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      Supreme court sides with high school coach who led on-field prayers

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      Supreme court sides with high school coach who led on-field prayersRuling expands religious rights of government employees in latest of decisions taking a broad view of religious liberty The US supreme court’s conservative majority on Monday sided with a former public high-school football coach who lost his job for praying with players at the 50-yard line after games.The 6-3 ruling, with the court’s liberals in dissent, represented a victory for Christian conservative activists seeking to expand the role of prayer and religion in public schools. In its decision, the court ruled that the school district had violated the constitutional rights of the coach, Joseph Kennedy, when it suspended his employment after he refused to stop praying on the field.“The constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority.The case before the court pitted the religious rights of public school employees against the rights of students not to feel pressured into practicing religious activities. Since expanding its conservative majority, the court in recent years has increasingly ruled in favor of expanding individual religious rights, turning against government actions once viewed as necessary to maintaining a separation of church and state.Police arrest New York man accused of slapping Rudy Giuliani on backRead moreIn a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the decision “sets us further down a perilous path in forcing states to entangle themselves with religion”. She was joined by Stephen Breyer and Justice Elena Kagan.The Bremerton school district argued that Kennedy “made a spectacle” of delivering prayers and speeches, invited students to join him and courted media attention while acting in his capacity as a government employee. Some parents said their children felt compelled to participate.The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals last year ruled against Kennedy, finding that if they let his actions continue local officials would have violated the ban on government establishment of religion that is embedded in the first amendment of the federal constitution.Kennedy served as a coach at his alma mater, Bremerton high school, from 2008 to 2015. His lawyers assert that he “lost his job” because of his actions and sued in 2016. Kennedy’s suit sought a court order to be reinstated as a coach, accusing officials of religious discrimination and violating his free speech rights.Kennedy initially appeared to comply with directions to stop the prayers while on duty, the district said, but he later refused and made media appearances publicizing the dispute, attracting national attention. After repeated defiance, he was placed on paid leave from his seasonal contract and did not reapply as a coach for the subsequent season.Officials have pointed out that Kennedy no longer lives in the school district and has moved to Florida. He has said he would return if he got his job back.First Liberty Institute, a conservative religious rights group, helped represent Kennedy in the case.Kennedy’s victory was only the latest in a series of rulings on religious rights that the supreme court has issued this year.On 21 June, it endorsed the use of public money to pay for students to attend religious schools in a Maine case. On 2 May, it backed a Christian group that sought to fly a flag emblazoned with a cross at Boston city hall. On 24 March, it directed Texas to grant a convicted murderer on death row his request to have his Christian pastor lay hands on him and audibly pray during his execution.In other religious rights rulings in recent years, the supreme court broke down barriers for public money to go to religious schools and churches and exempted family-owned corporations from a federal requirement regarding employee insurance coverage for women’s birth control on religious grounds.It also sided with a Catholic organization receiving public money that barred LGBT people from applying to be foster parents and backed a Christian baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.Reuters contributed to this reportTopicsUS supreme courtUS politicsReligionLaw (US)Washington statenewsReuse this content More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for supreme court justices to be impeached

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for supreme court justices to be impeachedThe congresswoman says Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch lied under oath to Congress about their views on Roe Political pressure is mounting on Joe Biden to take more action to protect abortion rights across the US as firebrand New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for supreme court justices to be impeached for misleading statements about their views on Roe v Wade.Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks took aim at justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Both were appointed by former president Donald Trump and had signaled that they would not reverse the supreme court’s landmark 1973 decision in Roe v Wade during confirmation hearings as well as in meetings with senators.On Friday, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch formed part of the conservative majority which in effect ended legal access to abortion in most states, and Ocasio-Cortez said “there must be consequences” for that.‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversalRead more“They lied,” the leftwing, second-term representative said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense … and I believe that this is something that should be very seriously considered.”Ocasio-Cortez added that standing idly by “sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure … confirmations and seats on the supreme court”.She also mentioned impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni emailed 29 Republican lawmakers in Arizona as she tried to help undermine Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Thomas has not recused himself from election-related cases, drawing criticism.“I believe that not recusing from cases that one clearly has family members involved in with very deep violations of conflict of interest are also impeachable offenses,” Ocasio-Cortez said.House members can impeach a judge with a simple majority vote. But to be removed from office a justice would need to be convicted by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.Biden’s Democratic party controls the House with a clear majority, but its standing in the Senate is much more tenuous. The Senate is split 50-50, though Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, can serve as a tiebreaker for votes that can be carried by a simple majority.The president dismissed the overturning of Roe v Wade as “cruel” but stopped well short of calling for the impeachment of any justices. He has also rejected the strategy proposed in some quarters to expand the supreme court in a way that would allow for the addition of more liberals and blunt the bench’s current conservative majority.Joining Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Thomas as conservatives on the supreme court are justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts. The liberals are Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.Breyer is retiring and due to be replaced by Ketanji Brown Jackson, another liberal.Nonetheless, on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez urged Biden to personally take steps to address what she called the supreme court’s “crisis of legitimacy”.“President Biden must address that,” she said.Ocasio-Cortez suggested Biden could order the opening up of abortion clinics on federal lands in states where terminating pregnancies has been outlawed “to help people access the healthcare services they need”, echoing an idea from the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren.In states where abortion is no longer allowed because of Friday’s ruling, residents who need to terminate pregnancies must now travel hundreds of miles – if not more – to get access to the procedure.Many US corporate giants have taken steps to provide support and financial assistance to employees seeking abortions in states where that is outlawed in most cases. But such measures won’t help millions of people who need abortions but are not employed by a large international or national company.That’s where an order from Biden to allow abortion on federal lands in anti-abortion rights states would come in and help.Ocasio-Cortez also discussed possibly expanding access to abortion pills that could be mailed to those in need, though Republican politicians are gearing up to limit access to those as well.For instance, South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, said her state would move to block medical providers in states where abortion is legal from mailing to South Dakotans pills that could end a pregnancy.The pressure on Biden follows Ocasio-Cortez’s remark earlier this month that she could not yet commit to endorsing him for another run at the White House in the 2024 election.Roe v Wade: senators say Trump supreme court nominees misled themRead moreHer comments on Sunday also came after senators such as Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Manchin of West Virginia said they felt deceived by Friday’s controversial supreme court decision to end nearly 50 years of protections granted by Roe v Wade.Collins, a Republican, said she felt “misled” after Kavanaugh and Gorsuch had said they would leave in place “longstanding precedents that the country has relied upon” during their confirmation hearings and in meetings with her.Meanwhile, Manchin said he had trusted both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch when they “testified under oath that they … believed Roe v Wade was settled legal precedent”.Manchin was the lone Democrat to support Kavanaugh’s appointment.TopicsRoe v WadeAlexandria Ocasio-CortezUS supreme courtAbortionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘A matter of life and death’: maternal mortality rate will rise without Roe, experts warn

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      ‘A matter of life and death’: maternal mortality rate will rise without Roe, experts warn Pregnancy in the US is already dangerous, disproportionately so for people of color – and without abortion access for those who need it, there will likely be more deathsAfter the revocation of the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, pregnancy-related deaths will almost certainly increase – especially among people of color, experts say. They called for urgent action to protect reproductive rights and the health of patients around the country.“There are going to be more people who are forced to carry a pregnancy to term, which means that there’s going to be a greater number of people who are at risk,” said Rachel Hardeman, a reproductive health equity professor and researcher at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “More pregnancy means more likelihood of deaths.”Existing state bans could lead to an additional 75,000 births a year for those who can’t access abortions, according to one estimate. The bans will disproportionately affect younger, poorer people of color and those who already have children.But America is an incredibly difficult place to be pregnant, with the highest maternal mortality rate by far of any developed country – and it’s rising sharply. For every 100,000 births, 23.8 people died from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes in 2020 – a total of 861 women – according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).As Roe fell, states immediately moved to ban abortion, with more than half of US states expected to ultimately do so. But some, like former Vice-President Mike Pence, want lawmakers to go even further, calling for a nationwide ban on abortion.A nationwide ban would result in a 21% increase in pregnancy-related mortality across the country, but it would be even worse for people of color, with a 33% rise in deaths, according to a study by Amanda Jean Stevenson, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder.“Pregnancy is really quite dangerous,” Stevenson said.And it’s disproportionately more dangerous for people of color, including Black, Indigenous and Latino people.Country comparison“The truth of the matter is, it’s already hitting people [of color] harder than others – that’s been the reality,” said Monica McLemore, an associate professor of family healthcare nursing at University of California, San Francisco.Black people in the US were already 3.5 times more likely than white peers to die because of pregnancy and childbirth, according to one study looking at data from 2016-2017, and 2.9 times more likely according to a CDC analysis in 2020. They are also more likely to need abortion services.“Because Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities are going to be disproportionately impacted by lack of access to abortion services, it’s going to exacerbate the maternal mortality racial gap that we’ve already seen in the United States,” Hardeman said.Pregnant people of color have long been marginalized and neglected in the medical system, frequently experiencing racism and discrimination at all points of care.“It’s translating into not getting the care they need, which can be a matter of life and death,” Hardeman said. And racism also takes an immense physical toll, so “by the time that person becomes pregnant, they are at less optimal health than their white counterparts who haven’t experienced racism across the life course”.The cumulative and chronic effects of living in America as a person of color increases stress, which can also affect reproductive health. “We know that the stress pathway is what leads to infant mortality, preterm birth, and other outcomes,” Hardeman said.Even living in a community or neighborhood with disproportionate levels of police surveillance and police contact, for instance, is associated with a greater risk of preterm birth – which can be dangerous for both the birthing person and the infant.“We have to be thinking about the Scotus decision and abortion bans generally as a racist policy, because the burden will fall the hardest on Black pregnant people, it’s going to fall hard on Indigenous people and other people of color, people living in rural areas as well and people of lower socioeconomic status,” Hardeman said.The supreme court decision on Friday and bans on abortion instituted at the state level “disproportionately harm people of color and reinforce a system of inequity and, frankly, of white supremacy”, Hardeman said.The states that have now banned or restricted abortion also have some of the highest mortality rates around pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the highest child mortality rates. Mississippi, for instance, where the supreme case that overturned Roe originated, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates – almost twice as high as the rest of the country – and the highest infant mortality rate in the country.US ethnicitySome people seek abortions because they are at high risk of dying from a pregnancy – because of a health condition, an unsafe home environment, harassment because of their identity, or another reason.“If you think about why people get abortions, it’s often because it’s not safe for them to stay pregnant,” Stevenson said. “The people who are currently having abortions are very likely to actually have higher rates of pregnancy-related deaths and maternal mortality than the people who are currently giving birth.”Having an abortion is “much, much, much safer than staying pregnant”, Stevenson said. Researchers estimate that childbirth is 14 times more deadly than having an abortion.But childbirth is just one risk of pregnancy. “It’s way, way more than 14 times more deadly to stay pregnant – that’s a massive underestimate,” Stevenson said.While roughly half of the country is poised to ban abortion, other states and cities have worked to expand access – including to out-of-state patients.But significant limitations on getting to those sanctuaries remain.“The question is, who is going to be able to access it?” Hardeman asked. Many people of color who face systemic barriers to healthcare may not have the tools, resources, money, time off work and childcare to travel to a sanctuary state or city to receive care, she said.“We have to be thinking about the fact that because we live in a society where access to resources is based on racism and race, there are people who are not going to be able to access the services that are available.”For many reproductive rights researchers, the court’s decision came as no surprise. “This has been coming for a long time,” McLemore said. “I get very grumpy when people just want me to regurgitate statistics about how Black people are going to be dying – we know that. What are we doing?”First, she said, “Congress could act right now and render Scotus’s decision irrelevant” by enshrining reproductive rights into national law. If this Congress doesn’t, she said, the six in 10 Americans who support abortion rights should vote for a new Congress that will.Members of the Black Maternal Health Caucus in Congress have been advocating for laws that would protect the well-being of birthing people, including the Momnibus Act of 2021.Lawmakers could also expand the social safety net, including paid family leave and health insurance for lower-income and postpartum patients, for the swelling number of people giving birth.All of these strategies wouldn’t just ensure that reproductive health continues to be offered to those who need it – they will also keep patients from dying, McLemore said.“We need an all-hands-on-deck approach here – with brilliance, not fear.”TopicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversal

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      ‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversalTop Democrats again call for appointing additional justices to blunt conservative super-majority which made ruling possible Leading Democrats on Sunday continued calling the supreme court’s legitimacy into question after it took away the nationwide right to abortion last week, and some again called for appointing additional justices to the panel so as to blunt the conservative super-majority which made the controversial ruling possible.Abortion banned in multiple US states just hours after Roe v Wade overturnedRead moreThe Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren suggested to ABC’s This Week that there was urgency to do that because supreme court justice Clarence Thomas indicated within Friday’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that he’s open to reconsidering precedents guaranteeing contraception, same-sex marriage rights and consensual gay sex.“They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had,” Warren said of the supreme court. “They just took the last of it and set a torch to it.”Warren joined Georgia gubernatorial candidate and Democratic organizer Stacey Abrams in again lobbying to expand the supreme court in a way that balances the current makeup of six conservatives and three liberals.Joe Biden has rejected the strategy. But Abrams – who’s also previously served in Georgia’s house of representatives – said the president doesn’t have the final word on the matter, with legislators also having a potential say.“There’s nothing sacrosanct about nine members of the United States supreme court,” Abrams said on CNN’s State of the Union.Warren didn’t just once again mention the idea of abolishing the filibuster, a delaying tactic that both parties use to prevent legislative decisions, which Biden and centrist Democrats have also rejected.She also urged Biden to issue orders shielding medication abortions and authorizing the terminations of pregnancies on federal land.Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez argued that drastic measures were justified.Trying to avoid burn-out: a Colorado abortion clinic braces for even more patientsRead more“I believe that the president and the Democratic party needs to come to terms with is that this is not just a crisis of Roe – this is a crisis of our democracy,” Ocascio-Cortez said.The congresswoman also said the supreme court was undergoing “a crisis of legitimacy”, making it a point to allude to how Thomas’s wife, Ginni, emailed 29 Republican lawmakers in Arizona as she tried to help overturn Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.“The supreme court has dramatically overreached its authority,” Ocascio-Cortez said. “This is a crisis of legitimacy.”Speaking from a Republican point of view on another program, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem fawningly said it was “incredible” that reproductive laws had been returned to the states. South Dakota is one of 13 states where trigger laws banning most abortions came into effect after Friday’s decision.“The supreme court did its job: it fixed a wrong decision it made many years ago and returned this power back to the states, which is how the constitution and our founders intended it,” Noem told CBS’ Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”.World leaders condemn US abortion ruling as ‘backwards step’Read moreSouth Dakota, she said, would ensure that “babies are recognized and that every single life is precious”.The governor said the state would move to block Democratic efforts to allow access to out-of-state telemedicine and the ability of health practitioners in legal abortion states to provide pills in the mail that would allow them to end a pregnancy.Noem voiced that abortion pills were “very dangerous medical procedures”, though Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan correctly pointed out that the pills were approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.Nonetheless, Noem insisted, saying, “A woman is five times more likely to end up in an emergency room if they’re utilizing this kind of method for an abortion.“It’s something that should be under the supervision of a medical doctor and it is something in South Dakota that we’ve made sure happens that way.”The governor, a rising star in Republican circles, said that mothers would not be prosecuted for receiving abortions, rather the state planned to target illegal abortion providers.“We will make sure that mothers have the resources, protection and medical care that they need and we’re being aggressive on that. And we’ll also make sure that the federal government only does its job,” Noem added.TopicsUS politicsElizabeth WarrenAlexandria Ocasio-CortezRoe v WadeUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on overturning Roe v Wade: anti-abortionists reign supreme | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on overturning Roe v Wade: anti-abortionists reign supremeEditorialThe removal of women’s constitutional right to abortion will deepen hardship and division in the US The decision, when it came on Friday, was not a surprise. Even before the dramatic leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion last month, it was widely predicted that the US supreme court would grab the opportunity presented by the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case to rescind the decision made in 1973 in Roe v Wade. This, after all, was the purpose of President Trump’s three supreme court selections – and the culmination of a decades-long campaign by anti-abortionists to return to states the authority to ban the procedure. But the announcement still came as a shock. The US’s global influence means that the decision to remove a woman’s constitutional right to abortion there reverberates far beyond its shores.The speed with which multiple US states reacted is disturbing; already, abortion has been outlawed in 10, with 11 more expected to follow shortly. While all women should be entitled to control their own lives and bodies, there are instances when denying this is particularly cruel. Americans who oppose forced pregnancy and birth now face the horror of rape and incest victims, including children, being compelled to become mothers. The US is exceptional in its lack of federal maternity provisions; children as well as parents will suffer the consequences of unwanted additions to their families, with poor and black people the worst affected.Early signs are that the most extreme Republican legislatures could try to block girls and women from travelling out of state for treatment, and impose further restrictions on care delivered remotely including medication sent by mail. The potential for personal data stored online, including on menstrual apps, to be used against women is causing justified alarm. Having relied on Roe v Wade to protect access to abortion for half a century, politicians can no longer do so. Abortion is now set to become a key issue in this autumn’s midterms.How this pans out will depend on public opinion; polling data suggest that 85% of Americans support legal abortion in some circumstances, and Democrats hope that this could work to their advantage. But the anti-abortion right is a formidable force. With hindsight, President Obama’s decision not to codify Roe v Wade into federal law, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s choice not to retire when he could have nominated a replacement, look like disastrous errors.The three liberal justices who dissented said they did so with sorrow for “many millions of American women” and also for the court itself. With this decision, it has chosen to reopen deep wounds. The 14th amendment on which Roe v Wade rested granted rights to former slaves, and is the basis for other crucial decisions including on same-sex marriage. By dismissing Roe v Wade in the way that they did, and against the wishes of Chief Justice John Roberts (who argued to retain it, while allowing Mississippi’s 15-week rule to stand), the court’s hard-right wing has seized control.Unprecedented division, and greatly increased hardship and risk for those denied safe healthcare, will be the outcome. While there is reassurance in noting moves elsewhere towards liberalisation, US anti-abortionists are far from unique, as tightened restrictions in Poland and the situation in Northern Ireland show. It is too soon to say whether Trump’s justices and their backers have overreached from an electoral perspective. If there is an early lesson to be drawn, it is that once gained, women’s rights must be constantly defended.TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionUS supreme courtAbortionLaw (US)WomenHealthRepublicanseditorialsReuse this content More

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      ‘A mockery of democracy’: US supreme court in question after abortion ruling

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      ‘A mockery of democracy’: US supreme court in question after abortion ruling In abruptly scrapping the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy the court went against the popular will – only 25% of Americans now have confidence in the institutionStriding from the US supreme court to the nearby US Capitol, holding aloft a sign that said “My body my choice” and “Women’s right to choose”, Taylor Treacy was struggling to fathom how she had fewer constitutional rights now than when she awoke that morning.“It’s heartbreaking,” said the 28-year-old, who works in sports marketing. “The people who have legally gotten abortions in the United States are mostly Black and brown women, yet the five justices able to have the final word were four powerful men and one white woman. We’re allowing more access to guns yet we’re taking away the rights of women. It just seems like we’re going backwards.”Americans take to streets across US to protest for abortion rights – in picturesRead moreMillions of women had just lost access to abortion on Friday after America’s highest court overturned a near-50-year-old ruling and other precedents enshrining that right. The conservative justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s majority opinion that Roe v Wade was “egregiously wrong and deeply damaging”, and that states should decide whether to limit or criminalise the procedure.02:03The court’s liberal minority responded: “With sorrow – for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection – we dissent.” The ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states, although the timing of those laws taking effect varies.The decision, though widely expected a draft opinion leaked last month, was nevertheless a stunning aftershock of Donald Trump’s presidency and sure to enflame America’s divisions. It also cemented the supreme court’s emergence an alternative centre of power that threatens to rupture the delicate governing balance of executive, legislature and judiciary.Just 24 hours earlier, the justices had struck down New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns in public, potentially opening the way to fresh legal challenges to other state-level gun laws despite recent mass shootings in California, New York and Texas. It was a triumph for the gun lobby and a blow to Joe Biden’s efforts to curb violence.Simon Schama, a leading historian, tweeted on Friday: “American democracy is in deep trouble. It can’t survive in its present form if the constitution is manipulated to impose minority rule.”The back-to-back decisions were the fruit of a long campaign by conservatives to shift the judiciary to the right, powered by influential groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. The Republican presidents George HW Bush and George W Bush appointed Clarence Thomas, John Roberts (now chief justice) and Alito to the supreme court.A democratic deficit opened when Senate Republicans blocked Barack Obama’s last nominee for the court, Merrick Garland, on the spurious grounds that it was an election year. Then Trump, a one-term president who had lost the national popular vote by 3m, appointed three justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. It has proven his most significant legacy.The court struck down Roe v Wade against the wishes of a Democratic president, Democratic-controlled Congress and the citizenry. The majority of Americans (61%) believed that Roe should remain the law of the land, and only 36% supported overturning it, according to the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank. Even most religious Americans wanted to see Roe upheld.Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said: “I’m afraid it’s extremely undemocratic. You now have the least democratic branch of the federal government on an ideological agenda to roll back liberties that are extremely popular with the general public in America.“It is a recipe for potential unrest, certainly demonstrations and political turmoil, as they seem intent on a course of action that will run counter to the will of the public.”The surge of judicial activism has knocked both the White House and Congress back on their heels. In Washington abortion rights protesters crowded outside the fenced-off supreme court on Friday, opposite the gleaming dome of the US Capitol, where their elected representatives vented frustration at the demise of Roe but were powerless to intervene.Two miles away at the White House, even the president seemed politically impotent. A solemn group of female staff, including domestic policy adviser Susan Rice and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, gathered beneath a staircase in the cross-hall to watch Biden deliver a response. Portraits of Bill Clinton and George W Bush, presidents in an era when Roe seemed sacrosanct, looked on from opposing walls.Calling it “a sad day for the court and the country”, Biden said: “It was three justices named by one president – Donald Trump – who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country.“Make no mistake: this decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law. It’s a realisation of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the supreme court, in my view.”He added: “With this decision, the conservative majority of the supreme court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of this country. They have made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world.”The president admitted that he cannot take executive action to secure a woman’s right to choose. The only hope is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v Wade as federal law, which in turns depends on Democrats winning the midterm elections. “This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” he said. “Personal freedoms are on the ballot.”Others argue that there is another solution to offset minority rule: expanding the supreme court beyond its current total of nine justices. The pressure group Demand Justice pointed to this week’s rulings on guns and abortion as proof that reform is needed.Christopher Kang, its co-founder and chief counsel, said: “This is part of the decades-long Republican agenda to accomplish through the supreme court what they cannot through the democratically elected branches of Congress. We’ve seen in the last couple of days decisions making it harder for lawmakers to combat gun violence in the wake of some of the worst mass shootings in our country’s history. We’ve seen, now, overturning the right to an abortion.“These are things that are supported by 70 to 80% of the American people and I think we’ll see it again next week in a big case concerning whether or not the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to take action to fight climate change, another thing supported by 70 to 80% of the American people. This is a further example of what Republicans are doing through our unaccountable courts that they couldn’t do through Congress or the White House.”Americans’ faith in the supreme court has dropped to a historic low, with only 25% saying saying have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in it, down from 36% a year ago, according to a Gallup poll. Kang believes that rebuilding trust is crucial to the health of America’s increasingly fragile democracy.“Today’s ruling shows that the supreme court is the problem and so any solution has to address the supreme court,” he added. “There are other things that the president can do or Congress, with greater majorities, could do but fundamentally we have to fix the court if we have any hope of addressing these problems.”The calls take on even greater urgency because of what might be to come. Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion on Friday that the supreme court should reconsider other legal precedents protecting same-sex relationships, marriage equality and access to contraception. Biden warned: “This is an extreme and dangerous path this court is taking us on.”Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, an organisation that works to engage young voters, said: “It is the takeover of an extreme rightwing minority that seeks to roll back the gains for the LGBTQ community, for women, for people of colour.“This isn’t the end, this is the opening salvo, and they made that clear in their decision. You had Clarence Thomas state they are going to take a look at how they can change the fundamental rights that the LGBTQ community has recently won in this country.”Ramirez added: “We didn’t defeat fascism in 2020; we beat it back. But to kill fascism in this country is going to require a lot more than one election cycle.”Map of state by state abortion restrictions in USFriday’s decision is set to create a patchwork of laws from state to state. Twenty-six are certain or likely to immediately ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute thinktank. In Alabama, the state’s three abortion clinics stopped performing the procedure for fear providers would now be prosecuted under a law dating to 1951; women in the waiting room on Friday morning were suddenly turned away. Democratic state governors, however, promised to strengthen protections.Back at the supreme court, the sun was shining but the mood was one of sombre defiance as hundreds of people waved placards, chanted slogans such as “the supreme court is illegitimate” and contemplated a leap into the unknown after half a century.At 43, Tracy Tolk, a climate change and energy policy advocate, had known nothing but Roe her entire life. “I’m absolutely devastated,” she said. “I thought it would hurt less because we had a preview but it hurt more than I expected. It’s gut-wrenching. People marched on the Capitol for less than this.”Virginia Shadron, 71, a retired academic administrator from Stone Mountain, Georgia, was wearing a badge with the face of late liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death in 2020 allowed Trump to rush through the appointment of Barrett even with a presidential election already under way.She said: “Millions of women will die. It sets back women and it’s only the beginning. It’s the beginning of the end of many things, as Clarence Thomas said. Next, they’ll take on contraception. Reasonable people can feel strongly and differently about abortion. I’m glad for myself, I never had to make the choice, but if I had needed to, I would have wanted a safe, legal procedure.”There was sadness in the eyes of Maureen John, 67, who warned that the decision to overturn Roe would lead to an increase in illegal and unsafe abortions. “I’m a nurse and I’ve seen many unnecessary deaths because of the abortions done illegally,” she said.John was born in Guyana, moved to the US in 1976 and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. “I’m from the Caribbean and I came here and I became an American citizen because of democracy which wasn’t available in my country at that time. I loved it. I love being American and now I’m being disappointed at what’s happening.”“They’re making a mockery of democracy.” TopicsUS supreme courtThe ObserverRoe v WadeUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      With the end of Roe, the US edges closer and closer to civil war | Stephen Marche

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      With the end of Roe, the US edges closer and closer to civil warStephen MarcheThe question is no longer whether there will be a civil conflict in America. The question is how the sides will divide, and who will prevail The cracks in the foundations of the United States are widening, rapidly and on several fronts. The overturning of Roe v Wade has provoked a legitimacy crisis no matter what your politics.For the right, the leaking of the draft memo last month revealed the breakdown of bipartisanship and common purpose within the institution. For the left, it demonstrated the will of dubiously selected Republican justices to overturn established rights that have somewhere near 70% to 80% political support.Accelerating political violence, like the attack in Buffalo, increasingly blurs the line between the mainstream political conservative movement and outright murderous insanity. The question is no longer whether there will be a civil conflict in the United States. The question is how the sides will divide, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how those strengths and weaknesses will determine the outcome.The right wing has been imagining a civil war, publicly, since at least the Obama administration. Back in 2016, when it looked like Hillary Clinton would win the election, then Kentucky governor Matt Bevin described the possibility in apocalyptic terms: “The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood. Of who? The tyrants, to be sure. But who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren,” he told supporters at the Values Voter Summit.The possibility of civil war has long been a mainstay of rightwing talk radio. Needless to say, when the right conjures these fantasies of cleansing violence, they tend to fantasize their own victory. Steve King, while still a congressman from Iowa, tweeted an image of red and blue America at war, with the line: “Folks keep talking about another civil war. One side has about 8tn bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.”Any time anyone acts on their violent rhetoric, the rightwing politicians and media elites are appalled that anyone would connect what they say to what others do. “We need to understand we’re under attack, and we need to understand this is 21st-century warfare and get on a war footing,” Alex Jones said in the lead-up to the Capitol riot.According to a New York Times series, Tucker Carlson has articulated the theory of white replacement more than 400 times on his show. Calls to violence are normal in rightwing media. Calls to resist white replacement are normal in rightwing media. The inevitable result is the violent promotion of resistance to white replacement. Republican politicians like Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik are outraged when their one plus one turns out to equal two, but their outrage is increasingly unbelievable, even to themselves. America is witnessing a technique used in political struggles all over the world. Movements devoted to the overthrow of elected governments tend to divide into armed and political wings, which gives multiple avenues to approach their goals as well as the cover of plausible deniability for their violence.The leftwing American political class, incredibly, continues to cling to its defunct institutional ideals. Democrats under Biden have wasted the past two years on fictions of bipartisanship and forlorn hopes of some kind of restoration of American trust. When violence like Buffalo hits, they can do little more than plead with the other side to reconsider the horror they’re unleashing, and offer obvious lectures about the poison of white supremacy. Since January 6 didn’t wake them up to exactly what they’re facing, it’s unclear what might ever wake them up. The left has not made the psychological adjustment to a conflict situation yet. But it won’t be able to maintain the fantasy of normalcy for much longer.The conflict, which on the surface seems so unequal, with an emboldened and violent right against a demoralized and disorganized left, is not as one-sided as it looks at first. It is unequal but it is also highly asymmetrical. The right has the weaponry and an electoral system weighted overwhelmingly in its favor. The left has money and tech.Steve King was, in a sense, absolutely correct about the armed status of the two sides. Half of Republicans own a gun, compared with 21% of Democrats. But that gap, though wide, is closing. In 2020, 40% of gun buyers were new buyers. There was a 58% rise in gun sales to African Americans in 2020 over 2019. In 2021, women were nearly half of new gun buyers, an astonishing statistic. The real structural advantage the right possesses is not military but electoral. By 2040, 30% of the country will control 70% of the Senate. The institutions of the US government distinctly favor those who want to destroy it. Every Democrat who fights to end the filibuster is fighting for their own future irrelevance, or rather for the acceleration of their own irrelevance.Two essential facts of the 2020 election should give leftwing partisans hope, however. Biden-voting counties amounted to 70% of GDP, while 60% of college-educated voters chose Biden. That is to say, the left-democratic wing of America is the productive and educated part of the country. One way of looking at the American political condition of the moment is that the leftwing part of the US has built the networks that have left behind the rightwing part. The networks are the left’s strength.The struggle over abortion has already revealed how the divide plays out. Anti-abortion factions control the pseudo-legitimate court system and the poorer states in the Union. Pro-choice factions have responded, first of all, with their superior financial resources. Oregon started the Oregon Reproductive Equity Fund with $15m. New York is establishing a fund to make the state a “safe haven”. California governor Gavin Newsom plans to add $57m to the state budget to deal with out-of-state patients.At the same time, pro-choice organizers are turning to technology. The Atlantic recently reported on networks using “encrypted, open-source Zoom alternatives” to provide women with support for their procedures. Already, anonymous web access to self-managed abortions is available, just as it has been for many years in some restrictive jurisdictions.This divide isn’t just American. As the forces of the world split between a liberal-democratic elite and authoritarian populists, the same asymmetry can be seen in the struggle everywhere. In Canada, the convoy that held the city of Ottawa hostage was defeated, in the end, not by force, but by money and technology. Other countries responded to similar convoys with direct assaults – the French teargassed their convoy immediately and the United States called in the national guard before they had even left for Washington. But in Canada, the government, not wanting to have the blood of children on its hands, weakened the convoy’s financial networks by simply turning off their fundraising accounts. A small band of anonymous hackers also tormented the convoy organizers by disrupting their communication lines. They infiltrated their Zello channels, blaring the hardcore gay pornography country anthem Ram Ranch. The “Ram Ranch Resistance” almost single-handedly undid the protests at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. This same divide has played out on an international level, in the struggle between Russia and Ukraine. Russia, overwhelmed by resentment because it cannot meaningfully compete in an integrated 21st-century economy, has devolved into a conservative authoritarianism with no other outlet than violence. But Ukraine had better access to the global financial and media networks. The reaction, from the forces of the democratic west, has been to cut Russia off from financial systems and to provide Ukraine with superior technology. Technology and financial networks have proven the match, at the very least, of brute force.Incipient civil conflict in the United States won’t be formal armies struggling for territory. The techniques of both sides are clarifying. Republican officials will use the supreme court, or whatever other political institutions they control, to push their agenda no matter how unpopular with the American people. Meanwhile, their calls for violence, while never direct, create a climate of rage that solidifies into regular physical assaults on their enemies. The technical term for this process is stochastic terrorism; the attack in Buffalo is a textbook example.The leftwing resistance is more nascent but is also taking shape: if you’re rich and you want to stay living in a democracy, the time has come to pony up. If you’re an engineer, the time has come to organize. The conclusion is not at all determined. Neither side has an absolute advantage. Neither side can win easily. But one fact is clear. The battle has been joined, and it will be fought everywhere.
      Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future
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