Jonathan P. Baird

Normally a decision by a federal appellate court would not be considered big news. But in a two to one ruling, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over 8 states, effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act (or VRA). This is the law that civil rights groups have used to challenge racial discrimination in voting.

In the case, Arkansas State Conference NAACP v Arkansas Policy Panel, the Court ruled that the NAACP did not have the right to bring the case of racial discrimination alleged because there was no private right of action under the law. That is legal-speak for the Court saying the NAACP or any other civil rights group cannot sue under the VRA. The Court said only the Department of Justice can bring a lawsuit under that law.

The case will almost certainly go up to the Supreme Court. It is hard to overstate the importance of the case. If the Supreme Court upholds the 8th Circuit decision, civil rights groups wouldn’t be able to challenge discriminatory voting practices like gerrymandered maps, redistricting and voter ID requirements. The 8th Circuit would outlaw most efforts to ensure Americans are not denied the right to vote on the basis of race.

Up until now, it has been, overwhelmingly, private parties who have brought successful lawsuits under the VRA. Over the last 40 years, of the 182 successful lawsuits brought under the VRA, the Department of Justice only brought 15. That reflects both the lack of resources as well as the priorities of the Department of Justice. For example, during the Trump presidency, the Department of Justice only brought one case under the VRA. Republicans have shown zero interest in enforcing the VRA.

It is clear that Congress had intended to allow private enforcement of the law but opponents of the VRA have jumped on the fact that the text of the law doesn’t say so explicitly. The opponents belittle 58 years of cases, including many at the Supreme Court, where this was never raised as an issue. Even worse the opponents belittle the centrality of the voting rights struggle in American history.

I would suggest that it is impossible to appreciate the significance of the 8th Circuit decision outside the broader context of U.S. history and the struggle to create a multi-racial democracy. The VRA passed in 1965 under the Lyndon Johnson administration, The law is a testament to the bloody struggles fought to counter suppression of Black voters across the South.

Preventing blacks from voting was central to the white supremacist project. White citizen councils in southern states blacklisted registered black voters to try and deny them essential services. The white citizens councils could get white elites to cut off credit and deny employment to blacks. They could get sharecropping blacks who registered to vote evicted. Intimidation was the name of the game.

Voting rights activists were beaten and arrested for trying to vote. SNCC activist Herbert Lee was murdered in 1961 after he started attending voter registration classes. Voter suppression and violence were key tools of the white supremacists.

Although the right to vote was supposedly guaranteed under the 15th Amendment which came into being after the Civil War, it turned out the right was anything but guaranteed. It had to be fought for continuously. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, both political parties allowed disenfranchisement of black voters. Courts didn’t stand up to Jim Crow and gave constitutional blessing to white supremacy.

Adam Serwer has written that the pattern was set by the Supreme Court decision in the case of United States v Cruikshank in 1876. In the context of a contested election and efforts to disallow minority voting registration, blacks were supporting the election of Republican candidates. A white mob descended on the courthouse in Colfax Louisiana in April 1873 where blacks were making a stand. Totally outgunned, a massacre ensued after the courthouse was set ablaze. Fleeing blacks were executed.

72 white men were indicted for the crime of slaughtering over 100 black men.. Federal charges were brought under the Enforcement Act of 1870 which had been designed for prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Supreme Court ruled that the federal government lacked the authority to charge the perpetrators. This was one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. The Court framed their decision in the language of limited government and individual liberty but the Court gave free rein to the white supremacists. The author of the opinion, Justice Joseph Bradley, relied on the fact that the murderers had not declared their crimes were done with a design to deprive the victims of their rights on account of race.

So we have white racists carrying out a massacre but the Court somehow found it was not because of race. This was the template for allowing Jim Crow to proceed. The Reconstruction amendments were written to reverse Dred Scott but the Court was saying the Bill of Rights did not apply to freedmen. Without federal protection, injustice ruled in the southern states.

For the next 75 years the courts failed people of color and actually encouraged the rise of white supremacy. They gave judicial sanction to a regime of racial fascism. The law professor Randall Kennedy has written:

“For a large portion of American life people of color have been treated unjustly, and for most of that period the Supreme Court has found ways to rationalize that.”

Unfortunately what we are seeing now is a continuation of a long-standing pattern. The absurdity of Cruikshank was the idea that a racist slaughter could be carried out without punishment if the perpetrators did not say it was done to promote racism. Just as courts backed off on the black voting rights struggle after Reconstruction, the same thing is happening now in the aftermath of the civil rights movement. Courts are chipping away at the VRA as the 21st century way to update disenfranchisement of black voters.

The strategy of the conservative legal movement is to make it impossible for legal challenges to racist practices to go forward. The 8th Circuit Arkansas case is a perfect example. The gerrymandered electoral map the NAACP challenged weakened black voting power in the state. If no one like the NAACP or the ACLU can bring a case, the gerrymander will stand. It used to be poll taxes and literacy tests. Now it is short-circuiting the private right of action.

How the Supreme Court resolves the Arkansas case will be telling. While Chief Justice Roberts has a history of hostility to the VRA (Shelby County decision comes to mind) he did author a recent Alabama decision, Allen v Milligan, that protected Section 2 of the VRA.

This Arkansas case may be too much even for Chief Justice Roberts. Saying civil rights groups have no right to sue under the VRA (something they have been doing for over 50 years) is not just wrong, it is contrary to common sense. A decision upholding the 8th Circuit in the Arkansas case could cause absolute chaos. States that have lost cases to private parties could conceivably sue to reverse their VRA verdicts. The number of VRA cases brought would drastically plummet.

Pretending that racial discrimination in voting is essentially over is fantasy land. Underneath the Arkansas case is the question: what kind of America will we be? Will we be going back to the 19th century dark ages or will we move forward toward the goal of vibrant multi-racial democracy ? We have come too far to go back.

For anyone concerned about the advance of authoritarianism in America, there has been plenty to worry about. In spite of his multiple criminal prosecutions, the Republican presidential frontrunner appears to be running neck and neck with President Biden.

With his vermin comment and his talk about the nation’s blood being poisoned, Trump has been sounding more fascist-like. He explicitly calls for the jailing of his political opponents. Last year on his social media he advocated termination of the Constitution. It is an open question whether American democracy would survive another Trump presidency.

The Democratic response to this fascist threat has been tepid at best. Where are the full-throated opponents of American-style fascism?

Almost no one knows the 1940’s story of Frances Sweeney, an incredibly brave anti-fascist organizer and writer from Boston. The journalist I.F. Stone described her:

“Fran Sweeney could not be discouraged, could not be beaten down, could not be frightened, could not be put in her place. She was a one-man crusade, She burned with some of the hottest and most inextinguishable passion for social justice that I have ever seen.”

Sweeney’s example offers hope and inspiration for all who are concerned about saving our democracy and about moving America forward in a progressive direction. Out of her own creativity and initiative, Sweeney played a pivotal role in crippling the far right in Boston. Activists today could learn from this history. Her story should be much more widely known.

Most people probably think of Boston as a liberal cosmopolitan city. There is no more reliably blue metropolitan area. So it might be surprising for readers to learn that in 1940 Boston was a fascist stronghold.

In the period leading up to World War II, there was a powerful far right movement in America. One leader of the movement was the Detroit-based radio priest Father Charles Coughlin who was enormously popular. Coughlin’s weekly show on Sunday had over 30 million listeners, almost one-quarter of the entire American population.

Massachusetts Governor and four-time mayor of Boston James Michael Curley called Boston “the most Coughlinite city in America”. Curley said “Politicians tripped over one another to be seen with him”.

Coughlin was much more than a radio personality. He inspired the organization of the Christian Front, a far right organization with particularly strong chapters in Boston and New York. Toeing the German Nazi line, Coughlin called for the United States to stay out of any European war. Before World War II, that seemingly anti-war position was widely popular.

The Christian Front blamed hostilities in Europe on the Jews. Coughlin equated Jews with communists and he reprinted the fraudulent antisemitic screed, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in his magazine.

Supporters of the Christian Front sold the magazine, ironically named Social Justice, after Mass in many Catholic parishes in Boston. Boston Cardinal William O’Connell was silent about the Christian Front and its vicious antisemitism while many Catholic priests soft-pedaled the far right politics. From 1939-1942, the Christian Front was highly visible with its offices located downtown on the second floor of the Copley Square Hotel.

In the early 1940’s, Jews in Boston were getting physically assaulted. Gangs of Catholic teens entered Jewish neighborhoods with blackjacks and brass knuckles. The gangs beat up Jewish residents and vandalized stores. They rampaged through Jewish parts of Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan.

As an Irish Catholic with universalistic values, Sweeney was appalled by Coughlin and the Christian Front. She was disgusted that Catholics who themselves had been victims of discrimination would turn around and discriminate against Jews. She organized an American-Irish Defense Association to create a counter voice and she launched her own offensive against the Christian Front.

Sweeney turned to journalism as her primary vehicle to expose the Christian Front and as a way to motivate Irish Catholics to stand against fascism. She pushed the Boston Herald to cover the Christian Front and she herself had a weekly column, Rumor Clinic, that she used to correct misinformation.

Her hard-hitting articles led to her being pushed out of the conservative Herald. She launched a new publication in late 1942, the Boston City Reporter. It was a four page mimeographed newsletter that came out monthly. She exposed Christian Front leaders’ ties to Nazis and showed how they cloaked antisemitism behind attacks on globalists and international bankers. She quickly built a paid subscriber base and got the newsletter mailed to thousands in Irish neighborhoods in Boston.

Sweeney exposed the talented leader of the Boston Christian Front, Francis Moran, as a paid Nazi propagandist. Moran was, in fact, an agent of the Nazis, recruited by a Nazi SS officer and consul, Herbert Scholz. This was like early day Michael Flynn, where you had an unregistered lobbyist working without disclosing his connections.

Sweeney’s efforts led to the Boston police intervening and actually shutting down the Christian Front. About the mission of the Boston City Reporter, Sweeney wrote:

“The object of the Boston City Reporter is and always has been to tell the public who is using prejudice against entire races and religions for undemocratic purposes – and how.”

Sweeney organized young people to be reporters, including Nat Hentoff, who later became a writer for the Village Voice. Hentoff dedicated his memoir Boston Boy to Fran Sweeney. Hentoff was among the young Jews who had gotten beat up by the antisemitic gangs. Sweeney gathered 14 affidavits from Jews who had been beaten and got the story publicized. Her efforts helped to stop the physical assaults on Jews in Boston.

Cardinal O’Connell threatened to excommunicate her from the church if she kept writing but she never did. Sweeney died of heart problems at age 38 in 1944. Her story is told in Charles Gallagher’s fascinating book, Nazis of Copley Square.

Fran Sweeney shows the difference one person can make.

For any close observer of the MAGA movement, the last week or two has been extremely revealing. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are telling us exactly what they intend to do if they re-gain power. Shredding the constitution, Trump plans to replace democracy with strongman rule. This assertion is not based on the words of a raving leftist. It is coming straight from the horse’s mouth.

Americans are accustomed to expecting the same political horse races that have characterized past presidential elections. That is the definition of normalcy. What is different about Trump 2024 is that it is focused on achieving power, not necessarily winning any election.

It is not that Trump does not want to win. Because he and his allies have a terrible record of losing elections, Trump has a Plan B, C, D and E. Elections are too risky and unreliable for Trump.

January 6 is a blueprint of sorts. After 60 courts rejected his Big Lie, after his false elector scheme failed and after Mike Pence did not come through for him, Trump opted for a violent coup attempt. There is absolutely no reason not to expect a repeat violent performance in 2024.

The truth is that we came remarkably close to losing democracy in 2020. No one knows how 2024 will play out. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, extremist judges and misinformation remain key Trump weapons. We do know that Trump will say he won regardless of the result.

Losing is less of an option now for Trump because losing would very likely mean prison time. 91 felony counts can focus the mind. If he can connive his way to power, he will make the criminal cases go away. He has a long career of evading consequences for shady behavior. This is someone with absolutely no respect for democracy, the rule of law or elections.

As was revealed in the last week by former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, Trump had no intention of leaving the White House in 2020, even after he lost. Ellis told Kilton County Ga prosecutors that Trump’s senior aide Dan Scavino told her “the boss” was not leaving the White House “under any circumstances”. This was after all legal challenges were exhausted.

When she testified before the January 6 Committee Ellis recalled that Trump told his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows: “I don’t want people to know that we lost. It is embarrassing, figure it out. We need to figure it out.” Trump ultimately could not change the 2020 result but for 2024, desperation will likely be the mother of invention.

The Trump playbook is not hard to figure. He doesn’t abide by any election result. Any election he doesn’t win is a fraud. He has said and will say the 2024 election is rigged. For his followers he will plant the idea that he couldn’t lose a fair election. A loss is per se proof of fraud. As for his criminal prosecutions, regardless of evidence, they are simply dismissed as witchhunts.

If he wins the presidency again, retribution is the major Trump theme. As Ben Collins has said: “Trumpism is no longer a political movement. It’s a violent fairy tale of revenge on political enemies”. Trump has vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries. The hit list includes Joe Biden and his family, his former Chief of Staff John Kelly, his former Attorney General Bill Barr, his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley.

Trump explained in Claremont that he sees his political enemies as “vermin”. When he is talking about “Communists, Marxists, Fascists and Radical Left thugs” that is substitute language he uses to describe Democrats and any opponent. The term “vermin” is straight from Nazi lexicon. It is the language they used to describe Jews.

What do you do to vermin? You exterminate. When asked about the use of the term “vermin”, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung responded:

“Their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

The Washington Post has reported that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military to quell civil demonstrations. I am sure he remembers, not fondly, the enormous women’s marches that ushered in his term in 2017.

As for his dictatorial plans, Project 2025 is a good place to begin. Crafted by his allies in the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a recipe for a vastly expanded Executive Branch power. The plan is to give Trump dictatorial powers.

immigration is an area where Trump has been most explicit. He plans to deport many millions of immigrants. He wants to detain them in what his aide Stephen Miller calls “vast holding facilities on open land in Texas near the border” while they wait to be expelled. Trump wants to get rid of due process hearings so that he can expedite removals.

Contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court case of United States v Wong Kim Ark, he wants to end birthright citizenship by executive order. He wants to impose an ideological test on immigrant entry and he wants the freedom to revoke visas from foreigners for any reason. He would re-impose a Muslim ban and Title 42 which falsely claimed immigrants carried infectious diseases,

Stephen Miller has explained that MAGA plans a massive anti-immigration blitz to overwhelm legal opposition. Dissatisfied with Federalist Society lawyers, Trump wants to utilize lawyers who are to the right of Attila the Hun to pursue a brand of autocratic “legality”. It may be a challenge to find such unethical extremist lawyers but from past experience I would have to say probably not.

While the concentration camps are allegedly being created to hold immigrants awaiting deportation, it is a fair question to ask if others Trump deems as “vermin” will also land there.

Considering what is at stake in 2024, public response to the threat represented by MAGA has been muted. Brian Klaas said “we are sleepwalking toward authoritarianism”. Americans have an anti-fascist tradition that is deeply rooted in our history. It is time for sleepwalkers to awake.

For those committed to a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, events since October 7 have been a worst case scenario. I begin from the premise that the fates of both people are inextricably intertwined. An ultimately just settlement can only come from recognizing common humanity and from insuring civil rights for both. No side has clean hands.

The Hamas attack on October 7 was absolutely sickening. Attacking and shooting young people at a rock concert is the definition of evil. Going from home to home massacring families is not the action of any liberation movement. In the New Yorker, David Remnick wrote that Hamas fighters methodically planned the Kibbutz attacks for two years with the intent to kill as many as possible and to take hostages. The killing was not spontaneous improvisation.

Hamas is a theocratic terrorist organization which has constantly called for Israel’s annihilation. That goal is in their charter. Hamas aims for a single caliphate throughout the Middle East. A senior Hamas official, former Foreign Minister Ghazi Hamad, has vowed to repeat the horrific attacks of October 7 ‘again and again’.

Hamas poses an existential threat to Israel’s survival. I would not fault the Israelis for finding a continuing threat to southern Israel border communities unacceptable. No Israeli government could survive in the future if it doesn’t take that threat seriously. How many Israelis living on a kibbutz in southern Israel would feel safe returning to live there?

From a Jewish perspective, the killing of 1400 Israelis evoked Holocaust trauma. It is the worst massacre of Jews since 1945. I don’t think most non-Jews get how deep in Jewish historical experience and memory these events penetrate.

Jew-hating has a history that embraces crusades, inquisitions, blood libels and conspiracy theories, pogroms and a Holocaust. The Hamas slaughter of innocent civilians should be seen in that context and anyone who brushes off these murders has a shallow understanding of antisemitism.

That said, Israel’s response, its assault on Gaza, also must be forcefully condemned. The Israelis are not pinpointing their October 7 attackers for retribution. They are collectively punishing all Gazans.

Indiscriminately bombing a trapped population is a war crime. Since October 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 4000 children. That number of deaths is unspeakable. Much of the population of Gaza have been forced from their homes raising fears of a second Nakba. Israel has cut off food, water, fuel and electricity.

This behavior violates international law and it is appalling. There is a principle of proportionality in the law of war that holds reasonable care must be taken in attacking military objectives so that civilians are not needlessly injured. In their rage, the Israelis have tossed that principle aside. They are not distinguishing between Hamas and the broader community of Palestinians.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described Palestinians as “human animals”. That type of dehumanization opens the door to barbarism and he is hardly alone in voicing that type of sentiment. It is common on the Israeli far right. Leaders like Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Rabbi Dov Lior and anti-gay religious extremist Avi Maoz routinely get away with making disgusting and hateful racist, misogynistic and homophobic remarks.

There must be an immediate ceasefire. Negotiations for return of the hostages should be a top priority. A prisoner swap is needed to save as many lives as possible. Beyond that, every effort must be expended to prevent a wider war which could run the risk of engaging greater powers. The U.S. has mistakenly allowed Israel to act with impunity. U.S. policy has been anything but even-handed.

The ground invasion of Gaza is a trap for Israel as is the idea of Israel occupying and politically controlling Gaza indefinitely. It will backfire on the occupiers and will only increase antisemitism world-wide. Also, as has been pointed out, Hamas will be recruiting its next generation of fighters from the families of the bereaved. Hamas wants to lure Israel into bloodier engagements.

The goal of completely destroying Hamas is an impossible fantasy. Even if the Israelis kill off much of the Hamas leadership, there will be a new incarnation of something even worse, akin to the birth of ISIS in Iraq. This is a road that will never lead to any just peace.

So much responsibility falls on the Netanyahu government. To maintain his personal power, his ultimate goal, Netanyahu made a deal with the devil, allying with the most extreme Jewish fanatics, fascists, and messianic settlers. Netanyahu sold himself as the protector of Israel. Preoccupied with his own criminal trials, Netanyahu utterly failed. He will always be remembered in Israel for the security failure of October 7.

It is not remembered that Netanyahu supported and propped up Hamas as a way to sabotage the possibility of a two state solution. In an effort to strengthen Hamas relative to the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu facilitated the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar into Gaza. It is an open question whether some of that money financed October 7 and other Hamas terrorism.

By boosting a partner Netanyahu knew Israelis would not, for good reason, accept, Netanyahu aimed to kill off the peace process. Instead his conniving blew up in his face.

Netanyahu’s administration degraded Israel’s military readiness in south Israel because their higher priority was supporting West Bank settlers, his political allies.That failure needs its own commission to explore how that could have happened.

Meanwhile settlers have escalated assaults and murders of West Bank Palestinians. Many of the settlers are religious extremists who believe the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea has been biblically granted to Israel. Netanyahu has let the fanatics run wild. The Israeli military has not reined them in.

The American response to Israel/Gaza as exemplified in the House’s wrong-headed censure of Rashida Tlaib must instead be focused on stopping the war and returning hostages. Tlaib is being scapegoated. Israel’s military actions are only creating more misery and hate across the region. The situation demands a political, not a military solution.

On October 25, a category 5 hurricane, Otis, caused catastrophic damage to Acapulco and surrounding areas on the west coast of Mexico. Otis had winds of 165 miles per hour. It left Acapulco looking like a post-apocalyptic war zone.

High-rise hotels had their windows and interior walls blown out. Sunken and flipped-over boats littered the beaches and harbor areas. Residents are still searching for the missing and dead bodies continue to be pulled from coastal waters. The storm destroyed many homes, blew off roofs, uprooted trees and caused huge mudslides.

The National Hurricane Center said, “There are no hurricanes on record even close to this intensity for this part of Mexico.” So far there are 48 people dead and 58 people missing. The storm knocked out electricity and phone service and left Acapulco with no drinking water.

The most amazing thing about the storm was its rapid intensification. Immediately before the storm, weather forecasters predicted Otis to be a category 1 hurricane. Catching everyone by surprise, including the residents of Acapulco, within a period of twelve hours, Otis went from tropical storm to category 5 hurricane.

The water off Acapulco had a temperature of almost 90 degrees. Hurricanes draw energy from warm surface waters. I don’t think it has been realized that oceans have absorbed 90% of global warming. The writer Zoe Schlanger wrote in the Atlantic. “A hot ocean is hurricane food”. Schlanger quoted Jeff Masters, a hurricane specialist:

“Hurricanes are heat engines. They take heat energy from the oceans, in the form of the water vapor that they evaporate from it, and convert it to the kinetic energy of their winds.”

Considering the magnitude of Otis, it has garnered remarkably little attention. It was a blip in the news. I am afraid this is consistent with the way climate change is being reported. Denialism and ignorance reign. Sure there are many other competing news stories that merit great concern but the refusal to recognize climate is the story with the greatest potential to come back to bite us.

Everything happens in a context and Otis is one of 23 separate billion dollar climate disasters in 2023. Just off the top, there was the wildfire in Maui, Hurricane Idalia in Florida, the record-breaking heatwaves in South Europe and China, the crazy smoke from Canada’s wildfires that blanketed American cities with an orange sky, the floods in Libya in September that killed over 11,000 and the flood in Montpelier.

Living in New England seemed to offer some insulation from climate change but the events this summer in Montpelier showed that to be an illusion. Who would have thought that would happen? Probably like others I nursed the mistaken belief that the northern New England ecosphere offered some of the best protection against climate disaster.

In spite of all these weather events staring us in the face, there is an ongoing failure to acknowledge the obvious. The U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutteres put his finger on it. “Climate breakdown has begun”. But instead of any unified global response, there is inaction. Where is the will to at least try and mitigate the damage?

Hurricane Otis and the other 22 climate disasters this year are a direct result of the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. The evidence is in and it is not controverted except by climate change-denying quacks. There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists about climate change.

You might think humanity would have a stake in its own self-preservation but the pursuit of profit would appear to win out. Time is of the essence but humans don’t have a great track record of working together across national boundaries. Still, what alternative is there. Humanity must come together very quickly with a shared climate agenda.

The obstacles are admittedly enormous. There is already a huge amount of global warming in the pipeline because of the continued burning of fossil fuel. Fossil fuel companies are pretending there is no climate emergency. Almost unbelievably, they are doubling down on fossil fuel expansion.

In a distracted world, they see no end to oil demand. ExxonMobil just spent $59.5 billion acquiring U.S. shale oil producer, Pioneer Natural Resources. Chevron announced it is purchasing Hess, an oil and gas company for $53 billion in stock. Their behavior is beyond selfish. It reflects the worst, most short-sighted capitalist mentality. They are depending on the world not paying attention.

Leadership on climate is sadly missing in our political parties. The Republicans are anti-intellectual and anti-science, an utterly lost cause. An NPR poll in August found that 70% of Republicans saw climate change as either a minor threat or no threat at all. In the House, the Republicans just voted to slash 39% of the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. They also voted to require the Biden administration to advance oil drilling off the Alaska coast.

The Democrats’ record on climate is, at best, mixed. While the Biden administration pushed and passed a significant climate-smart economic stimulus in 2022, it also approved a large drilling project known as Willow on federal land in Alaska. Based on the science, there should be absolutely no new investment in oil, gas or coal. Democratic urgency on climate is lacking.

The disaster in Acapulco is a window into the future. Surprise, rapidly-intensifying super-storms will increasingly be with us, causing predictable death and mayhem. We are in uncharted waters. Brushing aside and minimizing epic storms is a pathway to hell.

I would bet that if you asked most regular people who Leonard Leo was, the overwhelming majority would say they never heard of the guy. Leo first came to public attention when former President Donald Trump was considering nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. Leo, a leader in the conservative legal organization, the Federalist Society, gave Trump a list of names they had vetted. From that list, Trump picked Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

If being Trump’s judge whisperer was the only thing Leo ever did, that alone would have been significant. However, that barely touches Leo’s accomplishments. Operating behind the scenes, he has created a conservative legal juggernaut of staggering influence.

Probably Leo has been most successful as a network builder. Whether it is the U.S. Supreme Court, federal courts, state supreme courts and state solicitor generals and attorney generals, Leo has been the architect of a conservative power grab in all these forums. He advised the Trump administration in filling more than 200 positions in federal district and appellate courts. He has cultivated pipelines of conservative legal talent and then has used Federalist Society connections to place proteges in positions of power.

Leo has had tremendous success as a fundraiser. It is no exaggeration to say that dark money associated with his various front groups have bankrolled the entire conservative legal movement. In August 2022, a 90 year old right wing billionaire, Barre Seid, gave a new group set up by Leo $1.6 billion. It was the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history.

With that immense amount of money, Leo then distributed much of that money throughout the conservative legal movement. The money has been used to influence elections, judicial appointments and public policy battles. In a speech to the Federalist Society, Leo’s good friend, Justice Clarence Thomas introduced Leo and referred to him as “the number three most powerful person in the world”. Thomas may have been joking but he was not off the mark.

ProPublica and the NPR show On The Media recently did a three part podcast about Leo titled “We don’t talk about Leonard”. The podcast delved deep into the world around Leo and many people were unwilling to talk about him. He is funding so many organizations that no one who takes that money wanted to run the risk of alienating him. People generally did not want to go on the record.

Even before he got the $1.6 billion donation in 2022, Leo was a prolific fundraiser. According to ProPublica, tax records show that between 2014-2020, groups in the Leo orbit raised more than $600 million. Leo is the embodiment of dark money, where the source of spending utilized to influence elections, public policy and political influence is never disclosed to the public. His frequently name-changing non-profits pass along money to each other. The law allows non-disclosure of where money came from.

When asked about the money, Leo will always say something like he is just trying to keep up with the left but what he is doing is unprecedented. Speaking as someone on the left, I would acknowledge the left has nothing like what Leo has set up.

He has created an apparatus that includes think tanks, law firms, marketing firms, academics, shell companies and journalists designed to steer the law in a pro-elite, anti-abortion, deregulatory and anti-democracy direction. And, as noted, the enterprise is funded anonymously so it remains largely hidden. Citizens United paved the way for unlimited secret corporate political spending.

When people write about the courts, context is often missing. So many articles begin by looking at an individual case. What is missed is that Leo, the Federalist Society and their extreme right wing billionaire funders are commandeering democracy by using their massive money machine to capture the courts.

Being unable to win many popular elections because of their reactionary agenda tilted to supporting the super-rich, conservatives like Leo work to control democracy through the ultra-minoritarian power of the Supreme Court. Leo did not start his efforts during the Trump years. He was also an advisor to George W. Bush on his Court appointments including John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Leo has spent the last 30 years working this project.

The last thing Leo wants is the nomination of judges who might deviate from his extreme right orthodoxy. He looks at justices like Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter and Anthony Kennedy as squishy and failing his litmus test.

He wants young conservative judges in the Thomas/Alito mold who can be on the court many years and who are pro-gun, anti-abortion and anti-gay. Leo has cultivated the careers of many young lawyers. He then will try to get them placed so they can further his culture war agenda by deciding cases he and the Federalist Society want advanced.

These days, cases don’t accidentally make their way to the Supreme Court. Leo has been all about getting test cases to the High Court . He scored his biggest win when abortion rights were gutted but Leo has a big agenda. I suspect reversing gay marriage and opposing contraceptive access are next.

In his most recent incarnation, Leo is now the chairmen of Teneo Network, a group that plans to “crush liberal dominance” in American life. Teneo plans to do to American society what the Federalist Society has done to American law. He is fighting the woke and Hollywood which he, as a Catholic, sees as corrupting youth.

Many liberals and progressives have failed to understand what Leo has constructed. He has had a generational timeframe and has undeniably pushed many courts, including the Supreme Court, in a far right direction.

Any Democratic administration now or in the foreseeable future must consider the reality that the Supreme Court will likely block any major progressive reform it can, using legal mumbo-jumbo like the major questions doctrine. This is Leo’s legacy. Progressives need their own long-range generational strategy. Without that, we will be playing defense indefinitely.

With so much news going on, one story did not receive the coverage it should have. The Biden administration agreed to settle an ACLU class action lawsuit, Ms. L v ICE, that will prohibit any future administration from separating immigrant families at the border through 2031. It also allows parents the ability to apply for expedited asylum consideration, behavioral health care and housing support. The settlement did not include monetary reparation.

Back in 2018 an estimated 5500 immigrant families were separated at the border while the family separation policy was in effect. The Trump administration zero-tolerance policy referred parents for prosecution for illegally crossing the border. The government would not allow children and parent to be detained together. Immigration officials sent the children to large warehouses that served as juvenile centers.

The cruelty of this Trump policy was appalling. Babies and toddlers were literally ripped from their parent’s arms. The youngest child separated from their family was only six months old. Even if a mother was breast-feeding, it did not matter. This was up there on the heartlessness scale.

The separated families were not told if they would ever see each other again. Many children and parents did not see each other for over a year or more. The trauma inflicted on these children will be life-long and emotional and cognitive damage are a certain result.

While many of the separated families have been successfully reunited, according to the ACLU, up to 1000 children are still not with their parents. The government deported many of the parents and utterly failed to keep track of the scattered families. The disregard and contempt for this population could not be more apparent.

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead counsel in the case, pinpointed this reality:

“The Court said it appears that the Trump administration tracked property more diligently than they tracked the whereabouts of little children. We have been searching for years for these families.”

The settlement requires the government to continue to help reunify families, including finding parents and guardians who were previously deported. The government committed to bringing them back to the U.S.. Before separating families, immigration officials now must have evidence of child abuse or they must be able to show the parent committed a serious crime. Under the settlement, the families’ lawyers would have to be notified and they could challenge a separation.

Even if they were previously denied, separated families would be able to apply for asylum. That alone is a big deal. Seeking asylum from persecution is a human right that is protected under American law. The law dates back to the aftermath of the Holocaust when the United Nations ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Successive administrations have tried to restrict the right to asylum. While the Trump administration set a new low, the Biden administration has, to some extent, continued Trump-era policies. When their bogus Title 42 expired earlier this year, the Biden administration enacted a new policy that prohibited asylum for almost everyone who traveled through another country on their way to the U.S..Unless you were from Mexico, the new policy acted as a bar. Many asylum seekers are from south of Mexico.

Under U.S. and international law, asylum seekers should at least get a fair hearing.The Biden administration has thrown up additional roadblocks for asylum seekers. They created a cell phone app as an exclusive means for how most people can make an appointment at a port of entry for an asylum interview.

The app, CBP One, has proven very difficult to access. The asylum seeker needs a relatively new smartphone, a reliable internet connection and proficiency in one of the languages the app supports. Not surprisingly, many asylum seekers do not have up-to-date cellphones and getting through is a virtual impossibility.

Unable to obtain a CPB One appointment, they remain stranded in extremely dangerous circumstances where they are targets for kidnapping, violence and sexual assault. Parts of Mexico near the border are notorious for violence against immigrants. Many have been killed or have died of medical neglect.

No subject has been more demagogued than immigration. The MAGA movement and Donald Trump have poisoned the well by spewing hateful and dehumanizing lies about immigrants. They invoke great replacement and the fear that dark-skinned hordes are, to use Tucker Carlson’s words, replacing legacy Americans.

Republican governors like Ron DeSantis have treated immigrants like props in his political stunts, flying them to Martha’s Vineyard on false pretenses. You have government officials preying on vulnerable people who only want to have a better life.

Just to be clear on this, the United States is suffering from a worker shortage. There has been an increase in immigrants seeking entry into the United States. The demagoguery is the racism that sees immigrants who can contribute to the economy as a threat to white Americans. America has always been a melting pot and the current wave of immigration is no different than earlier waves. Immigrants are needed by our economy and should be welcomed.

Former President Trump has refused to rule out re-instituting the family separation policy if he is re-elected. While Trump may have no respect for the law, if he does want to bring back family separation, he will have to contend with Ms. L v ICE, which remains in effect for eight more years.

Nothing, though, can erase the awful trauma and harm the Trump administration has inflicted on innocent children.

In November, the Supreme Court will be hearing a case, United States v Rahimi, about whether the Second Amendment invalidates a federal law which prohibits possession of a firearm by an individual subject to a domestic violence restraining order. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a federal appeals court with jurisdiction over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, invalidated the law on its face holding that people subject to a restraining order have a constitutional right to possess guns.

You don’t have to be a lawyer to know that what the Fifth Circuit did in this case was nuts. A court had already determined that the abuser is “a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner”. The sexist disregard for the safety of women is truly shocking. It is part of a more general societal failure to reckon with public safety issues connected to guns.

I had my own personal revelation around guns and domestic violence. A number of years back when I worked as a lawyer for New Hampshire Legal Assistance, I spent almost two years handling domestic violence-related cases. Often the cases were civil restraining orders seeking protection from abuse at a final hearing. I also handled some custody and divorce cases where domestic violence factored into the case.

Doing the cases, I saw enough to become aware that among abusers, there was a subset who relied on weapons to intimidate and to exercise control over their victims. Often the abusers had extensive arsenals. They would wear weapons on their person that included guns and knives fitted into shoulder and ankle holsters.

There was an unmistakeable message to the domestic violence victim. “Do as I say or else”. Death threats, threats of bodily harm and threats to kidnap children are all too common.

At the risk of seeming naive, discovery of this dark side of the domestic violence universe surprised me. You don’t see it because the abusers typically operate behind closed doors. In spite of all the domestic violence education that has transpired over the last 50 years, the extent of the guns/domestic violence confluence remains obscured and under-appreciated.

Guns back up the threats and emotional abuse and they act as the enforcer. They are an essential tool in the domestic violence purveyor toolkit.

Every month 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner. Over 4.5 million women have reported being threatened with a gun by an intimate partner. Access to a gun makes it five times more likely that a woman will die at the hands of a domestic abuser. In nearly half of mass shootings with four of more people killed, the perpetrator shot an intimate partner or a family member.

The public health dimension of the guns/domestic violence confluence has been hidden. It is an enormous public health emergency. I would suggest that the gun industry and gun rights organizations are playing a role similar to the role the tobacco industry played with cigarettes and fossil fuel companies are playing with climate change. They merchandize doubt in an attempt to muddy public understanding.

Interestingly, In the Fifth Circuit decision in Rahimi, one of the judges, James Ho, in a separate concurrence, raised the classic canard. In his opinion, Ho argues that courts should be skeptical of a law seeking to disarm people subject to a domestic violence restraining order because women alleging abuse use restraining orders as a tactical leverage device to secure favorable rulings on other issues like custody, child support and exclusion from marital residence.

No doubt that happens but Ho uses it to minimize the very real threat to women the Court’s ruling represents. The Fifth Circuit entirely misses the sexist background to guns and domestic violence. The dynamic of power, control and victimization is not understood. Women have never had equal rights, particularly around domestic abuse.

To fully appreciate the depth of the sexism, American history must be visited. For a good part of our history, husbands had a legal right to subject their wife to physical violence. It was called chastisement if a wife defied her husband’s authority. A husband could corporally punish his wife as long as he didn’t inflict permanent injury upon her. Really until the 1970’s and the advance of feminism, wife-beating was considered a private matter between husband and wife. The state did not intervene.

Women’s lesser rights in the personal realm fit in with the broader historical pattern of men having rights and women having lesser or no rights. Ironically, the Fifth Circuit was blind to this sexist history even though they use their own version of history to justify the outcome in Rahimi.

The Fifth Circuit found that gun laws must fall unless the government can prove the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. That court couldn’t find historical analogies in early American history. They found that early laws that disarmed people considered to be dangerous were not on point. The Fifth Circuit’s analysis relied on an interpretation of the law mandated by an earlier Supreme Court case, New York Rifle & Pistol Association , Inc. v Bruen.

The crazy thing is that the Fifth Circuit did not consider how much American society and firearm technology have changed since the 18th century. A misguided originalism leaves out all we have learned about domestic violence. Nor did it consider the massive proliferation of guns which did not exist in early America.

Zackey Rahimi is not exactly the ideal defendant. Between December 2020 and January 2021, he was involved in five shootings. He had threatened his then-girlfriend with a gun and was seen dragging her into his car at a public parking lot before firing a gun at an eyewitness. He pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm while under a restraining order.

Now it is up to the Supreme Court to decide this case. A decision to uphold the Fifth Circuit’s ruling would potentially re-arm thousands of batterers who had committed court-found abuse. It is hard to imagine something more dangerous.