Do y’all remember ALEC? The American Legislative Exchange Council is a right-wing organization with a lot of wealthy supporters that creates model bills for state legislatures to copy and pass into law. It’s been around since the 1970s, but in 2012 it came to everyone’s attention. Political pressure caused a lot of their corporate donors to drop out.

But it didn’t die. Now ALEC is one of the forces — not the only one — pushing parents into a frenzy to ban Critical Race Theory from schools, even though it’s unlikely CRT really makes an appearance in elementary and secondary education. The people screaming about it mostly don’t know what it is.

In academia,  a “critical theory” in the social sciences is a focus on society, culture, law, etc. in order to reveal and challenge embedded power structures. And CRT, which has been around for decades, says that race is a social construct and that racism is not just a matter of individual bigotry but is baked into the legal and criminal justice systems and other widespread policies and practices. It’s a means to assess where racism is systemic, in other words. This isn’t something that would be introduced to third graders, I don’t believe.

ALEC’s web page speaks of CRT as if it were a disease. Here’s a screen shot —

Note that they’ve been at this for over a year, at least. In June, NPR reported on how ALEC and other groups have been fueling the fight against CRT. ALEC has been hosting webinars and making YouTube videos that get widely circulated among righties on social media. By June there were at least 165 local and national groups “trying to disrupt or block lessons on race and gender.”

Few of those lessons had anything to do with CRT.  The parents and local activists inspired to show up at school board meetings and scream about CRT and making their little white children feel bad wouldn’t know CRT from a toaster. Opponents of CRT “are using critical race theory as really more of a catchall to include anything teaching students about systemic racism, any mention of white privilege, and, really, the definition that they’re using has expanded to include anything related to equity, diversity and inclusion,” the NPR report said.

Behind this is a bigger goal, which is to re-ignite something like the old Tea Party movement going in to the 2022 midterms. Instead of getting the rubes worked up about taxes and death panels, now they are worked up about confronting racism and everything else they don’t like about modernity in public schools. This appears to have worked pretty well in the recent Virginia gubernatorial election.

The banning of CRT has left teachers in the dark about how to teach race, since they weren’t teaching CRT to begin with, and it appears that any mention of race in any context brings out the zombies. A Tennessee high school teacher was fired for discussing race in a “contemporary issues” class. Those still teaching are probably doing a lot of self-censorship.

South Dakota recently passed a bill that explicitly bans CRT. No SD public school, from kindergarten to 12th grade, may teach CRT, which the bill defines as “the theory that racism is not merely the product of learned individual bias or prejudice, but that racism is systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality.”

Of course, the fact that South Dakota passed this law is pretty solid proof that CRT is needed.

Note also that while I was looking up the South Dakota law I found an innocuous-looking site labeled “Critical Race Training in Education.” The site is nothing but anti-CRT propaganda.

Oklahoma passed a law banning CRT as well as anything about gender and sexual diversity in classrooms last spring. Now a lawmaker wants to pass a more detailed bill that would pretty much stop Oklahoma teachers from teaching much of anything about American history. This bill bans the following —

1. Any teaching that America has more culpability, in general, than other nations for the institution of slavery;
2. That one race is the unique oppressor in the institution of slavery;
3. That another race is the unique victim in the institution of slavery;
4. That America, in general, had slavery more extensively and for a later period of time than other nations; or
5. The primary and overarching purpose for the founding of America was the initiation and perpetuation of slavery.

Basically, this guy wants to be sure U.S. schoolchildren aren’t taught the history of slavery.

First off, let’s be clear what we’re talking about when we are talking about slavery. Slavery in the U.S. was “chattel” slavery, in which one person entirely owns another.  It was also hereditary, meaning that an enslaved person’s children also were automatically enslaved. Through world history all kinds of people bound all kinds of other people into arrangements that get labeled “slavery,” but these arrangements weren’t always this extreme.

It’s also the case that slavery existed in most parts of the world at one time or another, and all kinds of people have enslaved all kinds of other people. But the United States came into existence in the latter part of the 18th century. That, for example, Spartans enslaved captured Athenians in the 5th century BCE is not an excuse.

To take these one at a time —

#1. It’s true that much of western Europe still permitted chattel slavery at the beginning of the 19th century, especially in those nations with colonies in Africa and the Western Hemisphere. Most if not all elminated slavery before the U.S. did, but not by a great many years.

In the Western Hemisphere, the last nation to eliminate slavery was Brazil, in 1888. Note that after the U.S. Civil War some plantation owners relocated to Brazil to continue their “way of life.” See The Confederacy Made Its Last Stand in Brazil.

Still, this is a “Spanky did it too” kind of defense. Just because other nations were doing it doesn’t make it right.

Chattel slavery actually became more entrenched in the Americas during the 18th and 19th centuries than it had been earlier. Plantation cash crops like cotton and tobacco required a lot of labor, and Africans were imported and enslaved to provide that labor.

#2 and #3. As I have already said, if you look at world history going back to its beginnings, you can find many forms of slavery among people of all races. However, if we’re looking at the formative years of the United States, it really was mostly white people enslaving mostly black people. The only exceptions I know of were that the Cherokee and some other indigenous tribes owned African slaves for a time. A very small number of free black slave owners have been documented.

Native Americans also were sold into chattel slavery, especially in the 18th century. As much as white supremacists claim otherwise, however, whites did not become chattel slaves in the American colonies. Slavery in North America was a permanent and inherited condition passed on to subsequent generations. Some whites who came here were indentured servants, which could be harsh, but once they had worked off their contracts they were free. Their children were born free. Families were not broken up and sold away from each other. That happened only to nonwhites.

Further, it was the big plantation owners of the Southern states who were determined to maintain the institution of slavery and spread it into the western territories. And the big plantations owners were white. Further, by the 18th and 19th centuries slavery was being justified by claims that black people were either not entirely human or were not capable of being civilized, so it was a kindness to enslave them.

To pretend that slavery in the United States was not an institution that allowed white people to own black people is to hallucinate.  Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, explained this in his infamous “cornerstone” speech:

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

By the 19th century, and really long before that, the institution of slavery in the U.S. was all about enslaving people of African ancestry to labor for white people.  By the 19th century, in most slave states, black people found without papers proving their status as free could be seized and forced into slavery. Just because they were black. To pretend there was no racial component to slavery in the U.S. is beyond lunacy.

#4 — In 1850, 3,204,313 people were enslaved in the United States. This was out of a population of 23,191,876. I believe this means that more than 13 percent of the population of the U.S. was enslaved (you are cordially invited to check my math). I don’t have data on other countries in 1850 to know how that measures up, but I suspect that 13 percent of the population is on the high side.

#5 — I believe this statement is a distortion of a conclusion from the 1619 Project. Basically, the Project argues that “Enslavement is not marginal to the history of the United States; it is inextricable. So many of our traditions and institutions were shaped by slavery, and so many of our persistent racial inequalities stem from its enduring legacy.” That’s absolutely true. It’s also true, the Project says, that protecting the institution of slavery was one of the reasons colonists supported separation from Britain. Slavery was not illegal in Britain, but an abolitionist movement was gaining steam there by 1776. I think that’s what is being distorted into “The primary and overarching purpose for the founding of America was the initiation and perpetuation of slavery.”

Anyway — basically, the Oklahoma law, if passed, would outlaw the teaching of American history in Oklahoma. Teachers could only present a distorted and highly cherry picked version of it.

Along with banning the teaching of American history, Republicans are going whole hog into book banning and book burning these days. Books dealing with race and gender equality, or LBGTQ issues, or anything Republicans want to pretend isn’t there, are being yanked from school shelves. Some Republican politicians want these books burned.

Yep, we’re living in interesting times.

One of the tidbits about January 6 that came out yesterday was that Fox News hosts were calling Mark Meadows to tell Trump to call off the dogs. “The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Laura Ingraham texted to Mark Meadows, for example. “This is hurting all of us.”

This suggests that Ingraham knew good and well that the people attacking the Capitol were Trump’s people. But before the day was over, Ingraham was floating the idea that antifa was responsible for the violence. The New York Times, from March 1:

In fact, the rioters breaking into the citadel of American democracy that day were acolytes of Mr. Trump, intent on stopping Congress from certifying his electoral defeat. Subsequent arrests and investigations have found no evidence that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, were involved in the insurrection.

And no such evidence has emerged to this day.

But even as Americans watched live images of rioters wearing MAGA hats and carrying Trump flags breach the Capitol — egged on only minutes earlier by a president who falsely denounced a rigged election and exhorted his followers to fight for justice — history was being rewritten in real time.

Within hours, a narrative built on rumors and partisan conjecture had reached the Twitter megaphones of pro-Trump politicians. By day’s end, Laura Ingraham and Sarah Palin had shared it with millions of Fox News viewers, and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida had stood on the ransacked House floor and claimed that many rioters “were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”

Ingraham pronounced on January 6: “Earlier today, the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement. Now they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” I got that from today’s Byron York column, btw. York seems to think that Ingraham can’t be criticized for hypocricy because she didn’t claim that all the rioters were antifa; just some of them.

The rumor that the real rioters were antifa is probably still believed in some quarters. I am personally grateful that antifa didn’t show up. I wrote on January 2 that January 6 was going to be a dumpster fire. It turned out to be uglier than I imagined. But in all the videos of the rally, the march to the Capitol, and the riot, no counter-protesters appeared.

I suspect Trump’s people expected some lefties to show up. Yesterday we learned that Mark Meadows promised somebody that the National Guard would “protect pro-Trump people.” If there had been counter-protesters, would the Guard have shown up sooner?

I’m fine, but I lost internet access for a time. But now it’s back. I’ll be back and blogging tomorrow.

Thanks to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, public schools and county health departments all over the state are now abandoning all covid mitigation efforts. No mask mandates, no testing or tracing programs, no public release of information on infections and deaths. Schmitt has, in effect, declared the pandemic over. It’s just a mirage.

The timing for this couldn’t be better; we’re going into the holiday season, and covid rates are going up all over the country. According to the Mayo Clinic, the positivity rate in Missouri is now 12 percent, up from 6.3 percent in early November.

How did this happen? Late in November a county circuit court judge ruled that county departments of health had absolutely no legal authority to impose covid control measures on schools, businesses, or other entities. The decision called such measures a violation of the state constitution. Only elected representatives can vote to put such measures in place, the judge said. And in most of Missouri, elected representatives are not about to do that, either for fear of retaliation by MAGA-heads or because they are MAGA-heads themselves. I don’t know if anyone is appealing the decision.

The judge, Daniel Ray Green, was elected, not appointed, so I can’t blame a politician for him. His most controversial decision before this was to refuse a new trial for one of Missouri’s many wrongfully convicted inmates, Ryan Ferguson. Ferguson’s conviction eventually was vacated by another court.

Anyway — last week Schmitt issued a letter to all school districts and county health authorities declaring that all covid measures must immediately cease. And since then, one county after another has announced the end of all covid mitigation programs. From today’s Kansas City Star:

A growing number of local health departments across Missouri are ending their COVID-19 response after Attorney General Eric Schmitt demanded the agencies comply with a court ruling that appears to severely limit the authority of local health officials.

Since Thursday, more than half a dozen departments have announced they are suspending coronavirus-related work after Schmitt, a Republican campaigning for U.S. Senate, sent letters earlier in the week.

The announcements come from health departments in mostly rural counties — none have been issued from the Kansas City or St. Louis metropolitan areas. Rural Missouri counties have struggled throughout the pandemic to contain cases amid low vaccination rates, pushback from the public and limited funds.

These counties will no longer investigate COVID cases, contact-trace, direct exposed individuals to quarantine, or make county data public. Rural counties were never able to implement mask mandates, so there weren’t any to cancel in them. (There’s been a big fight over mask mandates in St. Louis County that’s so convoluted I gave up trying to understand it.)

The best part of this, though, is that Schmitt is asking parents to snitch on schools that are still requiring masks. I don’t know what parents are supposed to do if they have an immuno-compromised child.

Related to this, Schmitt is proposing a parent’s “bill of rights” that, among other things, would encourage parents to veto any part of the school curriculum they don’t like. Not long ago he sued the Springfield public school district for not adequately responding to his demand for documentation about how critical race theory is being taught. You get the picture.

Have I mentioned AG Schmitt is running for Roy Blunt’s Senate seat? I believe I have.

Update: This just in — a school bus driver in Arnold, Missouri (just south of St. Louis) said a police officer got on her bus and threatened her because she asked the children to wear masks on the bus.

Missouri Attorney General and Senate candidate Eric Schmitt.

David Brooks has a sad. In his youth, he says, he fell in love with Edmund Burke conservatism. But what passes for “conservatism” these days is something else entirely.

What passes for “conservatism” now, however, is nearly the opposite of the Burkean conservatism I encountered then. Today, what passes for the worldview of “the right” is a set of resentful animosities, a partisan attachment to Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson, a sort of mental brutalism. The rich philosophical perspective that dazzled me then has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression. …to be a conservative today, you have to oppose much of what the Republican Party has come to stand for.

Brooks goes into an analysis of the intellectual roots of what he considers “conservatism” to be, and it’s grand-sounding stuff. Little of this bears any resemblance to anything American conservatism has been in my lifetime, however, and I am ten years older than Brooks.

For example, Brooks wasn’t even born yet when that scion of conservative high-mindedness William F. Buckley wrote a book defending Joe McCarthy. A 1954 review of that book in the Harvard Crimson called Buckley out for bullshit, in so many words, but he never recanted. Going back to the bleeping McKinley Administration, conservatism in the U.S. has stood against civil rights and ordinary people and for the accumulation of great wealth for a favored elite. Conservatives were isolationists when the enemy was Hitler and hawks when the enemy was Ho Chi Minh.  While self-identified Liberals often fall short and make mistakes, through the years Conservativism has consistently been wrong about major issues, and self-bullshit is, apparently, the primordial nature of the  American conservative mind.

Brooks has never been the sharpest crayon in the box, of course.

I should add that he’s writing for The Atlantic these days as well as the New York Times. See also his essay The Terrifying Future of the American Right, published in The Atlantic about three weeks ago, in which he exhibits glimmers of insight into the bullshit being presented at a recent National Conservatism Conference. I doubt Brooks will ever perceive his own role in paving the road to that terrifying future, but he’s only 60. Maybe there’s time.

I liked this part:

In the NatCon worldview, the profiteers of surveillance capitalism see all and control all. Its workers, indoctrinated at elite universities, use “wokeness” to buy off the left and to create a subservient, atomized, defenseless labor pool. “Big Business is not our ally,” Marco Rubio argued. “They are eager culture warriors who use the language of wokeness to cover free-market capitalism.” The “entire phalanx of Big Business has gone hard left,” Cruz said. “We’ve seen Big Business, the Fortune 500, becoming the economic enforcers of the hard left. Name five Fortune 500 CEOs who are even remotely right of center.”

What can one say, but — WTF? What comes out in quotation after quotation is that “The Left” is utterly evil and out to destroy America.  Whatever American conservatism ever was, it is now pretty much a kind of group psychosis.

The thing is, once you’ve convinced yourself that your opponent is absolutely evil and out to destroy you, you have just given yourself a big permission slip to do whatever it takes to destroy them. And not metaphorically. We should be grateful for those conservatives like Brooks and Liz Cheney who aren’t going down that road, and we on the Left shouldn’t go down it, either. But seriously, nuts is nuts.

Philip Bump writes about the Right’s love affair with Vladimir Putin, and how Tucker Carlson is rationalizing an invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

In his telling, Putin is salivating over Ukraine because the Russian president simply “wants to keep his western border secure.” After all, Ukraine might join NATO, which Carlson describes as the United States “plan[ning] to control Ukraine no matter what.” Massing tens of thousands of troops at the border with Ukraine is simply Putin acting defensively, Carlson insists, akin to “how we would feel if Mexico and Canada became satellites of China.”

Do read all of Bump’s column; it’s jaw-dropping. You should be able to read it without a subscription firewall.

It hasn’t been that long, I don’t think, since Republicans were hammering President Barack Obama for being too soft on Putin’s aggressions toward Ukraine. Seriously, that was just seven years ago. Now many American conservatives have done a complete flipflop and are saying Putin is right to act against American aggression, or something.

It’s easy to blame Trump, but IMO Trump just brought out qualities that were already deeply embedded in American conservatism. The authoritarianism, the demagoguery, the tribalism, the lack of consistent principles, have been strong currents in the GOP for a very long time, at least since before David Brooks was born in 1961 (see: Joe McCarthy). There were still not-crazy Republicans then, and some who were really more interested in governing than in raw power by any means. But the old, relatively liberal Republicans like John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller are extinct now.

See also Adam Kinzinger: Republicans Are ‘Frigging Crazy’ by Jeffrey Goldberg.

Rep. Devin Nunes announced last night that he is leaving Congress by the end of this month/year to take a job as CEO of Trump’s new media empire. Note that Nunes, who once sued the Twitter account of Devin Nunes’ cow, is the senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee and would have become Chair if the Trump Party takes over the House next year. This is considered one of the most powerful positions in Washington. But Nunes, if not the cow, is moooving on to greener pastures.

Having been in closed door hearings with him leading up to the first impeachment, I can tell you definitively: Devin Nunes is straight up dumb. Can’t wait to see him “lead” Trump’s media company into the ground.

— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) December 7, 2021

Okay, maybe not. The media empire appears to be just another Trump scam. Judd Legum writes that Trump’s new media company is a $1.6 billion mirage that appears to be designed to let Trump get his hands on investors’ money without ever delivering a product.

One, at the moment Trump’s signature “social media” site exists as a static page that collects email addresses. A Beta version had been promised in November, but this is all there is so far:

What is known: The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) had promised the social media site would be built on “proprietary” technology but later admitted a test site used open source technology already employed by other right-wing sites. Further, Legum writes, the only people known to be involved in building this technology are Trump and Scott St. John, a game show producer who “will supposedly be involved in TMTG’s streaming service, TMTG+, which is supposed to launch sometime in 2023.” Scott St. John is the mastermind behind “Deal or No Deal” and a bunch of other short-lived games shows I managed not to have heard of.

The investor report eventually posted a “technology team” that consisted only of first names and initials — Josh A., Billy B., Vlad N., and so on. I thought I found a woman’s name — Mortada A., a designer — but it turns out this is a man’s first name in Egypt. Anyway, there is no way to check if these guys are real people or not.

Devin Nunes is real enough, but his only known technology/media management experience is suing the fake Twitter cow.

Even better — Matt Levine writes at Bloomberg that The Trump SPAC Did a PIPE. Yeah, I didn’t know what any of that meant, either. Investopedia says that a SPAC — Special Purpose Acquisition Company — “is a company that has no commercial operations and is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) for the purpose of acquiring or merging with an existing company.” And “Private investment in public equity (PIPE) is the buying of shares of publicly traded stock at a price below the current market value (CMV) per share,” Investopedia says. This is done to raise capital for the public company, although it dilutes the value of shares. Further, PIPEs aren’t subject to as many regulations as other investment transactions. Keep that in mind.

In this case, the SPAC is Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), which first came into existence this September. DWAC “raised $287.5 million by selling stock to investors at $10 per share,” Levine says, even though DWAC didn’t have anything to sell yet. Then in October, DWAC announced it had merged with TMTG. So DWAC is Trump’s SPAC. Levine continues,

“Trump Media & Technology Group (‘TMTG’) will soon be launching a social network, named ‘TRUTH Social,’” said the merger announcement, promising a beta launch in November. It missed that deadline. A test version of the site seemed to be just a clone of open-source social network Mastodon. TMTG’s website has a “company overview” slide deck that contains no business information and does not mention anyone involved in building its supposed technology. “This appears to be a shell company buying a shell company,” wrote Dan Primack.

Ooo, are we watching a shell game? Hey, grifters gonna grift.

Levine explains that as of yesterday, TMTG was valued $44.97 per share. And TMTG is selling stock — to DWAC — at $10 per share. In so many words, Levine says this is weird. Levine also suggests this investment — apparatus? structure? — is being set up so that Trump can keep investors’ money even if the social media empire never launches.

The grifters in The Producers had to put a real musical on the stage in hopes it would fail. This is even better; Trump doesn’t have to bother to put a real social media site on the web.

A couple of days ago, Trump announced that TMTG and DWAC the SPAC have $1 billion in capital pledged by institutional investors through subscription agreements. I don’t know if there’s any proof of that, other than Trump’s say-so. These investors have not been identified, which Forbes says is unusual. (One investor who has been named publicly is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is reported to have given DWAC as much as $50,000.)

Elizabeth Warren, bless her, asked the SEC to look into the relationship between TMTG and DWAC over potential violations of securities laws. And the SEC is doing so, although it’s hard to see if anything will come of it.

Even so, somehow I don’t think Twitter is too worried about the potential competition.

Why I like Chris Hayes: How much pro-life leaders actually care about life https://t.co/khr57Gs0Zc via @msnbc

— Barbara O’Brien (@mahabarbara) December 3, 2021

It’s so hard to keep up with the insanity. The Texas Tribune reported yesterday that Texas has banned medical abortions after seven weeks of pregnancy. I thought all abortions had already been banned at that point, but I guess the whiz kids in the legislature realized they had left a loophole.

Medical abortions are done by taking a couple of specific drugs a few hours apart to induce a miscarriage. I’ve read the drugs can be obtained through the mail, with a prescription. The new law stipulates that no one may provide abortion medication “by courier, delivery or mail service.” In Texas, now you can’t even go to a pharmacy with a prescription. A physician has to hand you the drugs in person.

“Texas is looking at the ways that people are navigating around restrictions and trying to essentially make that as unsafe and as frightening for people as possible in order to deter them,” said Farah Diaz-Tello, senior legal counsel for If/When/How, a reproductive justice legal group.

Diaz-Tello and other advocates worry that the new criminal penalties may make pregnant Texans fearful of seeking medical care after a self-managed abortion.

It’s my understanding that the medications can be obtained without a prescription in Mexico, so one suspects there is already a robust black market getting underway in Texas. Black markets are not regulated by the FDA, unfortunately. .

The abortion ban that went into effect September 1 allows for abortion in case of “medical emergency,” but it’s written so narrowly that it’s hard to know what kind of “emergency” is allowable. It’s documented that since September 1 at least one Texas woman had to go out of state to terminate an ectopic pregnancy that threatened her life. Her personal physician and the nearest hospital both turned her away because they feared violating the law.

See ‘Her Heart Was Beating Too’: The Women Who Died After Abortion Bans by Sarah Waldman at the New York Times.

If the SCOTUS ends Roe as expected, Texas rules will extend to most states eventually. I suspect only the very bluest states will be able to keep abortion legal. Red states are prepared to ban abortions the minute Roe is overturned, and purple states will be at war until the criminalizers prevail.

At New York magazine, Ed Kilgore writes that For the Anti-Abortion Movement, It’s Been a Long Road Back From the Great Betrayal of 1992. I didn’t know what the “great betrayal” was. Turns out it was the decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe but allowed states to impose some restrictions, such as waiting periods, as long as they didn’t create an “undue burden” on the woman seeking an abortion.

The pro-criminalization people had expected the Casey decision to overturn Roe, and they were bitterly disappointed in what they got. Mark Joseph Stern wrote at Slate,

Casey provoked a sense of betrayal, if not outright trauma, within the conservative legal movement. It prompted GOP attorneys to develop a more sophisticated vetting process for judicial nominees under the slogan “no more Souters.” Potential Supreme Court justices are now carefully screened for their anti-abortion bona fides with thinly veiled questions about “unenumerated rights” and “substantive due process.”

Ed Kilgore ads,

This won’t-get-fooled-again sentiment culminated in the implicit deal struck between the anti-abortion movement (including its conservative Evangelical and traditionalist-Catholic religious sponsors) and one Donald J. Trump in 2016. As he sought to consolidate his control of the Republican Party following his hostile takeover of the GOP in the presidential primaries, he violated all the rules of decorum by flatly promising to appoint only Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. Of equal importance, he published (and regularly revised) a list of potential justices from which he would choose, giving anti-abortion activists plenty of time to vet them. And most important, once he was elected, he turned over his judicial-vetting operation to the conservative legal warriors of the Federalist Society (and, to some extent, the Heritage Foundation).

In brief, the Court is now packed with several people whose entire raison d’être as Supreme Court justices is overturning Roe. They would never have been placed on the Court were they not considered “safe” on ending abortion rights. And they know it, even as they’ve carefully denied it.

Dahlia Lithwick:

Perhaps it would be refreshing if the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court no longer felt the need to lie to us. The lying, after all, is becoming nearly untenable—especially for an institution that relies on public confidence. After confirmation hearings in which they promised that stare decisis was a deeply felt value and that Roe v. Wade was a clear “precedent of the court” and “the law of the land.” there’s something sort of soothing about knowing the lying to our faces will soon be over. They were all six of them installed on the Supreme Court to put an end to Roe v. Wade after all, and that is exactly what they intend to do. There will be no more fake solicitude for women making difficult choices, no more pretense that pregnant people really just need better medical advice, and no more phony concerns about “abortion mills” that threaten maternal health. There is truly something to be said for putting an end to decades of false consciousness around the real endgame here, which was to take away a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy—rape, incest, abuse, maternal health no longer being material factors. At least now we might soon be able to call it what it is.

Linda Greenhouse at the New York Times writes The Supreme Court Gaslights Its Way to the End of Roe. The subscription firewall has been neutralized, I believe; do read it. She documents the five-alarm disingenuousness in the questions asked by the “conservative” justices. And at the end, she said, the gaslighting prize goes to Brett Kavanaugh, who asked why court’s should even “take sides.” Let states decide!

The same argument could be used to support racial segregation and an end to same-sex marriage, of course. Over many decades one of the Court’s most solemn purposes has been to protect rights of U.S. citizens from violation by state law, per the 14th Amendment. Letting states “decide” which civil rights are protected and which are not would set us back about 150 years. The “conservative” justices may be about to end a lot more protected rights than just a right to abortion.

Greenhouse added,

Can Justice Kavanaugh really believe what he said? We’ll see soon enough. Last month, the court heard arguments in a case that challenges New York’s strict requirement for a license to carry a concealed weapon. Most states have looser restrictions. New York, through its legislative process, is in a minority.

Will Justice Kavanaugh and those of his colleagues who glorify a recently manufactured version of the Second Amendment allow New York City to keep going its own way on gun safety in the name of “letting the people decide”? That’s about as likely as the chance that those very same justices will decide to keep the right to abortion on the books. In both cases, we know what they’re going to do. The only mystery is how they will explain it.

I’m sure it will be … creative.