Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
GOP lawmakers and candidates race to distance themselves from Alabama court decision
From House to Senate races, new candidates and incumbents alike are aggressively trying to neutralize Democratic attacks that the decision in Alabama is just the latest in attempts by the GOP to crack down on reproductive rights and the party is encouraging members to get ahead of the issue.
“As someone who struggled to get pregnant, I believe all life is a gift. IVF allowed me, as it has so many others, to start my family,” California Republican Rep. Michelle Steel, who represents a district carried by Biden, said on X. “I believe there is nothing more pro-life than helping families have children, and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF.”
Trump suggests his mug shot and indictments appeal to Black voters
“I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing. They were doing it because it’s election interference and then I got indicted a second time, and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,” Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges across the cases, told a gathering of Black conservatives here, on the eve of the state’s first-in-the-South Republican presidential primary.
‘My ultimate and absolute revenge’: Trump gives chilling CPAC speech on presidential agenda
“For hard-working Americans, November 5 will be our new liberation day,” Trump told a packed ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor in Maryland. “But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day!”
He added: “Your victory will be our ultimate vindication, your liberty will be our ultimate reward and the unprecedented success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge.”
The overwhelmingly white crowd, many wearing “Make America Great Again” regalia, rose to their feet and roared their approval.
Trump’s Charlie Kirk problem is an obstacle for him and the GOP
The organization has become a kingmaker of sorts in the conservative movement, thanks to its leader, Charlie Kirk, and his connection to Donald Trump and other MAGA movement staples. The group competes with the Republican National Committee for donors, issues endorsements of candidates and releases letter grades for Republicans based on their conservatism. This arrangement seems to have suited Kirk well, considering that he has become a millionaire on the back of the TPUSA brand.
But, as I’ve written before, TPUSA’s efforts haven’t translated to election wins. And this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference has helped highlight the reasons why.
Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies
The presence of these individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC. In previous years, conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes.
But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017.
At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
One member of the group, Greg Conte, who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, said that his group showed up to talk to the media. He said that the group was prepared to be ejected if CPAC organizers were tipped off, but that never happened.
Republicans address ‘complex’ IVF issue as Dems step up messaging
The Alabama ruling granting personhood rights to embryos has rocked the GOP, complicating the party’s standing with millions of people who may oppose abortion but support — and in some cases use — in vitro fertilization and other forms of fertility care.
Particularly at issue is what to do with the excess embryos that don’t end up being used during IVF procedures. Alabama’s decision prevents those embryos from being discarded, effectively blocking the procedure from being practiced in the state. Several clinics have already paused their operations.
Trump’s plan to use Judge Cannon to block Judge Chutkan and avoid trial
Juggling his campaign and court calendar and playing his cases off one another is a key part of Trump’s legal strategy. The ultimate goal, his team has said openly, is to prevent Trump from being tried in federal court before voters cast their ballots in the 2024 general election.
A primary aim for Trump’s legal team, according to people familiar with the strategy, is to put the judge in DC overseeing the 2020 federal election obstruction case, Tanya Chutkan, in a position where she can’t start a trial before Election Day.
“Meaning, ice her,” said a person familiar with Trump’s trial schedule strategy. “Making it impossible for her to jam a trial down before the election, by things that are out of her control.”
Trump’s deportation plan is modeled on ‘inhumane’ 1950s program, experts say
Now, former president Donald Trump is using the Eisenhower-era operation as a blueprint for his vision, which he pledges will be “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” to remove the estimated 10.5 million undocumented people in the United States — of whom two-thirds have lived in the country for more than a decade.
Americans can expect that immediately upon President Trump’s return to the Oval Office, he will restore all of his prior policies, implement brand new crackdowns that will send shockwaves to all the world’s criminal smugglers, and marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute” the deportation operation, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to The Washington Post. She added that undocumented immigrants “should not get comfortable because very soon they will be going home.”
Republicans under scrutiny for supporting conception bill in wake of Alabama IVF ruling
Republicans who expressed support for in vitro fertilization in the wake of the controversial Alabama Supreme Court ruling are coming under scrutiny for also backing legislation that declares human life begins at conception, without an exception for IVF — two positions that appear to be at odds with one another, in the latest example of Republicans struggling to thread the needle on reproductive rights issues.
The Life at Conception Act – which was introduced in January 2023 by GOP Rep. Alex Mooney of West Virginia and has 125 total Republican sponsors in the House, including House Speaker Mike Johnson – defines the term “human being” to include “all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”
Nikki Haley's 40% in South Carolina: A crushing loss for her or a '5-alarm fire' for Donald Trump?
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s loss in her home state's primary over the weekend was clearly an embarrassing one. South Carolina voters opted for former President Donald Trump over the candidate they chose twice to serve as governor.
But Haley still received a significant chunk of support from Republicans in the Palmetto State, a factor that should be deeply concerning for Trump's reelection bid, according to many political observers.
Republicans have an answer on IVF. It’s only raising more questions.
The struggle to address the details underscores the complex ethical quandaries surrounding the practice, which in the U.S. typically involves creating multiple embryos, implanting those with the highest chance of success and discarding or storing the rest.
Many conservatives are torn between their desire to help parents deal with infertility and their belief in fetal personhood, and have struggled over the last week to articulate exactly which laws and policies should govern this fraught area of health care.
The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024
Now I’m hearing a new story from those same GOP insiders (as well as other commentators) about Trump’s schemes for 2024. Here’s what I’m hearing Republicans are planning in the event Joe Biden wins re-election and Democrats hold the Senate and take the House this November:
First, Republicans need to make sure they’re in control of the House of Representatives on January 6th, 2025, when the new president will be certified.
To do that, even though Democrats might have won enough seats to take back the House in the 2024 election, Speaker Johnson will refuse to swear into Congress on January 3rd a handful of those Democrats, claiming there are “irregularities” in their elections that must be first investigated.
‘Star witness’ testifies his claims about Fani Willis were only ‘speculation’
Terrence Bradley, a former law partner of special prosecutor Nathan Wade, repeatedly testified under oath that he did not know when the relationship between Willis and Wade started and could not remember the date of when he learned about it from Wade, frustrating defense attorneys who had claimed his testimony would “refute” claims by Willis and Wade that their romantic relationship began months after Wade was appointed to manage the Trump case.
“I do not have knowledge of it starting or when it started,” Bradley testified Tuesday. “I never witnessed anything. So, you know, it was speculation.”
GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith blocks legislation protecting IVF access
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi blocked quick passage of a bill on Wednesday afternoon that would have enshrined protections for in vitro fertilization and for the doctors who perform the procedure.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois requested to pass the bill by unanimous consent, meaning any one senator could block it from advancing.
Several Republican senators had warned in the past week that they believed legislation on IVF should be left at the state level, not the federal level, as they defended their support for the procedure after the Alabama Supreme Court warned that disposing of unused embryos could be categorized as “wrongful death.”
The Supreme Court Just Gave Trump Exactly What He Wanted
The Supreme Court has all but guaranteed that Donald Trump will not face trial for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election before this November’s presidential election. On Wednesday, after more than two weeks’ delay, the court issued an order refusing to lift the stay that’s preventing the Jan. 6 trial, prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, from moving forward.
States Fights
Alabama’s IVF Ruling Is
Christian Theology Masquerading as Law
The word “God” appears 41 times in Parker’s opinion, which also liberally quotes from the Bible, specifically the Book of Genesis, and theologians like Thomas Aquinus and John Calvin. In an interview, Parker said he supports the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” which is a code for imposing Christian rule based on biblical precepts on the rest of society.
Folks, this is the chief justice of a state supreme court, and he is explicitly invoking fundamentalist Christian ideology to justify assigning legal liability and financial penalties to people who run afoul of Christian orthodoxy.
Gavin Newsom launches red-state abortion ads over ‘war on travel’
Newsom’s new ad, which debuted Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” will air in Tennessee, where a state representative is trying to outlaw transporting a minor for an abortion. Under the Tennessee proposal, adults who engage in “ abortion trafficking” — helping pregnant minors get the procedure out-of-state without parental permission — could be charged with a felony that carries up to 15 years in prison.
Florida surgeon general defies CDC recommendations as measles cases spread in state
Six children at Manatee Bay Elementary School, in Weston near Fort Lauderdale, caught the disease over a week ago. New state health data show two more cases in Broward County, of a child younger than 5 and another between ages 5 and 9.
The newly reported infections bring the total to eight, just days after Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo contradicted federal and medical professional guidance to contain the spread of the highly contagious and preventable disease that's resurging globally and in the U.S. Florida is one of 11 states that have seen cases this year.
Inside Michigan: Understanding Partisanship, Religious Affiliation, and Religious Diversity Across the State
The next presidential contest for Republicans and Democrats will take place in Michigan on February 27; however, unlike in other states, Michigan will hold a primary and a caucus. Although both parties will hold primaries on February 27, Republicans will also hold a caucus on March 2 which will award the majority of the party’s delegates. Republican Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump will be on both ballots as well as several other Republican nominees who have officially dropped from the race. The following are some key facts about Michiganders based on data collected by PRRI in 2022:
The median age of adults in Michigan is 46, lower than the median age for all Americans (48).
Four in ten Michiganders (39%) have a high school diploma or less education and three in ten have completed some college (30%). In comparison, only 17% of Michiganders have a college degree and 13% have a post-graduate degree.
Three-quarters of Michiganders identify as white (75%). Fewer than two in ten Michiganders identify as Black (15%), 5% identify as Hispanic, 2% identify as Asian and Pacific Islander or Multiracial, and only 1% identify as Native American.
Approximately one-third of Michiganders identify as independent (32%), three in ten identify as Democrats (29%), and one-quarter identify as Republicans (26%).
Between three in ten and one-third of Michiganders identify as ideologically liberal (30%), conservative (31%), or moderate (33%).
Florida Republicans’ war on the war on heat
Miami-Dade County has since proposed mandating 10-minute breaks in the shade every two hours for construction and farm workers. But a bill that advanced in a Florida state House committee last week would prevent the county from imposing the mandate, with Republicans arguing such protections would harm the state’s economy.
Alabama Republicans want to give IVF doctors immunity after court rules frozen embryos are kids
Under state legislation introduced Tuesday afternoon, Republican lawmakers propose giving doctors who perform in vitro fertilization immunity from civil and criminal prosecution to give clinics enough legal cover to resume providing services. The measure, however, falls short of an earlier draft of the bill that said embryos created during the IVF process that aren’t implanted in the uterus should be considered a “potential life” but not “human life.”
A ‘Stunning’ Element of the Alabama IVF Ruling
The Alabama IVF controversy is the latest part of that — and it’s bringing to the fore a larger debate over fetal personhood that has long existed at the fringes of the conservative movement.
Mary Ziegler, a leading historian on the abortion battle and a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, says widespread adoption of fetal personhood laws would have far-reaching policy implications, including criminalizing people who receive abortions and banning certain kinds of contraception. Politically, she notes, it’s already straining the relationship between the anti-abortion movement and the Republicans who are eagerly trying to showcase their support for IVF.
Vocal Locals
A single mother speaks out on how the ‘tradwife’ lifestyle led to her divorce
Sporting retro ’50s hairstyles and cinched aprons, “tradwife” influencers have taken over a pocket of the internet.
These traditional wives who showcase 30-second videos of homemade sourdough bread content, and other glimpses into the making of a perfect home, are no ordinary stay-at-home moms. They steadfastly believe in traditional gender roles. That means staying devoted to housework and taking care of the children — and being subservient to their working husbands.
Templeton, now 41, said she was raised as an evangelical Christian, believing that a husband had authority over his wife. But today, she is a divorced single mom by choice and advocates for women who wish to break free from a relationship dynamic that all too easily can create an extreme power imbalance.
“Don’t expect SCOTUS to come to our rescue” has become a mantra that the legislature should have been living and breathing for the past 20 years!!