GOP lawmakers are using brazen tactics to further their plan to ban abortion nationwide

Thursday, July 13, 2023
BY JULIA CLAIRE & CROOKED MEDIA

- Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) ([link removed]) grilling the DOD’s Defense Pricing and Contracting Director in a House Oversight hearing on financial accountability

In the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, ballot measures protecting abortion rights won across the country, including in deep red states like Kentucky. In response, the anti-abortion movement has developed a new strategy to navigate the changing terrain.

* Abortion rights advocates in at least ten states are considering heavy investment in ballot measures with the goal of codifying the right to abortion at the state level over the next two years. In red states like Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and South Dakota, the measures could have monumental implications, potentially restoring rights that have already been abridged. Anti-choice organizations like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America have already vowed to be “really engaged on these ballot measures ([link removed]) that are often very radical and go far beyond what Roe ever did.” Forgive me if we don’t trust people to have a good sense of what’s “radical” after they’ve explicitly said they’d rather see pregnant women die preventable deaths en masse than have access to abortion.

* Unlike the rest of the ballot measures, which would coincide with the 2024 elections, reproductive rights advocates in Ohio are organizing for a new amendment to their state constitution for their upcoming elections this November ([link removed]) . Anti-abortion groups know that they are on the losing side of a democratic fight, so instead of trying to convince voters to board their sinking ship, they have decided instead to move to restrict voter initiatives more generally. Fourteen states are reportedly considering a total of more than 50 rule changes that would make the ballot measure process more difficult. You know the old saying: “If at first you don’t succeed, rig the system to get your desired outcome!”

* Republican lawmakers have used every tool in their arsenal to limit abortion access. Since March, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has been holding up hundreds of military promotions (notable unfilled positions include Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and head of the U.S. Marine Corps) over his opposition to a Pentagon policy that provides travel expenses for service members who need abortions but are based in states where it is not legal. Spineless miscreant House Speaker Kevin McCarthy kowtowed to the far-right wing of his party and held a vote on Thursday to overturn that policy ([link removed]) , which passed 221-213. This puts the larger defense bill in jeopardy, as Republicans only have a narrow majority in the House.

The anti-abortion movement has powerful allies who show no signs of taking their foot off the gas.

* Abortion has also been a key issue in the clown car that is the 2024 GOP primary. Disgraced former president Donald Trump has of course been going around taking credit for ending Roe v. Wade, but he also hasn’t dedicated much space in his Truth Social ramblings to the issue (that space is reserved for screaming accusations that Joe Biden is a cokehead). But former Vice President Mike Pence has not been so irresolute. If anything, Pence has been the most outspoken abortion opponent in the GOP primary field. He not only supports a federal abortion ban in theory, he’s explicitly called on his fellow Republican primary candidates to support a 15-week national abortion ban.


* Now, Pence is going so far to say that he also supports banning abortions even for nonviable pregnancies ([link removed]) . To be clear: The former Vice President believes that pregnant patients should have to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, because he believes (based on nothing) that there is a chance such pregnancies might magically become healthy. The post-Roe landscape has already threatened—and ended— ([link removed]) the lives of women trying to obtain medically-necessary abortions in red states, to the point that doctors are making patients wait until they are experiencing a “medical emergency” ([link removed]) (i.e. in critical condition) before they will terminate a toxic pregnancy to protect themselves from legal retaliation.

It can be difficult to see any light amid this seemingly-impenetrable darkness, but the pro-choice movement has the energy and popular support to continue winning back what was lost, and hopefully enshrine even more robust reproductive rights in the future.

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Today the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) voted join the Writers Guild of America in their strike, something that hasn’t happened since Dwight Eisenhower was president of these United States and the president of SAG was, let me just check my notes here… yes, that’s right, Comrade Ronald Wilson Reagan. The studios’ proposals to SAG included scanning the faces of extras ([link removed]) and licensing their likenesses to be used in perpetuity with no further remuneration ([link removed]) . The move comes a day after an anonymous executive told trade website Deadline that the studios “endgame” for the writers’ strike was “to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”


The strike is the latest response by labor to “automation,” which tends to just mean “labor arbitrage.” In the case of Hollywood, execs are excited about the opportunities suggested by applied statistical models like ChatGPT and want to use it to write and redraft screenplays, among other horrors. Writers point out that since ChatGPT—and visual programs like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney—are trained on huge models made out of all the data they can scrape with no regard for copyright, they are not much more than “plagiarism machines ([link removed]) .” When the actors joined the strike on Thursday, stars Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt walked out of the premiere ([link removed]) of Netflix-produced historical epic “Oppenheimer.”


It’s also a long-overdue reckoning between the studios, all of which have their own in-house streaming services, and writers and actors who don’t get residuals from rebroadcasts of their shows and movies the way they do when those same works are shown on television. It’s an enormous move—SAG has more than 160,000 members—and bosses and workers around the country will be watching to see what precedents are set. Disney is already betting heavily on AI: The company created the titles sequence for the new Marvel series “Secret Invasion” using Stable Diffusion, which was trained on the work of [artist credit not found].

According to the Secret Service, no fingerprints or DNA have been uncovered on the bag of cocaine that was found at the White House ([link removed]) . Sorry, Fox News!


A tornado touched down near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, grounding or disrupting hundreds of flights ([link removed]) .


Twitter, which owes so much money to its creditors that the company’s latest interest payment on the loans is estimated by Bloomberg to be in the neighborhood of three hundred million American dollars ([link removed]) , is supposedly paying a select group of users tens of thousands of those very same dollars for their most-liked tweets (Twitter announced the revenue-sharing program alongside the payments). Among the people pre-approved for the application-only program: Far-right vlogger Tim Pool ([link removed]) and far-right accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate ([link removed]) .


A Pennsylvania jury found that Robert Bowers, the man who committed the largest act of antisemitic terrorism in U.S. history when he killed 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, is eligible for the death penalty ([link removed]) .


A deadly heat wave that has been baking much of the U.S. Southwest continues to deliver triple-digit temperatures ([link removed]) , greatly increasing the risk of wildfires.


Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing for a month-long tour to energize key Democratic voting groups ahead of 2024 ([link removed]) .


In 2019, Waco, TX judge Dianne Hensley received a public warning from the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct for refusing to perform same-sex marriages. In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing private businesses to refuse services to LGBT couples, Hensley filed a brief claiming that the ruling applies to her lawsuit against the Commission ([link removed]) , claiming that the 2019 warning “substantially burdened the free exercise of her religion, with no compelling justification.” Who could have predicted what a disaster that SCOTUS ruling would be, except everyone!

According to new reports, a Russian Major General Ivan Popov was dismissed after he spoke honestly about the Russian military brass ([link removed]) , saying that they had betrayed Russian soldiers. The Kremlin’s Defense Ministry has remained silent on the general’s fate (though we have some guesses and none of them are good).

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department continues to have a glaring extrajudicial violence problem among its deputies. The Department released video on Wednesday of a deputy in the Antelope Valley punching a woman in the face twice while she held her baby ([link removed]) in July 2022 during a traffic stop. Sheriff Robert Luna said he found the officer’s use of such brutal force “completely unacceptable” (yeah, you think?) and has sent the case to the county district attorney, who will decide whether to file criminal charges against the deputy. Luna also said his department had alerted the FBI, and the deputy in question has been taken off field duty. This latest horror show comes less than a week after two other deputies were pulled from field duty after video from June 24 surfaced of them tackling a woman and then using pepper spray on her. Luna is the former Long Beach chief of police, and has vowed to
overhaul the department after defeating incumbent Alex Villanueva (who had also vowed to overhaul the department).
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The FDA approved the first-ever over-the-counter daily birth control pill ([link removed]) , a huge win for women in need of expanded contraception access.


A New York state court of appeals ordered the redrawing of the Empire State’s congressional map on Thursday ([link removed]) , siding with Democrats and likely giving the New York State Democratic Party a little wind at their backs going into 2024.

On a trip to Finland, President Biden told Finnish media that the United States would “absolutely” stay committed to NATO ([link removed]) despite remarks to the contrary from far-right kooks like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and disgraced former president Donald Trump.
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