Mediaboss Marketing

The U.S. Supreme Court's failure to block a restrictive new Texas abortion law may have handed "ammunition" to progressives who want to see the court expanded, but reform remains unlikely, experts have told Newsweek.

The 5-4 decision not to grant an emergency application for a stay of Senate Bill (SB) 8 has renewed the debate about adding more justices to the nation's highest court, an idea referred to as court packing

Critics of the decision, including Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, have said the Texas abortion ban violates the precedent set in the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade and criticized the majority for allowing the law to go ahead.

Calls to reform the Supreme Court are likely to become more urgent following the decision, while some Democrats were already public supporters of expansion.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the progressive "Squad" renewed her calls for expansion this week, as did Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), who is the cosponsor of a bill that would add four seats to the court.

Experts who spoke to Newsweek said that President Joe Biden would be under greater pressure, but it still remained highly unlikely that he would support the idea.

Paul Collins, a legal studies and political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst, told Newsweek the Supreme Court may have bolstered proponents of expansion.

"The Supreme Court's five most conservative justices handed progressives substantial ammunition in the battle to expand the Supreme Court. By refusing to halt the law from going into effect, the court effectively overruled Roe v. Wade in the state of Texas, at least temporarily," Collins said.

"And they did it without giving the case full consideration, which will lead to calls not only for court expansion, but also for limiting the court's use of its shadow docket to make public policy."

"If the court were interested in avoiding being in the political thicket, it's difficult to imagine a dumber move. And other conservative states are likely to pass similar laws as Texas, adding more fuel to the fire," he said.

Gregory Caldeira, a professor of law at the Ohio State University who specializes in the Supreme Court, told Newsweek that Biden has other priorities.

"Of course, the court's response to the Texas abortion law will accelerate and intensify pressure on President Biden to support expanding the court," Caldeira said.

"But I doubt whether this pressure will move the president. First of all, he has shown little enthusiasm for the task of enlarging the court. Second, he has other, more pressing priorities in Congress; attempting to expand the court would tie up Congress and drag down his legislative program."

"Third, it seems to me, and I suspect to President Biden, expanding the court is a last-gasp move, if and when the court sets itself against all or nearly all of his legislative and executive priorities. We are far from that day," he said.

Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London's Centre on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek the court's inaction would lead to more progressive calls for reform.

"SCOTUS' failure to take action on the Texas abortion law will likely cause more rumblings among progressives to expand the size of the courtbut that doesn't mean it will lead anywhere," Gift said.

"Biden doesn't have anywhere near a mandate to pursue such a substantial reform, and he's personally too much of an institutionalist to go down that route," he went on.

"Earlier this year, the president did convene a commission to study the Supreme Court, including its size, but that was pure window-dressing to appease the left flank of his party. Biden has signaled no genuine intention of making court reform a priority, and SCOTUS' inaction on the Texas decision does nothing to change that," Gift said.

Susan Dunn, humanities professor at Williams College in Massachusetts, is the author of several books about Franklin D. Roosevelt, including 2018's A Blueprint for War: FDR and the Hundred Days that Mobilized America. She has previously argued that Roosevelt's plan to reform the court in the 1930s could still be used.

Dunn told Newsweek on Thursday that conditions today are different.

"The country is deeply divided and polarized now, in a way it wasn't when FDR proposed expanding the court," she said. "In the 1936 election, FDR's opponent Alf Landon, the governor of Kansas, won only two states: Maine and Vermont."

"FDR had a huge mandate to govern, and yet the Supreme Court was declaring his New Deal legislation unconstitutional. Citizens were rightly asking who is sovereign - 'We the people' or nine unelected old men, appointed for life?" Dunn said.

Read more:
Supreme Court Shoot Themselves in Foot as Democrats Prepare for Battle to Expand Court - Newsweek

Welcome to Byron York's Daily Memo newsletter.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to receive the newsletter.

THE MORTAL THREAT TO DEMOCRATS' PROGRESSIVE DREAMS, CONT'D.Yesterday I wrote about the realization among some Democrats that the party's once-hoped-for glorious future based on the support of millions of Hispanic voters might not actually happen. Democratic political scientist Ruy Teixeira, author of the influential book The Emerging Democratic Majority , which predicted just such a future, is now warning Democrats that the party is losing support among Hispanic Americans.

To that, add some striking information from the Republican pollster David Winston . A longtime adviser to some House GOP leaders, Winston notes that in 2020, congressional Republicans won 36% of the Hispanic vote up from 32% in 2016. That was better than President Donald Trump's performance with Hispanic voters, which was 32% in 2020 and 28% in 2016. And Trump's performance was better than Mitt Romney's in the 2012 election, a defeat that prompted much Republican debate over how the party could increase its appeal to Hispanic voters.

Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what's going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!

So the GOP's improvement among Hispanic voters, and the Democratic Party's decline among that same group, extends beyond the candidacies of Trump himself. And the 36% for congressional Republicans indicates that a lot of Hispanic voters who think of themselves as independent chose to support the GOP. In the 2020 exit polls, Winston notes, just 20% of Hispanic voters identified themselves as Republicans, while 32% identified themselves as independents, and 48% identified as Democrats. Obviously, Democrats still have an advantage, but a majority, 52%, think of themselves as independents or Republicans.

Perhaps most important is ideology. Hispanics are clearly not as far to the left as today's Democratic Party. The numbers, again from Winston: 32% of Hispanics identify themselves as conservatives, opposed to just 10% of Democrats overall. On the other end of the spectrum, 46% of Democrats identify themselves as liberals, opposed to just 25% of Hispanics.

In the middle, 43% of both Hispanic voters and Democrats as a whole call themselves moderate. But the numbers clearly suggest that Hispanics tilt a bit right, while Democrats tilt much more to the left.

So Teixeira's warning from yesterday's newsletter "Hispanic voting trends have not been favorable for Democrats" stands up. This political moment holds great opportunities for Republicans to cement their progress among Hispanic voters not by pandering, but by offering all voters the same conservative message. We'll see if the GOP can do it.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe .

Original post:
Byron York's Daily Memo: The mortal threat to Democrats progressive dreams, contd - Washington Examiner

This week, Texas Republicans proved once again just how extreme and out of touch their party is and moved forward with outrageous laws that attack reproductive and voting rights across the state. In response, the DNC made it clear that the Democratic Party will stop at nothing to protect these rights and stand against Republicans extreme agenda.

Meanwhile, the DNC wrapped up its Build Back Better bus tour this week with stops in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, where DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and local leaders touted President Bidens success in bringing jobs back, securing a bipartisan infrastructure deal, and providing people in their communities with needed relief through the American Rescue Plan.

And in states across the country, including Georgia and North Carolina, state parties spent the week driving similar messages, making clear voters in their states know that the D in Democrat stands for deliver.

Finally, ahead of Labor Day, state parties across the country reminded people that President Biden and Democrats have put American workers at the forefront of their agenda, as the U.S. economy has created more than 4 million jobs and is growing at the fastest rate in nearly 40 years.

Read this article:
IN THE STATES: As Republicans Attack Reproductive and Voting Rights, Democrats Continue to Deliver - Democrats.org

Poverty retreating; means to control covid; and infrastructure coming including connectivity, broadband and cell service (imagine, no more trips to McDonalds or Walmart parking lots for internet); shots in the arm; cash in your pocket; and help for rural schools and hospitals. All through Democrats working for you, for all of us.

For years, we have sent Republicans to Harrisburg and D.C. to represent us, yet our towns, bridges, roads, schools and hospitals crumble as our way of life falls to the wayside.

Former President Trump may have been right when he asked urban communities that routinely vote Democratic what do you have to lose? We, too, must ask ourselves, What do we have to lose by listening to the proposals of our local Democratic candidates? Nothing we might even benefit.

Democrats have heard the cries, the sense of abandonment. In 2015, the Pennsylvania Democrats formed the Rural Caucus, focused on rural issues and needs. Its core mission is to promote policies for family-sustaining jobs so our children and grandchildren have the opportunity to stay locally for work, raise their families and enjoy life with quality health care and education, while being good stewards of the environment, keeping our blessed rural Pennsylvania beautiful and healthy.

So lets open our hearts and minds just a bit. Its well past time to lend an ear to each other, see what local Democratic candidates can offer to the problems that confront us. Together we can preserve our way of life in rural Pennsylvania.

Terry Noble

DuBois

The writer is chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Rural Caucus.

See the original post here:
Letter to the editor: Democrats working for rural Pa. residents - TribLIVE

American papers are filled with pundits speculating about the horrors the Taliban may inflict on the people of Afghanistan, particularly its women. Less attention has been paid to the horrors Texas Republicans the Taliban wing of the Republican Party are inflicting on the State of Texas. In total control of the state, Republicans have a free hand that theyve used to enforce extremism.

Dubbing them the Texas Taliban isnt just name-calling. The parallels are chilling. The Taliban scorn democracy. They see their opponents as heretics and heathens. The Taliban are bigots, rejecting people of other religions. The Taliban enforce a religious zealotry with suppression of women a central tenet. The Taliban invoke religious law to supplant the civil law. The Taliban reject modernity, scorn science, and seek return to a fundamentalist society that never was.

Now consider the Republicans in Texas. They too are afraid of democracy. From Sen. Ted Cruz to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, they sought to overturn the presidential election, while the party leaders echo Donald Trumps Big Lie that the election was stolen.

Worried that Republicans are in danger of becoming a minority in the state, Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican state legislature just pushed through election suppression measures to make it harder for workers, minorities, seniors, young people and the disabled to vote, harder for civic groups to assist people in voting, easier for partisans to intimidate voters, and opened the way for the partisan legislature to overturn election results they dont like.

Republicans prey, as well, on racial and religious prejudices. Their party chairman, Allen West, is a former Florida congressman who described Barack Obama as Islamist, charging that he was purposefully enabling the Islamist cause. When the Supreme Court tossed Trumps baseless challenge to the election, West suggested that the South should rise again and secede: that law-abiding states should bound together and form a union of states that will abide by the constitution.

Republicans in Texas also target women in their zealotry. The governor just signed a law effectively banning abortion in Texas, outlawing any abortion after six weeks. Most women dont even know they are pregnant in that period of time.

Worse, the law turns citizens into bounty hunters, offering cash rewards for turning in anyone who assists someone seeking an abortion. This law, if it survives challenge, will lead to deaths from illicit abortions, from suicide, from pregnancies that take the mothers life. An effort to stay the enforcement of this vicious law a clear violation of the Supreme Courts constitutional precedents was just denied by the Supreme Courts right-wing justices acting without issuing an opinion.

The Republicans also turn their backs on science. Texas has suffered record-breaking floods, droughts and winter storms over the last decade. Yet, with the state a leader in fossil fuel production, its politicians have been in denial about climate change. They were unprepared when Hurricane Harvey hit the state in 2017. Then extreme weather caused a major snowstorm that froze an unprotected energy grid. Gov. Abbot laughably blamed the deadly energy failure on solar and wind energy.

Now Abbott and Texas Republicans are trying to ban local authorities and school districts from enforcing mask mandates. Pandering to the Trump-aroused zealots in their own party, they are prepared to put children and teachers at risk, even as Texas hospitals and ICUs are filling up with the surge of new cases from the Delta variant.

The Taliban, of course, patrol the streets of Kabul armed with AK-47s, terrorizing those who might cross them. The Texas Taliban hasnt gone that far, but they did just force through a law allowing its citizens to carry handguns without a permit.

In an era when weve witnessed armed gangs marching on the Michigan legislature and the sacking of the U.S. Capitol, one can only shudder to think what would happen in Texas if Republicans were to lose political control.

Unlike the Taliban, Texas Republicans still have to face the voters. Big oil money can help insulate them. Voter suppression laws can hold down turnout. The Big Lie can rouse their base. In the end, however, Texans will decide whether they will bring an end to this misrule or continue to support a party that is ever more unhinged.

In the last two weeks, the Taliban honored an agreement to help the U.S. military get 123,000 Afghans and Americans out of the country and promised to do more as they seek to work with other nations.

In that same period, the Texas legislature and Abbott sought to restrict voting and take away a womans right to self-determination. Who are we to not trust a newly emerging Taliban as it seeks its place in the family of nations while being asked to trust a Republican Government of Texas that attacks democracy and the rights of women?

Its the old tried-and-true Confederate State of Texas, the last state to inform its slaves they were free, for which we now celebrate Juneteenth.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com.

Original post:
The Texas Taliban wing of the Republican Party | Jackson - Chicago Sun-Times