Later that night, the clear-up began. Fifteen vehicles were taken away for forensic examination. Seventy-eight bullet holes were found.

Mrs Pascoe, safe with her neighbours in a community centre, was playing cards with the children to distract them from the horror outside.

At about 02:00 she looked out of the window and saw the bodies from South View being collected and driven away.

Later, police told her they believed her life had been saved by the fact she'd kept her curtains drawn as she pottered about, doing her housework in her nightgown.

She was still wearing it, soaked now with Lisa Mildenhall's blood, when she was finally allowed back home.

In the ambulance on the way to hospital in Swindon, Ivor Jackson's heart had twice stopped beating.

He had lost lots of blood, had bullets in his head and chest, his lung had been shot through and his arm was barely attached to his body.

He needed numerous operations and still suffers, both physically and mentally.

His wife, who had a bullet in her spine, was not expected to walk again.

It's testament to her own strength of mind that she did.

"I just thought to myself, I'm a mother. I need to get better and I will walk again. I knew I had to be the strong one of the family, I knew Ivor wouldn't cope."

Even now Mr Jackson has not been back to South View. He cannot even pass the end of the road.

He can barely speak about his friend, George White.

"He was a good man. We were good friends," he says.

"Ill never forget what I saw that day, what happened to him, but I can't tell you.

"Nothing's been right since."

The Jacksons had loved their home on South View, with its large garden, and were in the process of buying it.

But, although the house was cleaned and modernised and made available for them, they could not bear to return.

The couple and their two grown-up sons now live in a two-bedroom council house a few streets away.

"After what happened, lots of people split up," says Ivor Jackson. "They couldnt cope. But we've stuck by each other."

The couple have been married for 60 years and celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary in January.

"We got a letter from the Queen," Mr Jackson adds. "My daughter arranged it."

The letter, complete with golden tassel, is still in its recorded delivery envelope and is kept in a basket in the Jacksons' kitchen.

They keep meaning to frame it and put it up on the wall.

Their younger son Trevor, who had been 18 in 1987, is being treated for PTSD while his older brother Peter, who was in the same year as Ryan at school, refuses to talk about that day.

If it comes up, he leaves the room or goes to sit in the greenhouse.

Trevor Jackson had first heard of the shootings when a colleague asked: "What's happened to your parents?"

He returned to South View to find bodies on the ground and was asked by police to identify them.

Then he and his brother Peter went into their home, released the dogs from the cupboard, and started to clean the blood and glass from their kitchen.

As the brothers were cleaning up, a reporter burst in. There was a police guard on the front door so he had sneaked through the garden and into the house through the back door.

Another reporter followed their sister home from the hospital.

I just broke down in tears."

Press intrusion is something the Jacksons continue to feel very strongly about. They usually hang up if a journalist approaches them and refuse to have their photograph taken in connection with the shooting.

Similarly the Whitings, for years, simply drew their curtains and refused to answer the door.

When, in March 1996 Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 schoolchildren and their teacher in the Stirling town of Dunblane, Trevor Wainwright decided to write to the Scottish police.

He explained who he was and his experience, and offered sympathy. Then he tore his heartfelt letter up.

"I just thought: 'They dont want outsiders. They'll do what we did. The help will come from within the community'.

"Writing the letter did me good, but I don't think it would have helped the people of Dunblane."

A few days after the murders, Mr Wainwright - who had carried out the routine checks for Ryan's firearms licence - was astonished to see the Today newspapers front page splash.

"PC Signs Own Fathers Death Warrant".

"I just broke down in tears," Mr Wainwright says.

"It hit at the heart of my professionalism, of everything I'd ever done for the town. I probably did three or four of these checks a week.

"It was just routine. Hungerford is a big shooting area, farmers and gun clubs and that sort of thing. I mean, there's no legitimate reason anyone would need to have a Kalashnikov - but it was legal.

"There was a picture of my dad, dead in a car with a blanket over him.

"And I kept thinking, if it was true that I'd signed my dad's death warrant, it meant I'd also signed all those other people's too. At the time, the idea crucified me.

"At the hospital, where my mum was, everyone who'd been shot had been put into the same ward. I was due to go and visit her, but I thought I couldn't.

"I thought: 'How the hell can I go and see her if they're all blaming me?'

"She told me to get my arse straight down there. No-one blamed me."

He says he was helped by a discovery made at the post-mortem examination - that his father had developed lung cancer.

"If he had the choice - to die from a horrible disease like that, or be shot, I know he'd choose the bullet. Every single time."

He is still haunted, he says, by the photograph of his father dead in his car. If there is a shooting elsewhere in the world, he braces himself for his phone to ring.

"As soon as there's been a shooting, some journalist will call.

"And I hear the arguments of the gun lobby, who want to preserve the right to bear arms, and I think: 'You should come here and see what guns did to Hungerford.'"

The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 was passed in the wake of the massacre. It banned the ownership of semi-automatic firearms and pump-action weapons and made registration mandatory for shotgun owners.

A Thames Valley Police report to the Home Office found that - given the limitations imposed by the remote location and the difficulties in radio and telephone communication - the force's response "went well".

The local police station had only two working phone lines that day and the police helicopter was being repaired, delaying its deployment.

Further delays were caused by the firearms squad being in training about 40 miles away.

The report also said the operation was hampered by press helicopters making so much noise it was difficult for police on the ground to hear or relay instructions.

Hungerford is a pretty canalside town famous for its antiques shops and upmarket boutiques.

Its inhabitants refer to the shooting as "The Tragedy", almost as if it were a natural disaster.

The names of the 16 people who were killed are listed on a stone set into the wall of the town's war memorial garden, with no mention of how they died.

The town had long been a tourist destination. After the murders, though, visitors were less satisfied by remaining in the attractive main street.

"The tourist buses would just park where they usually did and then people used to come up here on foot," Trevor Jackson says.

"They were looking for bullet holes and spent shell cases to collect. Whenever they asked me where it all happened I'd say it was down the A4. Sent them away."

The description of the shootings as a "tragedy" doesnt sit well with Mrs Jackson.

"It was a massacre," she says. "Theres no two ways about it.

"We cope by taking every day as it comes. It's difficult. Healthwise, we're struggling.

"Ivor has very limited mobility, and his lungs are damaged from the bullet. I still get dreadful pain in my back. Trevor can't move out to his own place.

"It hasn't got any easier. Were just waiting until life gets back to normal.

"It hasn't happened yet."

Originally posted here:

INCCCCC - BBC News

For more than a decade, Texas native Don Kirchoff has used Facebook to share news and information with fellow conservatives. The longtime Heritage Foundation supporter and Heritage Action Sentinel frequently posts articles from The Daily Signal as well as content from other conservative organizations and media outlets.

But is anyone seeing them?

Many of Kirchoffs Facebook posts have zero likes or comments, prompting him to take his case directly to Facebook. While that worked in the past, he has noticed the problem more often.

Kirchoff captured screenshots and shared them with The Daily Signal, which is Heritages multimedia news organization, as well as Facebook. He joins The Daily Signal Podcast to explain the situation and raise awareness for other conservatives.

Listen to the interview or read a lightly edited transcript below.

Rob Bluey: You and I first met at a Heritage Foundation event back in 2018. At which point, you shared some of the troubling experiences you had at Facebook, and I attempted to intervene and put you in touch with some folks there to help sort this out.

Sadly, three years later, it seems that youre still fighting to make sure that your content is being seen on the platform. Can you tell our listeners your story?

Don Kirchoff: I had learned how to use Facebook probably at least 10 years ago, and Facebook continued more and more to prevent me from posting things. I would be blocked three days at a time, a week at a time. And then eventually, I think it was in April of about 2018, they just completely shut down my account. It was as if I never existed on Facebook.

And Rob, thats of the time I spoke with you and you put me in touch with a person in Facebook, and two or three days later, I was back up posting as normal, as if I had never been shut off.

And for the last two or three years, most of my posts have not had difficulty, unless I crossed, I guess, values with a group of liberals out there. And I believe what they would do is they would send messages to Facebook that I was doing something against their community standards, and Facebook gradually, more and more, began, I believe, shadow banning me.

So when that would happen, I would simply do a screenshot of the evidence I had and Id send it to this contact I have, you gave me, in Facebook and things would seem to get better, but in the last couple of months, this shadow banning has become severe.

In fact, some of the just outstanding information, fact-based conservative information, that I would post would get no views, no attention whatsoever. So Ive, again, in the last couple months, began sharing screenshots of that type of information with Facebook. And I really dont know what theyre doing about it because I dont know whats being done behind my screen.

Bluey: Don, for our listeners who might not know the term shadow banning, its something that members of Congress here in Washington have experienced, as well as users like yourself. Can you explain what you are sharing when you contact Facebook and what you mean by shadow banning?

Kirchoff: When I contact Facebook, its because [of] a post of mine, which could be an article prepared by The Heritage Foundation or The Daily Signal, or the New York Post, any of these really great fact-based conservative pieces of information.

And I believe shadow banning to me means that when I post it, theres no activity. There are no likes, no dislikes, no comments, no shares, or very, very few. To me, thats what shadow banning is. In other words, I put something out there, but nobody can see it or do anything with it.

Bluey: Youre absolutely right. And well share some of those screenshots, so our users can log onto dailysignal.com and see for themselves what you mean. Youve shared them with me, and its really interesting. We certainly appreciate that you help sharing Daily Signal stories and Heritage Foundation content.

My question for you is, does it appear to you that Facebook is taking issue with the specific sources of news and information, or is it posts from conservatives like yourself, as you said earlier, whose values might not align?

Kirchoff: I really believe its both. I think some of the material Ive posted such as The Daily Signal or New York Post, from what I hear and read in the media, those sources are already being censored by Facebook. So its not a surprise to me that when I post them, they are also censored on my Facebook page, but I think they are censoring me personally.

And I think thats driven most of the time when there is an issue or contentand it might be on socialism or the border problem. If I post something like that on a more liberal Facebook page, its then that I can associate with that a higher frequency of censorship on my own page.

So I think that part is personal because I become too visible out there in the liberal posting groups.

Rob Bluey: I think thats interesting because youve said youve investigated some of these liberal or left-leaning Facebook groups, and youve discovered that in looking at some of their own posts and the content in those groups, the same type of thing isnt happening.

So what did you discover as you poked around yourself on the platform, and what did you find?

Kirchoff: What I find is on those liberal groups, postings on the same content but a liberal-leaning view, there can be hundreds and even thousands of activity actions on those posts. Whereas if I post conservative content on my Facebook page, it is what I call banned. Nobody can see it, therefore, theres no action on it. Same issue, just a different point of view.

Bluey: Don, taking a step back, you mentioned that youve been active on Facebook now for about a decade. Why is Facebook an important platform for you to be sharing this type of political or policy type of information?

Kirchoff: Thats a great question because on Facebook, you could put out more information and you can engage people. These discussion threads become very educational. For example, my view is that I need to help push back on false information on some of these subjects put out by the liberal media, and therefore, engage people in discussions, both who have the same view as mine or who have an opposing view. Thats welcome on my Facebook page.

Its really interesting how people with both my view and a more liberal view on a subject will get engaged in Facebook discussions, but if the conservative view is shadow banned or prevented from reaching the public, those intellectual discussions cant even take place.

Bluey: Thats so true, and we appreciate you taking the time, that you want to engage with your fellow users on Facebook, those friends and others who may be in Facebook groups with you, to have those types of conversation and discussions. Ive noticed a change myself on Facebook, and Im wondering if you can pinpoint a moment when you feel that Facebook started to change in terms of how it was allowing you to share content?

Was it sometime during the Trump presidency? Was it before that? Was it just recently? Or has this been changing over the course of the last five years, in a way that is increasingly restrictive?

Kirchoff: I think its been changing gradually over a long period of time. I think it got significantly worse this summer. Why? I dont know. I just dont know why, because I cant see whats going on in Facebook. All I can see in my view is what the outcome is, as impacting conservative information I try to post.

Bluey: Facebook, unlike some of the other social media platforms, has created an Oversight Board. Its separate from the company. It makes big decisions, including things like, should President [Donald] Trump be banned from the platform? Of course, that was a decision earlier this year that they said, Facebook cant indefinitely do that. They have to come up with some criteria.

Do you think that something like an Oversight Board is a good development, and have you thought about appealing some of your cases to the Oversight Board, to see if maybe you can escalate it to that level?

Kirchoff: Well, the answer is yes. In fact, I have been sharing some information, the same information that I send to the Facebook content. I also am copying an attorney in Washington, D.C. And you may not remember, Rob, but it is the same attorney who you put me in touch with in 2018. And for a while, he would respond every time I provided information.

He even got me involved with a Facebook questionnaire that was helping to sort of, I guess, define who would be on this kind of board. And I continue to send that information to him, but I dont know what, if anything, is being done with it.

Bluey: Well, I think that thats the frustration. They do take a limited number of cases, and usually the ones that they do take are fairly high profile. But Don, whatever we can do to help, certainly, consider us. I know youre sharing a lot of content that we produce, so we certainly have a stake in this game as well.

I wanted to ask you what your advice is to others who might find themselves in a similar situation and be listening to this interview today?

Kirchoff: Again, thats a good question, too, because I see people making comments about being banned themselves or blocked completely. So when that happens, I direct message them and ask them to contact me on my email address. And when they do, I give them the contact in Facebook to whom they can send detailed information on whats happening to them.

So yes, I can be contacted by email. The problem is there are so many direct messages every day, I just cannot see them. But if I know somebodys going to direct message me in a narrow window of time with a problem and can contact me by email, I happily put them in contact with this Facebook person.

Bluey: Well, Don, we appreciate the work that youre doing to help others, and also to spread the conservative message. As we wrap-up the interview here, I want to give you a moment to just share what it is about conservative principles and the values that you believe in that inspired you to become active. As a grassroots activist, involved with Heritage Action and The Heritage Foundation, was there something in your life that motivated you to take this step?

Kirchoff: Yes. When it became apparent that the only two nominees for president of the Democrat Party was going to be either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, that got my wifes and my attention. Up until that point, we simply had our careers. We raised our family, we minded our own business, and we voted, and that was the extent to which we became politically involved.

But when the Democrats were going to have only one of those two as a candidate, we joined tea parties. And we began traveling, particularly to Washington, and attending conferences on how to become an activist. Its there that we became involved with The Heritage Foundation.

It is at that time they set up Heritage Action. We joined immediately. We were among the first to join. This group, more than any others we became in contact with, [was] action-oriented. We wanted to do something, not just talk about it. And thats what were enabled to do in Heritage Action because of the great resources we get in that group.

Bluey: Well, and of course, Heritage is the parent organization of The Daily Signal, and Heritage Action is a strong, independent partner of ours. So Don, we appreciate your leadership and your efforts there in Texas, and well continue to keep in touch.

Thank you for speaking out and giving voice to some of the concerns that I think so many other conservatives have experienced on platforms like Facebook.

Kirchoff: Well, Rob, thank you for being there when we needed help. We really appreciate everything Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action provides for us.

Bluey: Thank you, Don.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email[emailprotected]and well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

Read the original post:

Conservative Activist Calls Out Facebook for Suppressing His Posts - Daily Signal

Justice Samuel Alito gave a blistering defense of several of the Supreme Court's recent rulings on contentiouscases, including its decision to allow the Texas law banning all abortions after six weeks.

Critics have accused the majority-conservative Supreme Court of abusing the ideaof a"shadow docket" over the past few months an idea which Alito rejected wholeheartedly ina speech at the University of Notre Dame on Thursday.

"The catchy and sinister term 'shadow docket' has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways," he said. "This portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution."

The "Texas Heartbeat Act" which the Supreme Court bench declined to block in early September has been seen as a near nullification of Roe v. Wade. Alito, however, referred to these claims as "false and inflammatory."

"We did no such thing," he said. "And we said so expressly in our order." Quoting from the order, Alito stressed that the ruling was not an evaluation of the constitutionality of the law, but rather that the majority (5-4) made its decision following procedural bases.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

In this case, and in other extreme emergency cases, Alito favors a different term to describe the group: the "emergency docket." Much like how first responders, in dire circumstances, do not have the same luxury of careful considerationas a nurse or doctor in a hospital, the Supreme Court couldnot use its regular deliberation strategies, according to Alito.

"You can't expect the E.M.T.s and the emergency rooms to do the same thing that a team of physicians and nurses will do when they are handling a matter when time is not of the essence in the same way," he explained.

In a dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the ruling "illustrates just how far the Court's 'shadow-docket' decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process." She added that their decision making becomes more "un-reasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend," by the day.

The strict abortion rules that came into effect after the passing of the act, S.B No. 8, was a celebratory moment for conservatives and a dreaded point for women, abortion activists and practitioners and the left in general.

The restrictions, which took effect on Sept. 1, are extreme. Implementing a cutoff date that is often too early for a person to identify that they are pregnant, the act also follows a "vigilante-style system of policing Texans' right to choose" that punishes nearly everyone involved in facilitating a clandestine abortion including the Uber driver. It also does not grant exceptions in cases of rape, incest or sexual abuse.

But all hope is not lost for Texas abortion rights.

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Earlier this month, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas over the law, claiming that it was enacted "in open defiance of the Constitution." Judge Robert Pitman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas is presiding over the arguments presented by the Justice Department in their plea to block the ban. Meanwhile, the state has been enjoining the court to deny motion and dismiss the case out of hand.

"The federal government has not clearly shown that the Texas Heartbeat Act is unconstitutional, that a preliminary injunction would remedy irreparable harm, or that the balance of equities and public interest favor extraordinary relief," the state said in a filing, as reported by NPR.

There is currently no time table for the decision. In the meantime,people seeking abortions continue to travel to neighboring states to evade the harsh laws set out by the state.

The rest is here:

Justice Alito slams "efforts to intimidate" the Supreme Court over Texas abortion ban - Salon

Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

In August, Mayor Bill de Blasio made an enormous bet to reopen New York City schools for in-person learning. By requiring all of the citys 150,000 public-school employees to get a shot, he hoped to prevent a third academic year from going remote because of the virus. Employees who did not, he warned, would be suspended without pay.

So on Monday morning, the first day the mandate was enforced, about 8,000 employees were unable to report for work because they refused to be vaccinated. De Blasio took a victory lap at a press conference where he announced that 95 percent of employees were vaccinated, including 96 percent of teachers. A surge of last-minute vaccinations seemed to have avoided the sort of mass suspensions that officials feared and the relative few who were suspended, de Blasio said, had been replaced by vaccinated substitutes. As of today all of the employees in our 1,600 schools are vaccinated, he triumphantly said.

The Department of Education reported that 43,000 shots have been administered since the mandate was announced in August, with 18,000 coming in the past 10 days alone. About 1,000 teachers were vaccinated over the weekend, according to Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, which held its own press conference on Monday. (Mulgrew added that UFT members who are vaccinated before the end of the month will be able to return to work the following day.) Teachers who choose to remain unvaccinated will have to make a decision at the end of the month: voluntarily resign or remain on unpaid leave for a year. Both options allow teachers to retain health insurance benefits until early September, 2022. Teachers who choose neither option will be fired in December, according to an email sent to employees who had yet to comply.

Although the mayor had said all employees must be vaccinated by Friday at 5 p.m. or be placed on unpaid leave, the Department of Education told staff they could be vaccinated as late as Monday morning and still show up for work. While its unclear exactly how many teachers were unable to report for work on Monday morning, the mandate did trigger concerns about staffing shortages. The citys substitute-teacher portal listed thousands of slots available over the weekend, while the city said roughly 9,000 vaccinated substitutes were standing by to fill in. Mulgrew said staff shortages could hit some areas of the school system particularly hard, especially those that work with children who have special needs and school safety agents.

Of particular concern was Staten Island, where the vaccination rate has lagged behind the citywide average. Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter allayed fears about staffing shortages at schools there, such as New Dorp High School. Twenty staff members in a school of that size, while not insignificant, was fully covered by the work of the superintendent, by the work of the central staff, and by the work of the subs, she said at Mondays press conference.

This is going to be a total nightmare, said Rachel Maniscalco, 36, who taught English and special education at Concord High School in Staten Island. Maniscalco received an email from the DOE on Saturday notifying her that she had been placed on unpaid leave. Maniscalco said she would not be getting a shot before the end of the month because she did not feel drug manufacturers had been transparent about the makeup of their vaccines. The mayor wants to say that were replaceable, but the truth of the matter is that this week is going to be so detrimental to the DOE employees, their students, and their kids families, she said.

The school systems mandate comes nearly a week after New York began requiring vaccinations at health-care facilities statewide. That order resulted in a surge of vaccinations but left some hospitals with staffing shortages, forcing administrators to cancel elective surgeries in some instances. In Brooklyn, SUNY Downstate Medical Center postponed radiology appointments and canceled elective C-sections, according to Gothamist. Unlike mandates in other states and cities, New Yorks mandates do not allow for educators or health-care workers to rely on regular testing as an alternative to vaccination.

I never considered getting the shot at all. I dont even do flu shots, said Jo Rose, 30, a teachers assistant in the Bronx who was suspended over the weekend. Rose said she was one of only a handful of holdouts at her school; most of her unvaccinated co-workers caved to the pressure the mandate had placed on them since it was announced. Rose has not been vaccinated because she believes the government has too much control over people.I had to tell my kids on Friday that I was leaving. They thought I was cracking a joke on them, she said. They really thought I wasnt being serious. They were like, Why dont you just go get it? And I just tried to explain to them that I have a right to decide over my body.

The mandate survived a number of legal challenges, including a last-ditch appeal to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which was denied. About 3,000 UFT members applied for religious exemptions or medical accommodations, Mulgrew said, but only 1,000 had been granted. Michael Kane, 43, a teacher in Queens, was originally denied a religious exemption but is in the process of appealing that decision. As of Monday morning, Kane was not allowed inside his school building, but he has yet to be placed on unpaid leave.

Its been very conflicting, said Paulette ONeal, a 52-year-old teachers assistant at P.S. 307 in Brooklyn, who said she was denied a religious exemption. ONeal said she had not gotten vaccinated because she was concerned about the shadow-banning and censoring of information about vaccines. They dont want us in the building. Or to let us talk to our children or their parents. They just want us to disappear, she said.

De Blasio said he was considering whether to extend the mandate to other city employees but would not say which departments might be next.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

Excerpt from:

De Blasios Vaxx Mandate Led to an Avalanche of Shots for Teachers - New York Magazine

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito dismissed criticism of the so-called shadow docket. Erin Schaff/AP hide caption

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito dismissed criticism of the so-called shadow docket.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito launched a litany of acerbic barbs at critics of the Supreme Court's so-called shadow docket on Thursday.

Noting that the term was coined in a 2015 law review article, Alito said that the term has been adopted by "journalists and some political figures" in order to convey the idea that "something sneaky and dangerous" is going on at the high court when it rules on emergency appeals seeking the court's intervention.

"This picture is very sinister and threatening, but it is also very misleading," he said in a lecture at the University of Notre Dame. "There is nothing, absolutely nothing new about emergency applications."

He added: "The catchy and sinister term 'shadow docket' has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its way. And this portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution."

Addressing the court's most recent and controversial shadow docket decision, which allowed a Texas law banning abortions after about six weeks to go into effect, Alito said it is "false and inflammatory" to contend, as some critics have, that the decision "nullified Roe v. Wade."

"We did no such thing, and we said so expressly in our order," he said. Indeed, the court's 5-to-4 decision specifically left open the possibility that the court could re-examine the state law in a future case. But Alito did not address the fact that the court's decision to let the law go into effect meant that for the foreseeable future at least, almost all abortions in Texas are banned.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the unsigned majority opinion "illustrates how far the court's 'shadow docket' decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process."

But Alito fiercely denied that, contending that the court's processes for dealing with emergency appeals has not, in reality, changed over the years.

"The truth of the matter," he said, "is that there is nothing shadowy" or really new about the process.

Indeed, the Supreme Court has long been willing to grant temporary relief in a limited number of cases to preserve the status quo, especially when there is a strong case that individuals will be harmed if the court does not act. Most often in the past these emergency orders have been used in death penalty cases to halt executions if there is a real likelihood that the death row inmate's sentence may have violated the constitution.

But there was an explosion of these emergency applications when the Donald Trump became president. From 2001 to 2017, during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the solicitor general filed a total of eight applications with the Supreme Court seeking to halt lower court orders dealing most often with administration policies. That is one every other term, according to University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck. Of those eight applications, the court granted just four, one every other term.

In contrast the Trump administration filed 41 emergency relief requests, securing a win from the court 28 times.

"It's a silly criticism," Alito said of the notion that the court has issued more emergency rulings in recent years. Addressing some of these numbers, he said "the real complaint of the critics is that we should have granted relief when they think it should have been denied ... and denied relief when they think it should have been granted."

The justice maintained that he had no problem with legitimate criticism, but he contended that most of the criticism of the way the current court handles the shadow docket is politically motivated and that it erroneously "seeks to convey ... that a dangerous cabal is deciding important issues in a novel, secretive, improper way in the middle of the night."

See the article here:

Justice Alito Calls Criticism Of The Shadow Docket 'Silly' And 'Misleading' - NPR

WASHINGTON Members of a Senate panel battled Wednesday over the Supreme Courts "shadow docket," focusing on a contentious decision this month that allowed a Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks to remain on the booksfor now.

Critics framed the one-paragraph ruling in the Texas abortion case as ideologically driven and questioned the expedited process the court uses in such disputes. Republicans noted the courts emergency process isn't new and they accused progressives of mounting a pressure campaign to bully the court.

The 5-4 decision in the Texas case is the latest to bring the shadow docket under scrutiny at a time when progressives are calling for changes at the Supreme Court. The justices also recently unwound President Joe Bidens eviction moratoriumon the expedited docket and required the administration to keep migrants seeking asylum in Mexico.

More: Texas abortion ruling renews criticism of Supreme Court's 'shadow docket'

More: Supreme Court declines to block Texas ban on abortion at six weeks

"The Supreme Court has now shown that it's willing to allow even facially unconstitutional laws to take effect when the law is aligned with certain ideological preferences," said Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Constitutional rights for millions of Americans should not be stripped away in the dark of night."

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the committee, said the Supreme Court "did something very ordinary" by declining to step in to block the Texas law, which bans most abortions once doctors detect cardiac activity. The court ruled just before midnight Sept. 1 on a procedural matter, not the constitutionality of the law.

"This campaign against the court and against individual justices has hurt the public," Grassley said. "The dishonest rhetoric doesn't help the American people understand the issues."

The Supreme Court usually decides a case after the parties submit months' worth of legal briefs and take part in an hourlong oral argument. The opinions are usually signed so its clear how each justice voted and they generally involve the court parsing complex questions about how to apply the Constitution or a federal statute.

Shadow docket disputes, by contrast, usually involve deciding whether to temporarily block a law while the underlying legal questions are considered by lower courts. The parties sometimes have days to file briefs and there are no oral arguments.

Though criticism of the shadow docket appeared to spark some bipartisan interest during a House hearing earlier this year, Senate Republicans on Wednesday appeared mostly aligned in arguing those concerns are overblown. It's only the latest signal that congressional efforts to makechanges to the Supreme Court face tough odds.

After President Donald Trump nominated three justices during his four years in office, conservatives on the court now ostensibly enjoy a 6-3 advantage. In the Texas case, Chief Justice John Roberts, a President George W. Bush nominee, voted with the liberal wing and argued for halting the law while the underlying lawsuit continued.

Several polls over the summer indicated support for the Supreme Court has dropped since the Texas decision, particularly on the left. Democratic support dived 22 points over the summer in a Marquette University Law School poll, for instance.

The legal fight over the Texas law continuesin several courts simultaneously. A federal judge in Texas is set to hold a hearing Friday on a request by the Justice Department to temporarily halt enforcement of the abortion ban while the underlying constitutional questions are resolved. Abortion rights groups, meanwhile, brought a new challenge to the Supreme Court late last week in an effort to stop the law's enforcement.

Nearly 50 years ago the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women have the right to an abortion during the first and second trimesters but that states could impose restrictions in the second trimester. In 1992, in a case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court allowed states to ban most abortions at viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb about 24 weeks.

Several conservative states have approved laws banning the procedure prior to viability in an effort to challenge the court's precedents, but most of those have been halted by lower federal courts. The Supreme Court will decide another major case this year challenging Mississippis ban on most abortions after 15 weeks.

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Senate battles over Supreme Court 'shadow docket' in the wake of Texas abortion law - USA TODAY

Axios Jonathan Swan spoke with Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, Adela Raz, for the latest episode of Axios on HBO. It was her first TV interview since the fall of Kabul.

Guests: Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center; Axios' Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen.

Credits: Axios Today is produced in partnership with Pushkin Industries. The team includes Niala Boodhoo, Sara Kehaulani Goo, Dan Bobkoff, Alexandra Botti, Nuria Marquez Martinez, Sabeena Singhani, Michael Hanf, and Alex Sugiura. Music is composed by Evan Viola. You can reach us at podcasts@axios.com. You can text questions, comments and story ideas to Niala as a text or voice memo to 202-918-4893.

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NIALA BOODHOO: Good morning! Welcome to Axios Today! Its Monday, October 4th. Im Niala Boodhoo. Heres what you need to know today: The Supreme Court takes up some of our nations biggest issues. Plus, Mike Allen on the Pandora Papers. But first, todays One Big Thing: Afghanistans ambassador to the U.S. speaks out.

JONATHAN SWAN: Do you think Af-Afghans will ever trust an American president again?

ADELA RAZ: Uh, not soon, probably. I'm sorry to say that. I don't think so.

NIALA: That was Axios Jonathan Swan speaking to Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, Adela Raz, for the latest episode of Axios on HBO. It was her first TV interview since the fall of Kabul, and Jonathan Swan is here to tell us how her story might reflect Afghanistans story right now.

NIALA: Jonathan, thanks for being with me.

JONATHAN: Thanks for having me.

NIALA: Jonathan, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., Adela Raz, is still working in D.C., and I wanted to start by asking you: Does she still consider herself the ambassador to the U.S. and is she?

JONATHAN: Yeah, she does consider herself the ambassador and it's the most extraordinary situation. Basically shes stateless. She has kept the embassy open, the Afghanistan embassy. Obviously, she has no leader that she reports to because Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani fled the country in secret, and the Biden administration is declining to meet with her. She's someone who's spent her whole adult life fighting for the rights of Afghan women and girls. And she's basically, in the last month, watched her life's work go up in flames.

NIALA: What was her response to President Biden saying that the U.S. still wants to advocate for the rights of women and girls there?

JONATHAN: She said really it's all talk because what leverage does the U.S.-is the U.S. exerting of the Taliban? The Taliban has taken over the government. They're now stopping women from going to school. All the gains of the last 20 years that she's been involved in working for, are being erased right now.

NIALA: And what about President Biden's actions overall? What did she say about how the Biden administration handled the exit from Afghanistan?

JONATHAN: She really wishes that the Biden administration had renegotiated a better deal with the Taliban, one that put conditions in place, rather than just saying, we're going to leave. She saw that as a betrayal.

NIALA: Can you give me a sense of what her role was like in the lead up to the withdrawal?

JONATHAN: She was actually Afghanistan's ambassador to the United Nations. She was the first woman to be in that role. She was only appointed the ambassador to the United States in Washington in July. She was having to sort of publicly project confidence in her government when, of course privately, she had grave doubts about it. So she was just in a-in a horrendous position. We had to stop the interview several times. She was crying, had to collect herself, she feels like her life has just been taken away.

NIALA: What are you left thinking about now after this interview?

JONATHAN: I'll be honest, it left me feeling pretty bleak. The Taliban has shown pretty clearly that they haven't really changed. Ideologically, they're still the same Taliban that they were in the 1990s when they stopped Ambassador Raz, when she was a young girl, from going to school. The other thing that people aren't thinking about right now is Afghanistan is already experiencing a humanitarian crisis. There are sanctions on the Taliban and yet there's this moral imperative to get aid and food to the Afghan people. So it's just a very complicated situation and real people's lives are-are at stake.

NIALA: Jonathan Swan covers politics for Axios, and you can watch that whole interview with Ambassador Raz on Axios on HBO. Jonathan, thanks for giving us this backstory.

JONATHAN: Of course. Thank you.

NIALA: Well be back in 15 seconds with what to know about the Supreme Courts new fall term.

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NIALA: Welcome back to Axios Today! Im Niala Boodhoo. Abortion, guns and religious rights top the list of major issues in front of the Supreme Court as it starts its new term later today. Jeffrey Rosen is the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and he's with us for what he's watching as this new term begins.

JEFFREY: Hi, great to be here.

NIALA: We're hearing so much about, for example, abortion, is that the biggest issue the Supreme Court is taking up this fall?

JEFFREY: Yes, it is. The Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade, and that is the biggest constitutional issue in decades. And that's what makes this case, which is coming out of Mississippi, so important.

NIALA: What do we need to know about that case?

JEFFREY: Well, Mississippi passed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks and Roe v. Wade. And the cases after that said you can't ban abortions, uh, before fetal viability around 24 weeks. So if the Supreme Court were to uphold this ban, that would represent a huge setback for abortion rights.

NIALA: I've also been hearing a lot about this term shadow docket. Can you explain what this is and how this factors into The Supreme Court this fall?

JEFFREY: The shadow docket are cases The Supreme Court decides without full arguments and briefings. And in the abortion context, the court recently refused to block Texas' abortion law, which bans abortion after six weeks. And it did it on the shadow docket. In other words, it issued a brief opinion but it didn't give reasons that really justified what it was doing. And it also didn't have full briefing. So critics of the shadow docket say this is allowing the court to make really important decisions without hearing good arguments on both sides. And that's the source of the criticism.

NIALA: Were also hearing a lot of criticism or maybe should say debate over the politicization of the court. And Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas last week said the court quote may have become the most dangerous branch of government. What's going on here?

JEFFREY: Well, those who say the court's becoming politicized, say the justices are ruling based on politics rather than The Constitution. And it's interesting that, not only Justice Thomas, but also justices Barrett and Justice Breyer, appointed by President Clinton, all denied that. They say judges are actually deciding based on their judicial philosophies, not politics. Now, not everyone is convinced by that. And Justice Thomas thinks the court is getting into areas where it shouldn't. And that's why he says the courts become dangerous.

NIALA: How should people think about this? Because it gets really tricky when you hear liberal and conservative justices denying and saying this has happening.

JEFFREY: There are many cases where the court is not political. And in fact, last term, there were more unanimous decisions than in a long time. And you saw the justices agreeing in all sorts of unexpected ways. At the same time, there are these counterexamples: abortion, guns. How can we explain this? Well, Justice Breyer has said, there's some areas where justice feel so strongly, and abortion is certainly one of them that they may not be able to separate their political from their constitutional views. But in other cases where they feel less strongly, they can. Maybe that's the simplest way to explain it.

NIALA: National Constitution Center CEO, Jeffrey Rosen, also hosts the podcast We the People, where he brings together liberals and conservatives to talk about the big constitutional issue of the week. Thanks Jeffrey.

JEFFREY: Thank you.

NIALA: Yesterday, the ICIJ - that's the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released: the Pandora Papers, an attempt to untangle the world of offshore finance via millions of leaked financial records. And this investigation was the result of a year-long collaboration between more than 600 journalists in 117 countries, including news organizations like the BBC, the Indian Express and The Washington Post. We'll be no doubt hearing about this investigation for some time. But for this morning, I asked Axios' Mike Allen what you need to know about what ICIJ says is the largest investigation ever in journalism history.

MIKE ALLEN: At a time when people are ever more suspicious of insiders and the establishment, the papers reveal mammoth deception and unthinkable spending on personal luxury. All with this astonishing, convincing paper trail. Look at Jordan. Among the poor countries in the Middle East, a large recipient of U.S. foreign aid. The king secretly spent more than a hundred million dollars on luxury homes. In the U.S. and London, including a compound in Malibu, the Washington Post reports. Another place the Pandora papers had home for Americans, The Washington Post found that South Dakota is now a hub of financial secrecy, tens of millions of dollars from outside the U.S. now sheltered by trust companies in Sioux Falls.

NIALA: Mike Allen is a cofounder of Axios.

Thats all weve got for you today!

Im Niala Boodhoo - thanks for listening - stay safe and well see you back here tomorrow morning.

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Afghanistans ambassador to the U.S. speaks out - Axios