Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
The GOP Turned Its Back on Science. So Science Turned Its Backs on the GOP.
Hershey is a health care-fueled microcosm of a political trend occurring in Pennsylvania’s suburbs and across the nation: Physicians are now increasingly a reliable Democratic constituency. It’s part of a broader national voting shift toward Democrats among professionals in the health care, pharmaceutical and life sciences realm.
For physicians, their leftward turn is a reversal from decades past, when doctors commonly identified as Republican. At the time, their GOP preference was a business concern: They owned small practices. They had yet to enter the era of employment in large medical systems. “Most doctors are Republicans,” as one Florida physician observed to the New York Times in 1996. “Most doctors’ dads were Republicans. They do not see themselves as proletarian. They see themselves as bourgeois.”
What Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo wrought: How a justice’s wife and a key activist started a movement
From those early discussions among Leo, Thomas and Crow would spring a billion-dollar force that has helped remake the judiciary and overturn longstanding legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action and many other issues. It funded legal scholars to devise theories to challenge liberal precedents, helped to elect state attorneys general willing to apply those theories and launched lavish campaigns for conservative judicial nominees who would cite those theories in their rulings from the bench.
The movement’s triumphs are now visible but its engine remains hidden: A billion-dollar network of groups, most of which are registered as tax-exempt charities or social welfare organizations. Taking advantage of gaps in disclosure laws, they shield the identities of most of their donors and some of the recipients of the funds. Among those who’ve been paid by the groups are leading thinkers and individuals with close personal ties to Leo — including a whopping $7 million to a group run by a close friend and his wife. They also include a for-profit business for which Leo himself is chairman and which received tens of millions of dollars from his nonprofit network.
Why You Should Care That Ginni Thomas Is Bonkers
Ginni Thomas has long been one of the leaders of the right, and it turns out she’s a loon. This is not entirely a newsflash. Nine years ago, I revealed the existence of a new and secretive conservative outfit that Thomas had helped pull together. Called Groundswell, it assembled a collection of right-wingers in Washington, DC, for weekly meetings to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for “a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation,” according to a trove of its documents I obtained. The group included a host of far-right extremists, including Frank Gaffney (who had claimed Barack Obama was a secret Muslim); Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; tea party fanatic Allen West, a former member of Congress; Steve Bannon, then the executive chairman of Breitbart News Network; Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who would become a Fox News presence; Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the influential Federalist Society; a handful of conservative journalists; and others. A top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz was a Groundsweller.
Trump faces another 14th Amendment candidacy challenge, this time in Minnesota
The cases are seen as legal long shots. Trump denies wrongdoing and has vowed to fight to remain on the presidential ballot. The new Minnesota lawsuit was filed in state court by Free Speech For People, one week after another group initiated a similar challenge in Colorado.
A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says any American official who takes an oath to uphold the US Constitution is disqualified from holding future office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists.
Poverty rate jumps in 2022 after end of enhanced child tax credit
Some 12.4% of children were in poverty last year, up from a record low of 5.2% the year before and roughly comparable to where it was prior to the pandemic in 2019, based on a broader alternative measure developed by the Census Bureau. It was the largest jump in child poverty since the Supplemental Poverty Measure began in 2009. The measure takes into account certain non-cash government assistance, tax credits and needed expenses – addressing a major flaw in the official poverty rate, economists say.
Overall, the supplemental poverty rate was 12.4% for 2022, up from 7.8% a year earlier and higher than it was prior to the pandemic. It’s the first increase in the rate since 2010.
Lauren Boebert ditches the MAGA thing in Colorado
It’s no accident that Boebert’s profile in her home state these days is diverging from the Freedom Caucus rabble-rouser she’s known as on the Hill. After squeaking through a recount to a second term last fall against Democrat Adam Frisch — Boebert won by just 546 votes — it became clear that her rhetorical bomb-throwing was wearing on GOP voters.
Boebert is hardly the only member projecting a different version of herself in the Capitol than she does back home. But her embrace of a political split personality illustrates the limits of raucous Trump-first conservatism in a competitive district. Her Freedom Caucus stardom hasn’t immunized her from the risk of playing more to the GOP base than voters back home.
States Fights
‘Forced outing’ policy gets green light from Orange Unified
The majority passed the new parental notification policy with a vote of 4-0. Three board members who opposed the rule were not present for the vote, having left the room after a raucous protest erupted during public comment.
Those board members said in a joint statement that they left out of fear for their safety.
“By bringing culture wars into Orange Unified, the [board] majority has invited the most radical elements into our home,” the statement reads. “We can only imagine how difficult it is for our LGBTQ youth to exist in this toxic and hateful environment.”
Conservative members of the Orange Unified school board won a slim
majority of seats in November, and since then have led national culture war conversations around critical race theory, sex and gender curriculum, and the appropriateness of particular books.
Virginia's Glenn Youngkin Pardons Man Involved in Altercation Over Trans Restroom Policy
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has pardoned a man who was convicted of disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice in a confrontation over the sexual assault of his daughter in a school restroom — an assault that the father wrongly blamed on the school’s transgender-inclusive restroom policy.
Opinion: New Texas law deprives families of religious liberty rights
Each of Texas’ more than 1,000 school districts now has six months to vote on whether or not to create chaplain programs. There are no requirements to be called a “chaplain” outside of passing a background check. People allowed to serve as chaplains in this program are not barred from proselytizing and do not have to have any chaplaincy training or expertise in working with children or people from different faith traditions.
Women challenge abortion bans in three states after emergency care denied
Women who say they were denied abortions in medical emergencies have taken legal action in Idaho, Oklahoma and Tennessee, in the latest attempt to challenge abortion bans that, abortion patients and doctors say, prevent people from getting care even when their health is in danger.
The lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee, along with a federal complaint against a hospital in Oklahoma, were filed on Tuesday by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of women in Texas earlier this year. Tuesday’s filings were first reported by the Washington Post.
Florida surgeon general rejects FDA guidance, urges people under 65 not to get Covid booster
Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, speaking during a roundtable that DeSantis hosted, said that after three years of Covid, most healthy people don’t need to worry about getting infected from a virus that has killed more than 1 million people across the country. Ladapo is a well-known vaccine skeptic who has claimed some shots pose risks to healthy young men.
Some Florida church leaders blame DeSantis after racist Jacksonville shooting
The multicultural, multigenerational "Take Back the Mic" campaign illustrates how faith leaders in Florida and elsewhere are stepping up to fight for social justice in an atmosphere they see as increasingly hostile to the communities they’re tasked with serving.
Vocal Locals
Florida City Declares Itself LGBTQ+ Sanctuary
While about 40 cities, counties, and townships in Florida have LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances, Lake Worth Beach is the first to designate itself as a sanctuary city, according to numerous Florida media outlets, citing a press release from the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council.
“With so many LGBTQ+ people and allies fleeing Florida for less hostile states, we are thrilled Lake Worth Beach Mayor [Betty] Resch and the city commissioners continue to work to ensure the health, safety and well-being of LGBTQ+ people and our families,” said a statement from Rand Hoch, founder and president of the Human Rights Council.
Black churches in Florida buck DeSantis: 'Our churches will teach our own history.'
Friendship Missionary is among the more than 200 mostly Black churches in Florida taking steps to teach Black history in part because of what faith leaders call the restricted and “watered-down’’ versions schools must teach under the state’s new policies. Instead, pastors equipped with a new Black history toolkit are teaching unfiltered lessons during Sunday school, Bible Study or as part of sermons.
Faith in Florida, a coalition of churches advocating for social justice causes, created the online toolkit, which includes books, documentaries and videos related to Black history. The project, launched in July, aims to push back against state efforts to regulate Black history lessons. Florida is one of several states where mostly conservative lawmakers are leading movements to restrict some teachings of Black history.