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Maddow: Democratic Base Expects Its Leaders to ‘All but Lay Their Bodies on the Line’ to Stop Trump SCOTUS Pick

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‘Within a Year Abortion Will Be Illegal in Half of the United States’

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow says she expects abortion will be illegal in half the states across the country within the next year, as President Donald Trump replaces Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. But she made clear that the Democratic base is absolutely expecting its political leaders to lay their bodies on the line to block President Trump’s eventual nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The 81-year old jurist announced his retirement Wednesday afternoon, sending shock waves and panic throughout the left, and Fox News to begin the drumbeat to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Maddow ran down a list of Kennedy’s opinions that forever changed America, for better or for worse.

“Anthony Kennedy is why we got President George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore, Anthony Kennedy is why we have same-sex marriage rights in the Obergefell case, Anthony Kennedy is why we don’t execute children in the Roper case, Anthony Kennedy is the reason we gutted the Voting Rights Act, he’s the reason we have unlimited secret money in politics in Citizens United, he’s the reason we have the Trump Muslim ban from yesterday,” she detailed.

“I think a lot of particularly Democrats and progressives and centrists today will be focused on the fact that Anthony Kennedy is very probably why we have abortion rights in this country. I think within a year abortion will be illegal in half of the United States, because of this,” the longtime progressive journalist warned.

“I think that Democrats right now are facing a test, because Democrats have a ‘limiter’ on their behavior. They’re like, you’re driving a stock car, and it tells you you can go 120 miles an hour or something, but then, when you’re actually driving it in real life you find that it gets to a limiter,” she continued with an analogy of left versus right.

“Democrats have a limiter that Republicans don’t have in modern politics right now,” she told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, a moderate anti-Trump Republican.

“Democrats are really constrained by this idea that you should honor precedent, and that you should play fair, and that you shouldn’t make radical departures from the way that things have been done in this country, for generations if not centuries.”

“And Republicans are unconstrained by that,” Maddow continued. “When Mitch McConnell and Republicans in the Senate decided they were not going to allow President Obama to make a Supreme Court nomination, that was a Republican hard ball tactic [that] almost no Republicans had any problem with.”

“Democrats would have to play a similar kind of hard ball now, to try and keep this seat from being a nomination and a confirmation before there’s a new Senate potentially chosen, and a new Senate majority.”

“I think that Democrats are obviously fighting from a position of weakness,” she continued. “Democrats have the option to use, exhaust, and push to the limit every tactic that they’ve got to keep there from being a hearing, to keep there from being a vote, to put, to delay it as long as they can, in the expectation that the same argument that Republicans made, that there had to be an election before there could be any new nomination – that could be applied to what they’re doing here too.”

“I do think that the Democratic base is going to want them to fight that hard, to really try to save the Court or die trying.”

She concluded, “I think the Democratic base is going to expect [Democratic leaders in the Senate] to all but lay their bodies on the line to stop the Senate rather than allow any nominee to go forward.”

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Alabama Republicans Pass Bill Making All Abortions–Except for Health Reasons–Illegal From Point of Conception

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Republicans in the Alabama Senate late Tuesday night passed a bill making nearly all abortions illegal, with the specific goal of having the law challenged in the courts and ultimately, they hope, overturning Roe v. Wade.

The “Human Life Protection Act” bans all abortions from the point of conception, with the only exclusion being in the case of “a serious health risk” for the mother. Abortions for rape and incest are also banned.

Doctors who perform an abortion in Alabama under the bill could be sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Republicans in the House passed the bill last week.

It now heads to Republican Governor Kay Ivey’s desk. She has yet to indicate if she will sign it.

This is a breaking news and developing story. Details may change. This story will be updated, and NCRM will likely publish follow-up stories on this news. Stay tuned and refresh for updates.

 

Image by Victoria Pickering via Flickr and a CC license

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‘Roe v. Wade Is Doomed’: Legal Twitter Explodes as SCOTUS Justice Warns Conservatives Will Overturn Landmark Cases

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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on Monday issued what’s being called a “warning siren” Monday, strongly suggesting landmark civil rights cases, perhaps Roe v. Wade, or Planned Parenthood v. Casey, or maybe Brown v. Board of Education are increasingly likely to be overturned by the Trump-reshaped far-right SCOTUS.

“Today’s decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the Court will overrule next,” Breyer wrote in a dissent of a case handed down Monday, overturning decades of Supreme Court precedent.

Here’s one civil rights attorney’s quick explanation:

These bills are direct assaults on Roe v. Wade. Experts know if some will become law, will get challenged, and ultimately will wind up in the federal courts – which are growing increasingly conservative – and ultimately, at the Supreme Court.

It’s important to put Justice Breyer’s warning in context. As NBC News’s Heidi Przybyla notes, “More than 300 proposals to restrict abortion have been introduced in states between January and March of this year.”

Many legal experts weighed in on Twitter, making clear Justice Breyer’s warning must be taken seriously.

Here’s CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, saying Breyer’s warning means the Supreme Court case that found women have a right to abortion is “doomed.”

Professor of Law, University of Michigan School of Law:

Former Obama White House Counsel’s Office attorney:

Attorney and writer at Slate:

Former Buzzfeed News Legal Editor:

President, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law:

Reuters’ Supreme Court reporter:

 

 

Image by Victoria Pickering via Flickr and a CC license

 

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‘Fox & Friends’ in Meltdown Over Taking ‘God Out of Everything’ in America: ‘Where Have We Come as a Country?’

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Ainsley Earhardt Suggests Disappearance of God in American Discourse Has Led to Shootings at Churches and Synagogues

“Fox & Friends” was very focused on God – specifically, the Christian God of the Bible – on Tuesday morning. In one segment the Fox News AM crew used the Bible to interpret the “top topics” of the day, while another focused on what the hosts and a guest claimed is the disappearance of God in America.

Using a week-old story about a Pennsylvania elementary school that has stopped saying, “God bless America” after the Pledge of Allegiance is read over the school’s PA system, “Fox & Friends” invited an attorney from an anti-LGBT Christian law firm on to offer his opinion.

“I’m wondering if they’re so upset about the phrase ‘God Bless America,’ is the school district there in Pennsylvania, that is frankly not too far away from where those flights went down on 9/11, are they going to get rid of the dollar bills that have in God we trust on them?” Jeremy Dys, the Deputy General Counsel for the anti-LGBT organization First Liberty, asked.

“Are they going to start punishing teachers for saying ‘God bless you’ to students that sneeze in the hallway? This is absurd and it should be treated as absurd. When people say ‘the grass is pink,’ it’s not based on any kind of reality, just like they say ‘God bless America is unconstitutional,’ there is no reality that supports that.”

“Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt was quick to weigh in.

“As a Christian my faith is extremely important to me. When I think about taking God out of America, it really saddens me because I feel like we need Him,” she said.

Earhardt appeared to suggest that less people saying “God bless America,” or invoking God’s name has somehow lead to more shootings in churches and synagogues.

“When you have shootings in synagogues, shootings in churches, and you have to get wanded before you walk in to a church now. Where have we come as a country? What’s going to happen if we continue to push this narrative to take God out of everything?”

Dys added, “I fear. I fear for our country, if we were to get rid of these things entirely.”

He called it “a danger to our society” if America gets rid of “any kind of utterance of religion in public.”

Watch:

 

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