Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
The right-wing backlash against the US women’s national soccer team, explained
But the defeat has also become a talking point among a group of people who usually don’t have much to say about the sport: right-wingers, like former president Donald Trump and pundit Benny Johnson. In the wake of their defeat, USWNT has become subject to the claim that the US women lost because they were too woke and too progressive.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
John Eastman Comes Clean: Hell Yes We Were Trying to Overthrow the Government
January 6th conspirators have spent more than two years claiming either that nothing really happened at all in the weeks leading up to January 6th or that it was just a peaceful protest that got a bit out of hand or that they were just making a good faith effort to follow the legal process. Eastman cuts through all of this and makes clear they were trying to overthrow (“abolish”) the government; they were justified in doing so; and the warrant for their actions is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.
“Our Founders lay this case out,” says Eastman. “There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable. At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.”
John Eastman shows the path from misinformation to revolution
Eastman’s facilitation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election brought new disrepute on Claremont, an organization with which he’s long been associated, while any reframing of the Trump-Eastman effort couldn’t help but benefit the party.
That said, the effect of the conversation, published by Klingenstein in segments over the past few weeks, is not to make Eastman’s actions look more rational or well founded. (That may be the intended effect in part because Eastman is fighting disbarment in California.) Instead, it reinforces how his ongoing embrace of explicitly false claims led him to embrace what he himself described as the potential need to “alter or abolish the existing government.”
Ex-federal judge and prominent conservative: ‘There is no Republican Party’
Luttig, who holds bona fide conservative credentials with longstanding ties to the Supreme Court, has become increasingly outspoken in sharing his criticisms of the GOP, calling the party “spineless” in June over its continued support of Trump.
“A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America. Today, there is no such shared set of beliefs and values and principles or even policy views as within the Republican Party for America,” he said on Wednesday.
Luttig also sought to shoot down possible legal defenses that Trump could mount to address the federal charges to which he has pleaded not guilty. The former judge said that by charging Trump with criminal offenses of conduct, not speech, special counsel Jack Smith ensures that there could not be a First Amendment defense from Trump’s legal team.
NYT: Architect of Trump fake electors plot thought SCOTUS would ‘likely’ reject plan, but pushed ahead anyway
n the December 6, 2020, memo, pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro laid out the plan to put forth slates of Republican electors in seven key swing states that then-President Donald Trump lost. The memo then outlines how then-Vice President Mike Pence, while presiding over the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021, should declare “that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as President of the Senate, to both open and count the votes” from the GOP electors.
Chesebro conceded in the memo that this idea was a “controversial” long shot that would “likely” be rejected by the Supreme Court – but nonetheless promoted the strategy. He wrote that despite the legal dubiousness, “letting matters play out this way would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats and would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”
Exclusive: A veteran FBI agent told Congress that investigations into Giuliani and other Trump allies were suppressed
The agent, who served 14 years as a special agent for the bureau, including a long stint in Russia-focussed counterintelligence, claimed in a 22-page statement that his bosses interfered with his work in "a highly suspicious suppression of investigations and intelligence-gathering" aimed at protecting "certain politically active figures and possibly also FBI agents" who were connected to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.
Those figures, the statement claims, explicitly included "anyone in the White House and any former or current associates of President Trump."
States Fights
AP Psychology could be back on students' schedules in Florida as state clarifies guidance
A day after news broke that the state Department of Education was effectively banning the course by prohibiting instruction on gender and sexual orientation, the department is now clarifying it will allow school districts to teach the class in full, according to a letter sent to superintendents.
"In fact, the Department believes that AP Psychology can be taught in its entirety in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate and the course remains listed in our course catalog," Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. wrote in a letter dated Friday.
Ahead of abortion vote, Ohioans weigh making it harder to amend constitution
For 111 years, Ohioans who couldn’t get politicians to listen to them have had a straightforward way to try to bring about change. They can sidestep the governor and lawmakers to amend the state constitution on their own.
But Ohio Republicans, who control both chambers of the state legislature and have sought to restrict access to abortion, are trying to make the process more difficult. They scheduled a special election for Tuesday with just one issue on the ballot: Should constitutional amendments require the support of 60 percent of voters rather than a simple majority?
Turnout Is Off the Charts for Ohio Special Election Designed to Thwart Abortion Vote
Voting ends Tuesday evening on Ohio’s Issue 1, which would to raise the winning threshold for a referendum from a simple majority to 60 percent of the vote. (The pro-choice position is voting “no.”) If the measure passes, the new rules would take effect before November, thereby kneecapping a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
Ohio votes against Issue 1 in special election. Here's what that could mean for abortion rights.
The Associated Press projects the proposed constitutional amendment failed to garner the majority support it needed to pass. With all precincts reporting, and 58,000 absentee and provisional ballots outstanding, the measure was failing by a margin of 57.01% to 42.99%.
Issue 1 would have raised the threshold for approving future changes to the state constitution through the ballot box from a simple majority — 50%, plus one vote — to 60%.
"By rejecting Issue 1, Ohioans rejected special interests and demanded that democracy remain where it belongs — in the hands of voters, not the rich and powerful," Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio posted on social media.
Abortion rights won big in Ohio. Here’s why it wasn’t particularly close.
Tuesday’s election proved that the state-by-state battle over abortion rights is still a serious motivator to get voters to the polls — even when abortion isn’t directly on the ballot.
Abortion in Ohio remains legal for now thanks to a court injunction blocking enforcement of the state’s near-total ban. But Ohio voters have an opportunity to directly weigh in on a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to permanently protect the right to the procedure — making any anti-aboriton legislation obsolete.