Tag: state legislature
The Real Lessons of the Alabama IVF Ruling
When the Alabama Supreme Court found on February 16 that frozen embryos are protected by the state’s wrongful-death law in the same way that embryos inside a mother’s womb are, it set off one of those depressing and familiar 21st-century political firestorms.
The court had heard a complicated civil case touching on questions about the rights of families undergoing in vitro fertilization and the responsibilities of the fertility industry—questions that have long been neglected, to the great detriment of the
What the Colorado Oral Argument Missed
Often the outcome of a Supreme Court case is hard to predict from its oral argument. Not yesterday’s.
The justices’ questions in Trump v. Anderson made clear that the Court will rule—perhaps even unanimously—that no state can decide to disqualify Donald Trump from serving as president unless and until Congress enacts a statute granting that permission. Because Congress hasn’t done so, the Court, in all likelihood, will order Colorado and every other state to let Trump continue his reelection campaign.
What the DeSantis and Newsom Debate Revealed
The best way to understand last week’s unusual debate between Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Ron DeSantis of Florida is to think of them less as representatives of different political parties than as ambassadors from different countries.
Thursday night’s debate on Fox News probably won’t much change the arc of either man’s career. DeSantis is still losing altitude in the 2024 GOP presidential race, and Newsom still faces years of auditioning before Democratic leaders and voters for a possible
Red States Are Rolling Back the Rights Revolution
The struggle over the sweeping red-state drive to roll back civil rights and liberties has primarily moved to the courts.
Since 2021, Republican-controlled states have passed a swarm of laws to restrict voting rights, increase penalties for public protest, impose new restrictions on transgender youth, ban books, and limit what teachers, college professors, and employers can say about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Some states are even exploring options to potentially prosecute people who help women travel out of
The Next Test for the Abortion-Rights Movement
For the 150 or so people who filled a church hall in Toledo, Ohio, for a Thursday-night campaign rally last week, the chant of the evening featured a profanity usually discouraged in a house of God.
“With all due respect, pastor, hell no!” shouted Betty Montgomery, a former Ohio attorney general. Montgomery is a Republican, which gave the largely Democratic audience even more reason to roar with approval. They had gathered at the Warren AME Church, in Toledo, to
Trump Will Abuse the Presidency to End His Legal Troubles
If, as seems likely, Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee next year, the 2024 elections will be a referendum on several crucial issues: the prospect of authoritarianism in America, the continuation of a vibrant democracy, the relationship between the executive branch and the other two branches of government, and much else of grave significance.
It will also be a referendum on whether Trump will ever be held legally accountable for his actions. Trump faces multiple civil suits and at
The Tennessee Expulsions Are Just the Beginning of Offenses on Democratic Norms
The red-state drive to reverse the rights revolution of the past six decades continues to intensify, triggering confrontations involving every level of government.
In rapid succession, Republican-controlled states are applying unprecedented tactics to shift social policy sharply to the right, not only within their borders but across the nation. Just last Thursday, the GOP-controlled Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two young Black Democratic representatives, and Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, on Saturday moved to nullify the verdict of
Four Lessons Republicans Must Learn Before 2024
The Republican Party swaggered into Tuesday’s midterm elections with full confidence that it would clobber President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party, capitalizing on voters’ concerns over inflation and the economy to retake majorities in both chambers of Congress. The question, party officials believed, was one only of scale: Would it be a red wave, or a red tsunami?
The answer, it turns out, is neither.
As of this morning, Republicans had yet to secure a majority in either the
How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany
The short-lived Weimar Republic—which spanned the years after Germany’s defeat in World War I until 1933, when Hitler came to power—has become a paradigmatic example of democratic collapse. That has brought it renewed attention at this moment in America, when democracy is under threat from illiberal, would-be-authoritarian forces. We should rightly be suspicious of facile comparisons, especially the casual use of fascism as an imprecise epithet, yet Weimar’s fate provides us with some instructive parallels and important warning signals.
Paul LePage’s Comeback Bid – The Atlantic
JAY, Maine—Services at the New Life Baptist Church had just wrapped up, and in the parking lot outside its tiny chapel, Paul LePage was standing behind me with his arm wrapped around my head. He held a cellphone inches from my face, as if he were filming an extreme close-up. The former and perhaps future governor of Maine had insisted on reenacting an incident that had occurred a few weeks earlier, when he’d threatened “to deck” a Democratic operative tracking