“The best thing to do when faced with voter suppression – and my friends, this is what voter suppression looks like – the best thing to defeat it is to go vote. The best thing to do is fight back.”
Dana DeBeauvoir, Travis County, Texas District Clerk, offering advice to voters
“Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump have all been closely involved in the transactions in question, so we won’t tolerate their attempts to evade testifying in this investigation.”
Letitia James, New York State Attorney General, in a statement released January 18 in which she alleges former President Donald Trump and his family inflated the value of his properties and misstated his personal worth in representations to lenders, insurance brokers and other players in his real estate empire
“History will not remember them kindly.”
Martin Luther King III, the son of the late civil rights leader, comparing Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to the White moderates his father wrote about during the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s – who declared support for the goals of Black voting rights but not the direct actions or demonstrations that ultimately led to passage of landmark legislation
“COVID is real; COVID is a threat. But even more serious than COVID, as real and scary as it is, is to see thousands and thousands of thousands of voters not being able to vote, and it was on our watch. We refuse to stop. We refuse to turn around.”
Rev. Adolphus Lacey, a pastor in New York’s Brooklyn borough, announcing ongoing voter registration efforts despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic
“This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women in Texas, who have a right to control their own bodies. I will not stand by silently as a State continues to nullify this constitutional guarantee. I dissent.”
Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Supreme Court Justice, condemning severe abortion restrictions established by the state of Texas
Chief Writing Wolf 
Good on Sonia! And all the other here!
The right-wing bent the U.S. Supreme Court has taken over the past couple of years is frightening. They’ve assailed two of the most basic freedoms liberals and even moderates have taken for granted: voting rights and reproductive choice. Those are tenets that extremist conservatives seem to despise and have always tried desperately to limit.
While I’ve always waffled on abortion rights, I’ve come to realize it’s ultimately a personal freedom that each individual female deserves. Besides, the alternative is too frightening. It’s ironic that many pro-life advocates are now complaining about vaccine mandates; using the abortion mantra of ‘my body, my choice’. It’s also ironic that many of these same people enter manic states of frenzy when there’s a mention of any kind of gun control.
I’ve been an even stronger advocate for voting rights. My home state of Texas has joined a gallery of states dominated by conservative legislatures that have enacted stricter voting laws in recent years. Much of it has been after the 2020 presidential election, but I say the mania began after Barack Obama won his first term in 2008. A few years ago a former friend posted a news item on Facebook about an isolated case of voter fraud in Texas. One single incident of voter fraud! (I think it was after the 2018 mid-term elections.) I responded in my notably sarcastic manner that he and his fellow conservatives must be horrified by the event. But I also posted a graph of gun-related deaths of children in all of 2017; adding something like, ‘Meanwhile, here’s a real epidemic you right-wingers keep ignoring.’ He replied with some dismissive verbiage.
As of now, the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the U.S.) seems hostile even towards moderates. The only foreseeable remedy is that one justice retires or dies. I have my eyes on Clarence Thomas. I clearly remember his raucous 1991 confirmation hearing, but that’s another tale.
In the meantime, I pray for sanity.
Yes as awful as it does sound, a death of one of the court judges might ameliorate matters to some extent. But in the long term, how to prevent this. Did the founding fathers put in any checks and balances to stop one-sided politics dominating? Democracy as we have so often said, is flawed. I am awfully concerned about the lack of concern about voting and abortion rights. This is such a retrograde step and where does it progress from there? Autocracy, dictatorship and totalitarianism.
Our nation’s founders established the 3 branches of government – executive, legislative and judicial – as a means of checks and balances. They designed the system specifically as an antithesis to European monarchies and religious institutions. It was a new concept of government in the 18th century, but one they realized was necessary for an independent state. That’s why the antics of the Trump administration reeked of both imperialism and totalitarianism. They vehemently decried the leaders of China and Russia without realizing they were behaving the same way.
In November of 2020, as our elections loomed, a former friend posted a formal portrait of Francisco Franco – the Spanish dictator who died in 1975. I wrote an essay on my blog about him, noting that he was Western Europe’s last autocrat. My former friend was obviously impressed by Franco’s regal appearance. A friend of his commented that Franco would have never let Spain become the socialist state it is now – whatever that’s supposed to mean. I reminded both that Franco was a brutalist who suppressed free speech and freedom of religion and added that it didn’t surprise me that my then-friend admired him, since he also admired Trump. Neither man ever responded – or at least I didn’t see any response.
My only hope at this point is that the majority of American voters will realize the insanity of Trumpism and how badly the Republican Party has disintegrated.
It will take a monumental shift in public opinion as the supporters seem deluded and are kept in this somnatic state by media propaganda.