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      Next Front Line in the Abortion Wars: State Supreme Courts

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      Court challenges to sweeping rollbacks of abortion rights must go through state supreme courts, many of which have been shaped by years of conservative activism.WASHINGTON — Fresh from the political thicket of the United States Supreme Court, the struggle over abortion is now moving to venues that are poised to become the next front line in the country’s partisan warfare: state supreme courts.In Florida, seven justices appointed by Republican governors will decide whether the State Constitution’s explicit right to privacy, which protected abortion rights in past rulings, remains a precedent. In Michigan, a court with a 4-3 majority of Democratic nominees has been asked to conclude whether a 91-year-old law banning abortions is constitutional. In Kentucky, a decision on a ban on almost all abortions appears bound to a Supreme Court composed largely of nonpartisan elected justices.In those states and others, the federal reversal of Roe v. Wade tosses one of the nation’s most politically explosive issues into courtrooms that, until recently, had operated mostly beneath the radar of national politics.The increasing political pressure on justices — and the rightward drift of some courts — suggests that options for abortion rights advocates to soften the impact of the federal abortion ruling may be limited. It also reflects how partisan politics is emerging as a driving force in how some justices rule.Abortion rights protesters gathered at the Florida Supreme Court in May.Kenny Hill/USA TODAY NETWORKOver the past decade or so, the national Republican Party and other conservative groups have spent heavily to move both state legislatures and courts rightward. The party’s Judicial Fairness Initiative says it has spent more than $21 million since its formation in 2014 to elect conservatives to state courts, and will spend more than $5 million this year. The Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative advocacy group that has been a principal backer of recent Republican nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, also has invested money in state supreme court races.The Democratic Party has also poured growing sums of money into court elections, as have allies like labor unions — but not as much, and not for as long, as have Republicans. But the rightward lurch of federal courts increasingly is leading progressives to see state courts as potential bulwarks against more conservative gains, said Joshua A. Douglas, an elections and voting rights scholar at the University of Kentucky.The right’s focus on the courts could pay off handsomely in legal battles over abortion, according to Douglas Keith, an expert on state judicial issues at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.Consider Iowa, whose Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the due process clause in the State Constitution guaranteed a right to abortion. Aided by an advertising campaign financed by the Judicial Crisis Network, the General Assembly then revised the judicial nominee process, handing more control to the governor, Kim Reynolds.Gov. Kim Reynolds has turned the Iowa Supreme Court into a conservative bastion.Nick Rohlman/The Gazette, via Associated PressMs. Reynolds, a Republican, turned the court into a conservative bastion. Last month, a week before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its ruling in Roe v. Wade, the Iowa justices reversed their own 2018 ruling on abortion.Montana also recognizes a constitutional right to abortion. In the nonpartisan primary election last month for one of its Supreme Court’s seven seats, both the Judicial Fairness Initiative and the state Republican Party spent money to ensure that a candidate endorsed by abortion opponents, James Brown, would oppose an incumbent judge, Ingrid Gustafson, in November. Ms. Gustafson was nominated to the bench in 2017 by the governor at the time, Steve Bullock, a Democrat.The reversal of abortion rights in Iowa “is not the last one we might see,” Mr. Keith said. “The lack of attention that these courts have gotten from the left, comparatively, is going to come home to roost.”From Opinion: The End of Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s decision to end ​​the constitutional right to abortion.David N. Hackney, maternal-fetal medicine specialist: The end of Roe “is a tragedy for our patients, many of whom will suffer and some of whom could very well die.”Mara Gay: “Sex is fun. For the puritanical tyrants seeking to control our bodies, that’s a problem.”Elizabeth Spiers: “The notion that rich women will be fine, regardless of what the law says, is probably comforting to some. But it is simply not true.”Katherine Stewart, writer: “​​Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.”A major test looms in Florida, where the State Constitution’s Bill of Rights declares that “every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life.”The Florida Supreme Court previously cited that explicit guarantee of privacy in striking down laws that restricted access to abortion. That precedent now appears endangered.In 2019, the last three justices who had been nominated by a Democratic governor retired. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has made opposition to abortion a centerpiece of a possible presidential campaign, replaced them with conservatives.From voting rights to redistricting, the State Supreme Court has ruled reliably in support of conservatives in recent years. Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political scientist who watches the court, said he believed that was unlikely to change.“I think the U.S. Supreme Court is sending a signal to justices in state high courts that precedent no longer matters,” he said. Dr. Smith predicted that the constitutional guarantee of privacy “will be whittled away” when the state court makes its abortion ruling.Attorney General Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, a Republican, on Sunday asked the State Supreme Court to issue an emergency order suspending a lower court decision allowing the state’s only abortion provider to remain open. The court denied the request on Tuesday.In elections to the State Supreme Court this fall, State Representative Joseph Fischer, perhaps the Legislature’s leading opponent of abortion, is running to unseat Michelle M. Keller, who was appointed to the court in 2013 by Steve Beshear, a Democrat who was then the governor.State Representative Randy Bridges gave a thumbs down as protesters chanted “bans off our bodies” at the Kentucky State Capitol in April.Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader, via Associated PressNational political parties and interest groups will focus their money and attention this fall on state supreme courts in four states — Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio — where elections could flip the courts’ majority from Democratic to Republican or vice versa. But other states could be in play.Six of seven justices on the Democratic-led Supreme Court in Kansas must stand for retention elections, and some are likely to become targets of Republicans infuriated by the court’s ruling in 2019 that abortion is a constitutional right. Arkansas Republicans are backing a former chairman of the state party against a Democratic incumbent justice in an effort to scrub remaining moderates from the already conservative court.Even more than abortion, the focus on state courts has reflected the politics of redistricting, particularly after a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that left oversight of partisan gerrymanders to state legislatures and courts. National Republicans say changing state supreme courts is the only way to stop Democrats from gaining power by successfully suing to overturn gerrymandered Republican political maps, a strategy they mockingly call “sue till it’s blue.”“If Republicans and conservatives want to control the redistricting process, then winning control of state legislatures is not enough. You also need to control the supreme courts,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee.Kelly Burton, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has backed many of those suits, said the battle was more about stopping a creeping autocracy than about changing political boundaries.“It’s about voting rights cases,” she said. “It’s about fights over access to abortion. And fundamentally, we’re trying to protect these courts as neutral arbiters, while Republicans want to make them less independent and more partisan.”Some justices say they feel caught in the middle as partisan pressures surge.Maureen O’Connor, a Republican who is chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, was threatened with impeachment by some in her party this spring after she voted with Democratic justices to strike down political maps gerrymandered by Republicans.To some people, she said, her vote on redistricting “shows integrity and independence and respect for the rule of law and the Constitution. To others, I am a traitor.”Chief Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court has campaigned for years to scrap the state’s system of partisan elections for judicial positions.Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty ImagesNathan Hecht, the chief justice of the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, has campaigned for years to scrap the state’s system of partisan elections for judicial positions. “Texas has one of the stupidest systems in the world,” he said, and he worries that growing partisanship will make it even worse.Still, he said he thought there was a good chance that as divisive issues like abortion “devolve down to the states, the states will find ways to reach a middle ground that federal lawmakers have not been able to find.” But he added, “I’m not going to bet on that.”On Friday, the Texas court lifted a lower-court freeze on a 1925 law that bans abortions and holds out the prospect of imprisonment for those who provide them. A full hearing on the law will be held later.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Justice Dept. Sues Arizona Over Voting Restrictions

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      It is the third time the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has sued a state over its voting laws.The Justice Department sued Arizona on Tuesday over a new state law requiring proof of citizenship to vote in a presidential election, saying the Republican-imposed restrictions are a “textbook violation” of federal law.It is the third time the department under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has challenged a state’s voting law and comes as Democratic leaders and voting rights groups have pressed Mr. Garland to act more decisively against measures that limit access to the ballot.Arizona’s law, which Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed in March, requires voters to prove their citizenship to vote in a presidential election, like showing a birth certificate or passport. It also mandates that newly registered voters provide a proof of address, which could disproportionately affect people with limited access to government-issued identification cards. Those include immigrants, students, older people, low-income voters and Native Americans.“Arizona has passed a law that turns the clock back by imposing unlawful and unnecessary requirements that would block eligible voters from the registration rolls for certain federal elections,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, told reporters on Tuesday.Ms. Clarke said that by imposing what she described as “onerous” requisites, the law “constitutes a textbook violation” of the National Voter Registration Act, which makes it easier to register to vote. The department said the law also ran afoul of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in asking election officials to reject voter registration forms based on errors or omissions that are not relevant to a voter’s eligibility.As of March, 31,500 “federal only” voters could be prevented from voting in the next presidential election under the new requirements if state officials are unable to track down their information in time to validate their ballots.Some voting rights groups contend that the number of affected voters could be even greater. But even a few thousand fewer votes could be decisive in Arizona, one of the most closely contested battleground states: In 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. defeated President Donald J. Trump in Arizona by about 10,000 votes.A spokesperson for Mr. Ducey did not immediately respond to requests for comment. When he signed the bill in March, Mr. Ducey said the law, expected to take effect in January, was “a balanced approach that honors Arizona’s history of making voting accessible without sacrificing security in our elections.”Arizona has been at the center of some of the most contentious battles over the 2020 election. Six months after the election, its Republican-led Senate authorized an outside review of the election in Maricopa County, an abnormal step that quickly devolved into a hotbed for conspiracy theorists. The state has also passed multiple laws that impose new restrictions to voting.Even before the Republican-controlled Legislature passed the measure, existing state law required all voters to provide proof of citizenship to vote in state elections. Federal voting registration forms still required voters to attest that they were citizens, but not to provide documentary proof.In 2013, the Supreme Court upheld that law but added that Arizona must accept the federal voter registration form for federal elections. That essentially created a bifurcated system in Arizona that would require documented proof of citizenship to vote in state elections but allow those simply registering with the federal voter registration form the ability to vote in federal elections.The new law could threaten the registrations of those voters, preventing tens of thousands of them from casting a ballot in presidential elections, voting rights groups contend.“There’s certainly going to be some people in Arizona that are not going to be able to vote under the proof-of-citizenship requirement,” said Jon Greenbaum, the chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and a former Justice Department lawyer.While the new law would have sprawling consequences for many groups, local election officials have noted that delivering documentary proof of citizenship can be especially hard among Native American populations, which were key to helping flip Arizona to Mr. Biden in 2020.“You may have folks who were born on reservations who may not have birth certificates, and therefore may find it very difficult to prove citizenship on paper somehow,” said Adrian Fontes, the former election administrator for Maricopa County and a current Democratic candidate for secretary of state. “Things of this nature have always been of great concern for election administrators in Arizona.”Shortly after taking office, Mr. Garland announced an expansion of the department’s civil rights division in response to a wave of laws introducing new voting restrictions after the 2020 election.In June 2021, the department sued Georgia over its sweeping new voting law that overhauled the state’s election administration and introduced a host of restrictions to voting in the state, especially voting by mail. In November, the department sued Texas over a provision limiting the assistance available to voters at the polls.Marc Elias, a Democratic elections lawyer who represented a group that filed a suit against Arizona earlier this year, said he was relieved to see the department follow through on Mr. Biden’s pledge last year to counter a threat from Republican-sponsored state laws he called the “most significant test to democracy” since the Civil War.“Adding the voice and authority of the United States is incredibly helpful to the fight for voting rights,” Mr. Elias said in an interview. More

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      Driver of Texas migrant death truck ‘did not know air conditioning was broken’

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      Driver of Texas migrant death truck ‘did not know air conditioning was broken’Homero Zamorano Jr is in custody with three other suspects in case of deaths of at least 53 migrants near San Antonio The driver of the trailer truck in which at least 53 migrants died before being abandoned in San Antonio this week did not realize the vehicle’s air conditioning system was broken, federal court documents said.The detail was contained in records explaining why investigators arrested a man with whom the driver exchanged text messages, in what is believed to be the deadliest migrant smuggling episode on the US-Mexico border.Texas tragedy highlights migrants’ perilous journey to cross US borderRead moreThe alleged driver of the truck, Homero Zamorano Jr, 45, and his alleged correspondent, Christian Martinez, 28, are among four people charged in connection with the discovery of the bodies in an industrial area of south-west San Antonio on Monday night.Authorities allegedly spotted Zamorano hiding in brush near the truck, pretending to be a passenger. The resident of Pasadena, Texas, was arrested after officers recovered surveillance video of him driving the rig through an immigration checkpoint.Zamorano’s arrest prompted agents to comb through his texts, finding he had sent messages to Martinez before and after the discovery of the dead migrants.The texts included a message containing an abbreviation asking “where you at”, sent around the time authorities spotted the rig and the corpses, making authorities suspect Martinez was involved in trying to sneak the migrants across the border illicitly.A confidential informant told agents of an alleged conversation with Martinez, investigators wrote in court documents filed under oath. During that conversation, Martinez allegedly identified Zamorano as the driver and said he “was unaware the air conditioning unit stopped working and was the reason why the [passengers] died”.Agents determined that the informant’s cellphone placed him “within several meters” of Martinez during the time of that alleged conversation, investigators wrote.Both Zamorano and Martinez face charges of plotting to illegally smuggle migrants into the US, leading to their deaths. They could get life in prison or the death penalty.Two Mexican nationals, Juan Claudio D’Luna Mendez, 23, and Juan Francisco D’Luna Bilbao, 48, were arrested and charged with illegally possessing guns after investigators found them at an address linked to the trailer truck. They face up to 10 years in prison if eventually convicted of those charges.Authorities were holding all four suspects in custody without bond.Officials believe the rig at the center of the case was carrying at least 64 migrants from countries such as Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. At least 40 men and 13 women died and 11 were hospitalized with heat-related conditions. The trailer had traveled through temperatures approaching 100F (38C).TopicsTexasUS politicsUS immigrationMigrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Two men charged after police find possible link to Texas migrant deaths

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      Two men charged after police find possible link to Texas migrant deathsMen were detained leaving home listed on registration papers for abandoned trailer truck where 53 migrants were found dead Two Mexican nationals at an address linked to the abandoned trailer truck where at least 53 migrants were found dead Monday evening in Texas have been charged with illegally possessing guns as federal authorities continue investigating the grim discovery.‘A free land for everyone’: San Antonio residents mourn tragic loss of livesRead moreJuan Claudio D’Luna Mendez and Juan Francisco D’Luna Bilbao were at a house in the 100 block of Arnold Drive in San Antonio, listed on the registration papers for the big rig that contained the bodies, which had been discovered abandoned in an industrial area of the Texas city, agents with the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms wrote in a criminal complaint.Local police were staking the building at the address when they saw the D’Lunas get into a Ford F-250. Officers stopped the pickup truck to question the men after they began driving off, said the criminal complaint, which was filed in federal court Tuesday.Officers said they obtained a warrant to search the house, and they found a shotgun, a rifle and three pistols divided among the men’s bedrooms. There was also a pistol in the F-250.Neither man could legally possess guns because they allegedly admitted that they were in the US from Mexico on visas that had expired and which they had overstayed, agents wrote in their complaint. They jailed both D’Lunas on illegal weapons possession charges, and a judge ordered both to be held without bond until at least Friday, records show.Either man could face up to 10 years in prison if eventually convicted as charged.Agents as of Wednesday had stopped short of directly connecting the D’Lunas to the deaths of the migrants. But it’s clear they are suspected of other illicit conduct.Authorities said three people whom police detained within hours of the bodies’ discovery were suspected of plotting to smuggle the migrants across the southern US border without permission.One of the detained was the driver of the rig, who had pretended to be a migrant passenger. The two others were initially described only as Mexican nationals, which the D’Lunas are.The attorney listed for D’Luna Mendez declined comment Wednesday. D’Luna Bilbao’s lawyer couldn’t immediately be reached.At least 53 people found in the trailer of the rig at the center of the case have died, and 11 more have been hospitalized. It is believed to be the nation’s deadliest smuggling episode on the US-Mexico border, reigniting the longstanding debate about American immigration policies.Officials believe the truck was carrying 67 migrants from countries such as Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. Forty of the dead so far were male, and 13 were female, said the medical examiner’s office in Bexar county, which includes San Antonio.The identities of fewer than 40 of the dead had been established as of Wednesday afternoon, authorities said, citing challenges in tracking down the names and relatives of people who furtively cross borders.Eleven people were hospitalized with dehydration and other heat-related illness, having been in a trailer that lacked water and air conditioning as it traveled through temperatures approaching 100F (38C).Texas’ governor, Greg Abbott, said the state’s public safety department would immediately begin adding more checkpoints for large trailer trucks on well-trafficked roadways in an effort to limit episodes like the one Monday.TopicsTexasUS politicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More

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      To the migrants who died in Texas, Biden is no different to Trump on immigration | Maeve Higgins

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      To the migrants who died in Texas, Biden is no different than Trump on immigrationMaeve HigginsThey were killed by this nation’s migration policies, our exclusionary laws, and our obsession with the closing southern border More than 50 men and women – the current count is 51, but it may well climb – were killed on Monday. They died trapped in a tractor-trailer rig and abandoned on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, in 100F (38C) heat. More than a dozen are in hospital, including children. The dead were migrants from Mexico and Central America. The local fire chief, Charles Hood, said the people in the truck were “hot to the touch” and that they had no water and no air conditioning inside the truck.That is how they died, but that is not why they died. They died because they had no safe route into the United States. And why is that? It is because of border controls and deadly, racist migration policies created and upheld by our government, Democrats and Republicans alike.Many of these policies, such as Title 42, which effectively bans people from seeking asylum under cover of Covid restrictions, are the same under Joe Biden as they were under Donald Trump. The same goes for Migrant Protection Protocols, or “Remain in Mexico”, which allows US border officers to return non-Mexican asylum seekers to dangerous locations in Mexico. Successive US governments have deliberately and relentlessly pushed against the human right to asylum. The post-mortem results will show whether heat, dehydration or suffocation killed the people in that truck. But, fundamentally, they were killed by this nation’s migration policies, our exclusionary laws and our multibillion-dollar obsession with the southern border and keeping Black and brown people out.Border security is primarily a federal responsibility, and in claiming that, the federal government must accept responsibility for the injury and deaths of migrants. State lawmakers are also to blame. At 6pm on Monday, the same time the truck was discovered, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, released a statement about ‘Operation Lone Star’, a controversial $2bn border security operation he launched last year. The statement claims that the multi-agency effort “has led to more than 265,500 migrant apprehensions” and leads with a boast that law enforcement has turned back 22,000 migrants from the border. That is what the people who died yesterday were up against; a need to move and few options to do so is what drove them to get into that truck.People move. We always have, we always will. We are just one species out of many in which migration is a natural event. What is not natural is the disproportionate death and suffering of people who cross borders – that is artificial, caused by dehumanizing migration policy. The same heat radiating through the truck in San Antonio is forcing people worldwide to move. The extreme temperatures caused by climate chaos and growing numbers of wars and conflicts mean more of us are on the move today than at any time since the second world war. The US is not alone in targeting and victimizing Black and brown migrants. Because of Europe’s draconian anti-migrant policies, people are regularly pushed back from European shores, with thousands left to drown in the Mediterranean Sea last year alone. Treating people as disposable has knock-on effects, and none are good. The Guardian’s reporting on the thousands of migrant worker deaths in Qatar shows that once our life is reduced to “migrant” status, it is in peril.How can we tolerate this? The people our governments exclude and target are rarely white; we see that clearly as Ukrainian refugees (the majority of whom are white) can fly into the US to claim asylum. Meanwhile, crossing by land, migrants on the border (predominantly Black and brown) are blocked from doing the same thing.The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, states on Twitter that he is a “Husband. Dad. Immigrant.” He puts those identifiers before his government role in his bio. And it was on Twitter that the husband, the dad, the immigrant, Mayorkas made a short statement about the deaths last night. He said he was heartbroken, called it a tragedy, and put it on smugglers. In this way, Mayorkas and the US government, past and present, dodge responsibility while actively endangering people on the move. They blame these deaths on the symptoms of an illness, but it’s an illness they cause. Among yesterday’s dead were husbands, dads and immigrants, too. Now they are ghosts and will haunt us until we make this right.
      Maeve Higgins is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS newsOpinionUS immigrationTexasUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      Texas tragedy highlights migrants’ perilous journey to cross US border

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      Texas tragedy highlights migrants’ perilous journey to cross US border The number of migrant deaths in 2021 was 650, a stark reminder of the human cost of US immigration policiesThe deaths of 50 migrants – traveling from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras – in terrible conditions in Texas has cast a spotlight on the immense risks people are willing to take to cross the US border in search of a better financial life or escaping violence in their native countries.Fifty migrants found dead inside abandoned Texas trailer truckRead moreLaura Peña, the legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, represents asylum seekers at the border. Responding to the tragedy in San Antonio, she said both the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and President Biden have “utterly failed people who are trying to seek safety by crossing the border”.“The closure of borders are forcing people to take more dangerous routes. That’s just the facts. It’s resulted in thousands of deaths across the border … And it’s a direct result of these efforts to harden the border and criminalize people instead of investing in processing – simple processing of people who are trying to seek asylum and refuge at our ports of entry at our borders.”The processes Peña is referring to are the same ones used to allow more than 3,000 Ukrainian refugees to enter the US at the border of Mexico.She added: “We’ve been advocating for a dignified, humane process at the border, where people are not forced to risk their lives. We’ve seen the ability of the federal government to do that. We saw all the resources come to bear for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, rapid humane processing at the border. But when it comes to Black and brown migrants, those same benefits are completely stripped away. They are not afforded across the board. It’s the underlying racism, and how and where both the federal and the state governments choose to militarize.”On Tuesday, Biden called the deaths “horrifying and heartbreaking”.“While we are still learning all the facts about what happened and the Department of Homeland Security has the lead for the investigation, initial reports are that this tragedy was caused by smugglers or human traffickers who have no regard for the lives they endanger and exploit to make a profit.“Exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit is shameful, as is political grandstanding around tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything possible to stop human smugglers and traffickers from taking advantage of people who are seeking to enter the United States between ports of entry.”The San Antonio fire chief, Charles Hood, said the people found were “hot to the touch”, suffering from heatstroke and heat exhaustion.The peak of summer in San Antonio, where temperatures remain consistently in the 90s or higher, is no deterrent to those seeking work or fleeing persecution. Nor is the prospect of being discovered by border patrol agents. The result of the treacherous journey, however, is the gruesome image of stacks of bodies.The number of migrant deaths in 2021 was 650, the most since 2014. The figure is a stark reminder of the human cost of US immigration policies, which generally limit the number of migrants able to seek asylum.Congressman Joaquín Castro, who represents the district that covers San Antonio, called for ending Title 42, the pandemic-era policy invoked by the Trump administration that allows for turning away migrants without offering them the chance to seek humanitarian protection ostensibly to prevent the spread of contagious diseases like Covid-19.Castro argued that was an immediate aid to the infrastructure of US immigration, which has been overwhelmed.The tragedy in San Antonio tonight, the loss of life, is horrific. My prayers are with the victims, their families and the survivors being treated in our community. May God bless them. We must end Title 42 which has put desperate, oppressed people in grave danger of death. https://t.co/P0l8YmtHmq— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) June 28, 2022
      More changes to US immigration law are imminent. The conservative-majority supreme court is also set to rule on Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers from Mexico to return home while awaiting the result of their pending immigration cases. Advocates argue the policy makes migrants face a forced return to the unsafe and vulnerable conditions from which they were escaping.And to avoid that, advocates say, migrants are willing to endure extremely dangerous conditions and risk everything in hopes of making the journey across the US border with Mexico.Biden tried to end the policy upon taking office, but was unsuccessful.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said: “If the supreme court prevents the Biden administration from ending Remain in Mexico, it will enshrine a new legacy for the United States – a legacy of turning its back on international commitments and sending people directly into harm’s way.”Though Monday’s grim discovery stood among the deadliest tragedies involving migrants, it is not the first of its kind in San Antonio. In 2017, 10 men traveling by tractor-trailer died, having gone without water, food and air conditioning for hours.Further south in Brooks county, Texas, 10 migrants traveling by van died after crashing into a utility pole last August.In Houston, six migrants died in an SUV after being chased by police through rainy weather in 2019.Advocates have long said that those episodes illustrate the risks migrants are willing to take to access the US and leave behind uncertain lives in their native countries.The Texas senator Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott quickly blamed Biden for the most recent deaths in San Antonio. Abbott said: “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”The condemnation of the president comes after members of the Texas GOP criticized Democrats such as gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke for calling for more meaningful gun control measures after the shooting deaths of 19 children and two of their teachers at a school in Uvalde.Following news of the dead in San Antonio, O’Rourke echoed calls for expanding avenues for legal migration to discourage human smuggling rings responsible for organizing such dangerous trips across the border.TopicsUS newsUS politicsTexasUS immigrationMexicoAmericasUS-Mexico borderfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Texas Republican party adopts far-right position that homosexuality is ‘abnormal’

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      Texas Republican party adopts far-right position that homosexuality is ‘abnormal’Delegates at biennial convention also approve platform declaring that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected The Republican party in Texas has officially adopted a series of extreme-right positions that includes claims Joe Biden was not legitimately elected and homosexuality is “abnormal”.In a platform adopted at its biennial convention in Houston, delegates voted to oppose “all efforts to validate transgender identity”, including the use of taxpayer funds for any “medical gender dysphoria treatments or sex change operations”.The anti-trans and anti-gay declarations are part of the state party’s new guiding principles, in a section titled homosexuality and gender issues, which contradict claims by some Republicans that the GOP wants to be more inclusive.I often hear Republicans say they want to make a “bigger tent” and to be more inclusive.It’s clear that many Texas Republicans don’t want LGBT+ people in it. Here’s some of the flyers being passed around at the TX GOP Convention: #txleg #txpol pic.twitter.com/3S7vDX9WfM— Sergio Martínez-Beltrán (@SergioMarBel) June 17, 2022
      Adopted planks include opposition to giving a special legal status to gay men or women, while supporting those who oppose homosexuality based on faith, religion or a belief in “traditional values”. Military personnel, prison inmates and young people struggling with body dysmorphia and gender identity issues are singled out as groups who should not receive care and treatment.The state party’s stance is a rebuke to Biden’s recent executive order designed to protect the LGBTQ+ community from a wave of state laws in Republican states such as Texas that prevent access to health care resources and ban the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.In another section dedicated to education, the platform calls for students in Texas to “learn about the humanity of the preborn child”, by witnessing a live ultrasound and the use of fetal baby models. The supreme court decision on abortion access is expected in the coming days, but Texas has already criminalized abortion in most cases.The resolution embracing falsehoods about the 2020 election stated that “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in favor of … Biden.” The state party rejects “the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”The resolution encouraged Republicans to “show up to vote” in the November midterms, and to “bring your friends and family, volunteer for your local Republicans and overwhelm any possible fraud”.The state party also supports further restriction on mail-in voting and for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark legislation which outlawed racial discrimination in elections, to be “repealed and not reauthorized”.Overall, the new platform provides more evidence of Texas Republicans moving further to the extreme right. Republicans, who control the legislature, governor’s mansion and every statewide office, have used their dominance to push through a swath of regressive laws in recent months including anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-migrant and anti-voting rights legislation.Steve Toth, the state representative for part of Montgomery county, a Houston suburb, denied the party was moving to the right. “Defense of marriage? Abortion? Second amendment? Where have we moved to the right?… The Republicans have always been strong defenders of constitutional family values.”TopicsTexasRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Texas Republicans Approve Far-Right Platform Declaring Biden’s Election Illegitimate

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      The platform, which was voted on at the Republican state party convention in Houston, was the latest sign of Texas conservatives moving further to the right.The Republican Party in Texas made a series of far-right declarations as part of its official party platform over the weekend, claiming that President Biden was not legitimately elected, issuing a “rebuke” to Senator John Cornyn for his work on bipartisan gun legislation and referring to homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”The platform was voted on in Houston at the state party’s convention, which concluded on Saturday.The resolutions about Mr. Biden and Mr. Cornyn were approved by a voice vote of the delegates, according to James Wesolek, the communications director for the Republican Party of Texas. The statements about homosexuality — as well as additional stances on abortion that called for students to “learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child” — were among more than 270 planks that were approved by a platform committee and voted on by the larger group of convention delegates using paper ballots. The results of those votes were still pending on Sunday, but Mr. Wesolek said it was rare for a plank to be voted down by the full convention after being approved by the committee.The resolutions adopting the false claims that former President Donald J. Trump was the victim of a stolen election in 2020 as well as the other declarations were the latest examples of Texas Republicans moving further to the right in recent months. Republicans control both chambers of the legislature, the governor’s mansion and every statewide office, and have used their dominance to push tough anti-abortion legislation, create supply-chain problems by temporarily adding additional state inspections at the border and renominate the Trump-backed state attorney general over a member of the Bush family in a primary runoff in May.Mr. Wesolek disputed the notion that the declarations were tied to the state party’s rightward tilt. “That was the will of the body,” Mr. Wesolek said on Sunday. “We pride ourselves on being a grass-roots party.”State party conventions in Texas have at times been venues for publicly airing internal rifts. In 2012, Gov. Rick Perry was loudly booed at the state Republican convention when he said he was backing the powerful lieutenant governor over Ted Cruz in a contested primary for Senate. On Friday, Mr. Cornyn — a key negotiator in the gun talks with Democrats — was booed by convention goers during a speech in which he tried to assure Republicans that the new legislation would not infringe on the rights of gun owners.The state party’s resolution embracing the baseless 2020 stolen-election claims stated that “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in favor of” Mr. Biden. The state party, the resolution continued, rejected “the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”The resolution encouraged Republicans to “show up to vote” in November, and to “bring your friends and family, volunteer for your local Republicans and overwhelm any possible fraud.”Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence in Washington last week.Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesState Representative Steve Toth, a Republican who represents part of Montgomery County, a Houston suburb, said he left the convention before voting on the resolutions, but he expressed support for them. He said he hoped the Biden resolution would “encourage Republicans and Democrats to come together and to call for a forensic audit” of the 2020 election.Jason Vaughn, 38, a Republican delegate from Houston, claimed credit for adding the “show up to vote” language in the Biden resolution. “My fear is that if we keep telling people the election was stolen, they’re going to not go and vote,” Mr. Vaughn said.Mary Lowe, a delegate from the Fort Worth suburbs who was focused on education issues at the convention, said she was surprised the 2020 election results were a focus of attention by her Republican colleagues. But, she added, “I don’t know too many people that felt that Biden won.”Ms. Lowe, the chairwoman of the Tarrant County chapter of a group known as Moms for Liberty, said she was among those delegates openly critical of Mr. Cornyn. But she added that she was embarrassed by the booing and did not participate in it.“I don’t believe that booing is polite,” Ms. Lowe said. “I feel elected officials should be treated with proper decorum.”Jamie Haynes, 47, a Republican delegate who lives in the Texas Panhandle with her husband and who says that, together, they own “a lot of guns,” said the boos directed at Mr. Cornyn showed there was a “resounding strong opinion that Republicans do not want their gun rights shaved — not just taken away — but even just shaved in any form.”The resolution rebuking Mr. Cornyn that passed at the convention opposed red flag laws, which allow guns to be seized from people deemed to be dangerous. Those laws, according to the resolution, “violate one’s right to due process and are a pre-crime punishment of people not adjudicated guilty.”The homosexuality plank passed the platform committee by a vote of 17 to 14, according to Mr. Vaughn, an openly gay member of the committee who voted against it.“It does nothing to move us forward as a party and gain voters,” he said in a video of the committee meeting. In an interview, Mr. Vaughn said the shift at the convention was the result of a small number of people who “make the process miserable because they want to do all this extreme, far-right stuff.”Mr. Toth disagreed, saying that on abortion, gay rights and the 2020 election, the Republican Party has been consistent in sticking to its conservative principles. “Defense of marriage? Abortion? Second Amendment? Where have we moved to the right?” he asked. “The Republicans have always been strong defenders of constitutional family values.”One Texas congressman and Democrat, Representative Colin Allred, called the Republican Party’s actions regressive.“The Texas Republican Party is trying to take us back to a time when women couldn’t make decisions about their own bodies and when Americans lived in fear that they would be punished for being themselves,” Mr. Allred said in a statement. More