US constitution and civil liberties

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Samuel Alito assured Ted Kennedy in 2005 of respect for Roe, diary reveals

      by

      Samuel Alito assured Ted Kennedy in 2005 of respect for Roe, diary revealsExcerpts reported by biographer show Alito, who wrote June ruling that outlawed abortion, said he was ‘big believer in precedents’ In a private meeting in 2005, Samuel Alito, who would become the US supreme court justice who wrote the ruling removing the federal right to abortion, assured Ted Kennedy of his respect for Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 court decision which made the procedure legal in the US.“I am a believer in precedents,” Alito said, according to diary excerpts reported by the Massachusetts senator’s biographer, John A Farrell, on Monday. “People would find I adhere to that.”Alito and Kennedy met regarding Alito’s nomination by George W Bush. The nominee also said: “I recognise there is a right to privacy. I think it’s settled.”Seventeen years later, in his ruling removing the right to abortion, via the Mississippi case Dobbs v Jackson, Alito said the entitlement had wrongly been held to be protected as part of the right to privacy.“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” he wrote this June.The late Kennedy, a younger brother of US president John F Kennedy, who spent 47 years in the Senate, also questioned Alito about a memo he wrote as a justice department clerk in 1985, outlining his opposition to Roe. Alito told Kennedy he had been trying to impress his bosses.“I was a younger person,” Alito said. “I’ve matured a lot.”According to Farrell, Alito told Kennedy his views on abortion were “personal” but said: “I’ve got constitutional responsibilities and those are going to be the determining views”.Alito was confirmed to the supreme court by the senate, 58 votes to 42. Kennedy voted no.Farrell reported the excerpts from Kennedy’s diary in the New York Times. A spokesperson for Alito “said he had no comment on the conversation”.Kennedy died in 2009, aged 77. His Senate seat was filled by a Republican, Scott Brown, who was subsequently defeated by Elizabeth Warren, who quickly emerged as a leading progressive. In June, after Alito’s ruling removed the right to abortion, Warren was a leading voice of liberal anger.“After decades of scheming,” she said, “Republican politicians have finally forced their unpopular agenda on the rest of America.”01:54Susan Collins, a Maine Republican but a supporter of abortion rights, said she had been misled in a meeting similar to that between Kennedy and Alito.Collins said that in the 2018 meeting, when asked about Roe, Brett Kavanaugh told her to “start with my record, my respect for precedent, my belief that it is rooted in the constitution and my commitment to the rule of law” and added: “I understand precedent and I understand the importance of overturning it.”In 2022, Kavanaugh sided with Alito and three other conservatives in removing the right to abortion.Collins said: “I feel misled.”Discussing Alito’s meeting with Kennedy, Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor and legal ethics specialist, told the Times: “No serious court watcher can doubt that what Alito said in Dobbs he deeply believed in 2005. And long before then.”Farrell’s previous books include a biography of Richard Nixon. On Monday, reviewing Ted Kennedy: A Life, the Associated Press wrote: “Teddy lived long enough for his flaws to be fully exposed. All are laid bare in this book – the drinking, the infidelity, the selfishness, the casual cruelty, the emotional isolation.“The central riddle of Kennedy is how these weaknesses existed alongside the benevolence, loyalty, perseverance and wisdom that made him one of the most influential senators in modern American history.”The AP review noted Kennedy’s silence during another supreme court nomination, that of Clarence Thomas in 1991, writing: “When Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment, Kennedy was in no position to help lead the fight against him. He passed his time at the confirmation hearings by doodling sailboats, and Thomas was confirmed.”In June this year, Thomas joined with Alito to overturn Roe v Wade. In a concurring opinion, he suggested other privacy based rights could be next, including the rights to contraception and same-sex marriage.TopicsRoe v WadeAbortionUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsEdward KennedynewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the US constitution

      by

      Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the US constitution By taking over state legislatures, Republicans hope to pass conservative amendments that cannot be electorally challengedSteve Bannon, the former chief strategist in the Trump White House who is at the forefront of the Republican march toward hard-right populism, is throwing his weight behind a movement to radically rewrite the US constitution.Bannon has devoted recent episodes of his online show the War Room to a well-funded operation which has stealthily gained ground over the past two years. Backed by billionaire donors and corporate interests, it aims to persuade state legislatures to call a constitutional convention in the hope of baking far-right conservative values into the supreme law of the land.The goal is, in essence, to turn the country into a permanent conservative nation irrespective of the will of the American people. The convention would promote policies that would limit the size and scope of the federal government, set ceilings on or even abolish taxes, free corporations from regulations, and impose restrictions on government action in areas such as abortion, guns and immigration.“This is another line of attack strategically,” Bannon told his viewers last month. “You now have a political movement that understands we need to go after the administrative state.”By “administrative state”, Bannon was referring to the involvement of the federal government and Congress in central aspects of modern American life. That includes combating the climate crisis, setting educational standards and fighting health inequities.Mark Meckler, a founder of the Tea Party who now leads one of the largest groups advocating for the tactic, the Convention of States Action (Cosa), spelled out some of the prime objectives on Bannon’s show. “We need to say constitutionally, ‘No, the federal government cannot be involved in education, or healthcare, or energy, or the environment’,” he said.Meckler went on to divulge the anti-democratic nature of the state convention movement when he said a main aim was to prevent progressive policies being advanced through presidential elections. “The problem is, any time the administration swings back to Democrat – or radical progressive, or Marxist which is what they are – we are going to lose the gains. So you do the structural fix.”The “structural fix” involves Republican state legislatures pushing conservative amendments to America’s foundational document. By cementing the policies into the US constitution, they would become largely immune to electoral challenge.Were a convention achieved, it would mark the zenith of conservative state power in American politics. Over the past 12 years, since the eruption of the Tea Party, Republicans have extended their grip to more than half of the states in the country, imposing an increasingly far-right agenda on the heartlands.Now the plan is to take that dominance nationwide.Article V of the constitution lays out two distinct ways in which America’s core document, ratified in 1788, can be revised. In practice, all 27 amendments that have been added over the past 244 years have come through the first route – a Congress-led process whereby two-thirds of both the US House and Senate have to approve changes followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states. Meckler, working alongside other powerful interest groups and wealthy rightwing megadonors, is gunning for Article V’s second route – one that has never been tried before. It gives state legislatures the power to call a constitutional convention of their own, should two-thirds of all 50 states agree.A bar chart of party control of state legislatures since 1978.The state-based model for rewriting the US constitution is perhaps the most audacious attempt yet by hard-right Republicans to secure what amounts to conservative minority rule in which a minority of lawmakers representing less-populated rural states dictate terms to the majority of Americans. Russ Feingold, a former Democratic US senator from Wisconsin, told the Guardian that “they want to rewrite the constitution in a fundamental way that is not just conservative, it is minoritarian. It will prevent the will of ‘we the people’ being heard.”Feingold has co-authored with Peter Prindiville of the Stanford constitutional law center The Constitution in Jeopardy, a new book that sounds the alarm on the states-based convention movement. “Our goal is not to scare people, but to alert them that there is a movement on the far right that is quietly getting itself to a point where it will be almost impossible to stop a convention being called,” he said.His urgency is underlined by how active the movement has become. A convention resolution framed by Cosa has passed so far this year in four states – Wisconsin, Nebraska, West Virginia and South Carolina.The group has also been busy around November’s midterm elections, using its muscle and some $600,000 (£528,252) of its reserves to support candidates amenable to the idea. “We have built the largest grassroots activist army in American history,” Meckler told Bannon, probably hyperbolically.Bannon’s other guest on the War Room, Rick Santorum, a former Republican US senator from Pennsylvania who advises Cosa, told Bannon: “This is something that can happen very quickly. We are a lot further along than people think.”They are also much better funded than people might think. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), which monitors the constitutional convention movement, estimates that it pulled in $25m (£22m) in 2020, the last year for which figures are known. The funds were split between Cosa and other influential groups on the right. They include the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), a network of state politicians and corporate lobbyists which has taken up the cry for a constitutional amendment to force balanced budget restrictions on Washington.Much of the income is dark money, with the origins hidden. CMD has managed to identify some key donors – among them the Mercer Family Foundation set up by reclusive hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, and a couple of groups run by Leonard Leo, the mastermind behind the rightwing land grab in the federal courts.More than $1m (£880,265) has also been donated in the form of Bitcoin.The attraction to these groups and donors of pursuing a states route to rewriting the US constitution is easily explained. Over the past 12 years, since the eruption of the Tea Party in 2010, Republican activists have deployed extreme partisan gerrymandering to pull off an extraordinary takeover of state legislatures.Bannon is not finished: his ‘precinct strategy’ could alter US elections for yearsRead moreIn 2010, Republicans controlled both chambers of just 14 state legislatures. Today, that number stands at 31. “Republicans are near the high watermark in terms of their political control in the states, and that’s why the pro-Trump rightwing of the party is increasingly embracing the constitutional convention strategy,” said Arn Pearson, CMD’s executive director.Should a convention be achieved, the plan would be to give states one vote each. There is no legal or historical basis for such an arrangement but its appeal is self-evident.One vote per state would give small rural conservative states like Wyoming (population 580,000) equal leverage to large urbanized progressive states like California (39.5 million). Collectively, small states would be in the majority and control would tip to the Republicans.Last December Santorum spelled out this minoritarian vision at a private ALEC meeting. In an audio recording obtained by CMD, Santorum said: “We have the opportunity, as a result, to have a supermajority, even though we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”Pearson decried such thinking as “a profoundly anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic strategy that gives small rural states most control”.With the counting system skewed towards the conservative heartlands, the list of amendments that might be pursued is disconcertingly large. Though Meckler and his allies largely avoid talking about culture war issues, it is quite conceivable that a nationwide ban on abortion and a rescinding of gay marriage would be on the table.More openly, advocates have talked about imposing balanced budget requirements on the US government that would dramatically shrink federal resources. Some have even proposed making income tax unconstitutional.One of the more popular ideas circulating within rightwing constitutional convention circles, initially floated by the talk show host Mark Levin, is that states should grant themselves the ability to override federal statutes and supreme court rulings. It is hard to see how the federal rule of law could be sustained under such an arrangement with its unmistakable civil war undertones.Under Article V, 34 states would have to call for a constitutional convention to reach the two-thirds requirement. Cosa has so far succeeded in getting 19 states to sign up, with a further six in active consideration.ALEC, which sets a narrower remit for a convention focused on its balanced budget amendment, has gone further with 28 states on board.Either way, there is a shortfall. To address it, constitutional convention leaders have invented increasingly exotic mathematical formulas for attaining the magic number, 34. “We used to call it fuzzy math, now we call it wacky math,” Pearson said.Advocates filed a lawsuit in Texas in February that tried to get the courts to force a constitutional convention on grounds that they had reached 34 states already – they cobbled together unrelated state convention calls, including some dating back to the 1800s. In July two bills were also introduced to the US House requiring Congress to call a convention immediately.David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the willingness to adopt outlandish logic should sound further alarm bells. It raised the stakes even higher for the November elections.“The midterms are crucial,” Super said. “Changes at state-level matter, but will not get them to 34 states. If they can take control of Congress, they could bridge the gap.”Paradoxically, what happens to Congress in the midterms could have the biggest impact on the future prospects of a states-based constitutional convention. Should the Republicans take back control of the US House and Senate they would be in a position to advance radical Republicans’ demands.“We’ve already seen a willingness to play fast and loose with the math on all sorts of things in Congress,” Super said. “I would not be surprised if they were to make a serious attempt to adopt one of these bizarre accounting theories should they take control of both chambers in November.”That could mean a rapid dash for a convention before most Americans would have woken up to the danger.“If the Republicans prevail in Congress, they could try to call a convention right away,” Feingold said. “People should know that when they go to vote in November – this could fundamentally undermine their rights in a way that is both disturbing and permanent.”TopicsSteve BannonUS politicsUS constitution and civil libertiesRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      New York enacts new gun restrictions in response to supreme court decision

      by

      New York enacts new gun restrictions in response to supreme court decisionAfter court overturned 1911 New York law, state lawmakers produced act to create ‘gun-free zones’ and strengthen gun control measures After a federal judge said New York could implement gun restrictions passed after the US supreme court struck down a century-old law, the state attorney general saluted “a victory in our efforts to protect New Yorkers”.Texas judge overturns state ban on young adults carrying gunsRead more“Responsible gun control measures save lives and any attempts by the gun lobby to tear down New York’s sensible gun control laws will be met with fierce defense of the law,” Letitia James said on Wednesday night.In June, in the aftermath of mass shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned a New York law passed in 1911.The law said anyone wanting to carry a handgun in public had to prove “proper cause”.Justice Clarence Thomas said the 111-year-old law was a violation of the second amendment right to bear arms and also the 14th amendment, which made second-amendment rights applicable to the states.“Apart from a few late-19th-century outlier jurisdictions,” Thomas wrote, “American governments simply have not broadly prohibited the public carry of commonly used firearms for personal defense.”In dissent, Stephen Breyer, a liberal, wrote: “In 2020, 45,222 Americans were killed by firearms. Since the start of this year there have been 277 reported mass shootings – an average of more than one per day.”The same source, the Gun Violence Archive, now puts that total at 450.Breyer wrote: “Gun violence has now surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. Many states have tried to address some of the dangers of gun violence … the court today severely burdens states’ efforts to do so.”Joe Biden said: “I call on Americans across the country to make their voices heard on gun safety. Lives are on the line.”Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, said: “The supreme court is setting us backwards … This decision is not just reckless, it’s reprehensible.”Hochul called the legislature back into session. It produced the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, or CCIA.As defined by James, the CCIA “strengthens requirements for concealed carry permits, prohibits guns in sensitive locations, allows private businesses to ban guns on their premises, enhances safe storage requirements, requires social media review ahead of certain gun purchases, and requires background checks on all ammunition purchases to protect New Yorkers”.The law was challenged by the Gun Owners of America and the Gun Owners Foundation. On Wednesday, the GOA said the CCIA “would essentially make all of NY a gun-free zone and infringes upon the rights of its citizens”.Judge Glenn Suddaby, of the US district court in the northern district of New York, said the two gun groups lacked standing to bring the case.But Suddaby also indicated support, describing “a strong sense of the safety that a licensed concealed handgun regularly provides, or would provide, to the many law-abiding responsible citizens in the state too powerless to physically defend themselves in public without a handgun”.An appeal is likely. The CCIA went into effect on Thursday.On Wednesday the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, said: “The US supreme court’s … decision was the shot heard round the world that took dead aim at the safety of all New Yorkers.“New York City will defend itself against this decision, and, beginning tomorrow, new eligibility requirements for concealed carry permit applicants and restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons in ‘sensitive locations’, like Times Square, take effect.”The new law has prompted a change in what New York City authorities officially consider to be Times Square. As the New York Times reported, the new boundaries extend far beyond the traffic-choked and neon-blitzed Midtown hub known to tourists worldwide but largely avoided by locals.Under CCIA, the Times Square “gun free zone” will run “from Ninth to Sixth Avenues and from 53rd to 40th Streets and consists of about three dozen blocks”, the paper said.One New Yorker interviewed by the Times dismissed the idea that the Port Authority Bus Terminal, on Eighth Avenue, could be considered part of Times Square, even in order to make it a gun-free zone.“Nah,” Robert Govan, 62, told the city’s paper of record. “No way. Not going to happen.”TopicsNew YorkUS gun controlUS politicsUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Chile is updating its constitution for the 21st century. The US should follow its lead

      by

      Chile is updating its constitution for the 21st century. The US should follow its leadDavid AdlerThe US constitution used to be considered a model for democracies around the world – but its antiquated institutions and absence of rights have guaranteed its declining influence “Every constitution,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in a 1789 letter to James Madison, “naturally expires at the end of 19 years.” Two centuries after its expiration date, citizens of the United States are suffering the consequences of a constitution drafted by 55 men who owned hundreds of human slaves, thousands of acres in landed estates, and millions of dollars in inherited wealth. Fundamental rights denied, foundational institutions paralyzed and existential crises ignored: these are side-effects of a legal framework that has not been meaningfully amended in over a half-century.The US is not alone. Scores of constitutions around the world were written by dictators, colonizers and military occupiers to enshrine institutions that are undemocratic by design and unfit to cope with crises like a rapidly heating planet. In some cases, like the UK, the constitution was never actually written at all, setting the political system on a precarious foundation of norms and conventions that leaders like Boris Johnson have proven all too eager to discard. When a cross-party committee convened in 2013 to review the UK’s constitutional chaos, its recommendation was nothing short of radical: that the government should consider “preparations for a UK-wide constitutional convention”.But while both the US and the UK remain trapped in constitutional deadlock, the Republic of Chile has just concluded its own nationwide convention to replace the 1980 decree by the dictator Augusto Pinochet and his military government. The product of the convention is a visionary document that would not only update, expand and advance Chileans’ basic rights – to health, housing, abortion, decent work and a habitable planet – but also set a new standard for democratic renewal in the 21st century.Like that of the United States, the current Chilean constitution was written under extremely undemocratic conditions. Pinochet came to power in a bloody coup to overthrow President Salvador Allende, and set to work designing a constitution that would consolidate executive power, constrain democratic representation, and enshrine free market fundamentalism. Along with a clique of economists known as the “Chicago Boys” for their training at the University of Chicago, Pinochet set the country on a path of such extreme neoliberalization that Chile would become the only country in the world with a constitutionally privatized water system.The consequences of the Pinochet constitution were all too easy to predict – and will be too familiar to readers in the US from which its ideas were sourced. Inequality soared: Chile became the most unequal country in the OECD, with an income gap 65% higher than the OECD average; the combined wealth of its billionaires totals 25% of GDP. Debt exploded: Chile’s tuition fees rank among the highest in the world, trapping students in cycles of debt repayment that can last a lifetime. Precarity accelerated: the percentage of jobs on short-term contracts has grown to 30, while roughly half of all workers report being unable to save enough to fund their retirement. Even its famous system of privatized water crashed: millions of Santiago residents are regularly left without access to running water, as Chile moves into a period of severe water stress.In October 2019, millions of Chileans took to the streets to protest these intolerable conditions. Kicked off by a hike in public transportation fares by sitting president Sebastián Piñera, the protests quickly grew into a revolt against the country’s entire constitutional order – its neoliberal orthodoxy, its authoritarian governance, its absence of human rights protections that were on display in both Pinochet’s murderous regime and Piñera’s violent repression of the 2019 protests. “Constituyente o nada!” the protesters shouted: constituent assembly or nothing. One year later, Chileans turned out in record numbers to vote in a special plebiscite organized in the wake of the protest movement: 78% voted for a new constitution, and 79% for a convention of elected citizens to write it, rather than career politicians.At a time when democracies are ravaged by violent polarization, Chile’s convention has charted a path to peaceful renovation. Led by women, the convention brought together workers, Indigenous peoples and parties from across the political spectrum to draft a new constitution over the course of a year of careful deliberation. The result is a document that responds directly to the escalating crises of inequality, insecurity and a changing climate. The constitution establishes new universal public services for health, education, and clean water. It endows nature with rights and protects Chile’s glaciers, parks and big bodies of water from environmentally disastrous mining. And – four decades after Pinochet’s decree – it finally turns Chile into a full democracy, with gender parity in public institutions, self-determination for Indigenous peoples, collective bargaining for all workers and the right to vote for all Chileans over the age of 16.But the campaign to de-legitimate Chile’s constitution is already under way. Even before the convention had taken its seat, commentators at the Wall Street Journal had labeled it a “suicide mission”. Since then, a relentless “digital war” has been waged to discredit the new constitution by spreading lies and disinformation about its contents. One sitting Chilean senator falsely claimed that the constitution would change the country’s name, flag and national anthem, in a video that went viral across the country. Gender parity is mocked as “woke”. Worker rights are “divisive”. And Indigenous sovereignty is the path to an “Indigenous monarchy”. In its editorial instructing Chileans to vote against the new constitution, the Economist put the new text on a roll of toilet paper. The goal of the attacks is simple: to scare Chileans into a defense of an indefensible status quo.But Chileans are undeterred. After all, the Economist praised the “rapid success” of the Pinochet coup back in 1973, and most of the parties that presently call to reject the new constitution are the same ones that voted to keep Pinochet in power in the 1988 plebiscite that ended his rule. More than a month before the September vote, the coalition to support the new constitution is growing around the world, exciting everyone from feminists to evangelicals, US politicians to University of Chicago professors. “It’s kind of a miracle that it’s come this far,” said Tom Ginsburg, a University of Chicago professor. The “Apruebo” vote is still trailing in the polls, but enthusiasm for the plebiscite is on the rise. “This 4th of September, it will once again be the people who will have the last word on their destiny,” President Gabriel Boric said.But their destiny is ours, too. In the 20th century, the US constitution reigned as the model to be emulated by democracies around the world. No longer: its antiquated institutions and an absence of rights have guaranteed its declining influence. Now, Chile has shown the way to a new constitutional order – rich with rights, responsive to the needs of both people and planet – that can set an example for the world in the 21st century. Because, as even Thomas Jefferson recognized in 1789, “the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead”. From Chile back to the US, may a new movement for democratic renewal now come to life.
      David Adler is a political economist and general coordinator of the Progressive International
      This article was amended on 28 July 2022 to reflect that Gabriel Boric is not part of the Apruebo campaign; as president, he can only advocate for participation, not a single side
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS constitution and civil libertiesChileAmericasLaw (US)commentReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Alarm as US supreme court takes a hatchet to church-state separation

      by

      Alarm as US supreme court takes a hatchet to church-state separation A series of court decisions has raised fears that the conservative majority are forcing religion back into the US political systemWhen America’s highest court ended the constitutional right to abortion after half a century, Jeff Landry, the attorney general of Louisiana, knew whom he wanted to thank.“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad,” he said in an official statement. “Today, along with millions across Louisiana and America, I rejoice with my departed mom and the unborn children with her in Heaven!”The US supreme court is letting prayer back in public schools. This is unsettling | Moira DoneganRead moreThe southern state’s top law enforcement official was not the only Republican to reference God while taking a victory lap. Nor was he alone in rooting for the supreme court to continue a pattern of forcing religion back into the US political system and tearing down the wall that separates church from state.The court – said to be more pro-religion than at any time since the 1950s – wrapped up one of its most consequential and divisive terms this week. Critics lamented a string of decisions that they say undermine legal traditions that prevent government officials from promoting any particular faith.In May the conservative majority ruled in favor of a Christian group that wanted to fly a flag emblazoned with a cross at Boston city hall under a programme aimed at promoting diversity and tolerance among the city’s various communities.Last month they endorsed taxpayer money paying for students to attend religious schools under a Maine tuition assistance programme in rural areas lacking nearby public high schools.Then they backed an American football coach at a Washington state public high school who was suspended by a local school district for refusing to stop leading Christian prayers with players on the field after games. This ruling cast aside a 1971 precedent, known as the Lemon test, which took into account factors such as whether the challenged government practice has a secular purpose.In all three cases, the court decided against government officials whose policies and actions were taken to avoid violating the constitution’s first amendment prohibition on government endorsement of religion, known as the “establishment clause”.In addition, although their decision last week to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that legalised abortion nationwide did not involve the establishment clause, it was celebrated as a seminal victory by religious conservatives. Mike Pence, the former vice-president and a born again Christian, called for a national ban on the procedure.Paradoxically, the trend comes against the backdrop of an increasingly diverse and secular nation.Last year a Gallup survey revealed that Americans’ membership in houses of worship dropped below 50% for the first time, and last month Gallup found that the share of US adults who believe in God – 81% – was the lowest since it first asked the question in 1944.White Christians represented 54% of the population when Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008 but now make up only 45%. Former president Donald Trump’s appointment of three rightwing justices, however, helped put the court on a very different track. And the nature of its rulings have been unusually radical and sweeping.Robert P Jones, founder and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington, said: “What we’re seeing is a desperate power grab as the sun is setting on white Christian America. In the courts, instead of moving slowly and systematically, it’s a lurch.”Jones added: “In the meantime we’re going to be left with essentially an apartheid situation in the US where we’re going to have minority rule by this shrinking group that’s been able to seize the levers of power, even as their cultural democratic representation in the country shrinks.”The establishment clause prevents the government from establishing a state religion and bars it from favoring one faith over another. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, said in an 1802 letter the provision should represent a “wall of separation” between church and state.Some far-right Republicans now brazenly challenge that premise. The Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert reportedly told a church service last Sunday: “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.”In its trio of provocative decisions over the past two months, the supreme court decided that government actions intended to maintain a separation of church and state had instead infringed separate rights to free speech or the free exercise of religion, also protected by the first amendment.In the ruling on school football coach Joseph Kennedy, the conservative justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the court’s aim was to prevent public officials from being hostile to religion as they navigate the establishment clause. “In no world may a government entity’s concerns about phantom violations justify actual violations of an individual’s first amendment rights,” Gorsuch opined.Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented the school board in the case, said the separation was “under complete attack” by the supreme court as it favours the free exercise clause at the expense of the establishment clause, thereby raising the specter of religious favoritism.“We are at risk of taking away the religious freedom of vast numbers of Americans, which should make the founders of our country be doing somersaults in their grave and I’m sure is alarming to the world as a whole, because they see America as a beacon of light when it comes to religious freedom.”The line between church and state has been crucial, Laser argues, to advances in LGBTQ equality, racial justice, reproductive freedom, protecting religious minorities, the teaching of science in schools and safeguarding democracy itself. But all this is suddenly precarious because of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.She added: “The court pandered to a religious extremist agenda and implemented it by forcing one set of religious views on all of us and taking away the right of a woman to do with her body what her religious and moral views dictate, or taking away the right of a Maine taxpayer to not fund the teaching of a religion or religious discrimination that they disagree with, or taking away the right of a Jewish or Muslim or an atheist or a Buddhist public school student not to feel pressured to pray to play and be included in public school.”Like Jones, Laser perceives in the court’s opinions a backlash against America’s religious pluralism, racial diversity, an increase in women’s power in society and the advent of marriage equality and progress on LGBTQ equality.“This is a backlash that is meant to reinforce and cement existing power structures into our law, and it panders to a white Christian right extremist agenda. It’s incredibly divisive. It’s dangerous to our democracy in that regard.”Unusually, the nine-member supreme court currently includes six Catholics: Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, all appointed by Republican presidents, and Sonia Sotomayor, seated by a Democrat. Last year the court ruled that a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia could ignore city rules and refuse to work with same-sex couples who apply to take in foster children.But although most of the court’s religious rights decisions in recent years involved Christian plaintiffs, it has also backed followers of other religions. These included a Muslim woman in 2015 denied a retail sales job because she wore a headscarf for religious reasons and a Buddhist death row inmate in 2019 who wanted a spiritual adviser present at his execution in Texas.The court also sided with both Christian and Jewish congregations in challenges based on religious rights to governmental restrictions such as limits on public gatherings imposed as public safety measures during the coronavirus pandemic.The New York Times reported recently: “Since John Roberts became chief justice in 2005, the court has ruled in favor of religious organizations in orally argued cases 83% [now 85%] of the time. That is far more than any court in the past seven decades – all of which were led by chief justices who, like Roberts, were appointed by Republican presidents.”The shift has been welcomed by conservative pressure groups. Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, said: “The court’s recent pro-religious liberty streak shows how far it has come from earlier decades. A majority of the justices continue to demonstrate a clear record of protecting religious liberty and expression, something the constitution explicitly guarantees.”Activists and academic experts, however, warn that the emboldened supermajority of six justices is out of kilter with the will of the people on government endorsement of religion and other issues. Amanda Hollis-Brusky, an associate professor of politics at Pomona College in Claremont, California, said: “It’s paradoxical but it’s also a function of our system that creates so many avenues for minority rule and that’s something that we as Americans need to really reckon with: whether this 18th-century system still works for us in the 21st century.”TopicsUS constitution and civil libertiesUS politicsUS supreme courtChristianityReligionLaw (US)featuresReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      I’m a Black gun owner. I have mixed feelings about gun control | Akin Olla

      by

      I’m a Black gun owner. I have mixed feelings about gun controlAkin OllaI don’t have much faith that the state will protect me from violence – and I know that gun control laws have historically been used to target Black people, socialists and people who challenge the status quo The mass murder of elementary school students in Uvalde, Texas, and a white supremacist attack on Black residents of Buffalo, New York, have reignited the American gun control debate. Both atrocities have left me feeling more broken than I thought possible. As a Black, leftwing gun owner, however, I’m also struck by a feeling of unease.I believe in many forms of gun control, but the conversation about guns on the left often lacks complexity as we scramble for a simple answer to an extremely complicated problem. I don’t have much faith that the government will protect me or other minority Americans from the kind of violence that the police ostensibly exist to combat, and I know that gun control laws have historically been used to target Black people, particularly Black socialists like myself.I’m also not convinced that most current gun control proposals will even solve the problem. Consider the country’s deadliest school shooting, the Virginia Tech murders of 2007. The perpetrator passed his background check and used weapons that most gun control bans wouldn’t affect. A waiting period might have delayed his attack but his level of premeditation implies it was nearly inevitable. I feel sorrow for what happened. Yet I feel that as a society we tend to fight over specific gun control policies – some effective, some not – while ignoring the violent nature of the country we live in and the culture that drives almost exclusively men to commit mass murder.I never thought I’d be a gun owner. I’m not particularly fond of guns. If anything, they terrify me. I’ve generally hoped my charming personality and acumen at fisticuffs would be enough to deter would-be aggressors; it wasn’t until the terror that I experienced during the George Floyd uprising that I, like many Black Americans, was moved to become a first-time gun owner.I’d participated in protests and witnessed the sheer brutality of the Philadelphia police as they attacked my partner, threatened an elderly woman, and enveloped the entirety of my neighborhood in teargas. I watched Black parents flee their homes, gagging, eyes red, small children in tow. When I and others working as medical volunteers tried to evacuate the injured and elderly, we were met with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and batons. On the other side of the city, police officers let white vigilantes with baseball bats patrol the streets. None of this buttressed my belief that the police existed to protect me from violence.Around this time I, like other socialist organizers, received written threats. After a series of them, as well as a direct, in-person threat to my life made in front of my home, I buckled and decided I needed a weapon, and soon. Even without the specific threats, I was wrestling with a sense that society was on the brink. It may sound paranoid now, but to be Black in the midst of the George Floyd uprising and the tail end of the Trump presidency was a time to be paranoid. Guns and ammunition were sold out across the country. More than 5 million new gun owners purchased weapons in 2020, a more than 100% increase from the previous year. After a background check and a few days for the order to be processed, I picked up a gun from a store located in a man’s home in a dreamlike suburban cul-de-sac.America is steeped in violence. And the roots of that violence go deep | Moustafa BayoumiRead moreDespite owning a gun, I do think gun control is overdue and necessary. But I also can’t ignore the history of American gun control. Much of the modern debate around gun control began in the 1960s, after the state of California – with support, ironically enough, from the NRA – pushed through legislation in response to the Black Panther party and other armed militant groups. We must ensure that any new gun control laws do not disproportionately limit minority communities’ ability to own arms for reasons of legitimate self-defense, which may be impossible given that most laws in a country as steeped in racism as ours will inevitably be exploited to oppress the already oppressed.There are moments in US history when the right to own weapons made the difference between life and death for communities of color, such as the armed resistance against the Ku Klux Klan by the Lumbee Tribe in 1958. And despite the common perception of the civil rights movement, many activists kept guns in their homes or were protected by those who did. There was a time when Dr Martin Luther King Jr was described as having an arsenal in his home.To honestly address mass shootings, we must be willing to have difficult conversations about the complexity of all of this, and also accept that some solutions will involve restructuring our society. We have to accept that gun control may mean some people that reasonably fear for their lives will be left at the whim of fascists and police. We have to accept that mass shootings will absolutely still occur. We have to accept and analyze the reality that one of the most common denominators among shooters is their hate for women – as the Texas shooter, who shot his grandmother before carrying out his school massacre, sadly reminded us.And we have to realize the racist nature of this country and its violent roots. The founder of Uvalde, Texas, was shot and killed in 1867, probably not too far from where the elementary school shooting occurred. His alleged offense was opposing southern secession and supporting the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. His blood stains that town just as the blood of millions of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans stains the entirety of the United States.Gun control may be a good start to saving lives, but this country must be made new, and the lives of women, little children, and Black families made valuable. Until then, I sit uneasy.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian
      TopicsUS gun controlOpinionUS politicsGun crimeUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)Texas school shootingBuffalo shootingcommentReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Only cultural change will free America from its gun problem | Andrew Gawthorpe

      by

      Only cultural change will free America from its gun problemAndrew GawthorpeThe movement to protect innocent lives from gun violence is a multi-generational struggle akin to that which won African Americans civil rights or gay Americans the right to marry Some days it feels like guns are such a foundational part of American identity that the country would have to cease to be itself before it would give them up. When a gunman murdered dozens of elementary-age schoolchildren, leaving their bodies in such a state that parents had to give up DNA samples for them to be identified, it was one such day. What cultural value, what material interest, could be worth this? It must be something that its defenders consider supremely important.Guns – that’s what. Critics of the sickness which is America’s obsession with guns often focus their fire on the second amendment, or the perverse political influence of the National Rifle Association. But neither of these things really get to the root of the pathology. It’s true that gun-rights advocates rely on a surely mistaken reading of the constitution to justify arming themselves to the teeth. And it’s also true that the NRA is a malign force in American politics. But the constitution can be changed or reinterpreted, and special interest groups can be vanquished. What is at issue here is something more foundational, and more difficult to change: American culture itself.The gun is the great symbol, and poisonous offshoot, of American individualism. The country has long valorized masculine heroes – the cowboy, the frontiersman, the patriotic soldier – who impose their will on the community’s enemies with violence. It’s no coincidence that whenever a horrific mass shooting occurs, those in favor of guns respond by claiming that the solution to the guns of the bad guys is more guns in the hands of the good guys. Such reasoning responds to a deep-seated American historical myth, and allows the speaker to imagine themselves as the hero.But they are not heroes – far from it. Mass shooters may be, as the writer John Ganz put it, the “nightmare obverse” of the ideal of the lone frontiersman. But everyone else who defends their own right to possess a gun, who lauds guns as the bringers of peace and order, is guilty too. Their choices make society less safe, not more. The pleasure derived from guns, the sense of participation in America’s deepest myths about itself which they might foster, come at the expense of tens of thousands of lives a year. Sometimes, they are the lives of small children, innocent to the ways of a world which has allowed them to die.Men own guns at nearly twice the rate of women, and within all of this there is something deeply pathetic about the state of American manhood. American gun culture treats ownership of weapons of war as a sign of masculinity and virility, something that makes you more of a man. Almost anywhere else in the western world, a man seeking to demonstrate his masculinity in this way would be treated as an absurd and tragic poser. No doubt many gun owners tell themselves that they are better equipped to protect the innocent. But they are wrong. Rather, gun culture reveals the centrality of violence to American conceptions of manhood – a violence which ultimately harms rather than protects.If the problem is cultural, then what is the solution? There is no easy one. By now, the grooves of the debate are well-worn, and even a shocking event like the Uvalde massacre will not shake us out of it for long. Proposals to change the law or the constitution will be bitterly criticized, and gun-rights proponents will present the shooter as an anomaly who holds no lessons for “responsible” gun-owners. The supreme court is expected soon to loosen rather than tighten the law around carrying guns in public. Republicans will angrily decry attempts to “politicize” the massacre, as if the fact that innocent children are being brutally murdered due to the policies those very same Republicans support was not already a political issue of the highest order.But cultural change is not impossible. It has happened in recent decades on very important issues. America also contains within itself the will to self-improvement, and citizens who will give their all to achieve it. Sometimes it comes before political or legal change, and sometimes it comes after it. The only way to avoid despair is to see the struggle to protect innocent lives against the ravages of gun violence as a multi-generational struggle akin to that which won African Americans the right to vote, or that which won the right to gay marriage. Each of these required Americans in the grip of myths and pathologies to relinquish them, and each at one time seemed impossible. But change did eventually come.The path ahead will not be easy – and, as the supreme court’s expected ruling on Roe v Wade has shown, there will be setbacks along the way. Those who embody a pathological understanding of what America should be are currently ascendant, and there will be no easy victory over them. But despair would be surrender. That’s why for now there is the need to mourn the tiny lives which were extinguished. Remember them, and in doing so remember something else: America’s genius is that it can be changed, never quickly enough, but always in the end. It’s a slim hope to grasp onto in this moment of rage and sorrow, but it may be all that we have left.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States and the host of the podcast America Explained
      TopicsUS gun controlOpinionNRAUS politicsGun crimeUS constitution and civil libertiesRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      The Great Stewardess Rebellion review: stirring read of and for a post-Roe world

      by

      The Great Stewardess Rebellion review: stirring study of what Roe v Wade helped vanquish As the supreme court attacks women’s rights, Nell McShane Wulfhart’s story of ‘a workplace revolution at 30,000ft’ is timely In 1966, when America was still in the throes of the Mad Men era, when men were men and women were their secretaries, Martha Griffiths, one of a handful of women in Congress, wrote to the senior vice-president of United Airlines.‘A PhD in my brother’: Valerie Biden Owens on the Joe she knowsRead moreShe asked: “What are you running, Mr Mason, an airline or a whorehouse?”Charles M Mason had declared that a stewardess who lingered on the job for more than three years without finding a husband was “the wrong kind of girl”.Mason’s comment described not just the devalued status of stewardesses in the 1960s but the reality of most working women at the time. Mason’s “wrong kind of girl” (these “girls” were usually college graduates) was a woman who might not want marriage and children to be her only occupation, or might need to work for a living.As Nell McShane Wulfhart writes in her astonishing exposé of their long struggle for respect and equality, flight attendants were pimped out as sexual objects whose role was to serve, charm and entice male customers. TWA, United, Delta and other airlines argued that their bottom line depended on hiring young, beautiful women and firing them if they got married or pregnant, turned 32 or, God forbid, put on some pounds. Airlines were in the business of selling sex along with tickets, a very profitable Playboy Club in the skies.This largely under-chronicled aspect of recent women’s history is a valuable reminder of how far women have come. Those were the days when women couldn’t get credit cards or sign leases without their husband’s permission, sexual harassment and firing pregnant women was legal, only 3% of lawyers and 7% of doctors were women, and women earned 40% less than men for the same jobs. Women may have achieved the right to vote in 1920 but they hadn’t made many more strides towards equality until the second-wave feminist movement lit the fire in the 1970s.The recent bombshell draft opinion by the supreme court justice Samuel Alito, which would reverse 49 years of a woman’s right to control her body and life, only makes The Great Stewardess Rebellion a more relevant and urgent read. As American women stand on the precipice of revisiting their pre-1973 second-class citizenship, Wulfhart provides a stark reminder of how dark those days really were.In 1965, as many as a million women interviewed for 10,000 positions as “sky girls”. A stewardess’s globetrotting life trumped the few other options available: secretary, nurse, teacher. Those who made the cut were shipped to the “charm farm”, a stewardess boarding school where candidates were taught how to comply with strict hair, makeup, nails and clothing regulations. False eyelashes and girdles, yes. Glasses, no. Skills like mastering airplane safety came a distant second to physical appearance.As important as looking good was being svelte. If a stewardess stood 5ft 5 she could weigh 129lb or less, with three-pound overage once a month during menses. At the charm farm, “girls” close to the weight limit were pulled out of class for random weigh-ins. On the job, a scale was placed in the operations room, with stewardesses required to weigh in in front of their mostly male colleagues. Company doctors prescribed diet pills and many patients got hooked on Black Beauties. If a stewardess made the mistake of getting pregnant, she would have to quit, find a way to get an illegal abortion, or take sick leave to give birth in secret. At least six stewardesses who were fired after they turned 32 killed themselves.And then there were the “uniforms”. At first, the style was proper: hats, gloves, knee-length skirt suits and heels. But in the latter half of the 60s, the sex-kitten look prevailed. In 1968, TWA launched the “Foreign Accent” campaign. Each plane had its own theme and costume: a gold minidress for France, a toga for Italy, a ruffled white blouse for Olde England. American Airlines required tartan miniskirts, matching vests and raccoon fur caps.Braniff introduced the “Air Strip”, where stewardesses would slowly shed their Pucci-designed uniforms over the course of the flight. Madison Avenue ad copy boasted: “When she brings you dinner, she’ll be dressed this way … After dinner, on those long flights, she’ll slip into something a little more comfortable … the Air Strip is brought to you by Braniff International, who believes that even an airline hostess should look like a girl.”When the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opened, after the passage of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, stewardesses were among its first customers. More than 100 gender discrimination complaints were filed by stewardesses in the EEOC’s first year and a half. The agency, set up primarily to battle race discrimination, did not take the stewardesses seriously at first. Nor did the unions, Congress or the courts, and it would be years until any semblance of real change could be wrenched out of the airlines.But when the women’s liberation movement erupted in 1970 it empowered stewardesses too. Mary Pat Laffey filed a class action discrimination suit against Northwest Airlines for violation of Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. Northwest appealed over and over but Laffey finally made history in 1984, when she won the largest monetary judgment in Title VII history: $63m in back pay.More importantly, the case forced other large corporations to settle EEOC cases and put affirmative action plans in place, paving the way for a workplace revolution. Laffey’s career lasted 42 years – enough time to witness the role of women in the workplace transform from servants and sexpots to partners and colleagues.Now we wait to see how far the supreme court will go to turn back the clock.
      The Great Stewardess Rebellion is published in the US by Doubleday
      Clara Bingham is the author of Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost its Mind and Found its Soul
      TopicsBooksFeminismWomenPolitics booksUS politicsAir transportUS constitution and civil libertiesreviewsReuse this content More