1). “Global Capitalism: The U.S. Election and Trump 2.0 in Historical Perspective [November 2024]”, Nov 20, 2024, Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work, duration of video 1:17:47, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?
2). “Here’s What We Do Now: A Personal Note”, Nov 6, 2024, Greg Palast, Gregpalast.com, at < https://www.gregpalast.com/
3). “ 'The Election Ain’t Over' Greg Palast: New Details on Ballots Thrown Out”, Nov 22, 2024, Mark Thompson interviews Greg Palast, The Mark Thompson Show, duration of video 1:17:47, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?
4). “Trump’s Pentagon pick Hegseth wrote of US military taking sides in ‘civil war’: Defense secretary pick said in 2020 that should Democrats win election the military ‘will be forced to make a choice’ ”, Nov 22, 2024, Jason Wilson, The Guardian, at < https://www.theguardian.com/
5). “The dictatorial threat of Trump’s recess appointment plan”, Nov 19, 2024, Eric London, World Socialist Web Site, (WSWS), at < https://www.wsws.org/en/
6). “Georgia Fired Their Entire Maternal Mortality Committee”, Nov 21, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
7). “Georgia Dismissed All Members of Maternal Mortality Committee After ProPublica Obtained Internal Details of Two Deaths”, Nov. 21, 2024, Amy Yurkanin, ProPublica, at < https://www.propublica.org/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: The recent “election” win by the Amerikkkaner Overt Fascist Donald Trump with 76,818,362 Popular & 312 Electoral Votes as opposed to the Democratic Party's candidate Kamala Harris with 74,308,711 Popular & 312 Electoral Votes is the result of an election that was decided by a truncated vote in which something on the order of 10 million to 15 million, mostly Democratic Party leaning, voters stayed home and did not participate. Like in 2016 the demobilization of this huge cohort of “low-propensity voters” brought the election participation down to a level that made it vulnerable to the sorts of voter suppression, voter purges, and voter challenges typically mounted by Republicans; and that in total affect on the order of 5 million votes, including large numbers in the key 7 Swing States where the Electoral College Votes that decided the election were located. When the huge bloc of mildly left-wing & liberal working class / middle class “low-propensity voters” are energized they swamp the Republican base and win elections; but they were not motivated to vote this election.
In Item 1)., “Global Capitalism: ….”, Richard Wolff looks at the U.S. presidential election using a world capitalism perspective. The events taking place in the U.S. and the entire Presidential election campaign ignore the ongoing collapse of the U.S. World Empire and the ongoing decline in U.S. influence in economic, geostrategic, cultural, and political events on Earth. In Item 2)., “Here’s What We Do Now: ….”, and Item 3)., “ 'The Election Ain’t Over' ….”, Greg Palast discusses the methods by which Republican Operatives have been purging Democratic voters and otherwise rigging the system. This is critical in low-turnout elections.
There has been a big ballyhoo about the now-withdrawn nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. That noise has drawn attention away from a more important and dangerous cabinet nomination. In Item 4)., “Trump’s Pentagon pick Hegseth ….”. an article in The Guardian reviews material written by Pete Hegseth advocating for violent attacks on leftists and liberals. Of course Hegseth is a cowardly warrior, his martial experiences include “ …. going into Iraq as a crusader, and when that went wrong he started looking at America through the same lens”. So, as is typical with this sort of bullyboy, he prefers attacks on people who are not armed and who don't fight back (like American women needing abortions). The reality of the Middle East was too much for the cowardly lion Hegseth. His writing about the U.S. includes describing “ …. leftists, progressives and Democrats as 'enemies' of freedom, the US constitution and America, and counts Israel among the 'international allies' who can help defeat such 'domestic enemies' ” and he wrote “The hour is late for America. Beyond political success, her fate relies on exorcising the leftist specter dominating education, religion, and culture – a 360-degree holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.”. Furthermore he writes that: “He explicitly supports forms of election-rigging through gerrymandering. Fair electoral boundaries, he writes, amount to 'Playing nice to placate the so-called middle,' which 'has been a losing strategy for patriots for decades'. Since 'the other side is stacked with enemies of freedom', Hegseth argues, 'Republican legislatures should draw congressional lines that advantage pro-freedom candidates – and screw Democrats.' ” Hopefully his own rape & payoff scandal will derail his candidacy to become Secretary of Defense.
Another major issue is Trump's demand to the Republican majority, in the senate & the house, that both bodies take a long recess, declare it as such, and allow Trump to appoint anywbody he wants to these various posts. Item 5)., “The dictatorial threat ….” discusses Trump's success so far in appointing a complete slate of cabinet members without any scrutiny by even the rubber stamp Republican controlled Senate. As the article points out:
“Donald Trump’s threat to force through his slate of far-right cabinet nominees as 'recess appointments' without Senate confirmation votes marks a significant step in the de jure breakdown of constitutional forms of government.
“Trump’s plan is for his congressional allies to effectively 'auto-prorogue' the legislature to evade the Advice and Consent clause of the Constitution. It comes as Trump brags of plans to rule by emergency decree and deploy federal troops to deport immigrant workers. ….
“At the time the Constitution was drafted in 1787, Congress was in session for a relatively brief period of time, and traveling to the capital on horseback was arduous and expensive, especially for representatives from far-flung regions. In view of that, the constitution also added a 'recess appointments' clause, stating 'the president shall have the Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session' (i.e., in two years).
“Trump and his Republican allies claim that this 'recess appointments' clause gives Trump the power to impose his 'will' without Senate votes. Their plan is to pass resolutions in the House and Senate to adjourn with sufficient time for Trump to force through his recess appointments. This essentially means the prorogation of the legislature by legislators personally loyal to the executive himself. Such powers—however 'temporary'—are reserved for kings and dictators. If this plan is carried out, any legal challenge would wind up before the Supreme Court. ….
“The American ruling class now views the democratic principles it once fought to establish as barriers on the accumulation of wealth. The legal and constitutional foundations of the country are collapsing under the weight of the American oligarchy. The working class is the only social force which can defend democracy, and it can only do so through a frontal assault on the capitalist system.” (Emphasis added). (See, “The dictatorial threat of Trump’s recess appointment plan”, Nov 19, 2024, Eric London, World Socialist Web Site, (WSWS), at < https://www.wsws.org/en/
Abortion Access and Reproductive Healthcare Rights are prime targets of the Trumpista Right-wing. The obvious and much predicted consequence of the draconian attacks on Women's Healthcare in the U.S. has been a large number of deaths and terrible wounding of young women who needed abortion care. Two notorious cases came from Georgia; where a Maternal Mortality Committee pointed out that the two now-famous examples of this, the deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, both of whom could easily have had their health assured with timely abortions. This was reported in Item 6)., “Georgia Fired Their Entire ….”, and Item 7)., “Georgia Dismissed All Members ….”. In Item 6 Jessica Valenti notes that the response of the Georgia Republican Regime to the report on the death of these two women, was to fire the entire 32 member Medical Committee and to begin looking for compliant toadies to form a new bowdlerized Maternal Mortality Committee. She also mentioned that Idaho and Texas have changed their medical reporting procedures in order to start generating phonied up statistics that falsely blame earlier abortions for a wide variety of medical conditions among women. Her article notes that:
“ …. Idaho disbanded its maternal mortality review committee entirely, and how Texas put an anti-abortion extremist on theirs. …. the anti-abortion movement has been sowing distrust in maternal mortality data since Roe was overturned, and how they’re drumming up fake statistics on abortion ‘complication’ rates.
“They have been planning, carefully and strategically, for how to cover up women’s deaths. ….
“Speaking of how Republicans plan to cover up women’s deaths and suffering, let’s talk about who was in Idaho today, testifying in support of the state’s abortion ban: None other than Ingrid Skop, the anti-abortion extremist OBGYN who travels around the country defending abortion bans and publishing bunk science. Remember the anti-abortion studies that were retracted early this year? That’s her.
“Skop was also recently put on Texas’ maternal mortality review committee—in large part because she doesn’t believe that abortion bans ever harm women, nor does she believe that abortion is ever necessary to save someone’s life. It gets worse from there, so make sure to check out Abortion, Every Day’s backgrounder on her.
“Like so many other conservatives desperate to make their cruelty seem credible, Idaho Republicans trotted Skop out to testify that abortion bans are perfectly safe and there’s no reason doctors shouldn’t be able to provide care.
“Thankfully, the plaintiffs had a lawyer who knew exactly who Skop was. During cross examination, attorney Leah Godesky pointed out that Skop travels to testify in support of bans, that she’s affiliated with multiple anti-abortion organizations, and that she writes anti-abortion papers that have been retracted by their publisher. Lol.” (See, “Georgia Fired Their Entire Maternal Mortality Committee”, Nov 21, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at https://jessica.substack.com/p/georgia-fired-their-entire-maternity
The big questiohttps://jessica.substack.com/p/georgia-fired-their-entire-maternityn is; are the Republicans who serve thhttps://jessica.substack.com/p/georgia-fired-their-entire-maternitye most retrograde elements of the U.S. Capitalist Ruling class ready to move politically, using significant levels of violent coercion in the belief that this is their moment and that their future prospects do not look that bright. I expect the Rethugs and other right-wing operatives will move decisively. Most likely agents provocateurs will be placed in some major left/liberal protests and demonstrations and they will throw the rocks or fire a few shots at massed police and military forces giving them the excuse to open fire with machine guns and heavier weapons. The victims will be unceremoniously removed in front end loaders and dumped into mass graves dug for the purpose. That will be the end of dissent for 15 or 20 years.
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Here's What We Do Now
Before the election, I wrote, “How Trump Won.”
And on Election night I waited for the returns to make a fool of me.
Instead, the returns made the fool a President.
And so, my vacation’s cancelled. My life’s cancelled; that is, a life of anything but sleuthing and exposing the details of the heist of our democracy.
What’s at stake?
No way around it, this is one frightening moment.
Decades of progress created with sweat and determination face destruction. Within the next six months, we may see the Voting Rights Act repealed — and civil rights set back 50 years; the entirety of our environmental protection laws burnt in a coal pit; police cruelty will be made our urban policy; the Education Department closed to give billionaires a tax holiday; and howling anti-Semites will be appointed White House counselors.
But the horror we face is countered by this one hard question the US media will ignore, but I can’t: Did Donald Trump actually win this election? If so, was it really a landslide?
Here’s something you won’t read elsewhere: In the last Presidential, according to the official count of the federal Elections Assistance Commission, 2.7 million provisional ballots were rejected.
Whose ballots? If you’re Black, Hispanic or Asian-American, the chance you were shunted to one of these provisional ballots is 300% higher than if you’re white.
How many Black ballots were thrown in the electoral dumpster?
As a former professor of statistics, I know there’s still a lot of sleuthing in the numbers I have to do, but I can tell you this: The number of rejected provisional ballots, the number of voters wrongly purged from the rolls, the number of ballots “spoiled” and not counted, has unquestionably skyrocketed.
The result: This is the most “Jim Crow,” racially bent election I’ve covered in 25 years of reporting.
Did that make the difference? Don’t ask our “see-no-evil” media. While, before the election, The New York Times (never forget to capitalize the “The”) and MSNBC will run some stories on vote suppression trickery, from crazy ID requirements to rejecting student registrations to suspect purges of voters. However, the establishment outlets will NEVER, EVER say that these ugly, racist electoral swindles changed the outcome of the election.
They will wave the flag and tell us that American democracy prevailed again. That’s just horseshit. Excuse my French, but when are we going to face the fact that Jim Crow has returned — this time as Dr. James Crow, systems analyst.
In my film Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, I note that just one Trump-backed group, True the Vote, signed up a posse of 40,000 of self-proclaimed vote fraud hunters who, two months ago, had already challenged the ballots of 852,381 voters, overwhelmingly citizens of color — with a goal, undoubtedly met — of challenging 2 MILLION by this week.
Could disqualifying literally millions of ballots affect an election’s outcome? What do you think, Sherlock?
Vigilante challenges are a whole new racist weapon, new to 2024. It worked, so they’ll do it again in 2028 and 2032. They are already planning it. So, what are we going to do about it?
Same with mass purges: 400,000 in Georgia, 1.2 million in Texas — way over 10 million removed from the voter rolls — no other advanced nation does this, erasing voters’ rights to cast a ballot. And may I remind you, that in a technical report for the ACLU in which the Palast team’s experts literally reviewed every single name on the Georgia and Wisconsin purge lists, we found that Georgia wrongly removed a third of a million voters and Wisconsin tens of thousands.
Could this bend an election? Well, Sherlock, is the rancid evidence wafting up your nose yet?
Maybe what you smell are those rotting, “spoiled” ballots. The nasty little secret of US elections is that we don’t count all the votes. “Spoilage” is the fancy term in the vote-counting biz for votes that are rejected for all kinds of reasons, from paper ballots that scanners could not read to ballots cast in the wrong precinct.
Now, if voters’ spoiled ballots rejected were just a random thing, hey, it wouldn’t matter. But as I pointed out in The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a Black voter is 700% more likely than a white voter to have their ballot thrown in the reject dumpster. We are talking about, by official count, one to three MILLION ballots in our last presidential elections. Do the math, Sherlock. If we counted all the votes, who really won?
What can we do now?
Cut the tears, crybabies. We have work to do.
In 2016, in Rolling Stone, I laid out, in cold numbers, how Trump “won” election through a racially poisonous voter roll purge system called, “Interstate Crosscheck,” which purported to identify and remove criminal double voters from the rolls. If a “James Brown” voted in Michigan and “James Brown” voted in North Carolina, they’d remove this criminal double voter from the rolls. Roughly 1.1 million voters were knocked off the rolls. Combined with the purges, spoilage, provisional ballots rejected and other scummy scams — easily accounted for Trump’s official victory.
But here is the good news to remember: A national campaign led by Rev. Jesse Jackson and boosted by the ACLU in court deploying our investigative findings, our films, and our reports completely eliminated the Crosscheck purge system. If we did not continue the battle for voter protection after the 2016 race, Biden could not have won in 2020.
And let me make this clear: Our purpose in taking on Crosscheck was not to elect Biden — I’m strictly non-partisan. Our purpose was and remains to let the voters decide.
Some weeks ago, Rev. Jackson told President Biden and VP Kamala Harris to watch our film Vigilantes Inc., and then take action. But still, the Justice Department hit the snooze button. What that tells us is that no government agency, no political party, is going to save our democracy. That’s completely on us. And that’s my commitment.
Will you join me?
Information and facts make a difference
Today, I’ll be on calls with voting rights attorneys and frontline activist groups preparing for the fierce fight to protect our votes. They are, as you can imagine, requesting our factual reports and findings — about the two-million-plus vigilante challenges, about purges, mail-in ballot rejections and more. And they need our film and print stories of the voters whose ballots were challenged, discarded, blocked. Our films and short PSA have now been seen by more than 8 million — but that’s not enough.
Too much has been spent on selling candidates and not enough on simple civic education. Education is our work.
With our investigative reports, with our hard and unassailable evidence, we can challenge the legitimacy of the Trump “landslide.” It’s not about bringing down Trump, it’s about shoring up that fragile thing called Democracy.
Starting TODAY, we must begin the difficult but necessary work of protecting and restoring voting rights. The 2026 election — and the threat of more purloined elections — is upon us.
What we need to keep going…
Your extraordinary support and faith in our work funded our film Vigilantes Inc., which is now more relevant than ever and being seen by ever more audiences.
So, now, I have to hit the road again. North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona. It’s a long road. We begin with a request from the Congressional Black Caucus to show Vigilantes Inc. in the Capitol. The more difficult and expensive demand upon us is to educate the Congressional White Caucus about the decay of our voting rights.
Is there any choice?
Honestly and personally, I was hoping for some rest and time off.
But a lifetime of your work and mine is now in the balance.
We need your financial support to keep this fight going.
All our resources went into raising the alarm before the election. Our post-election actions can’t run on fumes.
As Leonard Cohen sang, “Democracy is coming to America.”
But it won’t get here by itself.
I can’t thank you enough for all the years of support.
Alas… our work is not done.
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Trump’s Pentagon pick Hegseth wrote of US military taking sides in ‘civil war’
Defense secretary pick said in 2020 that should Democrats win election the military ‘will be forced to make a choice’
Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, has written in a book that he could imagine a scenario in which the US armed forces would be used violently in American domestic politics.
Hegseth, a former elite soldier turned rightwing Fox television personality, is Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon which controls the gigantic American military – by far the largest armed force in the world.
In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a “national divorce” in which “The military and police … will be forced to make a choice” and “Yes, there will be some form of civil war.”
Hegseth’s 2020 book exhorts conservatives to undertake “an AMERICAN CRUSADE”, to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents”, to “attack first” in response to a left he identifies with “sedition”, and he writes that the book “lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies”.
Hegseth’s rhetoric about perceived “internal” or “domestic enemies”, along with media reports highlighting his tattoo of the crusader motto “Deus Vult”, may ring alarm bells for those concerned by Donald Trump’s repeated threats to unleash the US military, which Hegseth would directly control, on those he has described as “the enemy within”.
The Guardian contacted the Trump transition team seeking comment from Hegseth.
John Whitehouse, news director at Media Matters for America (MMFA) which tracked Hegseth’s Fox career, said that Hegseth has “always given off a proto-fascist vibe”, and that “the thing that appealed to him was going into Iraq as a crusader, and when that went wrong he started looking at America through the same lens”.
Throughout his work, and especially in 2020’s American Crusade (AC), Hegseth paints an apocalyptic picture of American politics, and encourages his fellow rightwingers to see their opponents as an existential threat.
At various points in that book, he describes leftists, progressives and Democrats as “enemies” of freedom, the US constitution and America, and counts Israel among the “international allies” who can help defeat such “domestic enemies”.
Addressing his conservative audience in a chapter of American Crusade entitled Make the Crusade Great Again, he writes: “Whether you like it or not, you are an ‘infidel’ – an unbeliever – according to the false religion of leftism.” He added: “You can submit now or later; or you can fight.”
Later in the book, he writes: “Build the wall. Raise tariffs. Learn English. Buy American. Fight back.”
Elsewhere in American Crusade, he writes: “The hour is late for America. Beyond political success, her fate relies on exorcising the leftist specter dominating education, religion, and culture – a 360-degree holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.”
In fighting, Hegseth wrote: “Our weapon is American nationalism,” adding: “The Left has tried … to intimidate us into thinking that nationalism is a relic of a bygone era.”
Hegseth has followed his own advice in this respect: his tattoos include the words “We the People”, quoted from the constitution, and a “stylized American flag with its bottom stripe replaced by an AR-15 assault rifle” according to Snopes.com reporting.
In relation to the media, “almost all” politicians and credentialled experts, Hegseth advises readers to “Disdain, despise, detest, distrust – pick your d-words. But all of this must lead to action.”
Some actions he recommends resemble forms of disruption and harassment that Trump-aligned activists have brought to nonpartisan local government bodies.
Hegseth tells readers: “The next time conservative views are squelched in your local school, host a free-speech sit-in in your kids’ school lobby and make your case,” and “When local businesses declare ‘gun free zones,’ remember the Second Amendment, carry your legally owned firearm, and dare them to tell you it’s not allowed.”
In the wake of Trump’s defeat in 2020, media reports noted an uptick in rightwing activists open-carrying firearms at political protests, and there was a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-“critical race theory” protests at school board meetings, with some groups such as Moms for Liberty coordinating efforts to carry out partisan takeovers of school boards.
Hegseth further advises readers: “You know what local politicians fear the most? A cell phone camera in their face.”
In January, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that in the three years since the 6 January 2021 insurrection, local and state elected officials had experienced “a barrage of intimidating abuse”. Their nationwide survey showed that over 40% of state elected officials and 18% of local officeholders had experienced threats or attacks. The numbers balloon to 89% of state legislators and 52% of local officeholders when less severe forms of abuse – insults or harassment such as stalking – are included.
Hegseth explicitly rejects democracy in American Crusade, characterizing it as a leftist demand: “For leftists, calls for ‘democracy’ represent a complete rejection of our system. Watch how often they use the word,” adding: “They hate America, so they hate the Constitution and want to quickly amass 51 percent of the votes to change it.”
He explicitly supports forms of election-rigging through gerrymandering. Fair electoral boundaries, he writes, amount to “Playing nice to placate the so-called middle,” which “has been a losing strategy for patriots for decades”. Since “the other side is stacked with enemies of freedom”, Hegseth argues, “Republican legislatures should draw congressional lines that advantage pro-freedom candidates – and screw Democrats.”
Hegseth addresses the then-looming election repeatedly in the book, at one point writing: “The clash of 2020 is going to focus on the re-election of Donald Trump; but the real clash – underneath it all – is for the soul of America”. He writes: “Yes, the leftist media and machine hate President Trump – but they hate you just as much, if not more.”
And in entertaining the prospect of Trump’s defeat, Hegseth claims that a Biden victory will shatter the US and lead to civil war.
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Georgia Fired Their Entire Maternal Mortality Committee
Click to skip ahead: In Hiding Post-Dobbs Deaths, Georgia Republicans have fired every single person on the state’s maternal mortality review committee. In the States, news from Idaho, Kentucky, Illinois, Florida and more. In Ballot Measures, Missouri Republicans are trying to override the will of the voters. In the Nation, Matt Gaetz is out and Students for Life is going all in. In Stats & Studies, more evidence that abortion is an economic issue. Finally,You Love to See It offers huge congratulations to Cecile Richards!
Hiding Post-Dobbs Deaths
Well, this is how it happens. I’m sure you remember ProPublica’s investigation into the the deaths of two women killed by Georgia’s abortion ban, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller. In response to that news, do you think politicians moved to change the law, or tried to protect pregnant people in the state? Of course not.
Instead, they fired every single person on the state’s maternal mortality review committee.
ProPublica reports that commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, Kathleen Toomey, wrote a letter to the committee dismissing all 32 members a few weeks ago. Toomey’s reasoning was that “confidential information provided to the Maternal Mortality Review Committee was inappropriately shared with outside individuals.”
In other word, Georgia’s Republican leadership didn’t like that someone from the committee told a reporter that the state’s ban was killing women. (I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the committee also happened to find the two women’s deaths preventable and connected to the state’s ban.)
This is how they cover up our deaths—with bureaucracy and bad data. I warned about this strategy in my book; I wrote about how Idaho disbanded its maternal mortality review committee entirely, and how Texas put an anti-abortion extremist on theirs. (More on that in a moment.) I’ve tracked how the anti-abortion movement has been sowing distrust in maternal mortality data since Roe was overturned, and how they’re drumming up fake statistics on abortion ‘complication’ rates.
They have been planning, carefully and strategically, for how to cover up women’s deaths.
And what does this latest news mean for Georgia women in the meantime? How long will it take for the state to replace the dozens of people on the maternal mortality committee? Just as important—who will they put on it?
For more on how conservatives’ planned for women’s deaths, read below:
In the States
Speaking of how Republicans plan to cover up women’s deaths and suffering, let’s talk about who was in Idaho today, testifying in support of the state’s abortion ban: None other than Ingrid Skop, the anti-abortion extremist OBGYN who travels around the country defending abortion bans and publishing bunk science. Remember the anti-abortion studies that were retracted early this year? That’s her.
Skop was also recently put on Texas’ maternal mortality review committee—in large part because she doesn’t believe that abortion bans ever harm women, nor does she believe that abortion is ever necessary to save someone’s life. It gets worse from there, so make sure to check out Abortion, Every Day’s backgrounder on her.
Like so many other conservatives desperate to make their cruelty seem credible, Idaho Republicans trotted Skop out to testify that abortion bans are perfectly safe and there’s no reason doctors shouldn’t be able to provide care.
Thankfully, the plaintiffs had a lawyer who knew exactly who Skop was. During cross examination, attorney Leah Godesky pointed out that Skop travels to testify in support of bans, that she’s affiliated with multiple anti-abortion organizations, and that she writes anti-abortion papers that have been retracted by their publisher. Lol.
I think Godesky might be my new favorite person, because apparently she also dressed down the state’s other two ‘experts’—including one who admitted on cross that he opposes birth control and thinks rape victims should be forced to give birth.
It says a lot that these are the only kinds of people they can get to back their bullshit ban.
We have good and bad news out of Illinois today. The good news is that Cook County’s new budget includes $2 million for community organizations that provide “wraparound” reproductive rights services. These are groups that fund travel, lodging and medical costs for those seeking abortions. It’s an especially important move as the country prepares for a Trump presidency, and for pro-choice states in particular, which have seen a huge increase in out-of-state patients.
Democratic Commissioner Bridget Degnen said, “This budget really reflects our moral compass, one centered in freedom, autonomy and equity. Reproductive freedoms are a human right.”
In less terrific Illinois news, a coalition of anti-abortion groups are suing over a state law that requires private insurers to cover abortion care. The groups are represented the Thomas More Society, which has been suing all over the place lately. (They’re the group trying to overturn the Supreme Court’s buffer zone ruling, for example.)
Something to watch out for in these suits over insurance coverage: birth control. While this particular case is about coverage for abortion, we’ve seen similar legal challenges conflate abortion and certain types of birth control—and I expect we’ll see more of them soon.
The anonymous woman suing over Kentucky’s abortion ban has traveled out of the state to end her pregnancy, but is still a plaintiff in the suit. A filing says that ‘Mary Poe’ “recently traveled to another state to obtain legal access to the abortion care that she was denied in Kentucky due to the challenged bans.”
Poe’s suit—which the ACLU wants to make a class action—argues that Kentucky’s ban violates her right to privacy and self-determination under the state constitution. Anti-abortion groups brought a similar challenge against the ban last year.
Finally, a Florida Democrat plans to file a bill to clarify the state’s medical exceptions. State Sen. Tina Polsky pointed out that since Republicans ran all these ads against Amendment 4 claiming that women’s health is safe under the state’s ban, they should have no problem codifying as much. In other words, she wants that shit in writing.
Quick hits: An Arkansas Democrat filed a bill to restore abortion rights in the state (a symbolic move considering the makeup of the legislature). And even Massachusetts doctors are getting inundated with calls about long-term birth control and sterilization.
Ballot Measures
As predicted, Missouri Republicans have no interest in adhering to voters’ wishes. GOP lawmakers are already taking aim at Amendment 3, the recently-adopted ballot measure that protects abortion rights until ‘viability.’
House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson told reporters yesterday that targeting Amendment 3 would be one of Republicans’ legislative priorities, saying, “There’s no amendment that’s passed that can’t be changed or improved upon.”
“The Missouri legislature has a history of ‘improving’ on citizen initiatives by undermining or refusing to implement them,” said Emily Wales, Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes.
Patterson had originally indicated he wouldn’t target Amendment 3, saying he would respect voters’ wishes. But then fellow Republican Rep. Justin Sparks called Patterson out for being too timid on the issue and made a move to block his leadership. Apparently that made Patterson nervous enough to consider legislation to undermine the pro-choice amendment.
The Republican Leader continues to insist, though, that “we respect the will of the voters” and that legislators just want to “address…a number of things in there.”
This is what I mean when I say that abortion is a democracy issue: this is a small group of extremist legislators imposing their will on the vast majority of Americans. Missouri voters spoke! They made clear that they want to restore abortion rights. Anything else is an attack on democracy.
For background on how Missouri Republicans tried to keep Amendment 3 off the ballot, read below:
Before we move on to national news, I had to flag this headline: “Florida voters reject measures to protect abortion rights.”
We need to be absolutely clear: Florida voters did not “reject” the pro-choice measure. The amendment won the support of 57% of voters—not just a majority, but a strong majority!
I promise you I’m not nitpicking, and this is not just about Amendment 4. A huge part of conservatives’ strategy is making Americans believe that this country is polarized on abortion rights. We’re not.
Americans want abortion to be legal. The issue is the powerful minority of lawmakers who work overtime to stop voters from having a say—be it through ballot measure attacks, gerrymandering, voter suppression, or more. And when mainstream outlets repeat the lie that the country is split on abortion, or characterize 57% support as voters ‘rejecting’ a measure, they’re enabling and covering up that attack on democracy.
In the Nation
It’s nice to have some good news every once in a while: Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration as Attorney General, posting on social media that his nomination “unfairly become a distraction.” In reality, Trump called Gaetz earlier today to tell him he didn’t have the votes.
This all comes as Democrats were pushing to release a House Ethics Committee report into Gaetz, who—among other things—is accused of paying a 17 year-old child for sex. CNN reports that Trump’s team believed that there would be even more damaging information on Gaetz to come, and decided to cut their losses.
I’m sure the anti-abortion movement will be bummed about the loss; they were already lobbying Gaetz to go after providers in pro-choice states who ship abortion medication to patients in states with bans. Just yesterday, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, told The Washington Post, “If I was a midwife or a rando left activist packing pills in a basement in New York State … I would be really f---ing worried right now.”
Speaking of anti-contraception wackadoo Kristan Hawkins, her group has doubled down on their most off-the-wall abortion medication claim. Students for Life insists that flushed pills and fetal remains are poisoning the groundwater and killing endangered species. And (as I told you last week), they’ve framed the argument as a “Make America Healthy Again (MAHA)” initiative in order to appeal to RFK Jr., who will head up the Department of Health and Human Services.
Rolling Stone did a deep dive into this story today, pointing out that while Kennedy previously “built a reputation as a champion for clean water…[he] has increasingly embraced fringe views without broad support from the medical community.” Like claiming without evidence that chemicals in the water supply are impacting children’s sexuality.
In other words, Hawkins is trying to speak to Kennedy brainworm-to-brainworm.
Just remember that the real goal of this wastewater argument is to shame women who self-manage their abortions at home: Hawkins wants women to be forced to bag up their bleeding and bring it back to their healthcare provider as ‘dangerous medical waste.’
Quick hits:
The Cut breaks down some federal actions President Biden could take to protect abortion rights before Trump takes office;
Predictions from legal experts on what happens next with Trump and abortion;
And Newsweek asked leading abortion rights activists, “Will abortion rights survive Trump's Republican trifecta?”
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Georgia Dismissed All Members of Maternal Mortality Committee After ProPublica Obtained Internal Details of Two Deaths
Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, at a 2020 press conference with Gov. Brian Kemp. This month, Toomey sent a letter dismissing members of the state’s maternal mortality review committee. Credit: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images Georgia officials have dismissed all members of a state committee charged with investigating deaths of pregnant women. The move came in response to ProPublica having obtained internal reports detailing two deaths.
ProPublica reported in September on the deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, which the state maternal mortality review committee had determined were preventable. They were the first reported cases of women who died without access to care restricted by a state abortion ban, and they unleashed a torrent of outrage over the fatal consequences of such laws. The women’s stories became a central discussion in the presidential campaign and ballot initiatives involving abortion access in 10 states.
“Confidential information provided to the Maternal Mortality Review Committee was inappropriately shared with outside individuals,” Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, wrote in a letter dated Nov. 8 and addressed to members of the committee. “Even though this disclosure was investigated, the investigation was unable to uncover which individual(s) disclosed confidential information.
“Therefore, effective immediately the current MMRC is disbanded, and all member seats will be filled through a new application process.”
A health department spokesperson declined to comment on the decision to dismiss the committee, saying that the letter, which the department provided to ProPublica, “speaks for itself.” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s office also declined to comment, referring questions to the health department.
Under Georgia law, the work of the maternal mortality review committee is confidential, and members must sign confidentiality agreements. Those members see only summaries of medical records stripped of personal details, and their findings on individual cases are not supposed to be shared with the public — not even with hospitals or with family members of women who died.
The health department’s letter states that there could be new steps to keep the board’s deliberations from public view. The letter said officials might change “other procedures for on-boarding committee members better ensuring confidentiality, committee oversight and MMRC organizational structure.”
Maternal mortality review committees exist in every state. They are tasked with examining deaths of women during a pregnancy or up to a year after and determining whether they could have been prevented.
Georgia’s had 32 standing members from a variety of backgrounds, including OB-GYNs, cardiologists, mental health care providers, a medical examiner, health policy experts and community advocates. They are volunteer positions that pay a small honorarium.
Their job is to collect data and make recommendations aimed at combatting systemic issues that could help reduce deaths and publish them in reports. The Georgia committee’s most recent report found that of 113 pregnancy-related deaths from 2018 through 2020, 101 had at least some chance of being prevented. Its recommendations have led to changes in hospital care to improve the response to emergencies during labor and delivery and to new programs to increase access to psychiatric treatment.
The health department’s letter states that the “change to the current committee will not result in a delay in the MMRC’s responsibilities.” But at least one other state has experienced a lag as a result of reshaping its committee. Idaho let its maternal mortality review committee legislation expire in July 2023, effectively disbanding the committee after lobbyist groups attacked members for recommending that the state expand Medicaid for postpartum women. Earlier this year, Idaho’s Legislature reestablished the committee, but new members weren’t announced until Nov. 15. There is now more than a yearlong delay in the review process.
Reproductive rights advocates say Georgia’s decision to dismiss and restructure its committee also could have a chilling effect on the committee’s work, potentially dissuading its members from delving as deeply as they have into the circumstances of pregnant women’s deaths if it could be politically sensitive.
“They did what they were supposed to do. This is why we need them,” said Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, one of the groups challenging Georgia’s abortion ban in court. “To have this abrupt disbandment, my concern is what we are going to lose in the process, in terms of time and data?”
One objective of any maternal mortality review committee is to look at the circumstances of a death holistically to identify root causes that may be able to help other women in the future.
In the case of Candi Miller, the most prominent detail in a state medical examiner’s report of her death was that she had a lethal combination of painkillers in her system, including fentanyl. It attributed the cause of death to drug intoxication.
But the Georgia committee looked at the facts of the death with a different objective: to consider the broader context. A summary of Miller’s case prepared for the committee, drawn from hospital records and the medical examiner’s report, included that Miller had multiple health conditions that can be exacerbated by pregnancy, that she had ordered abortion pills from overseas and that she had unexpelled fetal tissue, which showed the abortion had not fully completed. It also stated that her family had told the coroner she didn’t visit a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.”
The committee found her death was “preventable” and blamed the state’s abortion ban.
“The fact that she felt that she had to make these decisions, that she didn’t have adequate choices here in Georgia, we felt that definitely influenced her case,” one committee member told ProPublica in September. “She’s absolutely responding to this legislation.”
For Miller’s family, the committee’s findings were painful but wanted. “It seems like that is essential information that you would share with the family,” said Miller’s sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, who was not aware of the committee’s work until ProPublica contacted her.
She also said it’s upsetting to hear that the committee’s members were dismissed partly as a result of her sister’s case being disclosed to the public. “I don’t understand how this is even possible,” she said.
The committee also investigated the case of Amber Thurman, who died just one month after Georgia’s six-week abortion law went into effect. The medical examiner’s report stated that Thurman died of “sepsis” and “retained products of conception” and that she had received a dilation and curettage, or D&C, and a hysterectomy after an at-home abortion.
When the committee members received a summary of her hospital stay, they saw a timeline with additional factors: The hospital had delayed providing a D&C — a routine procedure to clear fetal tissue from the uterus — for 20 hours, which Thurman needed for rare complications she’d developed after taking abortion medication. The state had recently attached criminal penalties to performing a D&C, with few exceptions. The summary showed doctors discussed providing the D&C twice, but by the time they performed the procedure it was too late. Committee members found that there was a “good chance” Thurman’s death could have been prevented if she had received the D&C sooner.
Doctors and a nurse involved in Thurman’s care did not answer questions from ProPublica for its September story. The hospital also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Thurman’s family also told ProPublica they had wanted the information about her death disclosed.
Some experts say that keeping the reports of maternal mortality review committees confidential is important for a committee to serve its purpose. They are set up not to assign blame but instead to create a space for clinicians to investigate broad causes of maternal health failures. But others say the lack of transparency can serve to obscure the biggest disruption to maternal health care in half a century.
“We know that the reports that have come out of that committee are anonymized and synthesized in order to provide a 50,000-foot view,” said Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, which provides abortion care. “But my worry is that in an effort to protect the state, there will be less information that will be available to people who could shift their actions, shift their protocols, shift their strategies, shift their behaviors in order to make a difference in maternal health outcomes.”
Two states did make shifts to their committees — Idaho, after members made a recommendation to expand Medicaid that Republicans opposed, and Texas, after a member publicly criticized the state.
In 2022, Texas committee member Nakeenya Wilson, a community advocate, spoke out against the state’s decision to delay the release of its report during an election year. The following year, the Legislature passed a law that created a second community advocate position on the committee, redefined the position and had Wilson reapply. She was not reappointed. The state instead filled one of the slots with a prominent anti-abortion activist.
Wilson said Georgia’s decision to dismiss its committee could cause greater harm.
“What message is being said to the families who lost their loved ones?” she said. “There’s going to be even less accountability for this to not happen again.”
Ziva Branstetter, Kavitha Surana, Cassandra Jaramillo and Anna Barry-Jester contributed reporting. Doris Burke contributed research.
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