RSN: Julia Rock | Antiabortion Activists Want the Supreme Court to Ban Abortion on a Federal Level
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11 September 22
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When the US Supreme Court allowed states to limit reproductive rights in its June ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, experts predicted that conservatives would soon use the decision to try to secure a federal ban on abortion.
Now that’s exactly what’s happening — at the very moment abortion rights have become a central issue in the midterm elections.
Antiabortion activists in Rhode Island just filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to consider overturning their state judges’ recent decision that fetuses do not have standing to challenge the state’s law protecting abortion rights. They want the high court to rule that fetuses are entitled to due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Such a ruling establishing “fetal personhood” would go beyond the Dobbs ruling, by banning abortions nationwide, rather than leaving the issue to the states.
To move forward, the petitioners need just four of the Supreme Court justices to agree to hear the case.
“This case presents the unavoidable confrontation of Dobbs,” the petition says, “which left unresolved the tensions between the Tenth Amendment, federalism, and any surviving constitutional guarantees for the unborn.” Each year, thousands of claimants petition the Supreme Court to consider cases, and the court typically grants only about eighty of the requests.
Already, fourteen states have banned abortion in most or all cases — meaning nearly 21 million women have lost access to abortion — and more states are considering laws to restrict access.
“The recognition of fetal personhood nationwide could mean a total ban on abortion for everyone in the United States, and if an increasingly sophisticated minority of anti-abortion extremists have their way, many more women would face criminal charges for ending their pregnancies,” leading reproduction legal expert Mary Zielger wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed.
A Promise That “the Court Will No Longer Decide”
When the court handed down the Dobbs ruling, the majority didn’t weigh in on the constitutional rights of fetuses.
“Our decision is not based on any view about when a State should regard prenatal life as having rights or legally cognizable interests,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to go further, arguing that any remaining questions about when an abortion should be legal would be left to the states.
“The Court will no longer decide how to evaluate the interests of the pregnant woman and the interests in protecting fetal life throughout pregnancy,” he wrote. “Instead, those difficult moral and policy questions will be decided, as the Constitution dictates, by the people and their elected representatives through the constitutional processes of democratic self-government.”
Despite conservative justices’ signaling that they will let states take the lead, the antiabortion movement is moving ahead to try to force the issue.
The petition from the Rhode Island activists asks the court to consider whether unborn fetuses have standing to sue, in particular to overturn a 2019 law passed in Rhode Island that prevented the state from interfering in a person’s right to an abortion “prior to fetal viability” or “after fetal viability when necessary to preserve the health or life of that individual.”
In May, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled that fetuses did not have standing to sue. That opinion was based in part on the high court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The antiabortion activists’ petition notes that Roe was overturned by Dobbs and argues that Supreme Court justices should hear their appeal “to finally determine whether prenatal life, at any gestational age, enjoys constitutional protection — considering the full and comprehensive history and tradition of our Constitution and law supporting personhood for unborn human beings.”
If at least four justices vote to take up the case, Kavanaugh and the other justices will be forced to decide in the face of their declining public approval just how far they are willing to go in their assault on reproductive rights.
Ukrainian soldiers hold a flag at a rooftop in Kupyansk, Ukraine in this picture obtained from social media released on September 10, 2022 (photo: Telegram @kuptg/euters)
Russian state media says defence ministry ordered troops to leave the vicinity of Izyum, a key city in northeast Ukraine.
The swift fall of Izyum in Kharkiv province on Saturday was Moscow’s worst defeat since its troops were forced back from the capital, Kyiv, in March.
This could prove a pivotal moment in the six-month-old war, with thousands of Russian soldiers abandoning ammunition stockpiles and equipment as they fled. Russian forces used Izyum as the logistics base for one of their main campaigns – a months-long assault from the north on the adjacent Donbas region comprising Donetsk and Luhansk.
The state-run TASS news agency quoted Russia’s defence ministry as saying it had ordered troops to leave the vicinity and reinforce operations elsewhere in neighbouring Donetsk.
The head of Russia’s administration in Kharkiv told residents to evacuate the province and flee to Russia to “save lives”, TASS reported. Witnesses described traffic jams of cars with people leaving Russian-held territory.
News of the drawdown came just after Ukrainian special forces published images on social media showing camouflage-clad officers with automatic weapons in Kupiansk, a town of about 27,000 people.
Ukrainian troops had also liberated Vasylenkovo and Artemivka in the Kharkiv region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address on Saturday.
“The Russian army these days is demonstrating its best ability – to show its back,” he said
Ukraine’s armed forces have liberated about 2,000sq km (770sq miles) of territory since a counter-offensive against Russia started earlier this month, he said.
‘Tide turning’
There was no official confirmation from Ukraine that its troops had routed Russian forces from Izyum, but Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, posted a photo of soldiers on its outskirts and tweeted an emoji of grapes. The city’s name means “raisin”.
“The Russian army is claiming the title of fastest army in the world … keep running!” Yermak wrote on Twitter later.
Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from Kyiv, said Izyum was “a key military strongpoint for the Russians for many months”.
“It took the Russians six weeks of fighting to get a hold of that city, and now it appears that the Ukrainians will have retaken it, in pretty much a 12-to-24-hour timeframe,” Elizondo said.
“It gives you an idea of how the tide is certainly turning. Ukrainians clearly have the momentum in this battle right now in the northeast, as they continue to push the Russian forces back.”
Igor Girkin, a former commander of pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, called the Russian pullback “a major defeat” in remarks on Telegram.
There were signs of trouble for Russia elsewhere along its remaining positions on the eastern front, with pro-Russian officials acknowledging difficulties at other locations.
In Donetsk, pro-Russian rebel leader Denis Pushilin said the situation in the town of Lyman was “very difficult” and that there was also fighting in “a number of other localities”, particularly in the northern part of the region.
The reported Ukrainian gains come as pressure grows on Kyiv to demonstrate progress before winter sets in, amid threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt all energy shipments to Europe if Brussels goes ahead with a proposal to cap the price of Russian oil exports.
Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said in Kyiv that Ukrainian forces had demonstrated they were capable of defeating the Russian army with the weapons given to them.
“And so I reiterate: the more weapons we receive, the faster we will win, and the faster this war will end,” he said.
Earlier on Saturday, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, who was visiting the Ukrainian capital, said Berlin would continue to support Ukraine in its fight against Russian forces.
“I have travelled to Kyiv today to show that they can continue to rely on us. That we will continue to stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary with deliveries of weapons, and with humanitarian and financial support,” she said.
Russia still occupies extensive territory in the Donbas and in the south near the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014. Ukraine has for weeks been talking up a big counteroffensive in the south, which is under way though details are sparse.
Amid the reported gains in the northeast, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Malyar, sounded a cautionary note, urging people not to claim prematurely that towns have been “taken” just because Ukrainian troops were sighted.
Troops entered the town of Balakliia a few days ago, she said, but it was only on Saturday that Ukraine established control in the city.
“A few days ago it was reported that troops had entered the town. Today, we have finally established control in the city, carried out all the necessary activities, and raised the flag,” she said.
In Hrakove, one of dozens of villages recaptured in the Ukrainian advance, the Reuters news agency reported burned-out vehicles bearing the “Z” symbol of Russia’s invasion. Boxes of ammunition were scattered along with rubbish at positions the Russians had abandoned in evident haste.
“Hello everyone, we are from Russia,” was spray-painted on a wall. Three bodies lay in white body bags in a yard.
The regional chief of police, Volodymyr Tymoshenko, said Ukrainian police moved in the previous day and checked the identities of local residents who had lived under Russian occupation since the invasion’s second day.
“The first function is to provide help that they need. The next job is to document the crimes committed by Russian invaders on the territories which they temporarily occupied,” he said.
People gather in tribute as the cortege carrying the coffin of the late Queen Elizabeth II passes by in Banchory, United Kingdom. (photo: Peter Summers/Getty Images)
But the March trip by Britain’s Prince William and his wife, Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, was marred by protests, calls for reparations and canceled stops. Demonstrators demanded formal apologies from the royal family for its links to slavery.
“During her 70 years on the throne, your grandmother has done nothing to redress and atone for the suffering of our ancestors that took place during her reign and/or during the entire period of British trafficking of Africans, enslavement, indentureship and colonization,” wrote members of the Advocates Network Jamaica, a protest group.
As condolences and memorials emerge in the wake of the queen's death on Thursday, her passing also revived controversies surrounding her perceived lack of atonement for past sins of the royal family, ties to its colonial past and more recent racial embroilments.
"We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa's history," the Economic Freedom Fighters, a South African political opposition party, said in a statement. "During her 70-year reign as Queen, she never once acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world."
Elizabeth died Thursday at age 96, bringing an end to the United Kingdom's longest-serving monarch. Her reign spanned 15 British prime ministers, starting with Winston Churchill, and 14 U.S. presidents.
Calls for reparation from former colonial powers have been occurring for generations. But the backlash against Britain ramped up in the wake of the 2020 shooting of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter global protests, said Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University in England.
Barbados in November 2021 removed the queen as its head of state, becoming the region’s newest republic. Six other Caribbean countries have signaled their intent to follow suit.
With Elizabeth’s death, some question whether England should even have a monarchy, Andrews said.
“It’s just the former British Empire,” he said. “Its time has passed, I think.”
Justin Hansford, law professor and director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University in Washington, D.C., said he was surprised to see "reparations" trending on his Twitter feed Thursday, as people took to the social media site to point out connections between the queen and Britain's colonial past.
The groundswell for slavery reparations for former British African and Caribbean colonies ramped up over the summer and will only amplify in the wake of Elizabeth's death, he said.
"This is a moment where the legacy of the British monarchy, and as a result of the British empire, is being discussed," said Hansford, who also sits on the U.N.'s Permanent Forum of People of African Descent. "That’s not something that happens every day on a global scale."
William and Kate's March trip, part of the queen’s international “platinum jubilee” celebrations, culminated in Jamaica when sign-wielding protestors gathered outside the British High Commission and more than 100 professors, dignitaries and other prominent citizens wrote an open letter to the royal family demanding an apology and reparations for slavery.
On that trip, William, Elizabeth’s grandson and at the time second in line to the throne, called slavery “abhorrent” during a dinner speech and said it “should have never have happened” – though notably stopped short of apologizing.
Some observers applauded the remarks, calling it a “landmark” step forward. But critics said it didn’t go far enough.
“Many of us are not charmed,” Rosalea Hamilton, an organizer with the Advocates Network Jamaica, told the Washington Post at the time. William’s speech “doesn’t rise to the level of a formal apology, which not only requires taking responsibility but a commitment to non-repetition and, of course, reparatory justice.”
The marriage of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle in 2018 also rekindled allegations of racism simmering for years at Buckingham Palace. After leaving the royal family and moving to California in 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex sat for an interview with Oprah Winfrey. In the interview, Meghan said an unnamed person in the royal household questioned whether her son would be “too dark to represent the U.K.,” prompting William to later respond that the royal family was “very much not a racist family.”
Though allegations of racism within the royal family and Britain’s colonial past are separate issues, they are often intertwined.
In June 2021, a group of students voted to remove a portrait of Elizabeth hanging in a common room at Magdalen College at Oxford University in England over concerns that “depictions of the monarch and the British monarchy represent recent colonial history,” sparking a backlash from pro-monarchy leaders.
One of Elizabeth’s enduring legacies is how she managed to skirt controversy over her long and storied reign – from the brutal British suppression of the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya at the start of her reign in the 1950s to the recent revelations by Harry and Meghan – and emerge unblemished, said Marcus Ryder, professor of media diversity at Birmingham City University.
“Generally speaking, what has been amazing about the queen is that these controversies have swirled around her … and she’s been able to avoid any of them tarnishing her,” he said. “Whether her successor can do the same – who knows?”
Photo of father and son, Junior and Jason Owens. (photo: WV News)
The family of a West Virginia man is seeking answers after authorities fatally shot him at a funeral
As mourners gathered outside a northern West Virginia funeral home on Aug. 24, two plainclothes officers with a fugitive warrant swooped in from separate vehicles, called Owens' name and shot him dead, spattering his 18-year-old son's shirt with blood as horrified loved ones looked.
"There was no warning whatsoever,” family friend Cassandra Whitecotton said.
In the blink of an eye, stunned friends and family already mourning one member lost another. Now, they want answers — not just why Owens was shot but why the encounter happened the way it did.
Law enforcement officials aren't explaining much right now, citing an ongoing investigation. Owens, 37, was wanted on a fugitive warrant, but the U.S. Marshals Service hasn't said what it was for. The agency also said in a statement that he had a gun when members of a fugitive task force approached. Multiple witnesses contend that's not true.
Whitecotton and others who stood just feet away said Owens was unarmed, had been hugging his aunt, Evelyn O’Dell, and was fired on immediately after his name was called. Witnesses also dispute the U.S. Marshals' assertion that first aid was performed right away, before emergency medical services arrived.
"They yelled Jason’s name. They just said ‘Jason’ and then started firing,” Whitecotton said. “There was no identifications they were U.S. Marshals — anything. They did not render this man any aid at all. Never once they touched him to render any aid whatsoever.”
As relatives prepared for services Friday for Owens, a state police investigation of the shooting was underway. But patience in the community is wearing thin.
Relatives and supporters protested outside the Harrison County Courthouse last week, accusing law enforcement authorities of overreach in the death of Owens, who was white. A Facebook page called Justice for Jason Owens has swelled to about 800 members — more than half of the population of Nutter Fort, where Owens was killed.
Underlying the unanswered questions is whether some boundary of decency had been crossed in arresting a man in the midst of burying his father.
“If they’ve been searching for someone and they finally figure out where they are, they’re going to get them,” said Tracy L. Hahn, a Columbus, Ohio-based security consultant who retired after 32 years in law enforcement, including as deputy police chief at Ohio State University.
Hahn said she knows agencies that have gone to funerals but have waited until afterward to approach the person.
“There must be some extenuating circumstance that they felt the urgency to arrest him then instead of waiting, if there was some risk factor, an escape risk or something like that,” Hahn said.
Family members aren’t so sure. They say it only adds to their sense of disrespect that the agencies involved feel no obligation to address their questions.
“We want to know why you would do this in front of his family,” said Owens’ cousin, Mandy Swiger. “And what gives you the right to do that to an unarmed man?”
Acting U.S. Marshal Terry Moore said he couldn’t answer questions during the investigation and messages left with state police weren’t returned.
It’s not clear whether video exists from police bodycams, a police vehicle dashboard or the funeral home itself. Unlike major cities where detailed incident reports and video footage are released after fatal police shootings — sometimes within hours — that rarely happens in West Virginia.
West Virginia law exempts police from having to release video footage during an investigation. And the U.S. Marshals Service office said it did not write a detailed incident report about the shooting, referring to the news release that withheld Owens’ name and other details.
Owens had been in trouble with the law before. He was sentenced in 2018 to three to 13 years in prison for fleeing a Harrison County sheriff’s deputy and trying to strangle him during a scuffle. He was released on parole in April 2021.
But Swiger said he committed a parole violation “for not checking in just once. And that’s why he promised his mom after the funeral he would turn himself in.”
Whitecotton said she was smoking a cigarette after the service when an SUV came flying down the side street where the hearse would pull out.
"It about hit me, so I jumped back up on the curb and kind of looked at him like, ‘What’s your problem?’” she said. A man in shorts and a T-shirt jumped out, leaving his door open.
Swiger said a white truck with another plainclothes officer inside almost hit her mother’s vehicle as the truck sped into the parking lot. Swiger said Owens was shot from different directions and estimated as many as 40 people were in the area. She, too, said she didn't see a gun in Owens' hands.
Some mourners instinctively rushed toward Owens after he fell to the ground, Swiger said, but were told by one of the officers, “You step back or I’ll shoot you.”
Whitecotton said she has lived in much larger cities such as Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth.
“Never in my life have I dealt with anything like this,” she said. "I would expect it there, honestly. But not here.”
Leo Grant Jr. poses at his home in South Bay, Fla. (photo: Josh Ritchie/WP)
But in August, three Florida officers showed up at his home near Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County as he was about to go bass fishing with a friend. They had handguns tucked into holsters strapped to their jeans and carried shackles.
Grant had committed a grave offense, they said: election fraud. He’d voted despite a sexual offense conviction two decades earlier in 1999. They placed handcuffs around his wrists and drove him to jail.
“I’ve been a good father and I follow the law,” he thought. “I do good for the community. And here they come to my house and pick me up for voting?”
Grant, a high-ranking officer in his local Freemasonry chapter, is one of 20 individuals — most of whom are Black — charged by an elections police force created by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to pursue allegations of election fraud and improper voting. Those arrested are all accused of voting in violation of a state law that forbids those convicted of murder or felony sexual offenses from casting ballots.
Yet, in the days that followed DeSantis’s campaign-style event to announce those arrests, cracks have begun to emerge in the state’s case amid intensifying questions about whether the governor and his election police unit have weaponized their new powers for political gain.
Several of those charged told The Washington Post that they were led to believe by election officials and voter registration groups that they were eligible to vote as part of Florida’s widely publicized push to restore the voting rights of most felons. They expressed despair that they could face prison time for simply misunderstanding the law.
Attorneys representing some of those being prosecuted said the state appears to have targeted individuals who made honest mistakes amid a shifting and confusing legal landscape. They are skeptical the cases will hold up in court, noting prosecutors will need to prove those arrested knew they were ineligible.
What’s more, those arrested had submitted voter registration applications that were processed by the state — a move that for many amounted to a green light that they were eligible. In Florida, the state Division of Elections is responsible for identifying who isn’t qualified to vote and would have been required to flag their applications. Attention has now turned to the state’s role in signing off on their registrations. Three were cleared in Broward County, where the local election chief at the time was Pete Antonacci — now director of the Office of Election Crimes and Security, who did not respond to a request for comment.
“If the state is unable to determine that these people were not eligible to vote, how on earth are these individuals themselves supposed to know?” asked Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political science professor and expert on state and national election laws. “It’s really unconscionable. … They’re punching down and targeting the low-hanging fruit.”
DeSantis has touted the prosecutions as necessary to protect the security of Florida’s elections. But there is no evidence that fraud marred the 2020 vote. The aggressive action by the new election crimes unit has drawn sharp criticism from voting rights advocates, who say DeSantis is using his power as governor to launch politically motivated prosecutions as he ramps up for a possible presidential run in 2024.
A DeSantis spokesman responded to a request for comment on the state’s role in approving voter applications and criticism of the election police unit’s tactics by referring to the governor’s previous remarks, in which he has indicated local election offices and individual voters bear responsibility.
“They did not get their rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyways,” said DeSantis said in announcing the arrests on Aug. 18, flanked by more than a dozen Broward County Sheriff’s deputies. “And now they’re going to pay the price for it.”
But even some Florida Republicans are anxious that the state has gone too far in its attempt to promote the GOP’s embrace of “election integrity” in the wake of former president Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 vote was stolen.
More than 11 million people voted in the Sunshine State in the last presidential election, and DeSantis has acknowledged there is no indication that fraud at any significant scale took place.
“They have jobs. They have businesses. They have families,” said state Sen. Jeff Brandes (R). “And now all the sudden they’re being put under arrest for something they thought was doing their civic duty.”
Radio ads, a push to vote
In the Florida legislature, Brandes authored the bill that implemented Florida’s Amendment 4 after nearly 65 percent of state voters supported a 2018 referendum calling for the automatic restoration of voting rights for ex-offenders who had felony convictions — unless they had been charged with murder or felony sexual offenses.
The landmark amendment went into effect on Jan. 8, 2019, clearing the way for an estimated 1.4 million offenders to register to vote. The state’s ban on felons voting — which had disenfranchised an estimated 1 in 5 Black Floridians — had been imposed after the Civil War to bolster the political power of White residents.
In the months that followed, voting rights organizations poured resources into Florida to spread the word about the new law. They put up billboards, aired radio ads, and hired canvassers to stand outside shopping centers, churches and restaurants urging ex-offenders to register. But the legal landscape was confusing: A year after the amendment’s passage, GOP legislators passed a law requiring the would-be voters to pay any fines related to their offense before being allowed to register.
Nathan Hart, who lives near Tampa and works as a street sweeper on the overnight shift, said he registered to vote at a local Department of Motor Vehicles office in March 2020. Hart, 49, said a man was standing in the office’s lobby urging people to register to vote. The father of two wanted to cast a ballot but noted he had a felony conviction. In 2002, he’d been charged with molestation.
Nevertheless, the man helping sign up voters waved his record aside, referencing the passage of Amendment 4, Hart recalled. He filled out the paperwork to vote as a Republican, and his registration card arrived in the mail a few weeks later.
“I figured it was official,” Hart said.
On the morning of Aug. 18, two state law enforcement agents and a county sheriff’s deputy knocked on his door and took him into custody, charging him with one count of false affirmation on a voter registration form and one count of being an “unqualified elector.” Both charges are third-degree felonies. He was held for 14 hours in jail and then released pending a court date. Hart and the others arrested that day now face fines of up to $5,000 and as much as five years in prison.
Hart worries that the life he’s built since he got out of prison — rarely missing his midnight to 7 a.m. shift to support his family — will be shattered.
“Almost everything I’ve fought for over the last 20 years is going to evaporate,” Hart said. “I’ll lose my job. I’ll lose my car, my relationship with my daughter could be ruined.”
‘A different standard of justice’
When DeSantis announced plans for the election force in January, the governor billed it as a first-of-its kind unit. He urged Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature to allocate nearly $6 million to hire 52 people to “investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation” of election laws — despite a lack of evidence to suggest fraud was a problem in the state. Legislators trimmed his request down to $1.2 million and 15 investigators.
They would be stationed at unspecified “field offices throughout the state” and act on tips from “government officials or any other person,” the governor’s proposal for the office states.
One of those tips came the day the unit launched on July 1. Mark Glaeser, a Republican who specializes in political research, said he wrote an email to the office urging them to investigate his belief that 2,000 sex offenders had improperly registered to vote in Florida, including about 500 he claims cast ballots in 2020. Glaeser said he did his own work to match newly-registered voters with state criminal databases, information that is publicly available.
“For whatever reason, the Department of Elections, and the secretary of state, did not pick up on this when they registered en masse before the 2020 election,” he said.
In Florida, the Department of State works with law enforcement agencies and criminal databases to determine whether someone is eligible to vote. They are charged with verifying identities, examining whether the person registering to vote has committed a felony and if so, if they qualify to cast a ballot under Amendment 4. An election official is required to notify an applicant if they don’t qualify, and they are then given a chance to appeal.
Alan Hays, supervisor of elections in Lake County, said local offices like his accept applications and then transmit that information to Tallahassee. After the state gives its stamp of approval, the county then issues voter information cards.
“We don’t, as supervisors, have any investigative authority, nor do we have any prosecutorial authority,” Hays said.
Voting rights advocates say election officials should have done a better job on the front end of assessing who was qualified to register to vote.
“If the governor’s administration really cared about keeping their voter rolls super accurate and up to date, they would be doing their job and identifying people who were not eligible,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, a voting rights attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “That would be the state of Florida doing its job to protect election integrity.”
Laurel Lee, a DeSantis appointee, was Florida’s secretary of state from January 2019 until May of this year, the period of time in which the law changed regarding felon voting. Lee, who is now the Republican U.S. House nominee in Florida’s 15th District, did not respond to requests for comment.
DeSantis has deflected questions about the role of the state elections office, instead pointing to local supervisors of election. But Antonacci, the head of the Office of Election Crimes and Security, sent a letter to county election leaders the day DeSantis announced the arrests indicating they bore no responsibility for registering those charged.
“Through no fault of your own, records demonstrate that the convicted felons listed in the attached Exhibit A were registered to vote, and voted in your county,” he wrote.
Voting rights advocates say those now facing prosecution are being treated drastically differently than other Floridians who have faced election fraud charges in the past.
In 2021, four residents of The Villages, a predominantly White Republican retirement community outside Orlando, were arrested for double voting in the 2020 election. Authorities said they’d cast ballots in both Florida and another state. Two of those charged allowed to turn themselves in. Three have accepted pretrial intervention deals requiring them to do community service and earn at least a C in a civics class.
“It’s such a different standard of justice,” said Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida. “The people in The Villages got such nice treatment. They didn’t have SWAT teams coming to their front door.”
‘I would probably die in jail’
Attorney Larry S. Davis, who is helping to coordinate legal defenses for some of the suspects, said police used heavy-handed tactics in the recent arrests, including one man in Miami-Dade County who was arrested by more than a dozen officers armed with automatic weapons. The man, who was taken away in his underwear, spent 1 1/2 days in jail until his wife could post a $10,000 bond, Davis said.
Davis said he plans to challenge the charges, contending that authorities have not met the required threshold to prove voter fraud. Florida law states that prosecutors must show that those arrested knew they weren’t qualified to vote and did so anyway. He also believes the state does not have jurisdiction because the alleged crime only took place in one county.
“For there to be fraud, there must be intent,” Davis said. “When my client received his voter registration from the elections office, his only intent was to participate in the election.”
Further north, in Pompano Beach, Terry Hubbard was preparing to feed his neighbor’s chickens when two Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers arrived at his home in early August. He said they put him into the back seat of their vehicle and began asking why he voted in 2020.
“They kept me in the car for about an hour,” Hubbard recalled. “They wanted to know where did I vote? How did I get registered? Then they wanted me to go look for my [voter registration] papers.”
Hubbard had registered to vote in August 2019, nearly two decades after serving a 12-year sentence for sexual battery of a minor. The 64-year-old man has gotten by working odd jobs in his neighborhood and decided to register to vote after hearing on the radio that those with felony convictions were now eligible.
He went to the Broward County Property Appraiser’s office and said he was told it was okay to vote.
In 2020, a letter from the Center for Voter Information, a Washington-based voting group, arrived in the mail. “I have sent you the enclosed vote by mail ballot application already filled out with your name and address,” it stated. “You can also request a ballot on your County Supervisor of Election’s website.”
Hubbard applied for his mail-in ballot and returned it with a vote for Joe Biden.
Tom Lopach, president of the Center for Voter Information, said his organization uses state records to send out vote-by-mail applications, and that it falls on the state, not outside voter outreach organizations, to make sure that file is up to date.
About a year after he voted, Hubbard was hit by a car, resulting in swelling of his brain, he said. Hubbard now battles sharp phantom pains and a loss of memory and cognizant skills. When the deputies showed up at his house in August, he struggled to find the documents they requested. He was never arrested, but 10 days later, received a summons from Broward County Circuit Court.
“Are they going to arrest me there?” Hubbard asked a reporter who visited him. “What could they charge me with. … Do I need a lawyer?”
When he learned he’d been charged with improperly voting, he winced.
“I am 64 years old,” he said. “I would probably die in jail.”
‘He is being vigilant’
Even as the future of Hubbard and the others chargedhangs in the balance, their arrests are intensifying an already acrimonious political environment in Florida.
Democrats and voting rights advocates have decried DeSantis’s actions, accusing the governor of upending lives to advance his own political ambitions. They also contend that DeSantis is trying to intimidate some voters from casting a ballot in November, when he is up for reelection.
Fort Lauderdale Vice Mayor Ben Sorensen, a Democrat, who ran an unsuccessful bid for Congress this year, said he believes that DeSantis is trying to “politicize and weaponize his election police force to suppress voter turnout and engagement.”
“I think it is a basic attack on democracy, and it’s just reflective of his ongoing efforts to minimize the minority vote,” said Sorensen.
Ernest Olivas, a Broward County Republican official who attended the campaign-style event where DeSantis announced the arrests, countered that the governor is merely working to restore Republican voters’ confidence in elections.
“He is being vigilant, and he is helping to calm Republicans and restore their faith in the election process,” Olivas said. “It doesn’t mean you have to show me 10,000 fraudulent ballots because that is not the root of the problem … You just have to let the public know you are being vigilant, and that you are watching things great, and small.”
Meanwhile, in Orlando, Peter Washington is confused and concerned about why he could end up back in jail.
He registered to vote in May 2019 at the encouragement of his wife. Over a decade before, he’d been released after serving time behind bars for an attempted sexual battery conviction. He said he didn’t know that made him unqualified. Casting a ballot felt like a step toward becoming a full citizen again.
“Who would ever say, ‘I know I’m not supposed to vote, but I’m going to vote anyway and commit a crime?’ Washington, 59, said. “I wouldn’t be in my right mind, knowing that I’d go back to prison and put my whole family in jeopardy, just to go and vote. That would be crazy.”
Chipotle worker-organizers Harper McNamara, Sam Smith, and Atulya Dora-Laskey in front of the union hall with Teamsters organizer T. J. Kitchen. (photo: Cole Hughes/Jacobin)
Last month, Chipotle workers in Lansing, Michigan, became the first workers at the corporation to unionize. We spoke to three of the Chipotle workers and union activists about how they did it.
Eric Blanc
Can you describe the day you won the union vote?
Sam Smith
We were pretty anxious, especially Atulya. We had made voting plans with our coworkers ahead of time, to make sure they had rides and knew when the voting was taking place. But a few people changed their voting plans at the last second, so Atulya freaked out and started going through the list of nightmare scenarios we had mapped out where we wouldn’t get enough votes. So that added to our anxiety. I’ve got a picture of us at that moment waiting in the Target parking lot, with Atulya looking like he’s reconsidering his purpose in life.
Eric Blanc
What did it feel like that evening after they counted all the ballots and announced you had won?
Sam Smith
It was pretty magical. A lot of people from the union were out in front of the store next to the voting tent, standing in the rain. It felt amazing, like a great sense of accomplishment. At that moment, I was just really, really happy, and I gave Atulya an epic hug.
Harper McNamara
All of us started cheering. And the managers there — there were a bunch of them — got pretty quiet, fast. Honestly, I was so excited; it felt like all that work had finally paid off.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
I thanked everyone and then ran into the store and announced, “Welcome to the first-ever Chipotle union!” Beforehand, we knew it was kind of a big deal — being the first Chipotle to unionize — but we weren’t actually expecting this to be as big a deal as it’s become. A few hours after we won, I got my break at work, and so I could finally check my phone. It was blowing up. Grace Norris from Starbucks Workers United had sent me a link to a Bernie Sanders tweet about us — I think that’s when it really hit home.
Eric Blanc
How did you all end up working at Chipotle in the first place?
Sam Smith
Back in June 2020, I was sixteen and had applied to Starbucks, but they never got back to me. So I figured I might as well apply to Chipotle. It was my first job, and I ended up getting stuck doing dishes, four to six hours by myself every night.
Harper McNamara
I got hired the same week as Sam; I was also still in high school. Part of the reason I’ve stayed is that Chipotle has a tuition reimbursement program — if I work there long enough, they cover a lot of my community college tuition.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
After graduating from Alma College, I moved back in with my parents. But I didn’t want to live with them anymore, so a year ago I started working at Chipotle. I actually just needed a job.
Eric Blanc
Did any of you have prior union or political activist experience?
Sam Smith
No, I had basically zero background in organizing. I had seen TikTok videos of people getting unfairly laid off at work, I had seen Black Lives Matter, and then recently with the push to overturn Roe v. Wade, I got really angry. I also had seen what my parents went through during the pandemic — and I knew that I and everybody I grew up with were probably going to get stuck in dead-end jobs for the rest of our lives. So even before getting involved, I knew I wanted to make some kind of difference in the world.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
I had some organizing experience but not with unions. Back when Bernie ran in 2016, I thought a lot of what he said was sort of common sense. It really stuck with me that he would talk about things like Medicare for All, a policy that a majority of Americans backed, but that all those in power still refused to support it. The lack of democracy in this country became pretty glaring.
So then at my college I started a YDSA [Young Democratic Socialists of America] chapter, and I learned a lot from that, about how to bring people together.
Harper McNamara
The closest I ever got to organizing before this was when I was in high school during the second Bernie run. I went to a big campaign barnstorm, but I didn’t have a car, so I couldn’t get around or actually do anything. But the Bernie campaign definitely played a role in widening my political perspective.
Eric Blanc
What are the main reasons you decided to unionize?
Sam Smith
At the top of the list are pay, working conditions, and especially underscheduling. It’s not just at our store: Chipotle tends to not put enough workers on its shifts, and that forces anybody working that day to do too many things at once.
Harper McNamara
It sometimes gets to the point where it’s unsanitary, because nobody has time to clean up. Especially at peak times, it gets really hard to do the job right.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
There’s a broader thing too, which is that workplaces today are basically authoritarian regimes. We’re supposed to live in a democracy, but in the place where we spend most of our waking lives we have to give up any right to a say. I think unions are a step toward challenging that basic lack of democracy in our society.
Harper McNamara
Plus, we know how to make the store run best. Chipotle a while ago sent in a corporate guy who completely rearranged the work setup in the dumbest possible way, making everything way slower and less efficient.
Eric Blanc
How did you start organizing?
Atulya Dora-Laskey
Keep in mind that none of us knew each other before Chipotle. Back in October, I was on my break at work, reading a Mark Fisher book, Ghosts of My Life. Harper comes up to me and says, “Oh, I know zero books.” I was like, “You must be super humble or something; I’m sure you’ve read some books.” And he says, “No, I know Zero Books, the publishing company” — the publisher of Ghosts of My Life.
That was as close as you can get to a leftist dog whistle, so we started talking from that point on. We both had this idea of starting a union, so we just decided to go for it.
Eric Blanc
Since neither of you had any experience with workplace organizing, how did you figure out what to do?
Atulya Dora-Laskey
That’s where our local DSA chapter was really key. Greater Lansing DSA has a lot of rank-and-file union members, like Angelo Moreno who had started a union at his public library through the United Auto Workers. The chapter also had Rikki Reynolds, a member of the Michigan Education Association, and Grace Norris, who is a rank-and-file worker with Starbucks Workers United. We talked to them a lot, they were super helpful, and they pointed us to a couple of resources, the most helpful of which ended up being the Labor Notes book Secrets of a Successful Organizer. It is very helpful. Our whole organizing committee read it together.
Later on, once we started doing in-person union meetings, our DSA chapter also offered to cover the childcare costs of those workers who had kids, so that they could attend. Also, it was useful to read Alex Press’s articles about Chipotle in Jacobin — that’s really how we got a better sense that the issues at our store were part of a more systematic problem with the way the company operates.
Eric Blanc
Can you remember any specific organizing takeaways you got from the Labor Notes book?
Atulya Dora-Laskey
For starters, we followed its advice to make a chart of our workplace shaped like a target, in which the inner circle are the most pro-union people and the outer layers are the least supportive. Then we plotted out everybody at work in the diagram, and we drew arrows to see who would be able to get who, to bring them closer to the core.
The thing we ended up using most was the book’s guide to having one-on-one conversations. That was super helpful, because it taught us that you really have to be listening way more than you’re talking — you talk 30 percent of the time, you listen 70 percent of the time.
To be honest, that was a struggle for me, because I never shut up. But we learned that you have to communicate through questions: it’s through asking people about their concerns that you can help them see that their issues at work are only going to get resolved by collectively negotiating through a union.
Eric Blanc
Sam, how did you get involved?
Sam Smith
One night last winter after we had clocked out, I was sitting in the lobby, and I just started going on a tirade about how the minimum wage needs to be higher. Pretty soon after that, Atulya sat down with me and floated this idea of a union. I said something like, “Sounds interesting — I don’t know if we’ll actually be able to do it, but I’d like to be a part of it.”
The idea of a union hadn’t crossed my mind at all until Atulya mentioned it, but what made me passionate about it was seeing how politics has been going consistently downhill over the past few years. If there’s a way to improve things and make a change, we might as well go for it, because if this doesn’t work out, I’m just going to end up at a crappy job anyway.
Eric Blanc
What were other useful organizing steps you all took?
Atulya Dora-Laskey
We did a lot of the classic stuff, like one-on-ones with coworkers and keeping track of our numerical assessments of where they were at. We did a good job of inoculating our coworkers about what to expect from management.
Sam Smith
Building strong bonds and creating friendships between our coworkers turned out to be really important. Those bonds helped make everything else possible. Also, taking notes from discussions helped a lot too, so we could remember our coworkers’ specific concerns — and so we could keep track of the decisions we made about our next steps and then reflect on them afterward.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
Another thing we did was add all our coworkers who were pro-union to a Snapchat group chat. It became a very important space where we could talk, and vent, and talk shit, and send photos and organize outside of the surveillance of the company.
But for the most part, we just followed the instructions that we’d read about how to unionize — and it worked. Unionizing has turned out, so far at least, to be easier than we expected: it just takes some time, some commitment, and the ability to follow through on your plans.
Eric Blanc
How did you relate to established unions in this process?
Atulya Dora-Laskey
We started organizing last November, and by May we had over 50 percent of our coworkers on board. So in our internal meetings, we started discussing which union to affiliate with. We gave some thought to going independent, but we ended up voting to go with a national union, to get their expertise and extra legal help.
We reached out to about a dozen different unions, and the sad thing is that a lot of them literally never even called us back. Others said they weren’t interested in taking us on. I guess they thought we were too risky an investment and that we were up against too big a corporation.
To be honest, it was really discouraging to get rejected so many times. Unions should be better about saying yes to workers when they’re organizing.
Fortunately, I stopped by the Teamsters hall on a whim after my roommate, another DSAer, told me the Teamsters were “a fighting union.” We ended up voting by 92 percent to go with them, and they’ve been incredibly helpful ever since. They immediately assigned a local Teamsters organizer to us, T. J. Kitchen, and from day one he’s been super helpful and super accommodating at the same time.
Eric Blanc
It’s pretty remarkable how far you got without any coaching from a union or any previous workplace organizing experience.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
We were actually surprised to find out later on that this wasn’t the norm. We assumed this was just sort of how unionization was always done.
Sam Smith
We got lots of compliments from the Teamsters when they realized how organized we were. They told us we had already done most of their work for them.
Eric Blanc
How did management respond?
Atulya Dora-Laskey
It hired an outside union-busting consultant from Boston, and she started doing closed meetings with everybody at the store for one to two hours. She claimed to just be providing information about unions and labor law, but it was super selective, and she painted everything in the most anti-union light possible. We had expected her to come out more directly against the union, but this was even more dishonest in a way.
Harper McNamara
By the end she just started straight-up lying, saying things like if you pay union dues today, that means you’ll be stuck paying these for life, even if you’re no longer in the union. Once we got closer to the vote, the company started distributing a bunch of anti-union literature too. The union buster particularly targeted this type of stuff to our coworkers whose first language isn’t English. It got pretty scary there for a bit.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
On the day of the vote itself, management all of sudden surprised us by pushing everyone to take a test on food safety.
Sam Smith
— which “coincidentally” just happened to be during the voting time slots.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
Another thing they did the day of voting was that all the extra managers — who they’d brought in over the previous few weeks to overstaff the store — all of a sudden just disappeared, leaving just one crew member on the cashier line at peak. So she was stranded there, and because she didn’t want to let her coworkers down, she worked through the whole voting time slot, since she was the only one there.
Luckily, what they weren’t planning on is that she was committed enough to come back later that day to vote in the afternoon time slot. And we ended up winning the union vote overwhelmingly.
Eric Blanc
Looking back, how has work changed since you started organizing last year?
Sam Smith
None of the three of us knew each other before we started working at Chipotle, but we bonded pretty quickly — and that bond spread. People at work, and especially through the group chat, found out they had all sorts of mutual interests. I don’t want to brag, but I think this organizing has created a lot of new friendships between people who wouldn’t necessarily have known each other or have hung out before.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
When we all came together collectively, we got to see different sides of people that we never would have seen otherwise. We saw just how smart people were, how loyal, how creative, how artistic. We wouldn’t have had a chance to see any of that from our coworkers if we hadn’t been unionizing. It’s helped us bond in a lovely way.
Eric Blanc
Why do you think young people are at the fore of the current unionization surge?
Sam Smith
For a lot of us who are Zoomers, it really feels like the world is coming to an end — basically everything is going to shit. So what do we have to lose?
Atulya Dora-Laskey
People our age are looking around at climate change, at the way politics are going, and a lot of us feel like we’re in the back seat of a car about to head off a cliff, and the driver is completely asleep at the wheel — or they’re just checking their phone and don’t care.
Eric Blanc
Do you feel more hopeful now?
Sam Smith
I don’t wanna overdo our egos, but I feel like what we did at Chipotle might be a tipping point. Starbucks really set it off, but if we can unionize at another huge chain, I think it’s really going to prove to people — especially of our generation — that if they’re feeling like something in their workplace is wrong, if they’re being mistreated, that there is hope in fixing it by coming together and fighting back. If we could do it, anybody can do it.
Atulya Dora-Laskey
Exactly, I feel like one of the most exciting parts of what we did is that we’re not that exceptional.
Those of us who started this at Chipotle are just a few random people who happened to work at the same place. It’s exciting because I think this means that anyone’s workplace is up for grabs. If you want more of a say at where you work, all you have to do is talk to your co-workers and follow some classic unionizing instructions.
Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) at a rally on Oct. 20. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
10 september 22
In a letter sent Tuesday, more than 60 Democrats urged the White House to strengthen implementation of the Justice40 Initiative, which seeks to send at least 40 percent of the benefits of federal climate investments to communities that are overburdened by pollution, climate change and other environmental hazards.
The lawmakers made the following four demands of the Biden administration:
- Consider the 40 percent goal in the Justice40 Initiative to be a “floor” and not a “ceiling” for investments for disadvantaged communities.
- Ensure programs covered by Justice40 “do no harm” in disadvantaged communities by increasing pollution or greenhouse gas emissions.
- Ensure programs covered by Justice40 provide well-paying jobs with good benefits, with a focus on hiring members of disadvantaged communities.
- Establish a Climate Justice and Equity Office within the White House Office of Management and Budget to oversee a “whole-of-government” approach to Justice40.
“To maximize benefits and correct for chronic underinvestment, we strongly recommend that implementation guidance clarify that the Initiative’s 40% target is a funding floor, not a ceiling,” the lawmakers wrote. “We also recommend that the guidance apply this target to investments in disadvantaged communities, not only to overall benefits in such communities.”
The letter was led by Sen. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety; Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (N.Y.), chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee; Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), chair of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Environment; and Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Cori Bush (Mo.).
“Our movement is powered by the frontline communities and young people most endangered by the existential threat of climate change, and my job in Congress is to ensure that federal resources reach the Black, Brown and Indigenous communities who need them most,” Markey said in a statement.
“The Inflation Reduction Act has the power to shape a generation of climate action that can build health and wealth in disadvantaged communities, but only if we develop and use a powerful Justice40 framework to right the historic wrongs of environmental injustice,” he added.
The letter was addressed to Brenda Mallory, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality; Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Gina McCarthy, the outgoing White House national climate adviser.
Asked for comment, a senior administration official said in an email: “President Biden’s Justice40 initiative is the most significant whole-of-government effort to advance environmental justice in our nation’s history, and we’re looking forward to carrying this critical work forward in partnership with members of Congress, our White House Interagency Council, the [White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council] and environmental justice advocates across the country.”
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Environmental justice in the Inflation Reduction Act
The Inflation Reduction Act contains a record $60 billion investment in environmental justice, including several new grant programs championed by Markey.
To secure the vote of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), however, Democratic leadership made some concessions that could prolong the life of fossil fuel infrastructure in front-line communities.
- The measure requires the Interior Department to hold new oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico for at least 10 years.
- Democratic leadership also agreed to pursue separate legislation to overhaul the permitting process for energy infrastructure projects, including the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline.
Bush, who was a Black Lives Matter activist before coming to Congress in 2021, said she thinks the Inflation Reduction Act will deliver an overall benefit to communities of color that are disproportionately saddled with pollution — as long as the law is implemented with Justice40 in mind.
“We've seen a lot of money invested in climate in the [new law], but we need additional assurances that these funds will be distributed equitably,” Bush said in an interview. “We need to make sure those guardrails are there to ensure that 40 percent investment.”
Bush added that she plans to urge her colleagues to oppose the side deal on permitting struck by Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
“Just because two people came together to work on the deal, I will not allow St. Louis's vote to be taken for granted,” she said. “It's people who are Black, Brown and Indigenous, and people of low wealth, who would pay the heaviest price.”
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