Thread: Texas abortion vigilantism & Jim Crow

By now, ppl know that the TX abortion law was constructed to avoid lawsuit enforcement. But there's more to the story.

The law's tactics are the exact same that TX used a century ago under Jim Crow flux.community/stefanie-lindq…
The Texas abortion law bans enforcement by “any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state.”

This is how black Texans were deprived of their right to vote a century ago.
Because of the 14th Amendment, Texas could not explicitly ban former slaves from voting. What it did instead in 1923 was to ban them from voting in party primaries. This was struck down by SCOTUS in 1927 in Nixon v. Herndon.
In 1928, Texas responded by allowing political parties to determine who was eligible to vote in their primaries. State and local officials were banned from enforcing the law. Exactly the same as what's happened in 2021 with abortion.

The law was voided by SCOTUS in 1944.
Right-wing white Democrats refused to back down in their racism, however. They began pushing a "pre-primary" that was separate from the political party contests and then excluded black Texans once again.

This was also overturned in 1953's Terry v. Adams
The current SCOTUS could easily have referenced these cases when considering whether to stay the Texas law. Luckily, the civil rights case brought by DOJ does reference them.

Jim Crow has been reborn as Jane Roe. And once again, it is low-income black women who are the victim.
A friendly ping to @KarenAttiah who has been valiant in her educational efforts about the Texas law.
Whoops this should say "requires enforcement by anyone other than 'an officer or employee...'"

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More from @mattsheffield

15 Sep
Now that the #CARecall has collapsed and Larry Elder has lost overwhelmingly, let's talk about the history and future of CA Republicans (1/n)
First thing to remember is that like all Western states, California was historically Republican. This was true all the way through most of the 20th century. The only two presidents from CA were GOP, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
The future looks bleak for CA Republicans but it has been visible for decades, beginning in the 1990s when the state GOP ran ad campaigns trying to hit typical right wing fear campaigns of religion and immigration. They backfired though and actually drove voters away.
Read 12 tweets
9 Sep
This was an essential thing to say. Republican voters don't realize that their elites are vaccinated but have been lying to them in order to monetize ignorance.
If I had to guess, I would say that the reason Biden said "even Fox News" is because of a new Democratic strategy memo that shows how Americans are sick of GOP covid obstructionism. More from @ThePlumLineGS here: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
This is a strategy that has never been tried by Democrats before, telling Republican voters the truth: Their party manipulates to them constantly.

It is a strategy that actually has been proven by someone--Donald Trump. His entire 2016 primary campaign was based on it.
Read 8 tweets
9 Sep
Thread: Who is funding the #CARecall effort to get rid of Gavin Newsom? Luxury real estate developers, radical Christian supremacists, and hedge fund fat cats.

Please join me down the rabbit hole and share, if you wouldn't mind.
The biggest donor to the #CaliforniaRecallElection effort against Newsom is Geoff Palmer. He's a luxury condo developer who hates Newsom's plans to make more affordable housing in CA.

Palmer has donated $1.2 million ladowntownnews.com/news/geoff-pal…
Next on the list is John Kruger. He's a big donor to right-wing Christian schools focused on getting them government cash.

He originally tried to hide the $500,000 he donated to the recall effort behind a corporation named after a Bible verse, Proverbs 3:9. ...
Read 16 tweets
3 Sep
Thread: How the California recall scheme is part of a broader conservative effort to make democracy obsolete.

This is a summary of my latest for @DiscoverFlux: flux.community/matthew-sheffi…
A lot of people think that the effort by California Republicans to recall Gavin Newsom is just a ridiculous joke. It's anything but.

In fact, it's part of a decades-long conservative tradition of using legal trickery to shape the electorate so that they can with w/a minority.
This idea was stated explicitly in 1980 by Paul Weyrich, a Christian nationalist activist who started the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and the predecessor to the Christian Coalition.
Read 11 tweets
1 Sep
Exactly. It's a grave error to claim that people like Melissa from Florida just have mental problems. They may very well. But millions of ppl share her beliefs of fighting daily with Satan and his demons.

Here's one of many sites promoting this belief web.archive.org/web/2021072023…
People like Melissa from Florida are the core audience of Alex Jones, QAnon, Donald Trump, & any other right-wing grifter you can imagine. She and her church friends are the people they prey upon.

Jones et al have weaponized religious extremism for money and for political power.
It works bc right-wing media is a politico-religious "Matrix" for the weak-minded. People are totally mentally occupied w/an enormous array of programming across many formats.

For a brief look inside the giant Salem Media empire, see this from @anelsona flux.community/anne-nelson/20…
Read 5 tweets
1 Sep
The video of "Melissa," the disturbed woman from Lee County, FL, provided a great example of just how detached from reality that many far-right evangelicals have become.

This thread will show also how her delusions were being cheered on by right-wing elites and why (1/n)
First of all, if you haven't seen it, here is the clip via @RonFilipkowski. Melissa repeatedly states that she believes Covid masking is being pushed by "demonic entities," aka possessed human beings. This is "mark of the beast" delusion.
@RonFilipkowski People like her used to be shunned, even by conservatives. I know because people like her would crash the mic at Republican events I attended.

The one exception was donors. If they were crazy, that was loved. And monetized. See earlier related thread:
Read 13 tweets

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