Tag: Constitution

Catholicism and governance in the US

When I wrote this post on the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision in the US Supreme Court throwing all abortion rule-making back to the states, I alluded to the way the opinion followed Catholic teaching and my fears for what that would mean.

Of the nine justices on the current Supreme Court, seven were raised Catholic. (Justice Gorsuch was raised Catholic but is now an Episcopalian.) Of the seven, only Justice Sotomayor was nominated by a Democratic president; her views seem to be more mainstream among Catholics in the US.

The five Republican-appointed practicing Catholics (Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Cavanaugh, and Barrett) and Justice Gorsuch are/were all either members of or closely affiliated with members of Opus Dei, a secretive, ultra-conservative group that rose to prominence in the fascist period in Spain. Leonard Leo, a board member of Opus Dei and, for many years, a powerful leader of the Federalist Society, was a supporter/promoter of all six Republican-nominated justices and is also known to have fostered relationships between conservative billionaires and various justices. Beyond the Dobbs ruling, there have been a number of Supreme Court decisions that seem to reflect the Opus Dei viewpoint more than Supreme Court precedent and mainstream Constitutional interpretation.

Sadly, many of the fears I had about the out-sized influence of conservative Catholic opinions about abortion have come to pass, in some states, aided and abetted by conservative, Catholic-raised governors, such as Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida. In states where abortion is illegal or restricted to early weeks, women have hemorrhaged, developed sepsis, lost their ability to carry a child, or even died from lack of timely abortion care. There is currently a lawsuit in Texas by women who were denied abortion care in cases of pregnancy complication or fatal fetal conditions; these stories illustrate what happens when you force the conservative Catholic viewpoint that privileges the life of the unborn over the life of the mother on the public and medical providers. Indeed, in many of the states with restrictive abortion bans, medical providers trained in women’s/maternal health are leaving the state and medical schools and hospitals are having difficulty attracting students and providers to their programs because they can’t offer the full range of services to their patients. This is worsening already critical shortages of providers, especially in rural areas. When statistics become available, we may see a worsening of maternal morbidity/mortality and infant mortality rates, which are already much higher in the US than in most other countries with advanced medical systems.

The states with the most restrictive abortion laws are seeing some other impacts. Young people are sometimes refusing to consider going to school or taking jobs in states that restrict abortion, not only for fear of not being able to get care they need but also in recognition of inequality on the basis of sex. Lack of choice about where service members will be stationed is adding to recruiting problems for the armed services. Currently, Sen. Tuberville of Alabama is holding up all high-level military appointments in the Senate because the military policy is to pay for service members to travel out of state for reproductive care that is not provided in the state where service members and their families are stationed. (Note: Federal money is not used to fund elective abortion. This controversy is about funding travel/leave only.) I don’t think that it occurred to me that the Dobbs decision would impact our military readiness as a nation, but here we are.

We are also seeing proof that the overruling of Roe is not the end of the story. In some states, the legality of birth control is being challenged in the legislature. Many Republicans on the national level are proposing a national ban on abortion, even though the Dobbs decision said that the issue should be decided state by state. Voters in the midterm elections are weighing in on the side of abortion rights as articulated in Roe; it seems they may continue to do so in future elections.

I’m also afraid that this ultra-conservative Catholic viewpoint on the Supreme Court is feeding the larger problem of Christian nationalism. The United States is not a Christian nation; it is a pluralistic nation. The First Amendment of our Constitution tells us that our country shall not have an established religion.

The Federalist Society members are supposed to be originalists. You would think they would know that.

As an American, it is my right to make personal decisions based on my beliefs. The government does not have the right to impose a religious belief on me. It seems to me that this Opus Dei-influenced Supreme Court has crossed that line more than once. Whether a future Court overrules these decisions or Congress passes laws clarifying their intent remains to be seen.

Supreme Court reform?

Back in October 2020, I posted some ideas about possible changes to procedures for the Supreme Court and other federal courts.

There has been much more public debate about this these past few years, particularly since the Supreme Court majority has been tossing precedents and inventing new doctrine on a regular basis of late.

One idea that makes sense to me is to raise the number of Supreme Court justices to thirteen to match the number of federal appellate courts. When the number of justices was changed to nine, there were nine appellate courts, so it makes sense to update the number to match because a Supreme Court justice is assigned for each appellate court. As it is now, some justices are responsible for more than one circuit. Doing this now would also help to redress some of the shenanigans that Mitch McConnell pulled in not allowing consideration of President Obama’s nominee while rushing through one of President Trump’s.

As I wrote in my October 2020 post, I think there should be rules for voting on judicial nominees in a timely manner, committee votes within sixty days and floor votes within ninety. The exception would be a Supreme Court vacancy that occurs after July first in a presidential election year which would be kept open for appointment by the winner of the election.

Because lifetime appointments are not stipulated in the Constitution, there has been a lot of discussion of making the term of Supreme Court justices eighteen years, after which they would serve on an appellate court if they were not ready to retire. I don’t know what that would mean for people who have already served longer than that or that were appointed expecting to serve for a lifetime. There is nothing in the Constitution that says Supreme Court nominations are for life, so no amendment is necessary to effect this change.

There have been a number of issues that have come to the fore more recently. One of them is the urgent need for ethics reform for the Supreme Court. Unlike other levels of the courts, there is no written code of conduct with guidance for recusals, conflicts of interest, etc. In other courts, judges are supposed to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. Given that both Justices Thomas and Alito are known to have accepted lavish gifts from prominent, rich Republicans, it would be helpful to have explicit rules to follow. It also upsets me that two members of the Court have been credibly accused of sexual harassment. There are serious questions about the spouses of two members of the Court earning money from work for/with people who might be seeking to influence the Court. I think there should be ethics reform and ways to enforce violations. As it is now, the Supreme Court justices are accountable to no one, which leaves them outside the usual system of checks and balances. (While it is true that provisions for impeachment and trial through Congress are in place, political forces are so prominent there that votes tend to be on partisan concerns rather than the evidence presented, so the threat of that doesn’t function as a deterrent to judicial misconduct.)

The Republican-appointed justices of the majority have undertaken what seems to be a concerted effort to overturn long-standing precedents. The most obvious is the Heller decision overturning national abortion rights but there are other instances, such as the recent decision against using race as a factor in college admissions which had been upheld numerous times since the 1978 Bakke decision, most recently in 2016. It’s not that precedents should never be overturned, for example, the Dred Scott decision, but those decisions usually advanced people’s rights; this Court seems to be taking away rights that had been previously recognized by the Court and the public. During their confirmation hearings in the Senate, these justices had all proclaimed their intent to respect precedent and “settled law” but they seem to have abandoned this principle.

The Republican-appointed majority are also inventing or embracing new legal constructs, such as the “major questions” doctrine, insisting that Congress must explicitly state the actions that they intend the executive branch department to implement. The Court used this to prevent rules regarding carbon pollution from the power industry. However, the justices overlooked explicit language from Congress giving authority to the Secretary of Education to waive student loans in time of national emergency in the recent case against the Biden administration’s targeted student loan forgiveness program. So, these justices appear to want Congress to be specific about things they don’t favor while ignoring the legislative language when they are specific. That’s not how our legal system is supposed to work.

There have also been major problems with the Court accepting cases without standing. In order to bring a case in federal court, a plaintiff has to show that they were harmed. The most obvious example of this is the 303 Creative case, in which a prospective web designer did not want to design sites for gay marriages but was afraid she would be violating a Colorado law barring discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. She said that a man had approached her to create such a site, giving the man’s name and contact information as part of her case. There are a number of problems, though. She had not started the business and so hadn’t had any legal challenges that caused harm. When a reporter contacted the man that had been named as the prospective gay client, they found out that he had no idea he was named in the suit, had never contacted the web designer for wedding services, is not gay, has been married for fifteen years, and is a web designer himself who wouldn’t need her services. The case should have been thrown out of court but the Republican-appointed justices still ruled in her favor on free speech grounds, saying that she shouldn’t be forced to use her words to support gay marriage, which she opposes on religious grounds. [As a creative who uses words as her medium, I have trouble thinking of a web designer for wedding sites as using “her words” when it’s usually the clients’ words/content/story that goes into a wedding website. It seems more like being a reporter. Whether or not you agree with what is being said, it is your job to report it accurately.]

All of this has led to a lack of public confidence in Supreme Court. Many of their recent decisions are opposed by a majority of citizens. What bothers me more, though, is that the courts are supposed to uphold our rights and freedoms, whether those are popular or not. If a person has the right to make their own medical decisions in conjunction with their health care provider, it should not matter what state the person is in, what their gender is, whether or not they follow a religious practice, or what their skin color is. A parent has a right to object to a book being taught in their child’s school and request an alternate assignment; that parent does not have the right to make that decision for anyone else’s child.

In the United States, every citizen is supposed to enjoy “equal protection of the laws” under the Fourteenth Amendment. It’s an ideal we should be working toward continually but sometimes it seems we are in the Orwellian situation of some being “more equal than others.” We need to get back on track and court reform can help to do that.

Discharge Petition

I am calling on my Congressional Representative, Marc Molinaro of New York’s 19th district, to sign the discharge petition to bring a clean debt ceiling raise to the House floor and to vote in favor of it there. I urge him to encourage his Republican colleagues to join him in this, which honors the 14th Amendment of the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.

After that is accomplished, all members of Congress should work on budget bills that prioritize human needs, such as programs for affordable housing, nutrition, and health care. These programs should be expanded, not cut, with additional revenue raised through making sure the wealthiest individuals and corporations pay a fairer share in taxes.

Please join me in this effort by contacting your own House member and sharing your opinions about the debt ceiling and about your budget priorities for the coming fiscal year.

the debt ceiling

Today, the United States reached its debt ceiling, which is the maximum amount of debt that it is allowed to have under current legislation. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen can borrow money from pension funds and such to keep up with debt payments and government obligations until June but the responsible thing would be for Congress to immediately either raise the debt ceiling or suspend it. (The most responsible thing would be to eliminate the debt ceiling but no one is even discussing that.)

Like many other governments and corporations, the United States raises some of the money it uses for its operations through issuing bonds. Perhaps you are familiar with the US Savings Bonds program or with Treasury Bills, often called T-bills. The purchasers of these financial instruments are basically loaning money to the government, which then pays it back with interest on the maturity date. While some of these are held by individuals, the vast majority are held by large financial institutions, like banks and mutual funds, or by foreign governments. The United States dollar is considered the world’s reserve currency because of its stability and the reliability of the US government.

If Congress does not pass an increase in or suspension of the debt limit, the US government would default on its bonds, which could cause a steep downturn in both the stock and bond markets, a severe recession, higher unemployment, rising interest rates on loans, and higher prices. The impact would be global because many US government financial instruments are held in or by other countries. It would also cause some countries to mistrust that the United States will keep its word in other areas.

The US government also would not be able to pay its workers or to fully pay Social Security, veterans’ benefits, nutrition programs, and all the other programs that the federal government provides. This would be a huge hardship to many of their constituents, so why would Congress hesitate to raise the debt ceiling?

Politics.

Apparently, one of the things Kevin McCarthy promised in order to get enough “yes” and “present” votes to win the Speakership was that he would not pass a clean bill to raise the debt ceiling. Instead, McCarthy promised that the debt ceiling increase bill would mandate spending cuts, including to programs that are earned benefits, like Social Security.

This doesn’t make sense. The debt ceiling issue has to do with paying the bills for spending that has already been authorized by Congress. The time for debate about cutting the total amount of government spending is when debating appropriation bills for the next budget year.

Furthermore, the Fourteenth Amendment, Section Four to the US Constitution states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” It seems that the House Republicans are trying to question the validity of public debt by threatening to default on it.

It’s also telling that Republicans passed debt limit increases without making a fuss three times during Donald Trump’s presidency when the budget deficits were higher than they are now under President Biden. Part of the reason deficits were higher was that the Republicans passed large tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, thus reducing revenue. At the same time, they cut the budget of the Internal Revenue Service so that it was more difficult to audit and catch high-income tax cheats.

It’s hypocritical for the Republicans to be complaining about the size of the national debt now, because it increased so quickly during the four years of the Trump presidency. 25% of the total national debt is attributable to the Trump years.

If the Republicans were serious about balancing the budget and beginning to pay down the national debt, they would be looking at ensuring the wealthy are paying their fair share in taxes. Current law, with lots of loopholes for the wealthy, often has the very rich paying a lower percentage of their income in taxes than their average employee does. Yet, one of the first pieces of legislation the Republicans in the House passed was to rescind that increased funding to the IRS to upgrade their systems and audit more high-income earners. This bill would result in lower tax revenue as tax cheats would have a lower chance of being discovered and forced to pay what they owe. Fortunately, the Senate will not take up this House bill so it has no chance of becoming law.

I have already written to my member of Congress, Republican Marc Molinaro (NY-19), to ask him to join with Democrats and the reasonable Republicans in the House to pass a clean debt ceiling increase or suspension. If Speaker McCarthy won’t put the bill on the floor, they may need to file a discharge petition to get the bill put up for a vote.

Unfortunately, that process takes several weeks, so they had better start now. Secretary Yellen will enlist whatever shuffling of resources are allowed while they do it, but the clock is ticking and folks – and the financial markets – will be worried.

Of course, it would be faster and easier if McCarthy put the good of the country first and introduced a clean bill today. It would also show that the House Republicans want to cooperate in the governance of the country to “promote the general welfare,” as the Preamble to the Constitution states.

Given that they have thus far not shown this inclination, I won’t hold my breath.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/01/19/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-19th-2023/

One-Liner Wednesday: Liz Cheney

“Today, our highest duty is to bend the arc of history to preserve our nation and its blessings to ensure that freedom will not perish, to protect the very foundations of this constitutional republic.”
~~~ Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) in her concession speech after losing her primary race because she is standing up for the Constitution and election integrity in the face of Trump’s lies

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/08/17/one-liner-wednesday-sorry-2/

SoCS: United States?

I live in the United States of America.

It doesn’t feel that way.

There is a huge amount of disunity both between states and within states and it’s very upsetting and disorienting.

As with any democratic country, there will always be differences of opinion of how to govern and how to prioritize our obligations to each other and to other countries but we have fallen into a situation where we can’t even agree on facts.

I’ve written before about the issue of abortion, which now has each state making their own laws about it, but some states are trying to forbid going to another state to receive care, which is not something that should even be considered in the United States. We are supposed to be able to travel freely between states and to engage in commerce there.

As it happens, I’ve lived most of my life on a state border, growing up on the Massachusetts side of the border with Vermont and living for the last several decades on the New York side of the border with Pennsylvania. The concept that there would be any restrictions on crossing the border or engaging in a legal activity there is just bizarre and un-American.

While this disunity began before the Trump presidency, he has thrown the problem into overdrive. As non-US folks may be aware, Trump’s home in Florida was searched under warrant by the Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier this week. Yesterday, the warrant and receipt of what was removed by the agents was released by the court. The former president had kept documents that, under the Presidential Records Act, he should not have in his possession. (All presidential records belong to the people of the United States and are administered by the National Archives.)

This is part of an investigation at this point; there have been no charges that we know of. I suppose there could be charges that have been made but that are under seal but that seems unlikely at this point. At any rate, it seems clear that the former president had in his possession documents that he has no right to possess and that he did not turn them over when he was asked about them. When the archivists realized some documents were missing, they asked for them. Over the winter, fifteen boxes of material were sent back to Washington. When they analyzed them, the Archives realized there were still materials missing. There was a subpoena for them issued in June but they still were not returned, which led to the warrant and search this week. More materials were found and removed by the FBI agents, including some materials that are considered so sensitive that they are only supposed to be read in special rooms that are very secure with guards and prohibitions against having any electronic devices near them.

I’m not a lawyer, but the known evidence at this point looks bad for the former president.

The problem is that, in this time of disunity, even facts seem to be in dispute. Trump and his apologists are running through all kinds of excuses and obfuscations. There were claims that none of the president’s – well, ex-president’s – staff were there but his lawyers were present during the search. There were accusations that the FBI agents planted evidence, although, not only were Trump’s lawyers there but also DT and Melania watched the search unfold over the extensive surveillance system of Mar-a-Lago, the Trump golf resort which has become their primary residence. Trump was in New York at the time of the search to give a deposition in a civil case about his business practices pre-presidency; in hours of questioning, the only question he answered was his name, invoking his right against self-incrimination hundreds of times. (It’s true that that is his and every person’s right under the Constitution, but this is a civil, not criminal case, so jurors will be able to draw inferences from the refusal to answer in ways that are not possible in criminal cases where taking the Fifth is not able to be used against you in any way. Yeah, stream of consciousness can lead you off your path into what should probably be a separate post…)

So, yeah, back to other excuses. Some are saying that everything is okay because DT declassified everything he took, trying to obscure the fact that he should not have had any of these materials AT ALL because all presidential records belong to the people of the United States through the National Archives. Also, there is an extensive process by which a president can declassify materials which was not followed, as there were materials that still have stamps for classification at various levels, which would have to have been removed with documentation if they were truly declassified.

Unfortunately, there has already been a life lost due to the lies about the search. A man, responding to false reports that the FBI had done something illegal, attacked an FBI office, fled, had a standoff with agents, and was killed when he raised his weapon against them.

I’m very afraid of violence becoming more widespread. Unlike our Civil War which was between the Union and a group of states which broke away, this violence would likely take place within communities. There are homes that are flying the United States flag upside-down, which is a signal of distress, and displaying Trump banners and Second Amendment flags with guns on them and flags with vulgar messages toward President Biden. There are lots of people with multiple firearms and lots of ammunition. There are various s0-called militias that are anti-government and/or white supremacist, anti-Semitic, Christian nationalist, etc. And, of course, because of the January 6th insurrection, we know that they are capable of organizing and attacking at Trump’s behest.

It’s terrifying and bewildering and disorienting. I never thought I would have to fear that the United States might fall apart, or worse, fall into authoritarianism. I never thought one entire political party would so flagrantly violate their oath of office and still manage to get elected through riling up fears and manipulating the election system. I never thought the courts would take away rights that had been recognized.

It’s discouraging that, with facts as clear as they have been from the Select Committee taking testimony about January 6th and from the search warrant and results from this week, that so many, especially Republican members of Congress, are continuing to lie and lead people astray.

I try to do my little part to keep facts out there, even in stream of consciousness, but sometimes the disunity seems insurmountable. Millions of us will keep trying, though, to make our country the United States again.

I hope we can.
*****
Linda’s prompt this week was to build our post around something that begins with the letter U. Join us! (You can stream of consciousness write about something much more fun than this post, I promise!) Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/08/12/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-13-2022/.

(A reminder: Comments are open. I will respond to respectful comments but will delete anything that is vulgar or abusive.)

the aftermath of Dobbs

When I wrote this post after the leak of US Supreme Court Justice Alito’s draft opinion on an abortion law in Mississippi, we weren’t sure if there would be changes before the decision was announced.

When the decision was announced on June 24, it was little changed from the draft. The majority signed on to the opinion that Roe v. Wade had been “wrongly decided” and threw the matter of the legality of abortion to each state’s legislature.

It’s not that long-standing Supreme Court precedents have never been overturned or declared “wrongly decided” – the Dred Scott decision springs to mind – but the Dobbs case was the first time that such a reversal came at the expense of a recognized right.

Many lawyers and Constitutional scholars have faulted the majority’s decision on historical and legal grounds, as Alito seems to cherry-pick sources in support of his view while ignoring the mainstream history and scholarship to the contrary. For example, while it is true that the Constitution does not specify a right to an abortion, it also never uses the word “woman” or “family.” There are many rights that have been recognized by the courts over the centuries that are not specifically cited in the Constitution under the Ninth Amendment which states “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The right to privacy and to bodily autonomy belong to each person and should not be under the jurisdiction of the government at any level. The Alito opinion also seems to violate the Thirteenth Amendment against involuntary servitude and the Fourteenth Amendment which promises “equal protection of the laws.”

While Alito said that abortion was a unique situation in terms of privacy protections, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence that openly questions other rulings, such as those allowing contraception and marriage equality in all states. Somehow, he didn’t suggest that the Loving case, which forced all states to allow interracial marriage, had been wrongly decided, one assumes because he is a partner in one.

It’s now a little less than a month since the decision was handed down and there is upheaval. There have been many protests and public demonstrations. Some states moved to ban all abortions or all after six weeks of pregnancy. Some states are even trying to prevent people from crossing state lines to receive care, as though being a resident of a state gave them ownership over you. While the House has passed legislation to codify abortion rights similarly to Roe and to allow interstate travel for medical care, the Senate Republicans have blocked both measures from coming to a vote.

Some states are protecting and codifying the Roe framework. My home state, New York, had done this previously and is now beginning the years-long process to amend the equal rights protections of the state constitution to include “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health care and autonomy”. Bonus: this will protect marriage rights and stand against all gender-related discrimination, as well as returning reproductive health rights to each individual.

Before the decision was handed down, those of us warning of the dangers to the health and well-being of pregnant people were scolded for being alarmist, but we were being realistic. Every day, there are stories in the news of delayed care for miscarriages that threatens the health and life of the mother. There are stories of rape victims having to go to another state for an abortion. The most heart-breaking of these is the case of a ten-year-old rape victim who had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion at six and a half weeks pregnancy. This child has had to endure not only rape and the severe threat to her health that pregnancy at such a young age entails but also the trauma of some politicians and commentators questioning the veracity of her story.

These cases show the dangers of trying to legislate what should be private medical decisions. While some are contending that it’s not really an abortion if a child is pregnant and her life is endangered or if there is an ectopic pregnancy or if there is an incomplete miscarriage, medically speaking, all pregnancies end either in live birth or an abortion. Miscarriage is not a medical term; on medical records, it is termed a spontaneous abortion. Health care providers are being put in the impossible situation to provide the best care to their patients or to be forced by lawyers to wait until their patients are clearly dying themselves before intervening to remove a doomed fetus. When the federal government reminded hospital emergency rooms that they are required to treat any endangered pregnant person to save their life, the state of Texas filed suit, saying that their state law against abortion should take precedence.

Some states are making moves not only against abortion but also against contraceptives, even though these are not abortifacient. They are trying to prevent people from crossing state lines to receive care. As I mentioned previously, while the US House of Representatives has passed legislation to codify abortion rights and to affirm the right to interstate travel, the Senate is not taking these up because of obstruction by Republicans. Chillingly, there is talk of the Republicans passing a national abortion ban if they regain the Congressional majority. Meanwhile, Republicans fail to pass legislation that would uphold the health and dignity of each person, such as universal health care, living wages, social welfare support, etc.

As a Catholic woman, I knew this was coming. Alito was parroting the arguments that Catholic bishops have made against abortion and Thomas went even further down that road in his calls against contraception. I have struggled for years against a church that denies my full personhood as a woman, despite their lip service to the concept of human dignity. I did not expect my country to follow suit.

Like most women my age, I didn’t think we would still be fighting these kinds of equality battles, but we will. I can’t predict the manner or timing of victory, but we will not be demoted to second class citizenship by a skewed Supreme Court.

this Fourth of July

It’s the fourth of July, commemorated here in the United States as Independence Day. It’s supposed to be a “happy” day, but it’s hard to feel happy with our country mired in divisiveness and the undermining of our fundamental rights and democratic institutions.

I know I have been relatively silent here at Top of JC’s Mind lately. Part of it is a renewed wave of grief over Paco as we have entered the one year anniversary of his fall and final decline and the fact that I had deferred a large portion of my grief over Nana while dealing with his needs.

The larger share of my delays in posting, though, is that the posts I need to write about the Supreme Court decisions and the January 6 Select Committee hearings are difficult to write.

The Preamble to our Constitution proclaims that “We the People” are striving toward “a more perfect Union.” This Fourth of July is one of grief, watching my country lurch further away from that ideal rather than making halting, if messy, progress toward it.

hearings

We arrived home from the UK just in time for the first primetime hearing of the findings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Since that hearing held on June 9th, there have been three more during the daytime with several more on the schedule.

Because I follow the news closely, I had thought that the hearings might not be very revelatory for me but I have found them to be very powerful. Part of the impact is that the testimony is all under oath. While some of the information had been revealed by investigative reporting or published in books by various participants, one was never quite sure of the veracity of claims. Knowing that witnesses are sworn to tell the truth makes it more likely that they are, given that committing perjury before Congress or a court can result in imprisonment. The vast majority of the 1000+ people who have been interviewed in the investigation came forward voluntarily without being compelled by subpoena, so they intended to tell what they had seen and heard for the good of the country. The committee also has access to hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence, enabling it to stitch together a detailed timeline of the web of activities that led to the January 6th attack as well as what happened on that day and in the aftermath.

In the daytime hearings, a different member of the Committee has taken the lead in questioning, sometimes paired with a member of the staff. The staff includes experienced lawyers and investigators who have done the lion’s share of the work with witnesses and evidence.

At this point, the Committee is providing a preliminary review of its findings; a written report will be issued later in the year. They are doing a very comprehensive job of laying out evidence in an organized and cogent way. It probably helps that many of the committee members are themselves lawyers with courtroom experience. Their questioning of live witnesses is very straightforward so that each witness can tell their story without the distraction of political grandstanding. Most of the witnesses, whether appearing live or in recorded clips, are Republican officeholders, officials, or staff, so that it is clear that the Committee is not just interviewing critics of the Trump administration or engaging in hearsay. The Committee is putting forth actual evidence that you would expect to find in a court of law.

Chair Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, presides and does opening and closing statements at each hearing; Vice-chair Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, also does opening and closing statements each time. She has been particularly vocal in calling out Trump and the Republicans who assisted him in the lies about the 2020 election that led to the Capitol attack.

The testimony has revealed some previously undisclosed details. For example, in the hearing that centered on threats to then Vice-president Mike Pence, we learned that attackers got within forty feet of him as he was being evacuated, that he refused to leave the Capitol grounds, and that he was acting as commander-in-chief in calling in the National Guard as Trump refused to act.

It’s sobering and terrifying to see through this evidence how close our country came to an actual collapse of our democracy. If Pence and Republican members of Congress had delayed certification in violation of the Constitution, there would likely have been widespread violence in all regions of the country; Trump would have declared martial law and it would have been very difficult to recover our democracy. It’s also chilling to see the continuing impacts on our electoral process. A number of states have enacted provisions that make it easier to disenfranchise voters or ignore their legally cast ballots. Supporters of the lies about the 2020 election are winning elected office in some states, enabling them to interfere with government from within.

It’s very tense to be in the middle of all this, gaining all this knowledge but not knowing if/when there will be consequences for those who engaged in wrongdoing. We know the Justice Department is investigating but we don’t know if they will charge Trump, members of his administration and staff, and members of Congress with crimes pertaining to attempts to stage a coup. The Committee will make recommendations for legal reforms to the Electoral Count Act and other measures to try to avert another attempt to interfere with the certification of the election. These should be widely endorsed and enacted with large majorities of both parties but it remains to be seen if they will.

It scares me that so many current Republicans still cling to lies about the 2020 election and refuse to take responsibility for their activities that supported it. Even after the attack, eight senators and 139 representatives voted against acceptance of some of Biden’s electors, even though there was no factual basis to do so. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican who led a group on a long tour of the House office buildings the day before the attack though the entire Capitol complex was closed to visitors due to the pandemic, is denying he did anything wrong, even with evidence that a member of the tour group was part of the January 6 mob. There are dozens of members of Congress who should resign over their shameful disregard for their oath to uphold the Constitution but there is not even the possibility of Republican votes in favor of censure, much less removal from Congress.

I’m trying to remain hopeful that these hearings will break through the denial bubble that surrounds many Republican voters. After being the only major broadcast/news outlet to not air the initial primetime hearing, Fox News has begun to provide some coverage. I think that the powers that be at Fox News knew that the hearings would be important because during the primetime hearing, they did not take their usual commercials breaks so that their viewers wouldn’t be tempted to check in on the hearings. It’s also important to remember that Fox News, despite its name, is not really a news channel. While there are actual journalists who work for Fox News, they only have a few hours of airtime per week. The vast majority of their programming is classified as “entertainment” with pundits/personalities who are not constrained by any standards of truthfulness or propriety. The breath-taking amount of fear-mongering that Fox News and other right-wing outlets echoes and engenders the civic divide that Trump and the Republicans created and which threatens our democracy.

If Republicans watch the hearings, they will hear a number of familiar people and themes. Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, one of the most revered conservative jurists, was featured in one hearing, speaking about the current dangers to our democracy. A number of the witnesses have spoken about the role of their faith in their actions. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers was particularly eloquent in this regard.

I have been moved by the real-world consequences for those who protected the integrity of the election and of the Capitol. Speaker Bowers’ account of the threats against him and his family, including harassment at his home as he and his wife attended to their terminally ill daughter. US Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards’ testimony on being injured on January 6th and still trying to aid her fellow officers in what amounted to hand-to-hand combat, not the policing work for which they had been trained. The appalling loss of any sense of safety or security for election workers Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, including even the ability to use their own names in public for fear of being attacked after being repeatedly vilified by Trump, Giuliani, and their followers.

I will continue to watch the hearings and the analysis and urge all the people of the United States to do the same. I hope that they will mark a turning point for the electorate so that we can root out all those who have failed in their oaths to uphold the Constitution before it is too late.

The hearings are showing us how close we came to disaster and how little time we have to strengthen our democratic institutions against attack.

voting in the US

I’m tired of politicians in Republican-led states that are restricting voting practices boasting that their policies still make voting easier than in “liberal” New York.

I live in New York state and here’s the deal. New York has long had very cumbersome voting rules. Registration and changes in party affiliation had to be completed months in advance of election day. Absentee voting by mail was only for medical issues with a doctor’s letter or being out of the county on election day. Until the pandemic, there were no early voting days. When we did have some early voting for the November 2020 election due to the pandemic, I waited in line for three hours to cast my ballot. Fear of COVID was allowed as a medical exemption so voting by mail was easier in 2020 but those ballots were not counted for over a week.

I envied family and friends in other states where most of the voting was done by mail, often with ballots mailed routinely to registered voters. States with open primaries, same-day registration, weeks of early voting days. States where it was not as cumbersome to fulfill the fundamental responsibility of being a citizen.

Because of the election interference problems of 2016, there had been a lot of preparations done to make the 2020 election more secure. The pandemic added another layer of complexity but the election was very successful with high turnout and accurate results reported. There were only scattered instances of voter fraud. Despite the vociferous and continuing lies from the former president and other Republicans, the election was free and fair. Dozens of recounts, audits, and court cases have upheld the results.

That is not to say that there were no problems. In my Congressional district, New York 22, the vote count was so close that it had not been certified when the new Congress first met in early January. During the January 6 attack, there was no representative from my district huddled in the House chamber and then evacuated to a safer location. The contested election results wound up in court. One of the main issues was that one of the counties did not process new voter registrations even though they arrived before the deadline. When those people appeared to vote, they were not allowed to cast ballots, which was significant in a district where only a few dozen votes separated the candidates. The court allowed the vote count to stand, seating the Republican candidate who had won in 2016 in place of the Democratic incumbent who had beaten her in 2018.

In a way, this foreshadows some of the efforts underway in various states to make registering and voting more difficult for people who are deemed likely to vote for Democrats. This has variously been applied to people of color, urban dwellers, elders, college students, and Latinx populations, depending on the state. For example, in Texas, a handgun license is accepted as identification for voting but a student ID is not. There have also been moves to close polling locations in certain areas, for example, to create long lines to vote in majority black neighborhoods while white neighborhoods have more polling places with only a few minutes’ wait. We also see increased amounts of gerrymandering, whereby districts are drawn in convoluted ways to dilute the voting power of a group, whether that is regarding political party, race, or ethnicity.

These kinds of voter suppression tactics and interference in representation have been around for a long time but are worse now than in recent US history due to Supreme Court decisions in 2013 and 2021 which made much of the 1965 Voting Rights Act unenforceable.

What is even more unsettling are the new laws in some states that are empowering partisans to determine which of the votes cast get counted and which get thrown out. The counting of valid votes should be totally straightforward and non-partisan. It’s math. Inserting politics means that it’s possible for electoral college votes to be awarded to the candidate who lost the popular vote in the state, perhaps overseen by the state legislature. We have seen a frightening example of this already with several states sending fraudulent slates of electors for Trump in states where Biden won the popular vote. We have just learned that these cases are being investigated by the Department of Justice.

There have been several bills in Congress to try to address these problems. They have passed the House but not the Senate where they have been impeded by the filibuster that would need ten Republicans to join with the Democratic caucus to advance the bills for a vote.

It’s shameful that Republicans are not standing up for democracy and the right of all citizens to participate in free and fair elections. They are apparently afraid that, if everyone votes and all the votes are counted accurately in fairly drawn districts, they will lose elections and power.

They should, though, be prioritizing our democratic principles and highest ideals. The last time the Voting Rights Act was re-authorized in 2006 it passed in the Senate 98-0 with 17 currently serving Republican senators supporting it. The Voting Rights Act originally targeted black voter suppression in certain jurisdictions with known discriminatory practices and the Supreme Court considered these formulae outdated. The current legislation under consideration goes further in securing voting rights for all in that it addresses a wider range of problems over the country that have appeared or been threatened over time. It would help voters in Democrat-led states like New York as well as Republican-led states like Florida.

Some have argued that the courts will prevent injustice but that does not always happen, as we found in the case in NY-22 where voters were disenfranchised without redress. We are also seeing, unfortunately, cases where judges are acting in a partisan way rather than an impartial, merits-of-the-case way.

Our Constitution begins, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union”. Over our history, voting has been restricted by race, age, gender, and wealth. As we strive to “form a more perfect Union,” we must ensure that all adult American citizens have equal access to voting, whatever their race, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, political opinions, education, place of residence, or health status. We need just and enforceable laws to make that possible. I call on all members of Congress to support their fellow citizens in order to make our union stronger and “more perfect”.
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/27/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-27th-2022/