June, 24 2022, 11:18am EDT
UltraViolet on the Supreme Court Decision Overturning Roe v. Wade and Eliminating Constitutional Protections for Abortion
Statement from Sonja Spoo, Director of Reproductive Rights Campaigns at UltraViolet, a leading national gender-justice organization:
"The day we have all feared has finally come. The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, and in doing so eliminated the Constitutional rights of women and pregnant people across the United States to access abortion.
WASHINGTON
Statement from Sonja Spoo, Director of Reproductive Rights Campaigns at UltraViolet, a leading national gender-justice organization:
"The day we have all feared has finally come. The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, and in doing so eliminated the Constitutional rights of women and pregnant people across the United States to access abortion.
"With this decision, the trigger bans in 13 states will come into effect - automatically restricting or banning access to abortion - with an additional 13 states likely to take swift steps to do the same. This is a humanitarian, civil rights and public health crisis.
"Millions of people will be forced to travel hundreds or thousands of miles for an abortion - and those are the lucky ones. For poor people, for people who live in rural communities, and for communities of color - this decision will lead to increased surveillance and suspicion of all pregnancy outcomes. Forced birth, dangerous or deadly health outcomes, increased police intrusion into our health and families-all of this will be the new reality for millions and already is for so many. This is not an exaggeration.
"This is only the beginning. Without Roe - the fundamental right to privacy does not exist. This means access to contraceptives, the ability to love whomever you want, regardless of gender or race, and the ability to marry and raise a family are all on the chopping block.
"This decision proves that the Supreme Court is broken, hijacked by radical right-wing extremists. Its legitimacy is unlikely to survive today's decision.
"But as catastrophic as this is - both for the women of this country and our nation's political institutions - we must remember that today is the day that Republicans have been working towards for a generation - and it would not have been possible unless Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans had not stolen two Supreme Court seats, undermined voting rights, and packed the bench with ideological and overtly political Justices.
"But make no mistake - these radical extremists are the minority. The majority of Americans do not support this agenda. Democrats running as pro-choice have won more votes in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections - and nearly 80% of Americans believe that access to abortion should be legal and safe.
"Black, brown and Indigenous organizers have been warning about this moment for years. They called it when voting rights were gutted, and when state governments were captured by the right - and far too many of us refused to listen to their warnings.
"Today is a difficult day. But we now re-dedicate ourselves to fighting back.
"This is a national call to action. Now is the moment that we begin the work to protect access where we have it and to push back attempts to further restrict or ban abortion care. We vow to fight states that move to pass new bans or restrictions. We will call on states that will maintain access to care to work to expand access and support people needing to travel to their state for care. At state legislatures, in the streets, at the ballot box-we will be there. This is a time for bold action from our leaders across the country and for deep organizing, community, and mobilization.
Democrats in Congress, we demand urgency. Abolish the filibuster. Pass legislation guaranteeing a right to abortion. Restore protections to voting rights so we - the majority - can make sure our voices are heard in November - and we can put in place elected officials who will fix our broken and biased Supreme Court. We also demand that President Biden steps up and leads the whole of government response this crisis moment needs
"Companies like AT&T, Comcast, Disney and more - who have supported extremist Republicans up and down the ballot for years - this is the time of reckoning. You have your notice. You need to loudly and publicly declare that you will halt all political donations to anti-choice Republican political campaigns, fund folks who will protect our rights, and implement measures to ensure that all of your employees will have access to reproductive health care and abortion, regardless of where they live.
And for social media platforms-Meta, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and more-you are responsible for ensuring that people have access to accurate information about how to access abortion as well as accurate information about abortion science. You must work to stop the spread of abortion lies and disinformation and deplatform bad actors who work to sow fear, lies, and disinformation about abortion access.
"This is just the beginning of the fight. We are the majority, and we won't go back.
UltraViolet is a powerful and rapidly growing community of people mobilized to fight sexism and create a more inclusive world that accurately represents all women, from politics and government to media and pop culture.
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"As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress's constitutional role is respected and fulfilled," wrote Sen. Edward Markey and Rep. Ted Lieu.
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Two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden Thursday, urging him to place more checks on potential nuclear weapons use by mandating that a president must obtain authorization from Congress before initiating a nuclear first strike.
The letter writers, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), argue that "such a policy would provide clear directives for the military to follow: A president could order a nuclear launch only if (1) Congress had approved the decision, providing a constitutional check on executive power or (2) the United States had already been attacked with a nuclear weapon. This would be infinitely safer than our current doctrine."
The two write that time is of the essence: "As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress's constitutional role is respected and fulfilled."
The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the power to declare war (though presidents have used military force without getting the OK from Congress on multiple occasions in modern history, according to the National Constitution Center).
During the Cold War, when nuclear weapons policy was produced, speed was seen as essential to deterrence, according to Jon Wolfsthal, the director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, who wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last year that makes a similar argument to Markey and Lieu.
"There is no reason today to rely on speedy decision-making during situations in which the United States might launch first. Even as relations with Moscow are at historic lows, we are worlds removed from the Cold War's dominant knife's-edge logic," he wrote.
While nuclear tensions today may not be quite as high as they were during the apex of the Cold War, fears of nuclear confrontation have been heightened due to poor relations between the United States and Russia over the ongoing war in Ukraine, among other issues. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree lowering the threshold for potential nuclear weapons use not long after the U.S. greenlit Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied long range weapons in its fight against Russia.
This is not the first time Markey and Lieu have pushed for greater guardrails on nuclear first-use. The two are the authors of the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, a proposed bill first introduced in 2017 that would bar a U.S. president from launching a nuclear first strike without the consent of Congress.
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In their letter, Markey and Lieu also recount an episode from the first Trump presidency when, shortly after the January 6 insurrection, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley ordered his staff to come to him if they received a nuclear strike order from Trump.
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In a briefing paper titled The Sky Rained Missiles, Amnesty "documented four illustrative cases in which unlawful Israeli strikes killed at least 49 civilians" in Lebanon in September and October amid an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign of invasion and bombardment that Lebanese officials say has killed or wounded more than 20,000 people.
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Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement that "these four attacks are emblematic of Israel's shocking disregard for civilian lives in Lebanon and their willingness to flout international law."
The September 29 attack "destroyed the house of the Syrian al-Shaar family, killing all nine members of the family who were sleeping inside," the report states.
"This is a civilian house, there is no military target in it whatsoever," village mukhtar, or leader, Youssef Jaafar told Amnesty. "It is full of kids. This family is well-known in town."
On October 16, Israel bombed the Nabatieh municipal complex, killing Mayor Ahmad Khalil and 10 other people.
"The airstrike took place without warning, just as the municipality's crisis unit was meeting to coordinate deliveries of aid, including food, water, and medicine, to residents and internally displaced people who had fled bombardment in other parts of southern Lebanon," Amnesty said, adding that there was no apparent military target in the immediate area.
In the deadliest single strike detailed in the Amnesty report, IDF bombardment believed to be targeting a suspected Hezbollah member killed 23 civilians forcibly displaced from southern Lebanon in Aitou on October 14.
"The youngest casualty was Aline, a 5-month-old baby who was flung from the house into a pickup truck nearby and was found by rescue workers the day after the strike," Amnesty said.
Survivor Jinane Hijazi told Amnesty: "I've lost everything; my entire family, my parents, my siblings, my daughter. I wish I had died that day too."
As the report notes:
A fragment of the munition found at the site of the attack was analyzed by an Amnesty International weapons expert and based upon its size, shape, and the scalloped edges of the heavy metal casing, identified as most likely a MK-80 series aerial bomb, which would mean it was at least a 500-pound bomb. The United States is the primary supplier of these types of munitions to Israel.
"The means and method of this attack on a house full of civilians likely would make this an indiscriminate attack and it also may have been disproportionate given the presence of a large number of civilians at the time of the strike," Amnesty stressed. "It should be investigated as a war crime."
The October 21 strike destroyed a building housing 13 members of the Othman family, killing two women and four children and wounding seven others.
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Guevara Rosas said: "These attacks must be investigated as war crimes. The Lebanese government must urgently call for a special session at the U.N. Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative mechanism into the alleged violations and crimes committed by all parties in this conflict. It must also grant the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over Rome Statute crimes committed on Lebanese territory."
"Israel has an appalling track record of carrying out unlawful airstrikes in Gaza and past wars in Lebanon taking a devastating toll on civilians."
Last month, the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Israel's 433-day Gaza onslaught, which has left more than 162,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in the embattled enclave.
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Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice is weighing a genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel. Last week, Amnesty published a report accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
The United States—which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—has also been accused of complicity in Israeli war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon.
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Echoing recent warnings from economists, business leaders, news reporting, and immigrant rights groups, Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee detailed Thursday how President-elect Donald Trump's planned mass deportations "would deliver a catastrophic blow to the U.S. economy."
"Though the U.S. immigration system remains broken, immigrants are crucial to growing the labor force and supporting economic output," states the new report from JEC Democrats. "Immigrants have helped expand the labor supply, pay nearly $580 billion a year in taxes, possess a spending power of $1.6 trillion a year, and just last year contributed close to $50 billion each in personal income and consumer spending."
There are an estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and Trump—who is set to be sworn in next month—has even suggested he would deport children who are American citizens with their parents who are not and attempt to end birthright citizenship.
Citing recent research by the American Immigration Council and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the JEC report warns that depending on how many immigrants are forced out of the country, Trump's deportations could:
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- Cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half a million immigrants who are removed from the labor force.
Highlighting how mass deportations would harm not only undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens, the report explains that construction worker losses would "make housing even harder to build, raising its cost," and "reduce the supply of farmworkers who keep Americans fed as well as the supply of home health aides at a time when more Americans are aging and requiring assistance."
In addition to reducing home care labor, Trump's deportation plan would specifically harm seniors by reducing money for key government benefits that only serve U.S. citizens. The report references estimates that it "would cut $23 billion in funds for Social Security and $6 billion from Medicare each year because these workers would no longer pay into these programs."
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who chairs the JEC, said Thursday that "as a son of an immigrant, I know how hard immigrants work, how much they believe in this country, and how much they're willing to give back. They are the backbone of our economy and the driving force behind our nation's growth and prosperity."
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Along with laying out the economic toll of Trump's promised deportations, the JEC report makes the case that "providing a pathway to citizenship is good economics. Immigrants are helping meet labor demand while also demonstrating that more legal pathways to working in the United States are needed to meet this demand."
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The JEC report followed a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that explored how mass deportations would not only devastate the U.S. economy but also harm the armed forces and tear apart American families.
In a statement, Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, thanked Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) "for calling this important discussion together and shining a spotlight on the potential damage."
Cárdenas pointed out that her group has spent months warning about how Trump's plan would "cripple communities and spike inflation," plus cause "tremendous human suffering as American citizens are ripped from their families, as parents are separated from their children, or as American citizens are deported by their own government."
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Cárdenas concluded that "America needs a serious immigration reform proposal—with pathways to legal status and controlled and orderly legal immigration—which recognize[s] immigrants are essential for America's future."
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