Yet so much of our national dialogue these days urges a laser-focus on notions of privilege, bias, inequity and vocabulary, and while most Americans want some kind of gun reform, most are less on board with the idea that we must revolutionize our attitudes on these other issues. A 2020 Pew Research survey found that […]
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The filibuster, however, is only one part of the larger problem of the capture of America’s political institutions by an unrepresentative minority whose outright refusal to compromise is pushing the entire system to a breaking point. Large majorities of Americans favor universal background checks, bans on “assault-style” weapons, bans on high-capacity magazines and “red flag” […]
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CONTINETTI: Voters will hear a lot of what Lis is saying before November, but the Democrats’ problem is that they are in power as inflation comes roaring back after a 40-year absence. I am open to the idea that the end of Roe v. Wade may induce pro-choice voters off the sidelines in some swing […]
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The gun safety movement should also launch a renewed push for universal — and better — background checks to make it harder for criminals and abusers to obtain firearms. There is broad public support for universal background checks, even among gun owners, and the court is unlikely to declare them unconstitutional. Background checks, however, are […]
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Would the right to abortion have been on firmer footing had it been based on the Constitution’s explicit guarantee of equal protection, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously argued, rather than the implicit right to privacy? Who cares? After all, as Maureen Dowd reminds us, the doctrine to which the justices in the court’s conservative […]
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WASHINGTON — Jonathan F. Mitchell, the architect of the law that sharply curtailed abortions in Texas, filed a brief in the Supreme Court the other day. He has moved on to affirmative action. The filing has elicited rueful admiration from supporters of race-conscious admissions programs in higher education. “This brief supplies conservative justices with what […]
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As red states line up to prohibit — and even criminalize — abortion, the crucial question will be, What counts as an abortion? Beyond that, the draft opinion in the pending abortion case provides a path for challenging the constitutionality of all contraception. In a footnote, Justice Alito highlights an argument linking abortion with eugenics. […]
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Like every offspring of a famous political figure, I frequently round a corner and slam straight into some aspect of my father’s legacy. I’ve not checked with other political offspring, but I’m guessing we all shuffle through the same questions: Do I speak out, try to offer a wider or more personal perspective? Or do […]
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But she has adamantly opposed a fuller inquiry into the insurrection. Last December, she co-signed a letter calling for House Republicans to expel Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from their conference for joining the committee investigating the Capitol riot, saying it brought “disrespect to our country’s rule of law” and “legal harassment to private […]
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In 2009, when I interviewed Ginsburg for this magazine, she said her main concern about abortion was the lack of access for poor women (because the court decided, in 1980, that Congress could forbid the use of Medicaid for medically necessary abortions). I asked if repositioning Roe on the basis of women’s equality was on […]
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Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ When Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked a few weeks ago, it signaled that Roe v. Wade appears likely to be overturned in a matter of weeks. If Roe falls, questions about the right to abortion will re-enter the realm of electoral […]
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The Democratic revival of 2017-20 began with the epic women’s marches of January 2017. If Democrats are more competitive than expected this year, it will be in part because women are galvanized, especially women in the Democratic base but also independent or “soft Republican” college-educated suburban women. Something like this happened in 2017, when large […]
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In a series of Supreme Court cases settled in the early 20th century known as the Insular Cases, jurists and legal scholars argued that Puerto Rico and other newly acquired territories were “inhabited by alien races” that were too culturally and racially distinct to be governed under “Anglo-Saxon principles.” The court created the category of […]
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I gave up — and I have been coding since I was a tween, have a degree in computer programming, have worked in the software industry, and have been reading and writing about privacy and technology for my whole adult life. My impression is that friends with similar professional profiles have given up, too. Using […]
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Natalie Kitroeff contributed reporting. The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, […]
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The chief justice wrote that loans played a special role for candidates challenging incumbents. “As a practical matter, personal loans will sometimes be the only way for an unknown challenger with limited connections to front-load campaign spending,” he wrote. “And early spending — and thus early expression — is critical to a newcomer’s success. A […]
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Gail Collins: Bret, you and I live in a state that has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. But that didn’t stop a teenager with a history of making threats from getting his hands on a semiautomatic rifle and mowing down 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo […]
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There is no question that the court has become politicized, to its and the nation’s great detriment. But to be subjected to a lecture on that fact by Justice Thomas, of all people, is like listening to a plutocrat lounging by his infinity pool in a bathrobe, eating a gold-plated steak while bemoaning the horrors […]
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Then there’s the claim, from The Washington Post, that this protest is the latest in a new trend. But protests of this sort go all the way back to the revolutionary era, when crowds and mobs in Boston and other cities protested (and even attacked) British officials at their homes. In “Political Mobs and the […]
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Still, this Catholic feels an intense disquiet that Catholic doctrine may be shaping (or misshaping) the freedom and the future of millions of women, and men. There is a corona of religious fervor around the court, a churchly ethos that threatens to turn our whole country upside down. I come from a family that hews […]
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But, Alito might say, if voters do not want their states to ban abortion, then they can elect representatives who will then take steps to protect it. That’s not so simple. Thanks to Alito’s own votes and opinions (and those of his conservative colleagues) in Shelby County v. Holder, Rucho v. Common Cause and Brnovich […]
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WASHINGTON — With three words last week, Vice President Kamala Harris inserted herself forcefully into the roiling debate over abortion rights — and may have finally seized on an issue that is popular among key Democratic voters, plays to her strengths and is central to the future of her party. “How dare they?” she demanded. […]
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WASHINGTON — For the protesters chanting loudly outside Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s home, incivility was the point. They said they wanted to impinge on his privacy with picket signs and chants of “We will not go back!” to condemn the Supreme Court justice’s apparent support for ending the constitutional right to privacy that has guaranteed […]
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When I was back in high school — a Catholic girls’ school in Cincinnati at the beginning of the sexual revolution — our religion class covered the abortion issue in approximately 45 seconds. “Abortion is murder,” said the priest who was giving the lesson, before moving on to more controversial topics, like necking and heavy […]
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The court issued an unusual statement the day after the disclosure of the draft opinion. “Justices circulate draft opinions internally as a routine and essential part of the court’s confidential deliberative work,” the statement said. “Although the document described in yesterday’s reports is authentic, it does not represent a decision by the court or the […]
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“For much of the last six decades,” writes Steven Benen for MSNBC, “even Republicans were cautious about criticizing Griswold for an obvious reason: The American mainstream broadly supports public access to birth control.” Beyond abortion and birth control Regardless of where the movement to restrict contraception access goes from here, legislation like the bill being […]
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What leaks have been treated as crimes in the past? Leaks of classified information. Federal law criminalizes the unauthorized disclosure of national security secrets. Specifically, under the Espionage Act, it is a felony to disclose, to someone not authorized to receive it, information related to the national defense that could be used to harm the […]
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The leaked draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade cited claims frequently made by opponents of abortion. The opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., at times presents those assertions as indisputable facts while omitting context and counterarguments. The Supreme Court confirmed last week that the draft was […]
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Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury who has written extensively on reproductive issues, was pessimistic about the likelihood of abortion functioning as a liberal mobilizing issue. She wrote by email: The brunt of the impacts of a Roe reversal will be felt by young, poor, and Black women living in the Deep South […]
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There is a paragraph in which Alito denies that the logic of his opinion applies to these other rights. “None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion,” he writes. “They do not support the right to obtain an abortion, and by the same token, our […]
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I’ve seen churches care for vulnerable children and women in ways I had never considered — such as providing a safe room for social workers to call prospective foster parents in the middle of the night so that a child who’s been removed from a dangerous home does not have to hear the story repeated […]
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