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January 19, 2022

Republicans, Aided by Manchin and Sinema, Are Stonewalling Voting Rights Bill

“The denial of this sacred right [to vote] is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition,” Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1957. Now, on January 18, 2021 — one day after we celebrated King’s birthday and one year after a mob of right-wing Trump supporters attacked the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election — the Senate is debating voting rights legislation aimed at stopping voter suppression. But the legislation appears doomed to failure.

The right to vote is “preservative of all rights,” the Supreme Court said in 1886 in the case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins. The Constitution mentions the right to vote in five separate places — the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments, each of which empowers Congress to enact “appropriate legislation” to enforce the protected right. Yet right-wingers — enabled by congressional Republicans and reactionary members of the Supreme Court — are mounting a full-court press to prevent marginalized groups from voting.

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January 12, 2022

Conservatives on Supreme Court Poised to Block Biden’s Vaccine and Mask Mandates

Despite the fact that we are in the midst of an unprecedented and deadly pandemic with no signs of abating, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court appears unlikely to stop the carnage. The reactionary “justices” seem more inclined to shield corporate profits and red states’ rights than to protect the health and safety of the people.

Scientists have achieved near unanimity that vaccines and masking are effective in preventing COVID infections. Nevertheless, the high court is being asked to block Biden administration rules that would mandate vaccines and/or masking and testing. On January 7, the court heard arguments in two sets of cases that will have widespread impact on the health of millions of people in the United States.

The high court is not considering whether to strike down the mandates but rather whether to stop them from going into effect while the lower courts consider their constitutionality, which could take several months. Meanwhile, untold numbers of people are getting sick and dying.

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December 21, 2021

Battling the Effort to Recall Progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin

By Marjorie Cohn and Michael Steven Smith

Chesa Boudin has been serving San Franciscans as their district attorney for nearly two years. He is a leading progressive in what has been called the progressive prosecutors’ movement. Other progressive district attorneys in that small cohort are George Gascon in Los Angeles and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia.

In Berger v. United States, the Supreme Court said that the duty of a prosecutor “in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.” Yet all too many prosecutors are more concerned with winning cases than with doing justice, which includes the protection of constitutional rights.


Boudin campaigned by proposing solutions to the disaster of mass incarceration, one of the leading civil rights issues of our time.  He introduced policies of diversion and no cash bail. He put fewer juveniles behind bars. He opposed the death penalty and focused his efforts on helping victims of crimes.

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December 16, 2021

British Court Trusts US to Protect Assange Even Though CIA Plotted to Kill Him

In a patently political decision, the U.K. High Court reversed the British lower court’s denial of extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States on a narrow ground, despite the recent revelations of a CIA plot to kidnap and assassinate him.

Assange was charged by the Trump administration with violation of the Espionage Act for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. He could be sentenced to 175 years in prison if he is tried and convicted in the United States. But instead of dismissing Trump’s indictment, the Biden administration continues to pursue the case against Assange, notwithstanding the grave threats his prosecution poses to investigative and national security journalism.

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December 5, 2021

For the First Time, Supreme Court Is Poised to Retract a Fundamental Right

For the first time in U.S. history, the Supreme Court is poised to take away a fundamental right from more than half of the people in the country. The Court’s December 1 oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization confirmed what progressives have feared since former President Donald Trump added three radical right-wingers to the court: The six conservatives on the high court are about to gut the fundamental right to abortion.

“If this court renounces the liberty interest recognized in Roe [v. Wade] and reaffirmed in [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey, it would be an unprecedented contraction of individual rights and a stark departure from principles of stare decisis [duty to follow precedent],” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the Supreme Court.

Yet “Justices” Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch appear ready to do just that. And while Chief Justice John Roberts may not be prepared to squarely overturn Roe and Casey, he signaled his readiness to uphold the Mississippi law that outlaws abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, essentially gutting the right of women to choose abortion.

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November 20, 2021

Arbery’s Killers Are Using the Logic of Slave Patrols to Defend Themselves

The testimony has concluded in the Georgia murder trial of the three white men who targeted Ahmaud Arbery because he was Black and then killed him. Evidence presented at trial transported us back to the days of the infamous slave patrols. Gregory McMichael, his son Travis, and William “Roddie” Bryan Jr. are on trial for killing Arbery on February 23, 2020, during a purported “citizen’s arrest.”

Racism has infected every aspect of this case — from the defendants’ racial profiling of Arbery, to the 10-week delay in filing charges, to the seating of a nearly all-white jury, to the defendants’ racist statements, to the defense’s attempt to ban Black pastors from attending the trial.

Beginning in 1704, slave patrols empowered every white person to control the movements and activities of every Black person. Citizen’s arrest laws date back to 13th century Europe and were later brought to the British North American colonies. In 1863, Georgia adopted a citizen’s arrest statute to replace the slave patrols with another avenue to vigilante “justice.” The law deputized any white Georgian to seize and detain any Black person on suspicion of being an escaped slave.

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November 10, 2021

Absent Any Proof, Israel Designates Palestinian Rights Groups “Terrorist”

In an effort to cut off the financial lifelines of six of the most prominent Palestinian human rights groups, the state of Israel has baselessly designated them as “terrorist” organizations.

On October 22, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced that Israel will henceforth officially consider the six groups – Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International – Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees — as “terrorist organizations,” attempting to link them to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is a leftist Palestinian political party with a military wing.

Israeli leaders have targeted the groups due to their support of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) investigation of Israeli war crimes as well as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against the illegal Israeli occupation.

When Israeli officials endeavored to present secret evidence of the supposed “terrorist” affiliations of the six organizations, they were utterly unable to do so. Israel’s action provoked outrage from international human rights experts and observers, who have depicted the move as an attack on human rights defenders and the Palestinian human rights movement.

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November 4, 2021

SCOTUS Likely to Allow Challenge to Texas Law, But May Still Overturn “Roe”

Texas’s draconian anti-abortion law remained in effect as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on November 1 about whether it could be challenged in court. Known as the “Texas Heartbeat Law,” Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) outlaws all abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, generally after six weeks of pregnancy when most people don’t know they’re pregnant. The law contains no exception for rape or incest. Since September 1, when SB 8 became operative, it has prevented most abortions in Texas. Nearly 1 in 10 women of childbearing age live in Texas, the PBS NewsHour reported.

SB 8 squarely violates Roe v. Wade, which allows abortions until fetal viability — around 23 weeks. Although it appeared during the arguments that a majority of justices will permit SB 8’s constitutionality to be tested in court, the justices may nevertheless overturn Roe. On December 1, the high court will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, about a Mississippi law that prohibits abortions after 15 weeks. The lawyers representing the State of Mississippi in Dobbs are specifically asking the court to overrule Roe v. Wade.

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October 30, 2021

Biden’s DOJ Downplayed Suicide Risk for Assange in Appeal of Extradition Denial

The Biden administration asked two United Kingdom High Court judges to overturn the British district judge’s denial of extradition of journalist Julian Assange this week during an October 27-28 appeals hearing in London. If extradited to the United States, the WikiLeaks founder would face 175 years in prison for exposing evidence of U.S. war crimes. Determined to bring Assange to trial in the U.S. on the indictment filed by former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is raising spurious issues on appeal.

On January 6, U.K. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition because of the strong likelihood Assange would commit suicide if extradited to the U.S., where he would be held under onerous prison conditions. She relied largely on expert testimony by defense expert Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at Kings College London. Kopelman testified, “I am as confident as a psychiatrist ever can be that, if extradition to the United States were to become imminent, Mr. Assange will find a way of suiciding.”

The U.K. 2003 Extradition Act forbids extradition if “the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him.” Baraitser found the risk of suicide to be “substantial” or “very high,” and that it would thus be oppressive to extradite Assange to the U.S.

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October 25, 2021

UK High Court Should Deny Extradition Because CIA Planned to Assassinate Assange

Why is Joe Biden’s Department of Justice continuing Donald Trump’s persecution of WikiLeaks founder, publisher and journalist Julian Assange?

Barack Obama, concerned about threats to the First Amendment freedom of the press, decided against indicting Assange for exposing U.S. war crimes. Trump did indict Assange, under Espionage Act charges that could garner him 175 years in prison. A British district judge denied Trump’s request for Assange’s extradition from the U.K. to the United States because of the extremely high likelihood that it would lead Assange to commit suicide. Trump appealed the denial of extradition.

Instead of dropping Trump’s extradition request, Biden is vigorously pursuing his predecessor’s appeal against Assange, which the U.K. High Court will hear on October 27 and 28. At that hearing, the High Court should determine what effect the CIA’s recently revealed plan to kidnap and assassinate Assange will have on his fragile mental state in the event he is extradited to the United States.

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