Shari Rudavsky and Rachel Fradette, Reporters - Indianapolis Star / Cincinnati Enquirer
Stephan: You thought those stories of pregnant 11-year-olds needing an abortion were abstract hypotheticals? They are not, and here is the proof, and it's a 10 years old girl to boot. This is what America has come to.
Vivian Skovgard protests ouotside the Women’s Medicial Center in Kettering, Ohio Credit: Cincinnati Enquirer
Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.
Stephan: I'm sorry the Democrats don't really seem to understand what is happening, and Joe Biden, an honorable man, but not the leader we need, was trained for 36 years in negotiating in the Senate, which is quite different than leadership in the Executive Branch.
President Joe Biden speaks with governors on protecting access to reproductive healthcare on July 1, 2022 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Tasos Katopodis / Getty
The details of President Joe Biden’s deal with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer to a lifetime federal judgeship came into clearer focus on Friday, sparking fresh calls for top congressional Democrats to block the proposed agreement.
Slate‘s Mark Joseph Stern reported Friday that “McConnell will allow Biden to nominate and confirm two U.S. attorneys to Kentucky”—positions that are term-limited—if the president nominates Republican lawyer Chad Meredith to a post on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
“Under the arrangement, Meredith would take the seat currently occupied by Judge Karen Kaye Caldwell, a George W. Bush nominee,” Stern noted. “Caldwell submitted her move to senior status on June 22, which, once complete, will allow Meredith to take the seat. A lawyer with connections to the Kentucky governor’s office who is familiar with the agreement told Slate that Caldwell conditioned her move upon the confirmation of a successor—specifically, the conservative […]
Stephan: It is my opinion that we have just experienced a second coup. The first coup, which was not successful was the one cooked up by criminal Trump. The second, which has worked, is the one we are just now living through; the one carried out by the christofascist cabal on the Supreme Court. Here is why I think as I do.
Demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will create two Americas when it comes to abortion access — the mostly red states where abortion is illegal in most circumstances, and the mostly blue states where it is mostly available with restrictions. But this sudden cleaving in the United States will go far beyond abortion access, affecting healthcare, the criminal legal system and politics, at all levels, in the coming years.
We can’t know exactly how all of this will change. But we asked a group of historians, legal scholars and women’s health experts what they think will happen to the abortion landscape in the United States, and how that will affect law, politics, healthcare and society. Some thought the reversal of Roe would soothe political polarization by taking abortion out of national politics. Others thought the exact opposite would happen: Abortion would become a front-burner political issue at all levels, pushing our already-extreme polarization to boil over. Still others thought the decision wouldn’t […]
Stephan: The criminality of Trump is like something out of a bad novel. He is such a thug he puts mafia dons to shame. And yet he is never held accountable for any of it. If Merrick Garland's DoJ does not prosecute Trump and his orcs he will go down in history as the weakest most despicable attorney general in our history. A man who saw what was happening, understood what was happening, recognized the measure of criminality involved, and yet who did not act to save American democracy.
Donald Trump didn’t just conspire to overturn the election. He ripped off his own supporters while doing it.
Treason, it turns out, is a lucrative endeavor.
Attacking the establishment can line one’s pockets.
This has been a central insight of rightwing media — and not just of rightwing media. There’s a capitalist incentive to frame oneself as a brave dissenter against the existing power structure.
That’s not the only reason our public discourse is so divisive, incoherent, violent and useless. But it doesn’t help.
Paying for a coup
The J6 committee has shown how Trump was told repeatedly that there had been no fraud in the 2020 election. Nonetheless, he continued insisting in public that the election had been stolen.
His deliberate lies directly inspired rioters to storm the capital in an attempted coup. Trump didn’t just call for violence, though.
He also called for funds.
Trump claimed he needed money to mount a legal attack on election fraud — even though, again, he had been told there was no fraud. He said the money would go to an election […]
Caroline Kitchener and Devlin Barrett , - The Washington Post
Stephan: The anti-abortion sociopaths see the overturning of Roe as a beginning, not an ending. I don't think the Democrats ever really understood that point. In Red states, there will be efforts to limit a fertile female's right to travel, whether she is 10 or 40. These fanatics are also going to try to interrupt and control the U.S. Postal Service with the purpose of stopping women from ordering pharmaceuticals from a Blue state. The MAGAts see women as second class, even the female MAGAts believe this, although they would never say it that way. This is going to get very nasty.
Several national antiabortion groups and their allies in Republican-led state legislatures are advancing plans to stop people in states where abortion is banned from seeking the procedure elsewhere, according to people involved in the discussions.
The idea has gained momentum in some corners of the antiabortion movement in the days since the Supreme Court struck down its 49-year-old precedent protecting abortion rights nationwide, triggering abortion bans across much of the Southeast and Midwest.
The Thomas More Society, a conservative legal organization, is drafting model legislation for state lawmakers that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a resident of a state that has banned abortion from terminating a pregnancy outside of that state. The draft language will borrow from the novel legal strategy behind a Texas abortion ban enacted last year in which private citizens were empowered to enforce the law through civil litigation.
The subject was much discussed at two national antiabortion conferences last weekend, with several lawmakers interested in introducing these kinds of bills in […]
