Monthly Archives: May 2022

A majority of U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) justices allegedly still maintain that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which federally legalized abortion in the United States, is unconstitutional. According to a Saturday report from The Washington Post, as of last week, the majority of five justices to strikeRoeremains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court.

Published in Politico last week, the leaked February draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito makes clear that Roe must be overruled, with the high court noting how itwas egregiously wrong from the start and that its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.

It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the peoples elected representatives, Alito wrote.

In addition to Alito, the majority is comprised of Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, according to the Politico and Post reports.

Noticeably absent from the majority opinion, however, is Chief Justice John Roberts, who is reportedly set to join the Democrat-appointed justices in opposing the rectification of the high courts previous rulings on abortion.

A person close to the most conservative members of the court said Roberts told his fellow jurists in a private conference in early December that he planned to uphold the state law and write an opinion that leftRoeandCaseyin place for now, The Washington Post report said in reference to the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization case. But the other conservatives were more interested in an opinion that overturned the precedents, the person said.

In the past, Roberts has notably joined the leftist justices of the court in opposing laws that restore legal protections to the unborn. In June 2020, the chief justice was the deciding vote in a case striking down a Louisiana law requiring that individuals who performabortionsat clinics have admitting privileges in a nearby hospital, with the majority arguing that the law place[d] an undue burden on women seeking abortions.

Roberts also joined his fellow constitutionally illiterate colleagues last year in opposing Texas six-week abortion ban, with the chief justice laughably implying that women have a federal right to an abortion under the U.S. Constitution.

The Texas law has had the effect of denying the exercise of what we have held is a right protected under the Federal Constitution, Roberts wrote. The laws clear purpose and actual effect has been to nullify this Courts rulings The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.

As if his faulty jurisprudence on the issue wasnt bad enough, Roberts is also reportedly attempting to prevent the court from overturning Roe, with reports alleging that the chief justice is actively trying to persuade Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh to take a more incremental approach to allowingabortion restrictions.

Such actions are not unheard of for Roberts, who in 2012 attempted to convince Justice Anthony Kennedy to switch his position on the unconstitutionality of Obamacare to obtain the leftist corporate medias approval of Supreme Court jurisprudence. After initially siding with his fellow Republican-appointed justices, Roberts cut a last-minute deal with the leftist justices to preserve the Affordable Care Act by falsely deeming the laws individual mandate as a part of Congresss taxing power.

Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As chief justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court, and he also is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public, reported CBS News Jan Crawford in 2012. There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the court and to Roberts reputation if the court were to strike down the mandate It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, wobbly.'

Whether its the Obamacare decision or Dobbs, Roberts overtly political actions arent preserving the image of the court in the eyes of the American people; theyre destroying it. The primary responsibility of a judge is not to center judicial decisions on either the prejudices of the leftist press or the whims of the American public, whose opinions fluctuate on a regular basis, but to ignore such political noise and interpret the Constitution as written. Anything short of this is merely political gamesmanship.

Roberts bid to play politician is not only professionally grotesque, but its no different than what past justices have done in some of the most highly contentious SCOTUS cases in U.S. history. Just as the justices ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott v. Sanford allowed their personal views to obstruct proper jurisprudence and adherence to the Constitution, Roberts prioritization of his public image over his role as a judge is no different.

Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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John Roberts Should Follow The Constitution In Dobbs Decision - The Federalist

Next month, Alaskans will vote in a special primary election for the states single congressional seat, left vacant by the death of Republican Rep. Don Young in March. Young, the longest-serving Republican in the history of the U.S. House, was Alaskas sole congressman for 49 years, so the election to replace him is in some ways an historic event for the state.

But its also historic in another way: it will be Alaskas first ever statewide mail-in primary election. That is, there will be no in-person voting at all. Every single voter on the statesbloated and error-riddled voter rollswas automatically mailed a blank ballot.

Whats more, there will be no verification requirements for these mail-in ballots. Voters will simply need to fill out their ballot and have a witness observe them sign the envelope. The states Division of Election has explicitly saidit will not verify the authenticity of the signatureson the ballots.

Normally, to vote by mail in Alaska you have to submit an absentee ballot application ahead of time, which includes a signature that can be used to verify the signature on the completed ballot. But not for this special mail-in election, which is already a chaotic and confusing mess, with48 names on the primary ballotand a new ranked-choice voting process in place that will send the top four vote-getters from the primary to the in-person general special election in August (which is on the same day as the regular statewide primary election for the November midterms).

By any measure, Alaskas special election is a mess. But why should the rest of the country care? Because Alaskas insane statewide mail-in election is a template for how the left wants to run elections nationwide. Democrats and left-wing activists would love nothing more than to hold elections entirely by mail with as few safeguards in place to prevent ballot fraud.

Indeed, Alaska presents a unique and in some ways ideal test case for the left. For one thing,Alaskas voter rolls are a mess. As of 2020, voter registration was 118 percent of the estimated vote age population, meaning there were more registered voters than actual people who could vote (this problem is getting worse in Alaska; in 2018 it was only 103 percent). Making matters worse is a 2016 Alaska law that automatically registers residents to vote when they submit an application for the states permanent fund dividend.

If you want to make an election less secure, you pair bloated voter rolls with mass mail-in voting and then strip all safeguards and verification requirements from the mail-in ballots, which is exactly what Alaska has done.

The state governments weak excuse for conducting a statewide mail-in election is that, because a special election must be held within 90 days of the vacancy (in this case, Youngs death on March 18) there simply wasnt time to hire and train the 3,000 poll workers a standard in-person election would require. But even if you buy that, the state has not yet explained why it decided to conduct the mail-in election without any mechanism to verify the authenticity of the signatures on the ballots.

On top of all this, the special primary election next month and the special general election in August will be the first election cycle in Alaska that employs ranked-choice voting, which voters approved in 2020.

Its hard to imagine an election scenario more ill-suited to such a convoluted and confusing scheme than this special election, partly because voters will be choosing among an unheard of 48 candidates in the special mail-in primary election and partly because the special in-person general election will take place on the same day and perhaps even on the same ballot as the regular primary. (The special election is to choose someone to serve out the remaining months of Youngs current term, the regular general election is to choose the states next at-large congressman.)

As Sarah Montalbano of the Alaska Policy Forumnoted recentlyin the Alaska Watchman, that means the bifurcated ballot will have both a special election chosen by [ranked-choice voting] and a general primary election instructing voters to choose only one!

Montalbano calls Alaskas special election a perfect storm, and for anyone concerned about election integrity and fairness, it certainly is a perfect storm. But for anyone who wants to make elections as unsecure and as open to fraud as possible, whats about to happen in Alaska is ideal.

It represents the institutionalization of the extraordinary changes to absentee voting in some states during the 2020 presidential election amid fears of in-person voting amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Those changes, which got rid of nearly every safeguard for mail-in voting, were supposed to be temporary, necessitated by the pandemic.

But the left never lets a crisis go to waste, which is why were about to see in Alaskas special election a dry-run for what Democrats would like to do nationwide: use every trick in the book to make our elections less secure.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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In Alaska, A Special Election Reveals How The Left Wants To Rig The Vote - The Federalist

Pro-abortion groups this past week have called for increased lawlessness to express their opposition to the expected reversal of the Supreme Courts decision in Roe v. Wade. Apparently having failed to persuade either the court of the soundness of their legal position or Congress of the necessity of codifying Roe in a federal statute, these groups are committing, or threatening to commit, hate crimes targeting churches and worshippers.

The real or intended victims of these outrages are not defenseless. The legal system affords them robust protections against violations of their right to free exercise of religion. These include both federal and state criminal and civil remedies and private civil actions under federal and state law.

Churches and congregants alike should make full use of our legal system to protect themselves against pro-abortion forces that are vandalizing church property and attempting to intimidate believers as they worship. Not only do they owe it to themselves to defend their religious liberty, they have a duty to the larger community to combat these unmistakable hate crimes.

To date, President Biden has failed to personally denounce these threats to religious liberty by the pro-abortion forces that are Democrats political allies and core constituents. So has his Justice Department, which was quick to condemn parents appearing at public school board meetings. An unnamed White House official made a meaningless comment, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki finally condemned violence, threats, or vandalism on Twitter Monday, but the president himself has yet to speak out against pro-abortionists recent violent tactics.

Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland should be publicly shamed if their inaction continues. And if the administration chooses to turn a blind eye as the legal rights of American believers are trashed, state attorneys general can and should fill the breach.

Private persons can also bring tort actions under federal and state law, and if successful might obtain monetary damages in amounts that could be a significant blow to the pro-abortion movement and its (often undisclosed) donors.

The assaults on religious liberty are coming in two forms. One is the vandalization of church property, such as happened in Boulder, Colo., soon after the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs. Vandals broke the windows and spray-painted over the doors of the Sacred Heart of Mary Church and left pro-abortion messages, including keep your religion off our bodies and my body, my choice.

Over the past two years, Colorado has seen a series of attacks (not all proclaiming pro-abortion views) on Catholic churches. These attacks include one last October on the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, and another in September on St. Louis Catholic Church in a Boulder suburb (involving pro-abortion graffiti).

What is happening in Colorado unfortunately has been happening throughout the country. In January, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reported that there had been at least 129 attacks on Catholic churches in 35 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020. Secular sources like The Wall Street Journal have noted the increase in desecration of Catholic churches as well. If Roe is indeed overruled, expect worse.

In a second line of attack, the shadowy pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us has called, not only for demonstrations outside the homes of six Supreme Court justices, but also for the disruption of services in Catholic churches on Mothers Day during Sunday mass. The group posted a message on Twitter, stating Whether youre a Catholic for Choice, ex-Catholic, of other or no faith, recognize that six extremist Catholics set out to overturn Roe. Stand at or in a local Catholic Church Sun May 8.

Protesters disrupted planned services at Old St. Patricks Cathedral in New York City, some engaging in grotesque pantomimes of abortion immediately outside the church grounds.Christopher Plant, whose bio says he is the pastor of St. Bartholomew the Apostle Catholic Church in Katy, Texas, took to Twitter on Monday to report that the churchs tabernacle had been stolen the night before.

Meanwhile, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the headquarters of pro-life group Wisconsin Family Action in Madison, Wis., with the words If abortions arent safe you arent either graffitied outside. A pro-life center in Denton, Texas was also defaced.

These dangers to the peaceful exercise of religious liberties must be confronted and overcome. Even if the Biden administration refuses to quell threats and intimidation, believers have and should use the remedies that the law provides for them.

Of these remedies, one powerful option is, ironically, The Freedom of Access to [Abortion] Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). In an obvious legislative compromise, FACE protects not only abortion facilities, providers, and clients, but also criminalizes actions or attempts intended by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship. Likewise, FACE criminalizes the actions of anyone who intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship.

Enforcement of these criminal provisions is, however, in the hands of the vehemently pro-abortion Biden administration, which can be expected to tailor the execution of the laws to its political ends. Even so, FACE offers other means for vindicating religious liberties.

This is because FACE also authorizes churches and individual worshippers injured by the relevant misconduct to bring private actions on their own behalf. If entitled to relief, they may obtain either (or both) an injunction against the misconduct or compensatory and punitive damages, along with an award of reasonable legal fees. These legal awards, especially if they include punitive damages, could be crippling for pro-abortion defendants.

Finally, FACE authorizes state attorneys general who find reasonable cause to believe that a violation is being, has been, or may be occurring, to bring civil actions. The Virginia attorney general has already signaled his intention to refer any criminal violations for prosecution. Concerned citizens should demand that their state attorneys general follow suit.

States also commonly have hate crimes statutes that are similar to these federal civil rights laws. Colorado, for example, has at least two statutes that might apply to the vandalization of a Catholic church in that state. One statute makes it a crime knowingly to desecrate (which includes defacing) any place of worship. It will be interesting to see if the states Attorney General Phil Weiser, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, will bring a case under the states anti-desecration law on behalf of the Catholic churches in his jurisdiction.

Lawsuits against the pro-abortion extremists who attack churches or worshippers can also be brought under state tort laws by the injured parties. Professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University Law School has argued that civil actions, especially if class actions, can bring justice to those who suffered injuries when peaceful protests have turned into violence that damaged their lives or property. For instance, journalist Andy Ngo sued those who beat when while he was covering a peaceful protest that turned into a riot, alleging the torts of assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as a violation of the states anti-racketeering act.

Finally, churches and worshippers should remember that they have a legal right of self-defense against threats to life and limb.The choice of forms that self-defense should take churches might install security cameras, provide cans of pepper spray to their congregations, or even bring in defenders who openly bear arms is best left to the consciences of pastors and congregants within the confines of applicable law.

Robert Delahunty is a Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the American Way of Life. Teresa S. Collett is a Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, where she directs the Pro-Life Center.

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Legal Ways States And Pro-Lifers Can Stop Abortion Radicals' Violence - The Federalist

Defending a womans license to kill her child has always been a nasty business, and the nastiness is back with a renewed vengeance in the wake of the leaked Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion that could overturn Roe v. Wade. Obvious in the tone and substance of the reaction from the pro-abortion crowd is the deep-running selfishness that permeates our individualist society.

Any sinful culture as all are between Eden and glory might allow or excuse the killing of an innocent child. But the times such an act has been celebrated have historically been tied to religious rituals in which a child was sacrificed to a supposed deity. In our post-religious culture, that sacrifice is laid on the idol of self.

That self-obsession and self-worship help explain why the arguments for abortion have shifted from safe, legal, and rare to open fetishizing the deaths of babies.

Im killing the babies! an activist in front of the Basilica of St. Patricks Old Cathedral in New York City screamed while wearing a one-piece swimsuit with dolls stuffed inside.

Kill those f-cking babies, one demonstrator screamed at the Supreme Court last week.

I am pro-abortion. PRO. ABORTION. if I dont want to be pregnant? vacuum that sh-t out of me like a dental assistant with my saliva, one particularly crude Twitter user remarked.

A video posted by Libs of TikTok compiled clips of people who responded to the question, Are aborted babies being burned and used for electricity? with I hope so, cackling, and other deeply disturbing responses. I wont embed it below it cant be described as anything short of demonic.

Back in December, abortion activists gleefully took what appeared to be abortion pills in front of the court.

Mankind has been committing the sin of selfishness for millennia. Indeed, it was elevating his desires and conceit above the commands of God that separated man from his perfect communion with God in Eden. He has continued to practice selfishness and greed ever since.

Its why civilizations have gone to war, overthrown governments, raped conquered provinces, abused the vulnerable, robbed, murdered, lied, and cheated. Selfishness is nothing new, and neither is abortion, which was practiced by the ancient Egyptians (and surely even earlier).

But in the Christianized West, although its application was far from perfect, the concept of lifes intrinsic value began to take root. For a time, our society could agree that to kill your own child was an act of deep cruelty, selfishness, and depravity.

The enlightenment of the 18th century, with its presumption of mans perfectability, heralded a social ethic that assumed man was (or at least could be) intrinsically good. The darker effects of this political and moral philosophy became evident in the next century, when aspirations of perfectibility prompted Darwinian ideas of survival of the fittest and a disturbing eugenics movement (in which our modern abortion movement has its roots).

By the 20th century, society began to rebel against this modernism, especially after Nazi Germany demonstrated the extreme (but consistent) culmination of such social Darwinism. In its place, jointly fueled by the political individualism of democratic thought, came postmodernism, and its rejection of objective moral reality.

With postmodernism came the idea that each person could define his own truth and therefore his own reality. Its fed our social revolt against biology, and the craze to find ones own identity often in external qualities like race or sex, or in imagined gender identities. Our culture of victimhood only serves to further the self-preservation ethic.

Selfishness isnt unique to our moment, but it does manifest today in a particularly straightforward way. If we believe the highest telos of our existence is self-discovery, our lives cease to serve any higher purpose than ourselves.

It makes sense, then, that our culture would glorify abortion because, by that paradigm, killing an inconvenient baby is a means to self-empowerment. If eugenicist abortionists pushed to kill off babies for the good of society a century ago, now they purport to do so for the good of the individual woman.

Its why abortion activists can, in complete seriousness, advocate for the murder of a full-term child. It doesnt matter to them that the baby is a living being if he or she conflicts with a womans self-love, that baby doesnt deserve to live. Its perfectly consistent with our cultures increasingly popular perception of having children as a fulfillment of their parents wants instead of a responsibility to cherish that requires sacrifice and self-denial.

Thats not to say people in previous times have been any less selfish; the fallen status of man is not measured in degrees. But the traits our culture chooses to elevate are linked to our celebration of abortion in especially obvious ways.

If self-gratification is our highest good, then any act (up to and including the murder of a child) becomes good if done in its pursuit. If we are our own arbiters of truth, then moral reality ceases to become an inhibition, and life itself ceases to become an inherent good. If limiting the licentious indulgence of our own desires is oppression and therefore the greatest sin, then the anti-abortion crowd becomes the bad guys.

Until we confront the self-idolatry of our culture, many people will truly believe abortion is not just a necessary evil but a self-empowering good. Merely convincing them that abortion takes the precious life of a baby does nothing to shatter that paradigm, if they value their own imagined empowerment more than that life. The message their mania requires is that something true, good, and infinitely worthy could exist that is greater than themselves.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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Why Today's Left Will Admit Abortion Kills A Child And Still Support It - The Federalist

Since the conflict in Ukraine and Russia began, high-profile elites have demanded that the United States back Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky with finances, food, weaponry, and even the threat of war against Vladimir Putin, but this is out of step with the will of the people.

What started as a call to fund and defend a nation against an invasion from a dangerous dictator, however, quickly morphed into a quest to undermine the Russian regime by whatever means necessary including ordering NATO warplanes to shoot down Russian aircraft and issuing full-blown declarations of war.

A majority of Americans do not want the U.S. to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. Recent polling from The Washington Post and ABC News suggests that 72 percent of U.S. adults oppose the United States taking direct military action against Russian forces. Even in the early days of the overseas conflict, only 17 percent of Americans were willing to risk a direct war between the U.S. and Russia to do whatever it can to help Ukraine.

Congress has yet to vote to officially authorize acts of war against Russia, but that hasnt stopped some of the most high-ranking officials in the U.S., from President Joe Biden and sitting members of Congress to intelligence agencies and even institutions such as the corporate media, from promoting a clash in Eastern Europe.

Just this week, sitting Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., admitted that the United States is in a proxy war with Russia.

At the end of the day, weve got to realize were at war. And were not just at war to support the Ukrainians. Were fundamentally at war, although, its somewhat through proxy with Russia and its important that we win, Moulton said.

Similarly, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., claimed this week that we can win this war on behalf of Ukraine.

There is no off-ramp in this war. Somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose, and I hope and pray and do everything in my power to make sure Ukraine wins, Graham said.

Grahams march toward war has significantly increased in the last few months. In March, he called for the assassination of Putin by Russians to end the conflict.

The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out, Graham tweeted.

Now he says its up to the U.S. to fight for Ukraine and other nations such as Taiwan, which faces a threat of invasion from China.

Even though some legislators havent engaged in the same kind of reckless rhetoric to promote war with Putin, they have fed into the escalation narrative by voting to forward the nations role in the conflict. On Tuesday, just weeks after authorizing $13.6 billion of aid money to Ukraine, the House of Representatives voted to send nearly $40 billion more to the Eastern European country.

Only 57 House Republicans and no Democrats voted against the spending package, which lacked regulation and specification.

So far, neither Biden nor the Republicans or Democrats in Congress have laid out a peace plan or spending limits for Ukraine. Instead, theyve used reckless rhetoric to escalate U.S. involvement and explicitly signaled their intent to take down a nuclear power against voters desires.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Americans Don't Want War With Russia But Republicans And Democrats Are Forcing It Anyway - The Federalist

While blue states floundered to resume classroom learning for large swaths of students, Republican-led states protected working-class, minority children against the severe learning losses caused by Democrats Covid-19 overreach by encouraging classroom teaching, new data suggests.

According to a study conducted by Harvard Universitys Center for Education Policy Research, students in low-income areas suffered years worth of academic depletion, especially in math, after spending larger amounts of time in remote learning.

Within school districts that were remote for most of 2020-21, high-poverty schools experienced 50 percent more achievement loss than low-poverty schools, the study noted.

All students suffered educationally during the pandemic due to forced remote learning. Ultimately, however, it was the low-income, minority kids who suffered the most. While red states eagerly ushered kids of all backgrounds back to school, blue states led by Democrats campaigning on solving racial inequality kept impoverished black and Hispanic children at home, thus widening learning gaps between vulnerable, low-income students and high-income students.

Most of these students attended schools in large, Democrat-controlled urban hubs in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, and Washington D.C. which, even The New York Times admitted, were far more susceptible to anti-science lockdowns and pressure from teachers unions to keep kids remote than those schools in red areas. As a result, these high-poverty students often lacked the parental oversight, home stability, electricity, strong internet, or even a computer required to fully participate in online schooling.

Early in the pandemic, science showed that school closures were not only unnecessary to protect children who are far less likely than adults to contract severe Covid-19 or die from it, but also harmful. While kids in countries like Sweden safely attended class during the height of the virus, students in the U.S. were sentenced to learning online for large portions of 2020 and 2021.

On average, red states such as Florida and Texas were much quicker to resume classroom learning, some as early as the summer of 2020. Republicans cited massive learning losses across the board as their main motivator to reopen schools.

Their fears were correct. The Harvard study shows that even students who largely attended school in physical classrooms in the 2020-2021 school year lost nearly 20 percent of a school years worth of unfinished learning in math. If they hadnt reopened, those numbers had the potential to become even more dismal and undo even more of the immense math and reading skills progress recorded for American students, especially minority students.

The Covid closures have reversed much of that progress, at least for now, The New York Times noted.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Red States Protected Working-Class Minority Kids From Covid Overreach - The Federalist