More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The threats women candidates face on the campaign trail are intentional, especially towards women of color and those serving at the state and local level who rarely receive media attention.
Attacks on women candidates and elected officials are attacks on democracy. Full stop.
It’s a bittersweet time to reflect on President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s legacy for our federal courts.
On one hand, this administration and Senate majority are unrivaled in adding diversity to the federal bench. On the other hand, Biden and Schumer are now falling behind Trump and McConnell’s pace of confirmations.
Let’s confirm the president’s nominees and fill the vacancies where obstruction is impossible.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has succeeded in getting Donald Trump’s co-conspirators—especially key insiders Sydney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro—to plead guilty and testify against the former president and others.
This move is the latest example of Black women leading the way in defense of our endangered democracy.
Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell—both former lawyers for Trump—were indicted by a Fulton County grand jury in mid-August, alongside 17 others, including Trump himself. All 19 co-defendants are charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
On Thursday, Oct. 19, Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts—five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties, and one count of conspiracy to commit theft—making her the second defendant to flip on Trump and cooperate with prosecutors. Powell was supposed to go to trial on Monday with co-defendant Chesebro. With Powell’s plea deal, Chesebro will go to trial solo next week.
“The basic thrust is, is that while all of those defendants did slightly different things and engaged in slightly different discrete acts of criminal activity, they all were engaged in one unlawful purpose, which was to overturn the 2020 election,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor at the Georgia State University College of Law, on a recent episode of On the Issues with Michele Goodwin.
If allowed to take effect, an August ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals would sharply restrict access to medication abortion nationwide and eliminate telemedicine abortion. Three Republican-nominated judges issued the Fifth Circuit ruling. But one of the judges, James Ho, issued a concurring opinion, arguing the ruling did not go far enough.
Ho clerked for Clarence Thomas and has close ties to the Federalist Society, led by Leonard Leo. The judge has referred to abortion as “the immoral, tragic, and violent taking of innocent human life.” He and his spouse, Allyson Ho, have been running in the same circles as key players in the assault against abortion access in the U.S. for years.
For the first time, a former president is facing criminal charges for a wide-ranging conspiracy to thwart American democracy. In painstaking detail, the indictment recounts Trump’s scheme “to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud.” Regardless of how the case proceeds, one thing is already clear: the attacks on our democracy did not end on January 6, 2021.
As soon as next month, a grand jury out of Georgia will be tasked to consider charges against former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Already, the Department of Justice has indicted former President Trump with 37 felony counts related to the mishandling of classified documents, obstructing justice, making false statements and conspiring.
“The worst thing you can do for a democracy is just let it slide when people try to do a coup and undermine democracy. That is how democracy dies. It is worth pursuing the fight to keep people accountable under the laws for undermining our democracy,” said Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, on a recent episode of Ms.’ On the Issues With Michele Goodwin podcast.
Southern Baptists are at it again, targeting women pastors in the next round of an ongoing battle over ordination and leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
Never mind that more and more people are leaving churches and identifying as religious “nones.” Never mind that there is a clergy sex abuse scandal among Southern Baptists. The possibility of women’s leadership is such a threat, it has to be eradicated. So rather than dealing decisively with its clergy abuse scandal, the SBC’s annual meeting this June chose to spend its time pummeling women pastors and once again delaying necessary abuse reforms.
Pretty soon, they may just be sitting alone in their empty sanctuaries on Sunday mornings—because no one else is right enough to belong with them.
Dark money groups, far from standing down after they succeeded in abolishing Americans’ constitutional right to decide if and when to have children, have ramped up their efforts to further limit reproductive rights since the right-wing faction on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade a year ago.
Behind this attack on our rights is a web of groups funded by ultra-rich donors and coordinated by far-right lawyer and longtime Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo.
Dr. Bandy Lee—who warned the country about Donald Trump—calls the family court system another threat to our democracy.
Lee had been in touch with Catherine Kassenoff, the New York mother and attorney ended her life through assisted suicide over Memorial Day Weekend because she couldn’t fight for custody of her daughters any longer. “What family courts have enabled is the ability of abusers—through the accusation that the other parent is alienating them from their children—to reverse the victim and offender,” Lee said. “It is an abuser’s dream come true to be labeled the good one and to accuse their victims of their own guilt and own crimes—and also to call the healthy person mentally ill.”
