Crooked Media - What A Day: Dobbsmacked

 -Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), asking for a pardon from Donald Trump

The May leak was not a fluke: Five Republican Supreme Court justices overturned both Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood on Thursday, eliminating the constitutional right to reproductive freedom across the land.

• Let's skip straight to the dissent, signed by all three liberal justices, which laid out the damage the Alito Five have done. Their minority opinion "says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs." They also point the finger at the far right justices, observing accurately that this is not legitimate judging: "The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them," they wrote. "The majority thereby substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law."
   
• The dissenting justices also warn that the Dobbs ruling is a harbinger of things to come, and that the Republican justices who pretend otherwise are lying. On the abortion front, they warned that "state law will criminalize the woman’s conduct... incarcerating or fining her for daring to seek or obtain an abortion." And on the slippery slope, they noted this opinion is a live torpedo aimed at rights to contraception, same-sex marriage, and others that share the same foundations as Roe. "Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other."
   
• As if to prove their point, Justice Clarence Thomas write in a concurring opinion that, "in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous,'" Those opinions secured rights to contraception, sexual privacy, and same-sex marriage.

• Former Vice President Mike Pence celebrated the occasion by calling for a nationwide abortion ban. Newly elected Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) has asked Republican legislators in Virginia to draft their own abortion-ban legislation. Donald Trump (who wants to be president again and do more damage) took all of the "credit" for himself. And across the country latent abortion bans, unenforceable under Roe, snapped back into effect. Even before the ruling came down, fertility doctors took steps to move embryos into blue states, to prevent right-wing governments from commandeering them. 
   
• Attorney General Merrick Garland put states on notice that the Justice Department will protect women's right to intestate travel, and stand in the way of their efforts to ban FDA-approved abortifacient medicine. All Democratic leaders responded to the development in similarly withering terms, but the key line from President Biden was this: "We must elect more senators and representatives who will codify a woman’s right to choose into federal law once again, elect more state leaders to protect this right at the local level."

In today's emergency episode of Strict Scrutiny, Leah, Kate & Melissa are breaking down the Supreme Courts opinion in Dobbs and what it means for abortion access and care going forward. 

We've come a long way from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) lying to reporters about his attempt to hand fraudulent election documents directly to then-Vice President Mike Pence, calling it a "non-story," pretending to be on his cell phone, Brave Sir Robinning away from a group of Capitol Hill reporters, and blaming it all on someone else's intern. Johnson now admits that he coordinated with his chief of staff, Sean Riley, and a Wisconsin attorney named Jim Troupis, to obtain the fake-electors' paperwork in the hope of delivering them to Mike Pence, so that Pence could carry out Donald Trump's illegal coup strategy. While neither Johnson nor his staff ever denied that Johnson intended to courier a fraudulent slate of electors to Pence, his spokeswoman Alexa Henning did claim Johnson "had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office." So that was a lie. No bottom with these people!

They won't stop here. Neither will we. 

The Supreme Court issued a shameful ruling explicitly overturning Roe v. Wade – turning its back on 50 years of precedent. 

Emboldened by this decision, anti-abortion extremists and their political allies won't stop here. Opponents of freedom are planning for a nationwide ban on abortion. And they're also attacking our right to use birth control, access gender-affirming care, marry who we love, and vote. 

But the ACLU has been preparing for this moment. We're committed to using the full force of our organization to fight these assaults in the courts, in statehouses, in the streets, and at the ballot box. And we're ready to work as hard as it takes – for as long as it takes – to protect all our civil liberties. 

The ACLU needs you now more than ever – not just for today – but for the long haul. Donate in this crucial moment to ensure we have the resources needed for the urgent work ahead to defend people's rights. 

The ACLU will never back down and we know you won't either. Because, we, the people, always have the power to fight back. And, with your support, that's what we intend to do. 

Thanks for taking action,

The ACLU Team

The House and Senate have each passed a modest bipartisan gun-reform bill that will tighten the so-called "boyfriend loophole," encourage states to enact red-flag flaws, and fund mental health care and school security.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to replace his domestic intelligence chief, and longtime friend, Ivan Bakanov, who's overseen critical security failures during the resistance to the Russian invasion.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has begun reaching out to Wyoming Democrats with guidance on how to change party affiliation and vote in the GOP primary.

Arizona GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters has come out in support of privatizing Social Security. 

Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as Donald Trump's coronavirus response coordinator (and, too be clear, is hawking a book and trying to cleanse her reputation) delivered harsh testimony to the House select coronavirus subcommittee about her team's enormous coronavirus failures, which derived principally from Trump and his loyalists placing his political fortunes above the health and security of the nation. The central sycophant was Dr. Scott Atlas, a charlatan with no relevant expertise, who assured the Trump administration that COVID-19 would "cause about 10,000 deaths" in the United States, and that non-pharmaceutical interventions wouldn't save any lives. The flattery got him very far, but in Birx's belated estimation, it cost 130,000 Americans their lives. In totally unrelated news, when the Brazilian legislature uncovered similar failures of the Bolsonaro administration, its leaders accused him of mass murder and called for him to be charged with crimes against humanity.

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Vote Save America has an Immediate Impact Funds, which allows you to donate easily and will spread your donations evenly among the Repro Legal Defense Fund, National Network Of Abortion Funds, and Keep Our Clinics.

Vote Save America also has all the tools you need to find and support candidates in key races who will decide whether abortion bans stand or not.

A former law clerk for Sonia Sotomayor and current Stanford Law Professor has a game plan for states to outmaneuver the Supreme Court as it wages total war on modernity.

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed Arizona GOP Chair—and fake Trump electors—Kelli Ward and her husband Michael.