Daily Archives: May 3, 2022

The Roe opinion and the case against the Supreme Court of the United States – Vox.com

Posted: May 3, 2022 at 9:35 pm

Two events occurred Monday night one historic, the other rather insignificant which placed an unflattering spotlight on the Supreme Court of the United States.

The historic event was that Politico published an unprecedented leak of a draft majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, which would overrule Roe v. Wade and permit state lawmakers to ban abortion in its entirety in the US. Alitos draft opinion is not the Courts final word on this case, Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, but the leaked opinion is the latest in a long list of signs that Roe may be in its final days.

The other event that also occurred last night is that I sent two tweets. One praised whoever leaked Alitos opinion for disrupting an institution that, as I have written about many times in many forums, including my first book, has historically been a malign force within the United States. And a second celebrated the leak for the distrust it might foster in such a malign institution.

The former tweet was phrased provocatively, and it attracted some attention from those on the right, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). So let me clarify that I do not advocate arson as a solution to the Republican Partys capture of the Supreme Court. I metaphorically compared the leak of Alitos opinion to lighting the Court on fire because, as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his statement on the leak, the Court has extraordinarily strong norms of confidentiality that it zealously protects.

The fact that someone inside the Courts very small circle of trust apparently decided to leak a draft opinion is likely to be perceived by the justices, as SCOTUSBlog tweeted out Monday night, as the gravest, most unforgivable sin.

To this I say, good. If the Court does what Alito proposed in his draft opinion, and overrules Roe v. Wade, that decision will be the culmination of a decades-long effort by Republicans to capture the institution and use it, not just to undercut abortion rights but also to implement an unpopular agenda they cannot implement through the democratic process.

And the Courts Republican majority hasnt simply handed the Republican Party substantive policy victories. It is systematically dismantling voting rights protections that make it possible for every voter to have an equal voice, and for every political party to compete fairly for control of the United States government. Justice Alito, the author of the draft opinion overturning Roe, is also the author of two important decisions dismantling much of the Voting Rights Act.

This behavior, moreover, is consistent with the history of an institution that once blessed slavery and described Black people as beings of an inferior order. It is consistent with the Courts history of union-busting, of supporting racial segregation, and of upholding concentration camps.

Moreover, while the present Court is unusually conservative, the judiciary as an institution has an inherent conservative bias. Courts have a great deal of power to strike down programs created by elected officials, but little ability to build such programs from the ground up. Thus, when an anti-governmental political movement controls the judiciary, it will likely be able to exploit that control to great effect. But when a more left-leaning movement controls the courts, it is likely to find judicial power to be an ineffective tool.

The Court, in other words, simply does not deserve the reverence it still enjoys in much of American society, and especially from the legal profession. For nearly all of its history, its been a reactionary institution, a political one that serves the interests of the already powerful at the expense of the most vulnerable. And it currently appears to be reverting to that historic mean.

There have only been three justices in American history who were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote, and who were confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half the country. All three of them sit on the Supreme Court right now, and all three were appointed by Donald Trump.

Indeed, if not for anti-democratic institutions such as the Senate and the Electoral College, its likely that Democrats would control a majority of the seats on the Supreme Court, and a decision overruling Roe would not be on the table.

So it is ironic for that reason, and others that Alitos draft opinion overruling Roe leans heavily on appeals to democracy. Quoting from an opinion by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Alito writes that the permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.

If Alito truly wants to put the question of whether pregnant individuals have a right to terminate that pregnancy up to a free and fair democratic process, polling indicates that liberals could probably win that fight on a national level.

In fairness, polling on abortion often misses the nuances of public opinion. Many polls, for example, allow respondents to say that they believe that abortion should be legal under certain circumstances or in most cases, leaving anyone who reads those polls to speculate under which specific circumstances people think that abortion should be legal.

Perhaps the best evidence that proponents of legal abortion could win a fair political fight, however, is the Supreme Courts own polling. After the Court allowed a strict anti-abortion law to take effect in Texas last fall, multiple polls found the Supreme Courts approval rating at its lowest point ever recorded.

But public opinion may not matter much in the coming political fight over abortion, because Alito and his fellow Republican justices have spent the past decade placing a thumb on the scales of democracy making our system even less democratic than one that already features the Electoral College and a malapportioned Senate.

Alito authored two opinions and joined a third that, when combined, almost completely neutralize the Voting Rights Act, the landmark legislation that took power away from Jim Crow and ensured that every American would be able to vote, regardless of their race.

Similarly, the Courts Republican majority held in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) that federal courts will do nothing to stop partisan gerrymandering. Alito is also one of the Courts most outspoken proponents of the independent state legislature doctrine, a doctrine that, in its strongest form, would give gerrymandered Republican legislatures nearly limitless power to determine how federal elections are conducted in their state even if those gerrymandered legislatures violate their state constitution.

One of the most troubling aspects of this Courts jurisprudence is that it often seems to apply one set of rules to Democrats and a different, more permissive set of rules to Republicans. Last February, for example, Alito voted with four of his fellow Republicans to reinstate an Alabama congressional map that a lower court determined to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

In blocking the lower courts order, Alito joined an opinion arguing that the lower courts decision was wrong because it was handed down too close to the next election.

But then, in late March, the Court enjoined Wisconsins state legislative maps, due to concerns that those maps may give too much political power to Black people. March is, of course, closer to the next Election Day than February. So it is difficult to square the March decision with the approach Alito endorsed in February though it is notable that the March decision by the Supreme Court benefited the Republican Party, while the previous decision was likely to benefit Democrats.

I could list more examples of how this Court, often relying on novel legal reasoning, has advanced the Republican Partys substantive agenda on areas as diverse as religion, vaccination, and the right of workers to organize. But really, every issue pales in importance to the right to vote.

If this right is not protected, then liberals are truly defenseless even when they enjoy overwhelming majority support.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Supreme Court held that it has the power to strike down federal laws. But the actual issue at stake in Marbury whether a single individual named to a low-ranking federal job was entitled to that appointment was insignificant. And, after Marbury, the Courts power to strike down federal laws lay dormant until the 1850s.

Then came Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the pro-slavery decision describing Black people as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. Dred Scott, the Courts very first opinion striking down a significant federal law, went after the Missouri Compromises provisions limiting the scope of slavery.

Its not surprising that an institution made up entirely of elite lawyers, who are immune from political accountability and cannot be fired, tends to protect people who are already powerful and cast a much more skeptical eye on people who are marginalized because of their race, gender, or class. Dred Scott is widely recognized as the worst decision in the Courts history, but it began a nearly century-long trend of Supreme Court decisions preserving white supremacy and relegating workers into destitution a history that is glossed over in most American civics classes.

The American people ratified three constitutional amendments the 13th, 14th, and 15th to eradicate Dred Scott and ensure that Black Americans would enjoy, in the 14th Amendments words, all of the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

But then the Court spent the next three decades largely dismantling these three amendments.

Just 10 years after the Civil War, the Supreme Court handed down United States v. Cruikshank (1875), a decision favoring a white supremacist mob that armed itself with guns and cannons to kill a rival Black militia defending its right to self-governance. Black people, the Court held in Cruikshank, must look to the States to protect civil rights such as the right to peacefully assemble a decision that should send a chill down the spine of anyone familiar with the history of the Jim Crow South.

The culmination of this age of white supremacist jurisprudence was Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which blessed the idea of separate but equal. Plessy remained good law for nearly six decades after it was decided.

After decisions like Plessy effectively dismantled the Reconstruction Amendments promise of racial equality, the Court spent the next 40 years transforming the 14th Amendment into a bludgeon to be used against labor. This was the age of decisions like Lochner v. New York (1905), which struck down a New York law preventing bakery owners from overworking their workers. It was also the age of decisions like Adkins v. Childrens Hospital (1923), which struck down minimum wage laws, and Adair v. United States (1908), which prohibited lawmakers from protecting the right to unionize.

The logic of decisions like Lochner is that the 14th Amendments language providing that no state may deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law created a right to contract. And that this supposed right prohibited the government from invalidating exploitative labor contracts that forced workers to labor for long hours with little pay.

As Alito notes in his draft opinion overruling Roe, the Roe opinion did rely on a similar methodology to Lochner. It found the right to an abortion to also be implicit in the 14th Amendments due process clause.

For what its worth, I actually find this portion of Alitos opinion persuasive. Ive argued that the Roe opinion should have been rooted in the constitutional right to gender equality what the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once described as the opportunity women will have to participate as mens full partners in the nations social, political, and economic life and not the extraordinarily vague and easily manipulated language of the due process clause.

Indeed, one of the most striking things about the Courts Lochner-era jurisprudence is how willing the justices were to manipulate legal doctrines applying one doctrine in one case, then ignoring it when it was likely to benefit a party that they did not want to prevail.

In Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), for example, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited goods produced by child labor from traveling across state lines. The reason Congress structured this ban on child labor in such an unusual way is because the Supreme Court had repeatedly held prior to Dagenhart that Congress could ban products from traveling in interstate commerce among other things, the Court upheld a law prohibiting lottery tickets from traveling across state lines in Champion v. Ames (1903).

But the rule announced in Champion and similar cases was brushed aside once Congress decided to use its lawful authority to protect workers.

The Court also did not exactly cover itself in glory after President Franklin Roosevelt filled it with New Dealers who rejected decisions like Lochner and Hammer. One of the most significant Supreme Court decisions of the Roosevelt era, for example, was Korematsu v. United States (1944), the decision holding that Japanese Americans could be forced into concentration camps during World War II, for the sin of having the wrong ancestors.

The point is that decisions like Alitos draft Dobbs opinion, which would commandeer the bodies of millions of Americans or decisions dismantling the Voting Rights Act are entirely consistent with the Courts history as defender of traditional hierarchies. Alito is not an outlier in the Courts history. He is quite representative of the justices who came before him.

In offering this critique of the Supreme Court, I will acknowledge that the Courts history has not been an unbroken string of reactionary decisions dashing the hopes of liberalism. The Courts marriage equality decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), for example, was a real victory for liberals although, as several commentators have noted, there is language in Alitos draft Dobbs opinion suggesting that, if Roe falls, LGBTQ+ rights could be next.

But the Courts ability to spearhead progressive change that does not, like marriage equality, enjoy broad popular support is quite limited. The seminal work warning of the heavy constraints on the Courts ability to effect such change is Gerald Rosenbergs The Hollow Hope, which argues that courts lack the tools to readily develop appropriate policies and implement decisions ordering significant social reform, at least when those reforms arent also supported by elected officials.

This constraint on the judiciarys ability to effect progressive change was most apparent in the aftermath of perhaps the Courts most celebrated decision: Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Brown triggered massive resistance from white supremacists, especially in the Deep South. As Harvard legal historian Michael Klarman has documented, five years after Brown, only 40 of North Carolinas 300,000 Black students attended an integrated school. Six years after Brown, only 42 of Nashvilles 12,000 Black students were integrated. A decade after Brown, only 1 in 85 African American students in the South attended an integrated school.

The courts simply lacked the institutional capacity to implement a school desegregation decision that Southern states were determined to resist. Among other things, when a school district refused to integrate, the only way to obtain a court order mandating desegregation was for a Black family to file a lawsuit against it. But terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan used the very real threat of violence to ensure few lawsuits were filed.

No one dared to file such a lawsuit seeking to integrate a Mississippi grade school, for example, until 1963.

Indeed, much of the South did not really begin to integrate until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which allowed the Justice Department to sue segregated schools, and which allowed federal officials to withhold funding from schools that refused to integrate. Within two years after this act became law, the number of Southern Black students attending integrated schools increased fivefold. By 1973, 90 percent of these students were desegregated.

Rosenbergs most depressing conclusion is that, while liberal judges are severely constrained in their ability to effect progressive change, reactionary judges have tremendous ability to hold back such change. Studies of the role of the courts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rosenberg writes, show that courts can effectively block significant social reform.

And, while such reactionary decisions may eventually fall if there is a sustained political effort to overrule them, this process can take a very long time. Dagenhart was decided in 1918. The Court did not overrule it, and thus permit Congress to ban child labor, until 1941.

There are several structural reasons courts are a stronger ally for conservative movements than they are for progressive ones. For starters, in most constitutional cases courts only have the power to strike down a law that is, to destroy an edifice that the legislature has built. The Supreme Court could repeal Obamacare, but it couldnt have created the Affordable Care Acts complex array of government-run marketplaces, subsidies, and mandates.

Litigation, in other words, is a far more potent tool in the hands of an anti-governmental movement than it is in the hands of one seeking to build a more robust regulatory and welfare state. Its hard to cure poverty when your only tool is a bomb.

So, to summarize my argument, the judiciary, for reasons laid out by Rosenberg and others, structurally favors conservatives. People who want to dismantle government programs can accomplish far more, when they control the courts, than people who want to build up those programs. And, as the Courts history shows, when conservatives do control the Court, they use their power to devastating effect.

This alone is a reason for liberals, small-d democrats, large-D Democrats, and marginalized groups more broadly, to take a more critical eye to the courts. And the judiciarys structural conservatism is augmented by the fact that, in the United States, institutions like the Electoral College and Senate malapportionment give Republicans a huge leg up in the battle for control of the judiciary.

Of course I do not believe that we should literally light the Supreme Court of the United States on fire, but I do believe that diminished public trust in the Court is a good thing. This institution has not served the American people well, and its time to start treating it that way.

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The Roe opinion and the case against the Supreme Court of the United States - Vox.com

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Old lefties need to grow up – Spiked

Posted: at 9:35 pm

On hearing this week that a purple-haired Extinction Rebellion activist (keen on vintage clothes and fantastic sex) had suggested that Baby Boomers should be euthanised as revenge for their contributions to climate change, I expected the culprit to be the usual fresh-faced millennial who weve all become bored of being scolded by. But on seeing photographs of 59-year-old (only three years younger than me) Jessica Townsend, it all made even more recognisably ludicrous sense, despite her comment supposedly being a joke. (Would she have made it about any other group? No. Therefore it wasnt a joke.) For she is one of the growing tribe of left-wing old people who identify as Forever Young.

Its an easy mistake to make. It was always going to be hard for anyone who grew up in the Sixties or later to age gracefully; I was born in 1959 and I dont think Ill ever get around to it. But then, I dont joke about exterminating people according to how old they are.

Before the Sixties, youth was something people wanted to get over as soon as possible so they could join the adult world with all its arcane pleasures. But the moment the pill led sex before marriage to become normalised, adulthood lost a great deal of its appeal. Philip Larkin wrote Annus Mirabilis about this development (Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three / Between the end of the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles first LP / Up to then thered only been / A sort of bargaining / A wrangle for the ring / A shame that started at sixteen / And spread to everything) and returned to it in High Windows (When I see a couple of kids / And guess hes fucking her and shes / Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm / I know this is paradise / Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives). The young seemed to be having the best sex so of course adults wanted to dress like them and eventually act like them, too.

Then the Boomers didnt do the decent thing and die, due to the wonder of modern medicine; instead, theyre reporting at A&E with unparalleled recreational drug use and at sexual-health clinics with a little something they picked up on their last 58-70 holiday. Stairlift to heaven indeed! These are the SKIs (Spending Kids Inheritance), or what I call the YOLOAPs. Wrap up warm and Ill meet you at the cyber caf!, I heard a lovely lady in her seventies shouting gleefully into her iPhone on the bus.

On paper, Townsend should be one of these happy old dears getting high on the modern world; she enjoys lemon drizzle cake, hot buttered toast, mushroom risotto and burgundy wine. Its a lovely life being a writer, and she has apparently had a career as a playwright and screenwriter, though disillusion with her craft appears to have been fermenting all the while: When I was first a writer in my twenties there seemed at that time to be no big subjects to write about, and I felt slightly badly placed to be born into cosy times most of the plays, films and novels I read were about white, middle-class, heterosexual couples betraying each other. It was while researching a novel set in 2030 that she became interested in climate change before becoming an Extinction Rebellion activist, co-founding the XR podcast and the Writers Rebel group.

Her words speak volumes even if her volumes dont. Those who latch on to the climate-change panic are, in my experience, not terribly gifted people who nevertheless crave the spotlight; hence the spectacular but silly protest events of XR, which are high on media opportunities but low on persuading the public. Meanwhile, those who have been successful in their chosen careers often feel a bit establishment, and see cosying up to climate crusaders as a way to give them back a bit of their edge see Emma Thompson taking a flight of over 5,400 miles between Los Angeles and London, thus stomping out a one-and-a-half-tonne carbon footprint, in order to show solidarity with Extinction Rebellion. XR activists, though they demand that flights be used only in emergencies, then simpered that Dame Emmas jaunt was an unfortunate cost in our bigger battle to save the planet.

Faced with an uninspiring writing career, as Ms Townsend appears to have been, what could be more of a kickstart to the electric scooter of creativity than a leading role in the latest struggle between good and evil? She claims that those who oppose her chosen tribe will go down in history in the same way as those who opposed the abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of the working classes, the Suffragettes. In short, she is one of the Righteous Old, not to be confused with those bumptious Boomers living it up at their local cyber caf.

Members of the climate-change crew have previous in identifying as things theyre not, it must be said. Though their meetings make your average UKIP rally look like Reggae Sunsplash, they identify as diverse and inclusive, so thats okay. They identify as non-polluters though some of their leading lights appear to have clocked up the frequent-flyer points faster than anyone since pre-shamed Prince Andrew, hopping on planes quicker than you can say Instagram. One of them was shown on social media enjoying safari holidays in Uganda, boozing on the beach in New Zealand and bungee jumping over the Nile. Thats not a simple carbon footprint thats a carbon clown-shoe footprint.

Of course its not just climate change that attracts the Peter Pan Tendency to politics; Ive written here before about the Grumpy Old Woke Bros who have taken it upon themselves to instruct uppity women and members of the working class on how to behave. Way back at an anti-Brexit rally in 2017, the then 68-years-young Ian McEwan spluttered: A gang of angry old men are shaping the future of the country against the inclinations of its youth. By 2019, the country could be in a receptive mood: 2.5million over-18-year-olds, freshly franchised and mostly Remainers; 1.5million oldsters, mostly Brexiters, freshly in their graves.

Kate Bush has written some lovely songs, but I really believe that The Man With the Child in His Eyes gave a bunch of foolish males the stupid idea that if they never grew up, it would be really attractive. Newsflash: its not. When men used to be accused of having the male menopause, we mocked them as sad old salary men, keen to get hold of the fast car and the foxy girlfriend after a lifetime of wage slavery but lefties, bohos and artists are just as bad.

Both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard strike me as appalling people, but I did feel sorry for her when a witness claimed she told me she didnt like hanging around at his house with his friends because it was boring and it was all old men playing guitars and it wasnt interesting her. A young friend of mine was taken with a famous writer twice her age some years back until it transpired that his idea of fun was hanging out with other middle-aged famous writers swapping the most obscure Bob Dylan lyrics back and forth.

In unattractive rous from Hefner to Westwood, there is the conviction that attractive young women are genuinely keen on having sex with them; they obviously possess magic mirrors. Yes, the occasional woman suffers from this delusion too see Madonna wiggling away on TikTok in a thong but men are far more prone to this most debilitating of diseases. And I can see why theyre confused. If you can get applause for identifying as the opposite sex, when every cell in your body says otherwise, why on Earth shouldnt you be considered stunning and brave for identifying as Forever Young?

Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Her book, Welcome To The Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics, is published Academica Press.

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CU Denver - College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

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Roe v. Wade and an End to the Liberal Romance With Courts – New York Magazine

Posted: at 9:34 pm

There is a moment in a Seinfeld episode about abortion that has always nagged at me. The plot pokes fun at crusaders for and against abortion rights, but it has one moment of painful earnestness, where an anti-abortion restaurant owner asks Elaine what gives her the right to disagree with his stance on abortion, and she replies, The Supreme Court gives me the right to do that!

The exchange doesnt quite track its not clear if the writers meant to have Elaine say the Court gives her the right to disagree on abortion, which is wrong (that would be the First Amendment), or the right to have an abortion. But the sour note, to me, has always been the reverence in her voice as she invokes the Courts authority. The character is not merely making a point about jurisprudence. She is citing the Supreme Court as the ultimate moral arbiter.

The forthcoming demise of Roe v. Wade should dispel an illusion. Americans liberals in particular, and boomers especially have been suffering from a misplaced faith in the Supreme Court as the guarantor of rights and liberties. The right to abortion will not be secured by the occupants of a gleaming marble building. It will be the work of politics activism, persuasion, and voting that will control its fate.

For most of its history, the Supreme Court was a nakedly reactionary institution. The Court destroyed civil-rights laws in the 19th century and progressive economic legislation in the 20th, right up until midway through the New Deal. The Constitution, as interpreted by the Court, created rights for social and economic elites that Congress could not touch.

In the second half of the 20th century, the Court reversed its historic character and began handing down liberal rulings. Roe v. Wade was the apogee of the Warren and Burger Courts, and the era imprinted the image of a liberal Court on the public mind.

Even as control of the Court has passed into the hands of conservatives, who have turned it back into its historic role of creating conservative rights to pollute, to carry weapons almost anywhere, to thwart a Medicaid expansion rather than liberal ones, the old impression has endured. Last fall, a Gallup poll found Democrats and Republicans approved of the Court equally, while a Marquette University poll found it had slightly higher approval among Democrats an extraordinary assessment of a body controlled by six conservatives, half of whom were chosen by Donald Trump.

Roe v. Wade has become affixed in the public conscience as a synonym for the right to abortion. But one can support the right to abortion without believing that right is protected by the Constitution. (I personally believe people have the right to abortion and all essential medical services, but I dont think the Constitution is the source of the right either to abortion or to health care generally.) After Roe, the fight for abortion rights will revert to an openly political struggle. The Court is not ending the abortion debate. It is throwing it open.

In this new phase, abortion-rights supporters have the advantage of broad public support. If (and when) Roe is overturned, as polling analyst Ariel Edwards-Levy notes, only about one-fifth of Americans want their state to ban abortion completely. Another fifth favor restrictions short of a full ban, and just over half want their state to become a safe haven for women in other states who cant access abortion.

It took a half-century of patient organizing for the conservative movement to finally kill Roe. That movement overcame numerous setbacks, some seemingly fatal, including the appointment of several Republican justices who wound up voting to preserve the ruling.

It is entirely possible that, having won the ability to ban abortion, conservatives will proceed to enact such bans on many or most women in this country. It is also possible that opponents will begin expanding the right to abortion into a steadily widening sphere. Social conservatives have won a legal victory, but the end of the story hasnt been written yet.

Irregular musings from the center left.

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Liberal dark money group with Biden admin ties capitalizes on SCOTUS leak to push court-packing agenda – Fox News

Posted: at 9:34 pm

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A liberal dark money group with ties to President Biden'sadministration is using the leakedSupreme Courtdraft opinion to yet again push for the court's expansion.

Demand Justice, the left's most activejudicialgroup, emailed supporters on Tuesday in the wake of the leaked Justice Samuel Alito draft opinion signaling Roe V. Wade would be overturned saying the "clearest solution" to protect "constitutional rights" to abortion is to expand the court.

"The Republican party has seen the writing on the wall and knows that it can't win on the issues," Demand Justice writes in the email.

Brian Fallon, national press secretary for the 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton campaign, speaks during a Bloomberg Politics interview in 2016. Fallon now leads Demand Justice, a left-wing group that wants to pack the Supreme Court. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

FORMER CLINTON AIDE WONDERS IF 'BRAVE CLERK' LEAKED SUPREME COURT DRAFT TO PUSH JUSTICES TO RECONSIDER

"From the need for access to abortion and reproductive healthcare, to the need for an adequate and immediate plan to address climate change, to the need for robust gun violence prevention, Republicans have categorically rejected issues that a commanding and consistent majority of Americans support," the email states.

The group called the Supreme Court the Republican's "insurance policy" and pushed its supporters to contact and pressure members of Congress to kill the filibuster and add four seats to the Supreme Court.

Demand Justice is led by formerHillary Clintoncampaign staffer Brian Fallon, and it also has direct ties to the Biden administration.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Friday, March 4, 2022. Psaki served as an outside adviser to Demand Justice, a far-left group that advocates packing the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki served as an outside adviser to the Demand Justice. Paige Herwig, Biden's point person on judicial nominations, also worked for the group before joining the administration.

Demand Justice started with efforts to discredit Republican judicial picks while backing Democratic nominees. It has since morphed to more advocacy-based endeavors, such as packing the Supreme and lower courts.

LIBERAL DARK MONEY GROUPS DRIVE EFFORTS TO PACK THE SUPREME COURT

But as Democratic politicians attacked right-wing dark money judicial groups, they benefitted from Demand Justice, which has been shrouded in secrecy.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton looks at a smart phone with national press secretary Brian Fallon on her plane at Westchester County Airport October 3, 2016. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Demand Justice launched in 2018 as a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a fiscal sponsor managed by the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Arabella Advisors, which oversees one of the left's largest dark money networks.

The group, however,recently spuninto its own legal entity. Its complete list of donors is unknown due to its relationship with the Sixteen Thirty Fund and its recent break-off into its own nonprofit.

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And while it hides its donors, a nonprofit in liberal billionaireGeorge Soros'snetwork, the Open Society Policy Center,provided $2.6 millionto Demand Justice around the time of its inception, its grants showed.

Demand Justice did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

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Liberal dark money group with Biden admin ties capitalizes on SCOTUS leak to push court-packing agenda - Fox News

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Red stock, blue stock — MAGA Republicans and liberal Democrats are taking their politics to Wall Street – MarketWatch

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Do Republican investment advisors outperform Democratic ones?

Given how intensely polarized the U.S. has become, it was perhaps inevitable that partisanship would creep into the investment advisory arena. And it most certainly has. Numerous studies have confirmed that Republican advisers tend to invest more in companies run by Republican-friendly CEOs, for example, just as Democratic advisers invest more in Democratic-leaning firms.

But do these differences lead to any difference in performance?

A good place to start in answering this question is with two exchange-traded funds that were created around the time of the 2020 U.S. presidential election: The American Conservative Values ETF ACVF, +0.28% and the Democratic Large Cap Core ETF DEMZ, +0.84%. Since Nov. 7, 2020, the first date for which FactSet has performance data for both ETFs, ACVF has produced a 14.4% annualized return, while DEMZ has produced a 14.2% annualized return. (See the chart below; data through April 29.)

Given the variability in their returns, these two ETFs are in a statistical dead heat.

I didnt include in the chart another ETF that focuses on Republican themes: Point Bridge GOP Stock Tracker MAGA, +1.35%. It is older than these two newer ETFs, having been launched in September 2017. There is no corresponding Democratic-leaning ETF that was launched around the same time, so theres no head-to-head comparison. Since inception through April 29, MAGA is up 11.9% annualized, lagging the S&P 500s 13.7% comparable return.

We shouldnt be surprised by these results, as they are consistent with what researchers have found over the years. Consider a study that appeared in the August 2020 issue of the Journal of Quantitative and Financial Analysis, entitled Partisan Bias in Fund Portfolios. It was conducted by M. Babajide Wintoki of the University of Kansas and Yaoyi Xi of San Diego State University. They found that, while fund managers are more likely to allocate assets to firms managed by executives and directors with whom they share a similar political partisan affiliation, this bias is not associated with improved fund performance.

Another major study appeared a decade ago in the Journal of Financial Economics, entitled Red and blue investing: Values and finance. It was conducted by Harrison Hong of Princeton University and Leonard Kostovetsky of the University of Rochester. They divided U.S. equity mutual fund managers into two groups based on their contributions to candidates for federal elections. A manager was considered Democratic-leaning if the manager made significantly more contributions to Democratic candidates, and Republican-leaning if the manager tilted towards Republican candidates. (The researchers ignored for purposes of their comparison those mutual-funds managers who made no contributions to either party.)

Though they found significant differences in the stocks owned by Democratic- and Republican-leaning managers, the researchers found that the overall performance of Democratic and Republican managers does not significantly differ.

A similar result was reached in a study that appeared in 2017 in the Journal of Banking and Finance, entitled Hedge fund politics and portfolios. Its authors were Luke Devault of Clemson University and Richard Sias of the University of Arizona. They employed a similar methodology as Hong and Kostovetsky, classifying a hedge-fund manager as Democratic-leaning (or Republican-leaning) if he made significantly more contributions to Democratic (or Republican) candidates.

As was the case with mutual funds, the portfolio of the average hedge fund managed by a Democratic-leaning was significantly different than the average Republican-managed hedge fund. Despite these differences, Sias, in an interview, said that he and his co-author found no significant difference in the performances of Democratic and Republican hedge-fund managers.

These results make sense. If the stock-selection criteria employed by Democratic managers really did lead to beating the market, Republican managers would waste no time employing those criteria themselves, and vice-versa.

Profits have the upper hand over partisanship, in other words. Wall Streets money managers are some of the most hyper-competitive people on the planet, going to great lengths to gain just a few basis-points advantage over their competitors. Theres little doubt that they would happily sacrifice their political biases if it helped them come out on top in the performance sweepstakes.

This is one of the reasons why the betting markets are generally more reliable than opinion polls. Talk is cheap. But when our money is on the line, we tend to become less partisan and more objective.

One investment implication you might draw from these studies that its OK to align your portfolio with your political affiliation, since doing so shouldnt lead your portfolio to underperform. Another way of putting this: You dont have to invest in companies or funds whose politics you find particularly distasteful in order perform just as well as those companies or funds you find repugnant.

This implication might be going too far. The studies cited above are based on averages of many different funds, and theres wide variation among individual funds results. Theres no guarantee that, in your individual circumstance, aligning your portfolio with your political beliefs wont lead to underperformance as has been true for the MAGA ETF, for example.

In any case, the stronger investment implication I draw from these studies is that youre on shaky ground if you think that investing in companies whose politics match yours leads to beating the market.

Mark Hulbert is a regular contributor to MarketWatch. His Hulbert Ratings tracks investment newsletters that pay a flat fee to be audited. He can be reached at mark@hulbertratings.com

More: Hes a MAGA-hat wearing Republican, and Im pretty liberal. This concerns me: Shouldnt my financial adviser have similar beliefs to mine?

Plus: These competing Republican and Democratic ETFs are surprisingly bipartisan in their stock market holdings

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I was deputy leader of the Liberals. The party I served has lost its way – Sydney Morning Herald

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Until 1995 I was a member of the Liberal party, and for 16 years a serving Liberal senator. I was a member of the frontbench for the majority of my years in the parliament and federal deputy leader from 1989 to 1990. The party I joined in 1958 proudly proclaimed that one of the distinctions between it and the Labor Party was that the primary obligation of a member of parliament was to the electorate, and that to cross the floor, unlike the tightly caucused Labor Party, was permitted on conscience issues.

However, the party I served has lost its way. Members are no longer able to successfully execute what the electorate demands and it is now in the sad position of being held hostage by its extremes and those of its Coalition partner.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison campaigning in the seat of Dunkley this week.Credit:James Brickwood

My concerns today are about Australian democracy. They relate to the lack of accountability in the government; the blatant pork-barrelling; the use of public money for party electoral advantage rather than the public interest; the pursuit of immediate political advantage rather than the long-term interests of the country; the daily focus on politics rather than good government; and the way the government is reactive rather than forward-looking.

This government appears to be dragged kicking and screaming to policy positions that most sensible Australians would support including on climate change. Does anyone really think the government is as serious about carbon reduction as the community or the business community? Add to this the cruelty shown to people who have established that they are refugees yet are incarcerated and condemned to hopelessness at great public expense.

After nearly 20 years representing the Liberal Party, it is a serious matter to support an independent candidate in a federal election. I have only done so twice in the nearly 30 years since I left the parliament. In both times it was in the Western Australian blue-ribbon Liberal electorate of Curtin.

The first time, in 1995, I supported a disendorsed Liberal, Allan Rocher. I did so over long-held concerns about manipulation of branches and preselections by powerbrokers which had occurred over most of my time in parliament. I thought the party processes had been corrupted and, from recent revelations in NSW, it would appear this corruption has continued.

This time in Curtin, I will vote for Climate 200-supported independent Kate Chaney, who is also my niece. I admire Kate for her commitment to public interest, her seeking better approaches to issues including climate change, social welfare and Aboriginal employment, and her commitment to accountability. Australia needs members of parliament with those convictions and that resolve.

Climate 200-supported independent candidate Kate Chaney.Credit:Hamish Hastie

I suspect there are good people in parliament who feel as I do. But they are trapped by the system into supporting what should be unsupportable. Parliament after parliament has shown there is no capacity to reform from within. The system needs to be changed by us, the electorate. The game of politics has overtaken the primary task of providing good, acceptable government.

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There are pros and cons to the Liberal plan for $1 transit fares, experts say – CBC.ca

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The Ontario Liberals' campaign promise of$1 public transit fares to boost ridership and cut costs for commuters is drawing mixed reactions from advocates and analysts, with some contending the money would be better spent on increased and more reliable service.

"I think it's really good in the sense that we're actually having a conversation about transit fares because they are, frankly, a mess in a lot of the province. But I think that this proposal kind of misses the mark," says Reece Martin, a Canadian transportation analyst who hosts a popular YouTube channel with more than 100,000 subscribers.

"What I think [public transit agencies] need is operating subsidies so that they can operate more service," Martin said.

"If you're in Markham or Oakville or a lot of other places across the province not to mention Kingston or North Bay having a $1 fare on the bus is great. But if the bus only comes once an hour or once every twohours, it's still a really inconvenient service to use."

The $1 fares, which the party is calling "buck-a-ride, provincewide," would kick in this year and run until at least the end of 2023. Monthly transit passes would also be capped at $40, the Liberals promised. The party saysthe proposal would cost about $710 million in 2022/2023 and roughly $1.1 billion in 2023/2024, and that the government would replace all lost revenue to transit services.

At a news conference this week, Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said the fare reduction would take about 400,000 cars off Ontario roads each day and make life more affordable for commuters.

WATCH |Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca on his plan to slash transit fares provincewide:

The proposal was welcomed by some Toronto-area transit riders who spoke to CBC News Monday morning.

"That's amazing," said Jay Sharma outside St Andrew subway station. "Right now, I pay close to $140 [per month]. So that'd be nice."

A Liberal party official saidinternal modelling done in consultation with transit experts suggests the $1 fares could result in a 20 per cent increase in public transit usage across the board in Ontario.

There's no question that a dramatic drop in ridership caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has proven a persistent problem for public transit services.

The Ontario Public Transit Association (OPTA), an industry advocacy group, estimates that on average operators are running at roughly 60 per cent pre-pandemic levels.

That figure varies widely, however. Anne Marie Aikins, spokesperson for Metrolinx, said the GTHA regional transit agency is currently seeing about 35 per cent pre-COVID ridership levels, while operating 55 per cent of its pre-pandemic services.

Because public transit agencies in Ontario rely on farebox revenue for a significant percentage of their operating budgets, and in some cases a majority, lagging ridership threatensfuture viability.

OPTA estimates that for every 10 per cent drop in ridership, transit systems lose, on average across the province, $245 million in revenue. The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) alone is forecasting a $561 million revenue shortfall in 2022.

That is why commitments for stable operating funding should take priority over across-the-board discounted fares, according to Gideon Forman, a climate change and transportation policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation.

"The research generally shows that for people who are comfortably off, middle income or higher, the major issues around transit are convenience, speed, reliability, those sorts of things," he said.

Deep fare reductions for low-income Ontarians, coupled with money for better services on existing transit networks and new projects could be the key to improving ridership to pre-pandemic levels and beyond, Forman said.

Terry Johnson, president of the non-partisan advocacy group Transport Action Canada, called the prospect of $1 fares "an exciting idea" that could encourage some drivers to ditch their cars for public transit, while offering relief to Ontarians hit hard by rising inflation.

Cheaper fares need to be balanced with major investments for the future, he added.

"We have to be doing the triage that's needed post pandemic to encourage riders to return," Johnson said, but without money in the short termfor transit improvements, it will take even longer for networks to recover.

"If service drops off because the funding isn't there, the drop in ridership will likely be longer and it will be harder to rebuild."

The Liberals have previously committed to a $375-million increase in annual subsidies for the operating costs of municipal transit services.

Shelagh Pizey-Allen, executive director of the Toronto-based advocacy group TTCriders, said it was this element of the Liberals' public transit plan that most caught her attention. She says the commitment is a "good first step" but questions if it would be enough to help transit providers dig out of their pandemic holes.

"We are wondering, is it going to be enough to protect municipal transit from the service cuts that ... may be on the horizon as transit agencies continue to face COVID shortfalls because of lower ridership?" she said.

Until the 1990s, the Ontario government covered 50 per cent of operating costs for public transit agencies. Since 2013, provincial funding has come through transfers from gas-tax revenues.

Both the Ontario NDP and Green Party have committed to reintroduce the 50 per cent operatingcost-sharing model for municipal transit services, which the parties say would allow agencies to cut fares over time.

The Progressive Conservatives have put much of their focus on large transit infrastructure projects, promising $61.6 billion over 10 years as part of the capital spending plan presented in the 2022 pre-election budget last week.

When it comes to transportation-related affordability measures, the PCs have largely targeted drivers by scrapping license renewal fees and pledging to cut the provincial gas tax by 5.3 cents per litre for six months beginning on July 1.

In March, however, the government did drop some local transit fares for riders using the GO Transit network to connect to and from their local systems. The province also increased discounts for youth and post-secondary students.

Premier Doug Ford's government also provided a one-time infusion of $120 million to municipalities with public transit services to make up for lost gas-tax revenue as residents drove less during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That funding came in addition to roughly $2 billion in joint federal and provincial money that went to municipal transit services through the Safe Restart Agreement in 2020.

This year, Ottawa announced a one-time infusion of $750 million to municipalities countrywide, $316 million of which went to Ontario. The province then matched that funding, which was intended for not only public transit but all municipal services.

In the 2022 budget, the province conceded that the funding "may not be sufficient to address municipal transit pressures" and called on the federal government to provide a further influx of money.

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Liberal and Elkhart Baseball Split on Wind Blown Day – KSCB News.net

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With temperatures falling from the 60s, to the 50s, to 45 with a wind chill of 36, Liberal and Elkhart tried to play baseball amidst 30-40 mile per hour winds from the north. Elkhart won the first game 13-7 after building a 12-0 lead. The Redskins took game two 17-3 Monday at the National Beef Sports Complex.

In game one, Elkhart scored three in the first, five in the second, two in the third, and two in the fourth. The Redskins scored in the final four innings with one in the fourth, two in the fifth, three in the sixth, and one in the seventh. Liberal out-hit Elkhart 10-9 but struggled playing defense in the wind with eight errors. Elkhart had four errors. Liberal allowed just one earned run. Hunter Huskey was 3-5 and Shay Kerr was 2-3 in the loss. Gage Ralstin pitched three scoreless innings with five strikeouts and one walk. Cesar Gomez was 4-5 with three RBIs and four runs.

In game two, Liberal scored 10 in the first on the way to the blowout win. LHS added three in the second and four in the third. The Redskins out-hit the Wildcats 8-2. Elkhart committed five errors while LHS had three in the brutal weather conditions. Hunter Huskey hit an inside the park home run to begin the first. Shay Kerr pitched four strong innings allowing one earned run with five strikeouts and two walks.

Liberal is 9-9 and hosts Dodge City for Senior Night Tuesday at about 6pm after the JV game on 1270, 92.3, and The KSCB and The Legend App. Elkhart is 13-3.

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Why teal independents are seeking Liberal voters and spooking Liberal MPs – The Conversation

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One of the Morrison governments biggest challenges in this election campaign is the rise of the teals, a group of 22 independents who have received funding from Climate 200.

Running on platforms of science-backed climate action, integrity reform and real progress on gender equality, they are challenging Liberal MPs in urban electorates traditionally considered Liberal party heartland.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who is facing a serious threat from medical doctor Monique Ryan in the inner-Melbourne seat of Kooyong, has repeatedly used the term fake independents to describe these challengers. Former Prime Minister John Howard has similarly accused them of posing as independents. Prime Minister Scott Morrison says they are the voices of Labor and the Greens.

Read more: Below the Line: Former independent Cathy McGowan hits back at John Howards anti-Liberal groupies jibe podcast

This strategy of playing the woman and not the ball as well as the advertising spend in electorates like Kooyong suggests the Liberals are concerned. They have some good reasons to be.

It is certainly true these independents are running in Liberal, not Labor seats. But as Climate 200 convener Simon Holmes a Court argues, they are running with the goal of dislodging government MPs (which of course, happen to be Liberal).

It is worth noting that not all the Climate 200-backed independents use the teal colour for their campaigns. North Sydneys Kylea Tink uses pink, while Indis Helen Haines uses orange. Yet, the choice of teal for most campaigns a colour between blue and green does give an indication of their message to the moderate Liberal voters they are trying to attract.

The teal independents are speaking directly to moderate Liberal constituents who are frustrated with the (blue) Liberal Partys positioning on social and environmental issues.

While these same voters may never vote Labor or Greens, many are alienated by Morrison and his government, particularly on climate change and womens issues.

It is significant that 19 of the 22 Climate 200 candidates are women, all of whom have had highly successful careers in their own right. High-profile candidates include Ryan (Kooyong), a professor and head of neurology at the Royal Childrens Hospital, Zoe Daniel (Goldstein) a former ABC foreign correspondent, and Allegra Spender (Wentworth) the chief executive of the Australian Business and Community Network.

The teal independents are not political staffers taking the next step towards inevitable political careers. These are professional women making a radical sideways leap because, they say, this is what the times require. Its a compelling story.

To receive Climate 200 funding and campaign support, teal independents have agreed to run on three key policies - climate, integrity, and gender equality - and have demonstrated they have the backing of their communities.

Holmes a Court has been at pains to argue his organisation is not a political party it is a platform to support independents based on their commitment to the three main goals. As he told the National Press Club in February:

The movement is nothing like a party there is no hierarchy, no leader, no head office. No coordinated policy platforms.

So, how do the independent candidates measure against the Coalition, Labor and the Greens? I have reviewed the policy platforms of Spender, Ryan and Daniel as three of the most high profile new independent candidates.

On climate, Spender proposes to cut emissions by at least 50% by 2030, while Daniel and Ryan want 60% by 2030, and Daniel adds an 80% renewable energy target by 2030.

Read more: What's going on with independent candidates and the federal election?

These targets are more ambitious than both the Coalition and Labor, but less ambitious than the Greens, who want 75% emissions reduction by 2030, and net zero by 2035.

On integrity in politics, all three independents variously demand a strong, effective anti-corruption body with teeth, greater transparency around tax-payer funded programs, reform of political campaign funding rules, and truth in political advertising. These policies largely align with Labors integrity policies, which include a National Anti-Corruption Commission by the end of 2022. They also align with those of the Greens, who add a role for the National Audit Office to audit all government programs.

Finally, all the teal independents have a range of policies to increase womens safety and equality, including childcare, parental leave, better pay for caring professions, womens rights at work and programs to end family violence. On these policies, and simply the way they recognise the urgency of this issue, the independents are also more aligned with Labor and the Greens than the Coalition.

The Liberal Party is certainly taking this challenge seriously, diverting campaign funding and resources to seats that it would otherwise consider safe.

For example, it is spending up big on nine-metre-wide billboards to sandbag Kooyong, a seat that has been held by that party since Federation. In Wentworth, Dave Sharmas posters use the same colour teal as his challenger, Spender, and have no Liberal party logo. In Goldstein, a stoush over election signs ended up in court.

Another way they are taking it seriously is by trying to undermine the authenticity of the independents. If voters are seeking something different from the major parties, what better way to sway them away from changing their vote than suggesting their local independent isnt really independent?

On this, the Liberal party is incorrect. It is better to locate these candidates within a lineage of independents that includes Tony Windsor, Cathy McGowan, and Kerryn Phelps. Their goal is to use the power of the cross-benches in a hung parliament. A Labor majority would, in fact, diminish their power if elected, and work against their ambitions.

Major polls are suggesting a tight race between the major parties. A hung parliament, with independents holding the balance of power, is a highly possible outcome post May 21.

Despite fear campaigns from both major parties, it is worth remembering that Australias last minority government was one of the most successful, passing more legislation than any modern government before or since.

Windsor and Rob Oakeshott have both said they decided to support Julia Gillards government because she treated them with respect during negotiations in 2010, unlike her opponent, Tony Abbott.

This is a lesson that the Liberal party would do well to heed again.

Read more: Could the 2022 election result in a hung parliament? History shows Australians have nothing to fear from it

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Why teal independents are seeking Liberal voters and spooking Liberal MPs - The Conversation

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