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The GOP Is Rewriting What It Means to Be a Person
Susan Rinkunas
January 8, 2025
UNPEOPLING
The GOP Is Rewriting What It Means to Be a Person
The far right is weaponizing a doctrine that granted rights and liberties in order to snuff out the citizenship of anyone who isn’t a white man.
{snip}
Michele Goodwin, professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown Law, calls this process of picking and choosing “citizenship gerrymandering”—a process in which one’s rights are not necessarily granted by the Constitution but rather a live issue, subject to the whims—and more specifically, the prejudices—of state lawmakers and courts. The judiciary is already stacked with Trump picks, but in the next four years, it’s possible that half of all judges will be his nominees.
Many GOP-appointed members of the judiciary profess to care about the original intent of our laws, but accepting this theory of the amendment is merely “opportunistic originalism,” Goodwin said. States are quickly passing laws and filing litigation over issues such as abortion and trans rights because the makeup of the courts provides a chance “to make movement within these particular spaces,” Goodwin said.
Movement, specifically to the right, is necessary to a coalition of Christian fundamentalists, white nationalists, and power-hungry Republicans displeased that women and Black people have made gains in the modern fight for full citizenship, Goodwin said. These fights culminated in protections including the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and, yes, Roe v. Wade.
States and private lawyers have set about demolishing those rights, and the Supreme Court has responded in turn: It gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, a 2013 ruling that Goodwin said basically ignored the Reconstruction Amendments; overturned Roe despite scholarship showing a Fourteenth Amendment basis for bodily autonomy following the end of inheritable chattel slavery; and then ended affirmative action in college admissions in 2023. “If you look back at what’s taken shape in the last 15 to 20 years, it’s really been a dismantling of racial justice, and so now everything else is up for grabs,” she said, adding, “Race is often the conduit for undermining what will be the rights of us all.”
{snip}
January 8, 2025
UNPEOPLING
The GOP Is Rewriting What It Means to Be a Person
The far right is weaponizing a doctrine that granted rights and liberties in order to snuff out the citizenship of anyone who isn’t a white man.
{snip}
Michele Goodwin, professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown Law, calls this process of picking and choosing “citizenship gerrymandering”—a process in which one’s rights are not necessarily granted by the Constitution but rather a live issue, subject to the whims—and more specifically, the prejudices—of state lawmakers and courts. The judiciary is already stacked with Trump picks, but in the next four years, it’s possible that half of all judges will be his nominees.
Many GOP-appointed members of the judiciary profess to care about the original intent of our laws, but accepting this theory of the amendment is merely “opportunistic originalism,” Goodwin said. States are quickly passing laws and filing litigation over issues such as abortion and trans rights because the makeup of the courts provides a chance “to make movement within these particular spaces,” Goodwin said.
Movement, specifically to the right, is necessary to a coalition of Christian fundamentalists, white nationalists, and power-hungry Republicans displeased that women and Black people have made gains in the modern fight for full citizenship, Goodwin said. These fights culminated in protections including the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and, yes, Roe v. Wade.
States and private lawyers have set about demolishing those rights, and the Supreme Court has responded in turn: It gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, a 2013 ruling that Goodwin said basically ignored the Reconstruction Amendments; overturned Roe despite scholarship showing a Fourteenth Amendment basis for bodily autonomy following the end of inheritable chattel slavery; and then ended affirmative action in college admissions in 2023. “If you look back at what’s taken shape in the last 15 to 20 years, it’s really been a dismantling of racial justice, and so now everything else is up for grabs,” she said, adding, “Race is often the conduit for undermining what will be the rights of us all.”
{snip}
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
white males of working age that can hold a full-time job.
All others are just costly burdens or sex slaves.......
Good post, thanks mahatmakanejeeves.......