A Lawsplainer On The Nihilist Supreme Court Declaring Trump King
Donald Trump wants to steal $6.7 billion from various government agencies for his racist wall on our southern border that he keeps saying Mexico is going to pay for. On Friday, the Supreme Court made it a lot easier for him.
Let's back up ...
One of Trump's most noxious 2016 campaign promises was that he was going to build a giant wall on our border with Mexico -- and that Mexico was going to pay for it.
Of course, we all knew that Mexico was never going to pay for Trump's vanity wall. We started off the new year in the midst of the longest federal government shutdown in history, thanks to the commander-in-chief having a temper tantrum over not getting funding for his racist border wall. So, although the only crisis on our southern border is a humanitarian crisis of our own making, Trump declared a national emergency.
As predicted by Yr Wonkette's own Five Dollar Feminist, Trump's bogus emergency declaration was immediately met with litigation. Sixteen states, the Sierra Club, the Southern Border Communities Coalition, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the US House of Representatives, among others, have filed lawsuits to try to stop Trump from raiding various pots of money to build his stupid fucking wall.
Overall, Trump has earmarked several billion dollars for his border wall. The cases at issue here are about the $2.5 billion he wants to take from the military. Judge Gilliam, a federal judge based in Oakland, issued injunctions blocking Trump from stealing the $2.5 billion from the Pentagon to build his monument to racism. Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit upheld the injunctions. So naturally, the Supreme Court stepped in on Friday to give Trump the go-ahead.
The Racist Census F*ckery Is Dead! We Think! For Now!
Yesterday, to the delight of civil rights activists, the Department of Justice formally notified the parties in the ongoing Census litigation that the government would not be including a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. Then Trump called the information from his own Justice Department and Commerce Secretary "FAKE" on Twitter.
So … yeah, I got nothin'.
Since the Trump regime announced last year that the 2020 Census would include a question about citizenship status, it has been embroiled in litigation about its legality. One of the cases went up to the Supreme Court. After the Supreme Court heard arguments but before it could rule, new evidence came to light, showing the guy who had designed the citizenship question had come up with it to help "Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites." Last week, the Supreme Court shot down the administration's main, laughable justification for the question — that it was totally not racist, and actually to help them with their vigorous enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
Mitch McConnell Knows That You Know He's A F*cking Asshole
It should surprise no one with a functioning brain stem that Mitch McConnell's rationale for blocking Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick was total bullshit. The Senate majority leader refused to even hold hearings for Merrick Garland back in 2016 because it was an election year and the "American people should have a voice." Apparently, McConnell believes we'll collectively suffer from laryngitis come 2020, so he plans to speak for us.
Speaking at a Paducah Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kentucky, McConnell was asked by an attendee, "Should a Supreme Court justice die next year, what will your position be on filling that spot?"
The leader took a long sip of what appeared to be iced tea before announcing with a smile, "Oh, we'd fill it," triggering loud laughter from the audience.
Isn't it just hilarious? McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat from a president who was actually democratically elected, and now he's gleefully imitating a Kermit meme.
Alabama Maybe Not So Sure About Denying Abortions To Rape Victims After All
Right now, there is an anti-abortion bill floating in the Alabama Senate that, like the one that recently passed in Ohio, does not include exceptions for rape and incest and which would outlaw all abortions except for those meant to save the mother's life.
That, apparently, is making even a few anti-choice Republicans cringe a little. So today, they will vote on whether or not to add those exceptions to the bill before it goes to the desk of Republican Gov. Kay Ivey.
Speaking to the Washington Post, Rep. Del Marsh (R), the president of the state Senate, said he hopes the exceptions will be added because although he'd love to see Roe overturned, he's not "real comfortable" with the idea of forcing a woman to have her rapist's baby.
Rep. Cam Marsh is not too comfortable with it either, noting that he would not want to force his own daughter to carry a baby from rape.
"The question is, are we going to be the state that says this is okay?" he said. "Even if this is just a legal strategy, I also have a 16-year-old daughter. Would I want her to carry a baby from a rape?
"That's where my stomachache comes in," he said. "That's where folks feel real sick about this."
Gee, it sure is too bad about that stomach ache. It's also too bad he cannot figure a way to extend that empathy to anyone who does not want to be forced to give birth. Because I just have a feeling that if his daughter were to get pregnant from consensual sex, he still might not actually be too keen on her having a baby at 16. He probably has great big hopes for her life that he would not like to see derailed by an unwanted teen pregnancy. Just like lots of people have for their lives and their children's lives.
There is good news for Rep. Marsh, though—he's probably got enough money to spirit his own daughter out of state to get an abortion if she needed one, just like rich people did in the "good old days." Abortion has always been safe and legal for those who can afford it.
The bill's sponsor, state Rep. Terri Collins (R), says she totally gets why some people might want to have exceptions for rape and incest, but says that because the whole point of her bill is to get it to the Supreme Court so that they can overturn Roe v. Wade, this is the way it has to be. It's a legal strategy!
"It has to be 100 percent a person at conception," Collins said.
Collins said she would support states making their own decisions about exceptions. And she herself agrees "that rape and incest could be an exception in state law.
"But what I'm trying to do here is get this case in front of the Supreme Court so Roe v. Wade can be overturned."
Wow, what a truly gross person. Though at least she's consistent.
As horrifying as it is to force a rape victim to have their rapist's baby, it is just as horrifying to force anyone to to have a baby they don't want to have, period. The reason why "rape and incest" exceptions exist is not because the people who believe in them are more reasonable or moderate or slightly more empathetic than their "no exceptions" counterparts, but because they really don't care so much about the fetuses as they do about forcing women who have recreational sex to "face the consequences" of their actions. They see rape victims who did not want to have sex as "innocent" and those who did want to have sex as "guilty" and, well, "if you do the crime, you do the time."
r/AskTrumpSupporters
r/AskTrumpSupporters
As usual, the ACLU is planning to sue if the bill passes.
"It shows how extreme and how emboldened the people who are pushing these laws feel now," [ACLU senior staff attorney Alexa Kolbi-Molinas] said. "Before, they knew they couldn't get away with it. Now they think they can."
The ACLU, she said, is preparing to sue if the Alabama measure passes — with or without exceptions.
"At the end of the day, an all-out abortion ban, whether it's at six weeks or before, is blatantly unconstitutional whether those exceptions exist or not," Kolbi-Molinas said.
Unfortunately for us all, that's probably not going to be the case for too long. Conservatives on the Supreme Court showed this week, in their decision on the case of Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, that they are willing to overturn court precedent if they happen to not like the way a case was decided in the first place—principle of stare decisis be damned.
Oh well, at least some Republicans are feeling mildly glum about it. Sort of.
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