Here is this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
House Republicans punt on national abortion ban amid fears of 2024 backlash
It’s an eye-popping pivot for a party that has spent the last five decades ingratiating itself with the religious right, promising to use every lever of government to advance the anti-abortion cause. But it reflects a growing divide in the movement itself as advocates face a new chapter after Roe v. Wade was overturned, where states are serving as the test labs for laws rather than Congress.
Health care access for trans youth is crumbling — and not just in red states
The impact of gender-affirming care bans — inflamed by the rhetoric on the right about “child grooming” — is rippling beyond Republican-controlled states, making it harder everywhere for transgender youth to receive care and physicians to provide it, eight doctors who provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth told POLITICO. The Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which have been tracking attacks against doctors, report similar findings.
Trump killed the ‘values voter’ wing of the GOP. It isn’t coming back in 2024.
Unlike in Republican presidential primaries past, just two candidates — Pence, the former Catholic turned evangelical, and Scott, who speaks of finding a “God Solution” to the country’s racial divide — stand alone in making explicit appeals to Evangelical voters. Trump and DeSantis, meanwhile, are relying solely on their reputations as brute-force brawlers in the culture wars.
Tucker Carlson out at Fox News
The announcement came one week after Fox News settled a monster defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over the network’s dissemination of election lies. The lawsuit had exposed Carlson disparaging colleagues. A lawsuit filed in March by his now-fired top booker, Abby Grossberg, also included a number of allegations of sexism on his show.
Don Lemon Fired By CNN—Minutes After Tucker Carlson Out At Fox News
Lemon repeatedly said his move from prime time to the early morning was not a “demotion”—insisting the creation of a successful morning show was Licht’s “biggest priority.” But Lemon’s time on the show was marked by a series of controversial comments he made about women and reported tensions with his two female co-hosts.
How Tucker Carlson Became Fox News
Carlson would spend the next six years sounding the same themes as O’Reilly had, only with a harder, more menacing tone. If O’Reilly spoke for the barstool blowhard who shouts slurs at the television while watching the Knicks lose, Carlson spoke for the very online seditionists who openly suggest that what this country really needs is a good old-fashioned race war.
Clarence Thomas didn't recuse himself from a 2004 appeal tied to Harlan Crow's family business, per Bloomberg
Thomas previously told Bloomberg that it was OK for him to accept gifts from Harlan Crow because the GOP mega-donor did not have "business before the court."
But the 2004 appeal ties the Crow family name to a case that did come before the Supreme Court: In January 2005, the court denied the appeal petition, a $25 million copyright claim brought by an architecture firm against Trammell Crow Residential Co., a development company that's part of the real estate empire built by Crow's father. The Supreme Court's decision ultimately benefitted Trammell Crow Residential.
Fox News’ sudden firing of Tucker Carlson may have come down to one simple calculation
One veteran television news executive told me that they believed the decision came down to a straightforward calculation by the Murdochs: Risk versus reward. “There’s a lot of drama and intrigue, but this is always about managing risk vs reward,” the person said.
“I know that’s not very exciting, but it’s how these decisions get made at the highest level,” the executive added. “A weighing of the negatives - and risks to the business - versus the positives or benefits.”
Proud Boys leaders: Trump caused Jan. 6 attack
“The leader of the free world sold this narrative, and many members of the Proud Boys believed it,” Pattis said. “People believe their president ... He’s not on trial here, much though I wish he were.”
“If my president tells me my republic is being stolen, who do I listen to?” Pattis added. “The thief or the commander-in-chief? ... A nation of strangers gathered together as their commander in chief sold a lie.”
Gun Violence Is Actually Worse in Red States. It’s Not Even Close.
In reality, the region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence, while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s. On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute, regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.
The Threat of Civil Breakdown Is Real
Yet full-scale civil war is not the only danger. Far-right Americans are highly unlikely to coalesce into a cohesive force that could wage war, but an army is not required to wreak sustained havoc and destabilize the country. In a deeply polarized environment, smaller pockets of armed unrest could easily ignite and spread disorder.
Your guide to the trial: E. Jean Carroll v. Donald Trump
E. Jean Carroll is a writer who was an advice columnist for Elle Magazine for many years. She alleges that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room of luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. In her lawsuit, she says Trump attacked her inside a dressing room in the lingerie department, where he “seized both of her arms” and then “jammed his hand under her coatdress and pulled down her tights.” After unzipping his pants, “Trump then pushed his fingers around Carroll’s genitals and forced his penis inside of her,” according to the lawsuit.
Law firm head bought Gorsuch-owned property
Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court. Gorsuch owned the property with two other individuals.
The real reason for the Supreme Court’s corruption crisis
There is a federal statute which requires all federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, to recuse themselves from any case “in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” but there is no effective enforcement mechanism to apply this vague law to a Supreme Court justice.
Meanwhile, while lower federal judges must comply with a lengthy Code of Conduct for United States Judges, the nine most powerful judges in the country are famously not bound by this code of conduct — although Chief Justice John Roberts has claimed that he and his colleagues “consult the Code of Conduct in assessing their ethical obligations.”
The Lost History of No-Fault Divorces
During that time, divorces were also “fault-based,” meaning that there needed to be abuse, infidelity, or some other reason to justify a split. But a law can’t fix a broken marriage, and as legal scholar Laura Oren writes, in the 1930s to the 1950s, couples “often were able to evade the strictures of rigid fault-based statutes,” either by working together to assign fault or sometimes going to “more liberal jurisdictions to get divorced,” a practice known as migratory divorces.
Support for abortion rights has grown in spite of bans and restrictions, poll shows
Nearly a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, U.S. opinions about that consequential decision remain largely unchanged in this latest poll. A majority of U.S. adults – 59 percent – still say they oppose the justices’ decision, which removed federal protections for many reproductive health care services, while another 40 percent of Americans agree with the nation’s highest court.
Those who say they mostly support abortion rights include 84 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents. At the same time, 37 percent of Americans overall oppose abortion rights, including 67 percent of Republicans.
Conservatives Are Coming for No-Fault Divorce
A new report from Media Matters for America shows a rising trend of right-wing influencers and Republican leaders and politicians, including U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, advocating for the end of no-fault divorce—a policy that allows people to end a marriage without being required to prove wrongdoing by their partner, including adultery, abuse, or desertion.
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States Fights
NAACP sues Mississippi over ‘separate and unequal policing’
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves says violent crime in Jackson has made it necessary to expand where the Capitol Police can patrol and to authorize some appointed rather than elected judges.
But the NAACP said in its lawsuit filed late Friday that these are serious violations of the principle of self-government because they take control of the police and some courts out of the hands of residents.
Alabama education director ousted over ‘woke’ training book
Barbara Cooper was forced out as as head of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education after Ivey expressed concern over the distribution of the book to state-run pre-kindergartens. Ivey spokesperson Gina Maiola identified the book as the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Developmentally Appropriate Practice Book, 4th edition.
After losing state Supreme Court, Wisconsin conservatives eye constitutional amendments
Constitutional amendments offer Republicans an advantage in promoting GOP policies because they only require approval from the Legislature — the one branch of government conservatives will control after August — before going before voters.
Florida surgeon general altered Covid-19 vaccine analysis to suggest higher risk for younger men, Politico reports
Politico said it obtained a document as part of a public records request that shows Ladapo’s changes to the eight-page analysis. The changes deleted comments that said a link with slightly increased risk of cardiac-related deaths after Covid-19 vaccination was “no longer significant” for multidose vaccines and “there is little suggestion of any effect immediately following vaccination.” The document shows an added line that says mRNA vaccines may be driving an increased risk of cardiac-related death in males, especially those ages 18-39.
Montana transgender lawmaker silenced again, backers protest
Zephyr defiantly hoisted her microphone into the air as her supporters interrupted proceedings for nearly half an hour in protest of Republicans denying her requests to speak on a proposal that would restrict when children can change the names and pronouns they use in school and require parental consent.
'Immense And Needless Suffering': Idaho’s Abortion Ban Is Creating A Crisis Of Care
A crisis of care is quickly unfolding in Idaho. There are two abortion bans currently in place: a six-week ban that allows private citizens to sue people who violate the law, and a near-total ban, also known as the trigger ban, that carries criminal penalties and automatically went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Between them, the two abortion bans allow for few exceptions and carry a slew of punishments for physicians. The penalties range from civil suits with fines starting at $20,000 to the permanent suspension of a medical license and the threat of felony charges that carry a maximum of five years in prison.
Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district
“Disney finds itself in this regrettable position because it expressed a viewpoint the Governor and his allies did not like. Disney wishes that things could have been resolved a different way,” the lawsuit says. “But Disney also knows that it is fortunate to have the resources to take a stand against the State’s retaliation – a stand smaller businesses and individuals might not be able to take when the State comes after them for expressing their own views. In America, the government cannot punish you for speaking your mind.”
Disney has a ‘strong case’ against DeSantis over his ‘retaliatory campaign,’ First Amendment experts say
Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School, noted to me that the “retaliatory campaign” was “not subtle.” Tushnet said Disney “has a strong case, both under the First Amendment and potentially for violation of its property rights that the state is trying to destroy.”
The irony in all of this, as pointed out by RonNell Andersen Jones, the Lee E. Teitelbaum Chair and Professor of Law at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, is that corporations enjoy expanded speech rights because of conservative justices on the Supreme Court.
Abortion bans fail to pass in 2 conservative states
A near-total abortion ban failed to pass in South Carolina's Senate by 22 votes to 21 — marking the third time such a measure hasn't passed in a GOP-led chamber since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, AP notes.
in the Nebraska Legislature, a bill proposing to ban abortions at six weeks of pregnancy fell one vote short of the required 33 votes to break a filibuster.
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Vocal Locals
A California journalist documents the far-right takeover of her town: ‘We’re a test case’
Shasta, Chamberlain said, is in the midst of a “perfect storm” as different hard-right factions have joined together to form a powerful political force with outside funding and publicity from fringe figures.