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Nevilledog

Nevilledog's Journal
Nevilledog's Journal
May 1, 2024

True North Issues New Research Report Detailing Who Is Targeting State Courts to Limit Freedoms

https://truenorthresearch.org/2024/04/report-who-is-targeting-state-courts-to-limit-our-freedoms/

In 2024, America will witness some of the most expensive state judicial elections in history, with attack ads largely fueled by men with vast fortunes trying to make their personal agendas into binding law. True North is issuing a new research report shining a light on those men–Leonard Leo, Dick Uihlein, Charles Koch, and Jeff Yass–and right-wing groups targeting state courts and other levers of power to change the rules and limit our freedoms. This new report also documents how Leo used the Federalist Society to target state supreme courts and the judicial selection process in order to advance his agenda, and more.

Read the full report at the link or here.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24602706-true-north-conquering-the-courts-report

April 30, 2024

The Federalist Society coup, in 16 charts.

https://www.weekendreading.net/p/breaking-the-law-trump-is-the-means

Going into last week’s oral arguments on Trump’s immunity appeal, it was widely believed that as a practical matter the appeals court decision would hold – that Trump did not have immunity for attempting to overturn the results of the election he lost and for inciting a deadly mob to prevent the Electoral College votes from being counted. At that point, it seemed clear that the only motive for SCOTUS to hear Trump’s appeal in the first place was to delay his trial. Indeed, there was no apparent justification for the Supreme Court hearing this appeal other than postponing the trial. After all, Justice Roberts has famously said:

If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more.


Instead, as they have so many times before, the six Federalist Society justices1 opened the door to much darker possibilities. Astonishingly, they were more concerned with erring by setting a precedent that could open the door to frivolous partisan prosecutions by the Justice Department against a future president than they were about erring by setting a precedent that would close the door to accountability for the last president who actually attempted a coup. (Incredibly, the implication, an echo of MAGA paranoia, is that the Justice Department, the criminal justice system, and the jury system are less legitimate than the actions of the unnamed president.)

The Federalist Society Project

Right now there is a real risk that the raw offensiveness of the proceedings – the shock of hearing certain justices entertain the idea of allowing presidential lawlessness – will continue to distract us from the most lethal danger we face. That danger is the completion of the Federalist Society project: to replace America’s liberal democratic constitutional order with an illiberal, revanchist one that does not protect civil rights or constrain the worst excesses of capital, and that allows the Court to make policy without democratic accountability.

It’s a mistake to discuss Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas as individual jurists rather than as politicians who were effectively “appointed” to the Court by the Federalist Society. Whatever your (justifiable) problems with any of those individuals, if they had not been confirmed, there were dozens more lined up on the Federalist bench who would not be doing anything substantially different. (To be clear, I am not saying that the justices have been bought off; I’m reasonably confident they believe in what they are doing. I am saying that they wouldn't be Supreme Court justices if they hadn’t been able to convince the MAGA/corporate judicial gatekeepers of their commitment to the cause.)

*snip*
April 30, 2024

Every Awful Thing Trump Has Promised to Do in a Second Term

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-second-term-plans-wildest-proposals-1234947327/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/53DPv

Donald Trump reportedly did not expect to win the presidency in 2016, which isn’t surprising considering how ill-prepared he and his team were to take control of the country. He appointed established conservatives to key positions before learning some had personal principles that extended beyond indulging the president’s ego. Trump wreaked havoc on the United States for four years, but the damage might have been even greater if he wasn’t battling career public servants who tried to check his impulses, or if he wasn’t such a political neophyte.

Trump will not be the dog that caught the car heading into his second term. He’ll be ready and waiting to take the wheel and hit the gas. The former president has now had nearly a decade to burnish his understanding of how Washington, D.C., works, and to assemble a political machine laser-focused on exploiting a federal government full of loopholes to give him the power to enact an authoritarian agenda that could spell disaster for the economy, the environment, human rights, and democracy.

Trump’s romp through the primaries has confirmed that he is in total control of the race and barring something unforeseen will be squaring off with Joe Biden in an election to determine the fate of the nation.

Here’s what’s at stake:

He will indict Biden and his other political enemies

Trump has made abundantly clear that he will use a potential second term in office to take revenge on his enemies. He’s planning to do so by helming the Justice Department with a loyal attorney general willing to appoint a slew of special prosecutors to go after everyone he feels has wronged him. These plans have been in the works since 2021, as Rolling Stone reported in August, and focus not just on Biden, whom Trump believes is the primary force behind his myriad legal woes, but also on Special Counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and plenty of others. “There are almost too many targets to keep track of,” one Trump adviser familiar with the discussions says.

*snip*
April 17, 2024

Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/17/russia-foreign-policy-us-weaken/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/Jmvrx

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has been drawing up plans to try to weaken its Western adversaries, including the United States, and leverage the Ukraine war to forge a global order free from what it sees as American dominance, according to a secret Foreign Ministry document.

In a classified addendum to Russia’s official — and public — “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” the ministry calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States.

“We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” states the 2023 document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a European intelligence service. “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.”

The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West. Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post. It is also seeking to refashion geopolitics, drawing closer to China, Iran and North Korea in an attempt to shift the current balance of power.

*snip*
April 2, 2024

Texas Company Paid Extremist Group $20 Million for Operation Lone Star Busing

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2024/04/02/texas-company-paid-extremist-group-20-million-operation-lone-star-busing

A cache of documents related to Texas’ Operation Lone Star reveals that state contractor Wynne Transportation, LLC, paid over $20 million to an antigovernment extremist group to bus migrants in “inhumane” conditions. The documents also reveal the tangled web of limited liability companies that Texas pays to bus immigrants from its border with Mexico.

A contractor for the state of Texas appears to have paid millions for busing immigrants and asylum seekers to antigovernment extremist organization Mayhem Solutions Group, according to public records and hundreds of invoices Hatewatch obtained. The documents also shed light on the muddled world of state contractors.

Texas awarded Wynne Transportation, LLC, a contract for “transportation management services” that started on Aug. 21, 2020, and ends on Dec. 31, 2024. Texas has spent over $124 million on transporting migrants to sanctuary cities, The Hill reported on Feb. 3. Most of these payments went to Wynne Transportation, LLC, according to a review of the records, which Hatewatch obtained through an information request.

The busing program is part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star,” aimed at slowing down border crossings. Operation Lone Star is steeped in controversy. Wynne Transportation began busing immigrants through MSG in April 2022 and ended its relationship with MSG in April 2023, after Texas required Wynne to reduce costs. MSG did not respond to a request for comment.

*snip*
April 2, 2024

Trump's Promise to Free Jan. 6 Inmates in DC Jail -- Almost All of Them Assaulted Law Enforcement Officers

https://www.justsecurity.org/94157/january-6th-detainees-dc-jail/

Former President Donald Trump has made the January 6th defendants central to his campaign. It is “most likely,” Trump has said, that he would pardon “a large portion of them.” One of his “first acts” in office, Trump wrote last month, would be to “Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongly imprisoned!”

It can be difficult for journalists and the public to isolate which January 6th defendants Trump has in mind. However, Trump has taken a particular interest in the January 6th defendants held in Washington, D.C.

On Mar. 22, Trump posted on Truth Social a flier advertising a nightly vigil for the inmates held by the D.C. Department of Corrections. “Stand in solidarity with our January 6th Political Prisoners in the DC jail as we honor their bravery,” the flier reads. “At 9:00pm, everyone stops what they are doing to stand in solidarity as we all sing the National Anthem together.” Trump captioned the flier with his own announcement of the vigil.

The vigil is organized by Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter and QAnon adherent who was shot and killed by a U.S. Capitol Police officer on Jan. 6, 2021. Babbitt was attempting to climb through a broken window in a door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby of the U.S. Capitol at the time. Rioters broke the glass and pounded on the doors as members of Congress were evacuating just feet away.

*snip*
March 28, 2024

The Little-Remembered Supreme Court Precedent That Could Protect IVF -- and Abortion

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/27/1923-supreme-court-decision-ivf-abortion-00149194

Last month, the Alabama Supreme Court stunned the nation by holding that extrauterine embryos frozen for in vitro fertilization procedures are “embryonic children.” The court’s theory is that life begins at fertilization regardless of where conception occurred or whether the “child” is located in a cryogenic tube or a human uterus. By that logic, IVF clinics could be liable for the destruction of frozen embryos under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

The Alabama ruling set off a firestorm of conservative backtracking on the ruling, which was the inevitable fallout of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The reasons for this reaction run deep: The Alabama ruling pits the conservative ideal of promoting the traditional family unit against the ideology of protecting unborn human life at conception irrespective of the pregnant mother’s competing interests.

The Alabama Legislature passed a law to restore access to IVF two weeks later. But because Dobbs muddied the waters on whether a fetus is entitled to the same protections as a human adult or born child, the underlying controversies will continue to percolate. Louisiana already has an embryo destruction ban, and more states are considering them.

If a challenge were to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a little-remembered case from the early 20th century could prove consequential to both sides. In fact, if harnessed by proponents of abortion rights, the case would provide a precedent that could shift the terms of the IVF-versus-abortion debate away from the line of reasoning enshrined in Roe v. Wade to a new one that carves out family life as existing beyond the reach of government interference.

*snip*
March 23, 2024

Americans struggle to tell the difference between fact and opinion: Study

https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/4550432-americans-struggle-tell-difference-fact-opinion-study/

Knowing the difference between fact and opinion seems simple, but respondents in a survey published earlier this month were largely unable to correctly identify either.

Two researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently published a study on how well American adults can tell the difference between a factual statement and a statement of opinion.

The study appeared in the Harvard Kennedy School of Misinformation Review earlier this month.

As part of the study, the pair sent 12 statements to 2,498 adults via a YouGov poll in 2019 and asked them to correctly identify whether the statements were fact or opinion.

All the statements were related to current events, and many touched on hot-button topics like abortion, immigration, healthcare costs and the role of diversity in America.

*snip*
March 20, 2024

Banning abortion was the first step, not the last

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/scotus-banning-abortion-was-the-first-step


When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion smugly declared that “nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Alito mocked the dissent’s concern that getting rid of abortion would ultimately imperil things like access to contraception, saying the dissent was “designed to stoke unfounded fear that our decision will imperil those other rights.”

But as anti-choice politicians and activists are now deploying Dobbs to try to roll back decades of law about bodily autonomy, it’s clear the dissent’s fears were quite well-founded.

Conservatives are not going to stop at unwinding the constitutional right to privacy, which underpins things like the right to obtain birth control and the right of same-sex couples to marry. After they destroy the agency of half the population by imposing so-called “fetal personhood” laws, they’re coming for the modern welfare state.

The blueprint

Over at the hard-right Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll, a former comms person for both the Heritage Foundation and Utah Sen. Mike Lee, has a lengthy list of laws he’d like to get rid of — everything from Medicaid to Head Start to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Those laws, he argues, “penalize marriage and encourage alternative family formation.” Carroll’s goals therefore dovetail not only with forced-birth conservatives but also with forced-marriage conservatives.

At its core, what reproductive freedom promises is that people who can get pregnant will be able to fully participate in society rather than being limited in their ambitions. As the liberal justices wrote in their Dobbs dissent, “[y]esterday, the Constitution guaranteed that a woman confronted with an unplanned pregnancy could (within reasonable limits) make her own decision about whether to bear a child, with all the life-transforming consequences that act involves … but no longer.” The dissent also quoted an earlier abortion case, 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where the Court had held that protecting reproductive freedom also protected "[t]he ability of women to participate equally in (this Nation's] economic and social life." Being forced to carry an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, the dissenters said, ultimately results in the pregnant person “losing control of their lives.”

*snip*

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