Last week's newsletter
#RoeVWade
#Uk
#vietnamwar
#climate
#goldmining
#Belarus
#EU
look.substack.com/p/eight-things…
1/ an excerpt from our lead story in last week's newsletter, on the leaked #RoeVWade decision:
"The most discouraging aspect of the leaked Roe draft opinion is its intention to vest in state legislatures final authority on abortion rights,
2/...with a directive that women seeking reproductive autonomy should vote, lobby or run for elective office to obtain their desired policy outcome.
3/ The Court’s instruction that women should rely on their voting rights is disingenuous in light of the Court’s own recent decisions that have weakened voting rights, decisions which have,
4/ ….. (i) Gutted the voter protections of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act;
,,,,, (ii) Upheld new voting restrictions that impose voting impediments on targeted communities; and
5/ ….. (iii) Proclaimed that federal courts have no power to rule on partisan gerrymandering, despite evidence that gerrymandering imperils democracy by providing an unfair structural advantage to one political party.
#RoeVWade
6/ The Roe draft opinion then feigns ignorance over the political repercussions of its decision, even though Justices joining the opinion, mindful of those political dimensions, misrepresented their views on Roe during their confirmation hearings.
7/ In entrusting state legislatures with authority over women’s reproductive rights, the Court turns a blind eye to recent evidence of the willingness of elected representatives to harm their own constituents for partisan advantage.
#RoeVWade
8/ ….. (i) Twelve states continue to refuse federal funds for Medicaid expansion made available in 2014 under the Affordable Care Act, leaving millions uninsured;
9/ ….. (ii) Twenty-six states withdrew federal funds for unemployed workers months early, during a time of massive covid-related layoffs, to ‘encourage’ out-of-work residents to find a job; and
10/….. (ii) A handful of states have refused components of federal aid to combat the covid pandemic, such as funds to expand covid testing.
11/Trusting state legislatures with final authority over matters of personal liberty ignores the blighted American history of state-enacted restrictions on liberty imposed under the aegis of ‘states’ rights,’ and the pivotal role of federal intervention in upholding those rights.
12/ No restrictions were more egregious than state laws and regulations enshrining racial segregation, and no one embodied their cruelty better than Alabama Governor George Wallace.
13/ “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.” — Wallace, Jan. 14, 1963
14/ When Wallace was inaugurated as governor of Alabama, the Brown decision requiring the desegregation of schools had been federal law for nine years; but the law had been ignored in Alabama and other southern states.
15/And Wallace made it clear that he'd oppose any federal implementation of desegregation laws in Alabama, claiming integration caused crime and unemployment.
"I shall refuse to abide by any such illegal federal court order even to the point of standing in the schoolhouse door."
16/ In June 1963, six months after Wallace’s inauguration, the NAACP, with the support of the Kennedy Justice Department, organized a challenge to the University of Alabama’s refusal to enroll Black students.
17/Three Black students with sterling credentials applied for admission to the University and a federal district court ordered that they be admitted, forbidding Wallace from interfering.
18/ On the day that two of the students planned to enter a campus auditorium to complete their student registration, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and a three-car motorcade of federal marshals accompanied them.
19/ And there, in the schoolhouse doorway, stood Wallace, as promised, surrounded by a group of state troopers and local media, with Ku Klux Klansmen nearby.
20/When Katzenbach confronted Wallace, demanding that the students be allowed to enter the building, Wallace refused to step aside, calling the fed intervention a “frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges &sovereignty of this State by the Federal Government."
21/ President Kennedy then placed the Alabama National Guard under federal control and ordered a guard division to proceed to the campus.
Four hours later, one hundred guardsmen escorted the Black students into Foster Auditorium, where they completed their student registration.
22/ That night, in a nationally televised address, Kennedy called for the enactment of a comprehensive civil rights bill.
23/ The Civil Rights Act of 1964, largely written by Katzenbach, was enacted a year later, capping a years-long struggle of Black Americans to obtain federal protection for personal liberties that had been denied to them under discriminatory state laws.
24/ But Governor Wallace wasn’t done.
A provision of the Civil Rights Act required that local school districts comply with integration orders to remain eligible for federal funding.
25/ In 1966, 3 years after his standoff w/ Katzenbach, Wallace proposed a new state law to forbid Alabama schools from entering into desegregation agreements with the federal government, even though the proposed state law would place $24 million in federal school funding at risk.
26/ And the Alabama legislature fell in line, approving the Wallace bill almost unanimously, despite the threatened loss of fed funds. Soon after, several Alabama schools withdrew from desegregation plans that had been previously negotiated with the federal Office of Education.
27/ This is a story about the power of state governments.
This is a story that the Supreme Court would ask American women to ignore."
/fin
#RoeVWade
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