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The lies the Supreme Court used to justify abolishing a half-century of constitutional rights for American women to make their own decisions about abortion caught up with those justices last week and most of them ran for cover.

The Republican-appointed supermajority on the Supreme Court would rather not be hearing another rightwing attack on abortion rights by the 5thCircuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, the Trumpiest regional appeals court in America, during this election year but they brought it on themselves.

It was the 5thCircuit courts support for Mississippis brazen destruction ofRoe v. Wadethat the court eagerly used to roll back 50 years of constitutional rights for women to make decisions about their own bodies and their own lives.

Guess what? When Supreme Court justices destroy religious freedom in America to allow a minority of rightwing politicians to impose their personal religious beliefs on everyone else by law, the issue isnt over. They have to keep reliving their destruction of constitutional rights in our democracy over and over again. Happy Groundhog Day.

The raging political backlash creating record turnouts in state elections restoring the constitutional rights of women to control their own lives isnt going to die down. Neither at this point will the nations most anti-abortion courtsthe current Supreme Court and the 5thCircuit appeals courtever support the freedom of women to make decisions about their own lives.

No one should be fooled into believing Supreme Court justices are moderating their opposition to abortion by dodging for now whether to ban medication abortions that use safe and effective nonsurgical abortion pills.Abortion opponents despise abortion pills because theyaresafe, effective and easily obtained from abortion rights advocates to be used privately at home. Theyre the most common abortion procedure today and the only one that can be self-administered in states where abortion is banned.

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The only reason the justices who abolished abortion rights arent ready to ban abortion pills yet is they havent figured out a fraudulent legal cover story to do so. Fewer than 1% of millions of abortions using the pills over the past quarter-century have ever resulted in any physical complications. Theyre safer than over-the-counter Tylenol.

That didnt stop the House Republican Study Committee, which includes 80% of House Republicans, from releasing a budget last week that would rescind the Food and Drug Administrations approval of abortion pills and embrace a nationwide abortion ban from the moment of conception.

Separately, on the rightwing Heritage Foundations Project 2025 website detailing Trumps plans to act as dictator in his second term not just on Day One, but all the other days as well lists withdrawing federal approval of abortion pills, the single greatest threat to unborn children, as a top priority for the former president right up there with jailing the Biden family.

That puts Trump at odds withall three of his Supreme Court appointees. Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett appeared satisfied with government assurances doctors opposed to abortion were already shielded under federal law from participating in the procedure. Justice Gorsuch sided with Justice Jackson in objecting to the overreach by the seven anti-abortion doctors who were exempt from using the abortion drugs suing to prevent doctors with no objections to providing abortion care from using safe medications.

As expected, the strongest objections came from Justices Alito and Thomas who absurdly invoked the 151-year-old Comstock Act passed in 1873 by crusading U.S. Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock obsessed with banning obscene, lewd or lascivious material from the mail including pornography and contraceptives.

Alito and Thomas made it clear from the moment Alitos draft destroying constitutional abortion rights began circulating that it was just the beginning. Racial, cultural and sexual diversity were out of control in America. All different kinds of people who looked nothing like Americans were claiming to have constitutional rights now. They wanted it stopped.

But theres a large majority of Americans who appreciate the rich, cultural diversity of our country. Kids who grew up in small towns like I did are moving to metropolitan areas because of everything that is going on there.Republicans are terrified of losing the votes of the violent White supremacists who support Trump. They should be more worried about losing the votes of their own kids. Kids know how absurd it is to ban books about sex and Americas racist history from their schools instead of banning the assault weapons that could kill them tomorrow.

Most Americans have no desire to live 25 years, 50 years or 150 years in the past. A majority of Americans have been waiting four years for Trump to be prosecuted for the most violent insurrection in history to overthrow democracy.

Trumps Supreme Court is intentionally delaying that prosecution, but Americas voters can assure the trial takes place and their fight to restore democracy can continue.

Joel McNally is a national-award-winning newspaper columnist and a longtime political commentator on Milwaukee radio and television. Since 1997, Joel has written a column for the Shepherd Express where he also was editor for two years.

Apr. 01, 2024

11:53 a.m.

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Trump's Courts Can't Stop the Battle to Restore Democracy - Shepherd Express

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Metas Instagram and Threads apps are slowly rolling out a change that will no longer recommend political content by default. The company defines political content broadly as being potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics.

Users who follow accounts that post political content will still see such content in the normal, algorithmically sorted ways. But by default, users will not see any political content in their feeds, stories or other places where new content is recommended to them.

For users who want political recommendations to remain, Instagram has a new setting where users can turn it back on, making this an opt-in feature.

This change not only signals Metas retreat from politics and news more broadly, but also challenges any sense of these platforms being good for democracy at all. Its also likely to have a chilling effect, stopping content creators from engaging politically altogether.

Read more: From curry nights to coal kills dresses: how social media drives politicians to behave like influencers

Meta has long had a problem with politics, but that wasnt always the case.

In 2008 and 2012, political campaigning embraced social media, and Facebook was seen as especially important in Barack Obamas success. The Arab Spring was painted as a social-media-led Facebook Revolution, although Facebooks role in these events was widely overstated,

However, since then the spectre of political manipulation in the wake of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal has soured social media users toward politics on platforms.

Read more: Cambridge Analytica scandal: Facebook's user engagement and trust decline

Increasingly polarised politics, vastly increased mis- and disinformation online, and Donald Trumps preference for social media over policy, or truth, have all taken a toll. In that context, Meta has already been reducing political content recommendations on their main Facebook platform since 2021.

Instagram and Threads hadnt been limited in the same way, but also ran into problems. Most recently, the Human Rights Watch accused Instagram in December last year of systematically censoring pro-Palestinian content. With the new content recommendation change, Metas response to that accusation today would likely be that it is applying its political content policies consistently.

Notably, many Australians, especially in younger age groups, find news on Instagram and other social media platforms. Sometimes they are specifically seeking out news, but often not.

Not all news is political. But now, on Instagram by default no news recommendations will be political. The serendipity of discovering political stories that motivate people to think or act will be lost.

Combined with Meta recently stating they will no longer pay to support the Australian news and journalism shared on their platforms, its fair to say Meta is seeking to be as apolitical as possible.

Read more: How will Meta's refusal to pay for news affect Australian journalism and our democracy?

With Elon Musks disastrous Twitter rebranding to X, and TikTok facing the possibility of being banned altogether in the United States, Meta appears as the most stable of the big social media giants.

But with Meta positioning Threads as a potential new town square while Twitter/X burns down, its hard to see what a town square looks like without politics.

The lack of political news, combined with a lack of any news on Facebook, may well mean young people see even less news than before, and have less chance to engage politically.

In a Threads discussion, Instagram Head Adam Mosseri made the platforms position clear:

Politics and hard news are important, I dont want to imply otherwise. But my take is, from a platforms perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (lets be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.

Like for Facebook, for Instagram and Threads politics is just too hard. The political process and democracy can be pretty hard, but its now clear thats not Metas problem.

Instagrams announcement also reminded content creators their accounts may no longer be recommended due to posting political content.

If political posts were preventing recommendation, creators could see the exact posts and choose to remove them. Content creators live or die by the platforms recommendations, so the implication is clear: avoid politics.

Creators already spend considerable time trying to interpret what content platforms prefer, building algorithmic folklore about which posts do best.

While that folklore is sometimes flawed, Meta couldnt be clearer on this one: political posts will prevent audience growth, and thus make an already precarious living harder. Thats the definition of a political chilling effect.

For the audiences who turn to creators because they are perceived to be relatable and authentic, the absence of political posts or positions will likely stifle political issues, discussion and thus ultimately democracy.

For Instagram and Threads users who want these platforms to still share political content recommendations, follow these steps:

Read more: Social media apps have billions of 'active users'. But what does that really mean?

Visit link:
Instagram and Threads are limiting political content. This is terrible for democracy - The Conversation Indonesia

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Bill Maher grills Esper for not backing Biden after calling Trump a 'threat to democracy': A 'binary' choice  Fox News

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Bill Maher grills Esper for not backing Biden after calling Trump a 'threat to democracy': A 'binary' choice - Fox News

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GOP billionaires vs. democracy: they know what theyre getting into this time  MSNBC

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GOP billionaires vs. democracy: they know what theyre getting into this time - MSNBC

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WASHINGTON, D.C. The same federal court that struck down South Carolinas congressional map for being an unconstitutional racial gerrymander ruled today that the state can use the map in the upcoming 2024 elections.

This decision comes after Republican officials asked the court to pause its January 2023 decision that blocked the map and ordered a new one for 2024. Todays order states that because the June 11 primary is rapidly approaching and a new map is not in place, the ideal must bend to the practical.

South Carolina voters have gone over a year without a fair congressional map. With todays order, justice is delayed once again to Black voters in the state. The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to issue its opinion on the merits, which the court cites as a reason for this delay.

In January 2022, the Republican-controlled South Carolina Legislature passed a congressional map that drastically changed the composition of the states 1st and 6th congressional districts. The South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and a voter filed a lawsuit challenging the congressional map, alleging that the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments.

The South Carolina branch of the nations oldest civil rights organization argued that the Legislatures action was the latest example of a decades-long pattern by the Legislature of proposing or enacting congressional districts that discriminate against Black South Carolinian voters to limit their electoral opportunity.

The case went to trial in fall of 2022 and soon after the district court sided with the plaintiffs and struck down the map.

The three-judge panel that heard the case struck down the map after finding that race was the predominant motivating factor in the General Assemblys design of Congressional District No. 1 and that traditional districting principles were subordinated to race.

The court held that creating South Carolinas 1st Congressional District, currently held by Rep. Nancy Mace (R), would have been effectively impossible without the gerrymandering of the African American population of Charleston County and that the movement of over 30,000 African Americans in a single county from Congressional District No. 1 to Congressional District No. 6 created a stark racial gerrymander of Charleston County.

The court ordered the Legislature to present a remedial map, but Republicans appealed the entire decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has issued 11 opinions so far this year but continues to stall the process by refusing to issue its decision in this case.

Since the plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the South Carolina congressional map under the 14th and 15th Amendments this case was directly appealable to the Supreme Court, which had to accept the appeal and rule on the merits of the case.

Republican legislators appealed the panels January decision to the Supreme Court and asked the nations high court to reverse the decision and reinstate the gerrymandered map.

In May 2023, the Supreme Court announced that it would review the case on its full merits docket next term, with full briefing and oral argument. All the while, voters in the Palmetto State still did not have a fair congressional map.

The Court heard oral argument in mid-October of last year when the parties asked the Supreme Court for a decision by Jan. 1, 2024. Nearly three months later, the Court still hasnt ruled on the case, creating a dire situation for congressional candidates as the candidate filing period started on March 16 and will end on Monday.

In the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the Purcell principle, Republicans argued in a brief to the Supreme Court that implementing a new map so close to the 2024 elections would bring about confusion and disorder, despite having ample time to produce a remedial plan. In response, the South Carolina NAACP, which brought the case, pointed to the thirteen months of legislative inaction.

The Legislature could have implemented a new congressional plan, the NAACP noted, without disturbing the June 11 primary and November 5 elections and argued that the states arguments against adopting a new map were overblown, contrary to the trial record, and inconsistent with their prior request that this Court issue a decision by January 1, 2024. There is still plenty of time to draft and enact a new map, the plaintiffs concluded.

The two plaintiffs went beyond court filings to voice their discontent with the latest development in the case. In a press release issued on Monday, Brenda Murphy, president of the South Carolina NAACP, urged the Legislature to prioritize the integrity of our democracy by enacting a new map created in fairness for all voters and Taiwan Scott, a longtime South Carolina voter, added, We cannot allow delay tactics to impede progress towards fair and equitable representation in our democracy.

While the nations high court has yet to respond to the Republicans request and rule on the merits of the case, todays order from the district court means South Carolina voters will not have a fair map before 2024.

The order concludes: The present circumstances make it plainly impractical for the Court to adopt a remedial plan for Congressional District No. 1 in advance of the military and overseas absentee ballot deadline of April 27, 2024 mandated under federal law and the party primaries scheduled for June 11, 2024.

The district court itself acknowledges that it is the same court that struck down the map for being an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, but still ruled today that voters will have to be subject to this unconstitutional map for 2024.

The U.S. Supreme Court will still have the final say on the merits of this case and could block the map for 2026 and future elections.

Read the order here.

Learn more about the case here.

Link:
South Carolina Will Use Gerrymandered Congressional Map in 2024, District Court Rules - Democracy Docket

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