rise of the Prophesied King of the North; Christian Persecution from the Beast; WWIII and the Coming New World Order; and Woes, WWIV, and the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

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Trump's long-awaited announcement on abortion endorses the most reactionary bans enacted by red states

Trump made his long-awaited announcement on abortion on Monday. He said that abortion—reproductive liberty—should be “left up to the states”—a formulation that endorses the total ban on abortion in Texas and the six-week ban in a dozen other states (with no exceptions for rape or incest).

By “leaving it up to the states,” Trump endorsed the most cruel and reactionary bans on the books. That position should have assuaged anti-reproductive liberty activists—but it did not.

First, Trump's formulation approved policies in liberal states (like California and New York) that continue to follow the rule of Roe v. Wade—a result that angered anti-choice groups.

Second, Trump also failed to endorse a national ban on abortion, an omission that infuriated anti-abortion organizations. As explained in Axios, Trump drew fire from nearly every quarter in the anti-abortion movement:

SBA Pro-Life America, the leading anti-abortion group, said in a statement that "we are deeply disappointed in President Trump's position."

Former Vice President Mike Pence went a step further, saying in a statement, "Trump's retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020."

Doug Stafford, chief strategist for Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) PAC, tweeted: "I'm not sure a major candidate has ever produced a worse statement on Life than the one I just watched." He later deleted the post.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a top Trump ally who has introduced legislation to restrict abortion at the federal level after 15 weeks, said he "respectfully" disagrees with the former president.

President Biden issued a strong statement committing to re-establish the protections of Roe v. Wade. President Biden said,

Donald Trump made it clear once again today that he is – more than anyone in America – the person responsible for ending Roe v. Wade. Let there be no illusion. If Donald Trump is elected and the MAGA Republicans in Congress put a national abortion ban on the Resolute Desk, Trump will sign it into law. 

Trump is scrambling. He’s worried that since he’s the one responsible for overturning Roe the voters will hold him accountable in 2024. Well, I have news for Donald. They will. America was built on personal freedom and liberty. So, there is nothing more un-American than having our personal freedoms taken away. And that is what Donald Trump has done.

As of Monday evening, Trump has begun a war of words with Lindsey Graham, who called out Trump for not endorsing a national abortion ban (at 15 weeks). See NBC Montana, Trump responds to Lindsey Graham over abortion criticism: 'Handing Democrats their dream', and NBC News, Lindsey Graham says Donald Trump is making 'a mistake' on abortion, vows to push forward with nationwide restrictions.

The most trenchant comment was by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post, Opinion  Trump’s abortion position just made his 2024 reelection even harder. (Accessible to all.)

Robinson said,

One thing that is guaranteed? Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the abortion issue won’t work.

As usual, he’s trying to have it both ways by taking credit for getting rid of Roe v. Wade while washing his hands of the consequences. That might work on some issues, but not on abortion.

Reproductive liberty should not be reduced to a political calculation—but that approach is unavoidable at this moment in our history. Unless we summon the political will to stop Trump, MAGA extremists, and reactionary judges, hundreds of millions of women will be denied their right to make the most fundamental decisions regarding their lives and bodies.

Donald Trump and the reactionary majority on the Supreme Court have relegated women to a second-class status. It is up to all of us to reverse that result and reclaim the rights and liberties that were hard-won over the last 75 years.

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