Tag: private citizens
What Has Happened to the Rule of Law in India?
On December 11, India’s supreme court upheld ending the constitutional privileges of the Indian-controlled province of Kashmir, a disputed region claimed by both India and Pakistan. The decision was a sobering example of the Indian judiciary’s creeping servility in the era of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Just as India’s vibrant, secular democracy is transforming into an authoritarian, ethnonationalist state, the supreme court, once vaunted for its fierce independence, is failing to stand up for the rule of law.
The Kashmir
What Overturning Roe Did to the Anti-abortion Movement
In a normal year, the March for Life would begin somewhere along the National Mall. The cavalcade of anti-abortion activists in Washington, D.C., would wind around museums and past monuments, concluding at the foot of the Supreme Court, a physical representation of the movement’s objective: to overturn Roe v. Wade. The march happens in January of each year to coincide with the anniversary of the Roe decision.
But this is not a normal year. Tomorrow’s march will be
The Contradiction of Republicans’ Rhetoric of Freedom
For decades Republicans have marketed themselves as the party of freedom. During the 1990s and early 2000s, conservative activists took up the description of the GOP coined by the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist as the “leave us alone” coalition, so named because it consisted of voters whose stated aspiration was to live without government interference. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Republican governors led by Ron DeSantis in Florida gravitated toward unbending opposition to business and school shutdowns,
How 2 Afghans Escaped the Taliban
For the past 10 days, thousands of private citizens have been working around the clock, through informal networks of friends and colleagues, to organize evacuation flights from Afghanistan to countries like Albania and Kyrgyzstan, and to help Afghans get their name on passenger manifests and safely reach the Kabul airport. This effort, which is largely taking place on WhatsApp and Signal, has been called a “digital Dunkirk.”
At this point the phrase is too generous. In the spring of