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FOCUS: John Roberts Distances Himself From the Trump-McConnell Legal Project |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51459"><span class="small">Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Wednesday, 01 July 2020 10:27 |
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Toobin writes: "This, simply, is cause for celebration. But you wouldn't know it from the reaction of many of those who follow the Court closely - and who agree with all three of Roberts's votes."
Chief Justice John Roberts. (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Shutterstock)
John Roberts Distances Himself From the Trump-McConnell Legal Project
By Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker
01 July 20
 he Supreme Court often appears to exist in a world of abstractions. To pick just one example, what does a concept like “separation of powers” mean in the lives of most Americans? But three times in recent weeks, the Justices have issued concrete directives that have changed the world—and for the better. They held that it was unlawful to fire people simply because they are L.G.B.T.Q.; they prevented the Trump Administration from deporting seven hundred thousand young people, known as the Dreamers, who have lived virtually their entire lives as Americans; and they guaranteed that women in Louisiana will continue to have at least some access to abortion. And the Chief Justice, John G. Roberts, Jr., a conservative who was appointed to the Court fifteen years ago, by George W. Bush, voted in the majority in all three cases.
This, simply, is cause for celebration. But you wouldn’t know it from the reaction of many of those who follow the Court closely—and who agree with all three of Roberts’s votes. The headline on the Times’s editorial scolded, “John Roberts Is No Pro-Choice Hero,” and the piece intoned that Roberts “appears to have decided that the circumstances of this case were not ideal for crippling reproductive rights—but he left the door open to doing so in the future.” My friend Dahlia Lithwick, at Slate, wrote that what Roberts actually did was “cloak a major blow to the left in what appears to be a small victory for it.” Rather, she added, “Roberts is telling states wanting to impose all sort of needless regulations that it doesn’t matter if they are utterly without health benefits, so long as the burdens on women are not that bad.” The idea behind these views appears to be that Roberts’s vote to strike down these abortion restrictions was really just a move in a multi-dimensional chess game to allow other restrictions—and, ultimately, to overrule Roe v. Wade.
To which I reply, respectfully, nope. If the Chief Justice wanted to uphold restrictions on abortion, he would have voted . . . to uphold restrictions on abortion. He did the opposite, and struck down a law that would have curtailed access to abortion in Louisiana. It is true, of course, that Roberts has not suddenly turned into Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Four years ago, the Chief Justice voted to uphold abortion restrictions in Texas that were virtually identical to the ones that he voted to strike down in Louisiana. As he noted in his opinion concurring in the judgment this week, he stands by his 2016 vote, where he was on the losing side, 5–3. But, he added, “The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”
Like all the Justices, Roberts respects precedent—except when he doesn’t. He has often voted to overturn prior decisions with which he disagrees. In his opinion in the Louisiana case, Roberts said clearly that he believes that the Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, from 1992, which upheld Roe, remains the law of the land. The Casey ruling allowed some restrictions on abortion, but not others. That, clearly, will remain Roberts’s approach. But the idea that Roberts is dedicated to overturning Roe seems fanciful in light of this latest vote and opinion.
That cannot, of course, be said of Roberts’s four conservative colleagues, who voted to uphold the Louisiana law, despite its similarity to the Texas law that the Court just recently invalidated. Unlike Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh demonstrated by their votes that they are dedicated to the grand conservative project of overturning Roe. (In November, the voters of Maine will have a chance to invite their credulous pro-choice senator, Susan Collins, to reflect on her embrace of Kavanaugh, supposedly because of his great devotion to respecting precedent, from a comfortable retirement in the Pine Tree State.) As long as Donald Trump is President and Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader, any vacancy on the Court will be filled with a similarly anti-Roe Justice—right up to the day both men leave their posts. So the peril to Roe, and to abortion rights, remains. But it now seems clear that despite what I and others thought, this Court—that is, these nine Justices—will not be overturning Roe v. Wade. (Conservatives, to their chagrin, recognize this.)
As for Roberts’s other two votes, the one on employment discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people and the other about the Dreamers, it simply isn’t possible to explain them away as preordained by his prior jurisprudence. The employment case was about a statute, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, not the Constitution. But Roberts had never before taken such an expansive view of the protections of the law, nor had he voted in favor of any of the Court’s landmark gay-rights rulings, including, of course, the 2015 decision guaranteeing the right to marriage in all fifty states. As for his vote on the Dreamers, Roberts has a strict view of the need for procedural regularity, and he voted to strike down the Trump Administration’s bumbling effort to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census for violating those principles. Roberts’s prior jurisprudence didn’t guarantee that result, either. I don’t pretend to know what’s in Roberts’s heart, but I can see what’s clear: that he is dissociating himself from key parts of the conservative legal project that Trump and McConnell have done so much to foster.
Roberts will never be a liberal, but he’s no moderate, either. His 2013 opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, which crippled the Voting Rights Act, will haunt his reputation, and the nation, forever. He will probably also vote to uphold some abortion restrictions in the future. This week, too, Roberts wrote a dismal opinion allowing public subsidies for religious schools, further lowering the barriers between church and state. But the John Roberts who currently presides at the Supreme Court is not exactly the same man he once was, and it may be time for his critics to recognize that and take yes for an answer.
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RSN: The 2020 Election Demands 3-Way Protection and a Nationwide Grassroots EP Upheaval |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6004"><span class="small">Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 01 July 2020 08:23 |
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Wasserman writes: "The 2020 election will be decided by 3 factors: Registration Rolls, Vote by Mail, and Ballot Counting."
A vote-by-mail election in Utah. (photo: Jeffrey D. Allred/Deseret News)
The 2020 Election Demands 3-Way Protection and a Nationwide Grassroots EP Upheaval
By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
01 July 20
he 2020 election will be decided by 3 factors: Registration Rolls, Vote by Mail, and Ballot Counting.
How effectively a national grassroots election-protection upheaval can affect them will decide the fate of the Earth.
THE REGISTRATION ROLLS have been stripped of 16 million or more citizens mostly of youth and color, but many have been re-registered.
Election Protection (EP) activists must fight to make voter registration as easy and fair as possible, contact and re-register the disenfranchised, confirm the registrations of those who think they’re registered but are not, and register millions of new voters, especially among those who have just marched for racial justice and police reform.
VOTE BY MAIL (VBM) has successfully provided paper ballots in Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon & Hawaii. All states have always provided absentee ballots. But the virus could force 2020 VBM totals from 5% overall to 40-80%, overwhelming unprepared counties & states.
The obvious Trump strategy is to whine on the Big Lie that VBM is inherently corrupt while letting the virus decimate the public’s ability to vote in person. Stripping the voting centers, providing the few that are left with faulty machines, delegitimizing vote by mail, and destroying the US Postal Service equals the basic Trump plan to sabotage the election.
But Vote by Mail can be made to work well. Here’s how:
EP activists must proofread outgoing ballot drafts for mistakes (willful or otherwise); make sure they are properly printed; make sure enough are printed both to be sent eligible voters and to be available for those coming into polling stations; make sure they’re printed on time; make sure they’re delivered to election boards on time; make sure they’re sent to voters on time; make sure every eligible voter gets one; fight to eliminate disenfranchising requirements like Photo ID, multiple witnessing, notarization etc.; make sure return deadlines are clear (unlike April’s Wisconsin primary); fight to save the US Postal Service; fight to provide return postage; make sure every voter can easily mail back the ballot or walk it in to a secure election board or protected drop box; make sure early voting is greatly facilitated; fight to provide as many voting centers as possible, and to publicize their locations; encourage all who come to vote in person after signing up for a ballot bring it in with clear understanding of the “surrender rule,” or get a proper ballot upon coming in to vote without one; make sure all ballots received at election boards are protected, with clear and secure chains of custody; make sure received ballots are NOT counted before the polls close on election day; make sure the ballots are preserved 22 months as per federal law.
COUNTING THE BALLOTS demands maximum use of electronic imaging devices, now in 80% or more precincts, which automatically create digital images while preserving the paper ballots. These easily countable images are protected by federal law, but local election officials often destroy them. Unworkable reporting deadlines (as in Florida) must be extended. As per Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, and Wisconsin-Michigan-Pennsylvania 2016, all phases of ballot counting and recounting (including by hand) must be closely monitored.
Trump has allocated $20 million to hire 50,000 armed cultists to “protect” the voting places and infiltrate the electoral system. Many are already shaping the process. Thousands will come on election day with Confederate flags and guns to terrorize the citizenry. We can also expect some kind of 9/11 “October Surprise” event to undermine the process.
Yet in the wake of the George Floyd killing and others, millions have just marched for racial justice and police reform. Every one of you must now work to protect the 2020 election. Merely voting is nowhere near enough.
Because the presidency is decided through the Electoral College on a state-by-state basis, this is not a national election. Most likely 2020 will be decided in 18 swing states, many with key US Senate races, nearly all with extreme right-wing legislatures, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona; then Ohio, New Hampshire, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa; then South Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Kansas, Montana, Kentucky.
Election protection demands at least two coordinators in each state with a thorough, detailed understanding of all the nuances of the election laws in that state.
In turn, every county must have EP activists tightly bound to the local election board. They must know all about the registration rolls, re-registering the disenfranchised, and registering new voters, especially among those who marched.
Based at the election boards and in neighborhood storefronts and elsewhere, this network of EP activists must:
- guarantee that all eligible citizens are registered
- work closely with all phases of Vote by Mail
- neutralize Trump cultists already infiltrated into the electoral system
- physically protect election-day voters lined up at election centers
- work through the post-election night to guarantee a fair vote count
The election is barely four months away. Without top-to-bottom protection, it will be America’s last.
Here are some organizations you could join:
Scrutineers, described by its founder/director Emily Levy as an action-oriented online community of people working for fairness and accuracy in US elections … training a Fairness Force to take action to protect the voters and protect the votes! Join at Scrutineers.org.
Progressive Democrats of America, which Executive Director Alan Minsky says is mobilizing an unprecedented nation-wide Voter Education campaign with a special 2020 voter guide and calendar, plus statewide coordinators in all of the swing states with volunteers on a county-by-county basis.
People Demanding Action, whose ED Andrea Miller works to restore voter registration rolls, sending more than a million postcards to citizens who’ve been disenfranchised, getting them to re-register.
The National Vote from Home Institute, which works with Headcount to promote VBM among younger voters with a strategic roadmap at https://www.voteathome.org
The Covid-19 National Emergency Election Protection Zoom, which convenes most Mondays 5-6:30 pm EST, with recordings posted at freepress.org. To join, contact Sluggo via solartopia.org.
There are others. Send me descriptions and contacts for further postings. Join or die!
Completion of Harvey Wasserman’s People’s Spiral of US History awaits Trump’s departure at solartopia.org. His radio shows are at prn.fm and KPFK/Pacifica-90.7 fm, Los Angeles.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee Could Defy "the Madness of Militarism" as Co-Chairs of the Democratic Convention's Biggest Delegation |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=48990"><span class="small">Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 30 June 2020 12:54 |
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Solomon writes: "One of the few encouraging surprises in the lead-up to the 2020 Democratic National Convention is that co-chairs of California's huge delegation will include Representatives Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee."
Reps. Barbara Lee and Ro Khanna. (image: East Bay Citizen)
Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee Could Defy "the Madness of Militarism" as Co-Chairs of the Democratic Convention's Biggest Delegation
By Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
30 June 20
 ne of the few encouraging surprises in the lead-up to the 2020 Democratic National Convention is that co-chairs of California’s huge delegation will include Representatives Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee. Progressive activism made it possible – winning caucus races to elect strong Bernie Sanders delegates in early June and then organizing a grassroots campaign for Khanna to become chair of the state’s entire delegation.
Now, for Khanna and Lee – two of the most eloquent and effective members of Congress on matters of war and peace – the upcoming convention offers an opportunity to directly challenge the Democratic Party’s default embrace of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”
Mainline media outlets have recognized the symbolism, if not the potential, of what just occurred. Reporting has explained that progressive clout prevented Gov. Gavin Newsom from becoming the chair of the delegation, with the result that co-chair positions went to Khanna, Lee, and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
“For the past two weeks,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Sanders supporters have argued that his March 3 primary win in California meant a progressive like Khanna – an early endorser of the Vermont senator and a national co-chair of his presidential campaign – should be the face of the state’s delegation.”
The newspaper added: “The agreement is a definite win for California progressives, who got Khanna and Lee. While Lee backed California Sen. Kamala Harris in the primary, she’s an icon on the left for her history as an antiwar activist and her support for most of Sanders’ platform…. Progressives managed to block Newsom, who endorsed Biden in May, from a leading role. While Democratic governors typically lead their state’s delegation to their party’s convention, Newsom is persona non grata for California progressives.”
On Monday, Politico summed up: “Bernie Sanders may not be the Democratic nominee, but his followers are flexing their muscle in California.”
Politico pointed out that “the grassroots decision to sidestep Newsom was a clear departure from tradition – and a signal that progressives who backed Sanders don’t intend to be sidelined.” Along the way, “the vote underscored Khanna’s rise as a progressive wing leader to watch – and cements his role as the captain of the Bernie movement in California…. He has galvanized progressive support with his active legislative record to curb the president’s war powers and end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, among other issues.”
Now, Khanna and Lee have a tremendous – indeed, historic – opportunity. Their full-throated voices for peace and justice should be widely heard in the context of the upcoming national convention.
This is a heavy burden of expectation to place on two members of Congress who are not in top “leadership” positions. Meanwhile, the burden should also be swiftly taken up by activists throughout the country.
Much is possible in a short time. As one of more than a hundred Sanders delegates elected in California a few weeks ago, I was inspired to see what we could achieve by working together to replace traditional power brokerage with genuine progressive leadership.
Warped budget priorities that have bloated the Pentagon’s spending are thefts from desperately needed funds for health care and a huge array of social programs – just as militarized police forces and bloated law-enforcement costs are continuing to drain the funds of local governments. In the midst of the pandemic, the need is vast and urgent for a massive redirection of funding, away from militarism and toward long-term measures to save lives.
Humanistic values insist that corporate Democrats must accommodate to progressive agendas, not the other way around. This certainly means disentangling the party from the military-industrial complex and multibillion-dollar health care profiteers.
While Dr. King condemned militarism’s madness, he also denounced the cruelty of inequities in funding that undermine health. “Of all the forms of inequality,” he said, “injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.”
Moral positions on these profound issues are in sync with public opinion. Over the last decade, one poll after another after another after another has reflected substantial support for reductions in military spending. Exit polls during this year’s primary elections consistently showed overwhelming support for Medicare for All.
Understood broadly and deeply, the madness of militarism is not only the normalized frenzy of preparing for war and waging it. The madness extends to ongoing financial, social, and psychological investments in routine institutionalized violence – from militarizing police to glorifying suppression of civil unrest to devoting humongous resources to further military endeavors at the expense of vital social programs – methodically taking lives instead of saving them.
Such destructive patterns can’t be effectively challenged while deferring to hidebound party leaders. As co-chairs of the Democratic National Convention’s largest delegation, Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee will only have a chance to change history for the better if they’re willing to clearly and forcefully speak essential truths that powerful Democrats don’t want the public to hear.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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FOCUS: A 10% Cut to the US Military Budget Would Help Support Struggling Americans |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=24193"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Tuesday, 30 June 2020 12:03 |
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Sanders writes: "At this unprecedented moment in American history - a terrible pandemic, an economic meltdown, people marching across the country to end systemic racism and police brutality, growing income and wealth inequality and an unstable president in the White House - now is the time to bring people together to fundamentally alter our national priorities and rethink the very structure of American society."
Supporters in Concord, NH, reach out to greet the man they call Bernie. (photo: Steve Senne/AP)
Bernie Sanders, Guardian UK
By Bernie Sanders, Guardian UK
30 June 20
If this horrific coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it is that national security involves a lot more than bombs
 t this unprecedented moment in American history – a terrible pandemic, an economic meltdown, people marching across the country to end systemic racism and police brutality, growing income and wealth inequality and an unstable president in the White House – now is the time to bring people together to fundamentally alter our national priorities and rethink the very structure of American society.
In that regard, I have been disturbed that for too long, Democrats and Republicans have joined together in passing outrageously high military budgets while ignoring the needs of the poorest people in our society. If we are serious about altering our national priorities, then there is no better place to begin with than taking a hard look at the bloated $740bn military budget that is coming up for a vote in the Senate this week.
Incredibly, after adjusting for inflation, we are now spending more on the military than we did during the height of the Cold War or during the wars in Vietnam and Korea.
This extraordinary level of military spending comes at a time when the Department of Defense is the only agency of our federal government that has not been able to pass an independent audit, when defense contractors are making enormous profits while paying their CEOs exorbitant compensation packages, and when the so-called “War on Terror” will end up costing us some $6tn.
I believe this is a moment in history when it would be a good idea for all of my colleagues, and the American people, to remember what the former Republican president, Dwight D Eisenhower, said in 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
What Eisenhower said was true 67 years ago, and it is true today.
Will we be a nation that spends more money on nuclear weapons, or will we be one that invests in jobs, affordable housing, health care and childcare for those who need it most?
In order to begin the process of transforming our national priorities, I will be introducing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to reduce the military budget by 10% and use the $74bn in savings to invest in distressed communities around the country that are experiencing extreme poverty, mass incarceration, deindustrialization and decades of neglect.
Here is what the amendment would do:
- Create jobs by building affordable housing, schools, childcare centers, community health centers, public hospitals, libraries, sustainable energy projects, and clean drinking water facilities.
- Improve education by hiring more public school teachers to reduce class sizes, ensuring teachers receive adequate pay, providing nutritious meals to children and parents, and offering free tuition for public colleges, universities, and trade schools.
- Make housing more affordable by providing rental assistance and bringing an end to homelessness.
If this horrific coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it is that national security involves a lot more than bombs, missiles, tanks, submarines, nuclear warheads and other weapons of mass destruction. National security also means doing all we can to improve the lives of the American people, many of whom have been abandoned by our government for decades.
In this extraordinary moment in the history of our country, now is the time for us to truly focus on what we value as a society and to fundamentally transform our national priorities. Cutting the military budget by 10% and investing that money into communities across the country is a modest but important way to begin that process.
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