The Rights Blue States May Lose If the GOP Returns to Power

[Budi]

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The Rights Blue States May Lose If the GOP Returns to Power
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/rights-blue-states-may-lose-gop-returns-power.html

If Republicans secure their own governing trifecta – which could happen as soon as 2024 – they will be tempted to abandon their passion for states’ rights and impose the policies they favor nationally, a development that Brownstein calls the “darkest scenario for Democrats.”
Here are some types of federal laws and regulations that Republicans could very conceivably enact in that scenario, which would curb rights even in blue states.
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Fetal personhood protections that restrict abortion nationwide
But the ultimate objective — enshrined in the GOP platform since 1980 — is a federally established “fetal personhood” right that bans any state from allowing abortion. And there are abundant signs that this perspective could become dominant in conservative circles once the great white whale of Roe has been harpooned.
One important indicator is the recent omission of rape and incest exceptions from many state abortion bans (including the Texas and Mississippi laws now before the Supreme Court).
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“Election integrity” laws that keep states from expanding voting rights
Beginning in 2013, after a conservative Supreme Court majority gutted the key enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Republicans rapidly abandoned the commitment to federal voting rights that most of them (outside the Deep South) had embraced all the way back to the Eisenhower administration.
But what appears to be gaining steam, thanks to encouragement from Donald Trump and some conservative ideologues, is the idea that America needs federal legislation to shore up “election integrity.” This could include banning state laws expanding access to the ballot via liberalized early voting (particularly by mail), ex-felon re-enfranchisement, and simplified or automatic voter registration. Similarly, Republicans are showing signs of favoring standardized election-administration rules to prevent a repeat of what MAGA folk regard as the theft of the 2020 presidential election by Democratic state and local election officials. It’s no accident that two of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, Senator Josh Hawley and Congressman Mike Kelly, introduced the Protect Election Integrity Act of 2020 right after the last election to address both of these alleged problems.

Parental rights laws that undermine national education standards
One of the most important but underdiscussed policy developments of the 21st century has been the steady abandonment by Republicans of their once-strong support for objective standards for public schools.
George W. Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind legislation was one of the initiatives that produced the strong conservative backlash that in turn created the Trump-era Republican Party.
And by the time the Common Core education standards initiative, originally spearheaded by Republican governors, reached fruition in the 2010s, it had already become anathema to most conservatives.
But most recently, even those rank-and-file Republicans still utilizing public schools have become so hostile to teachers unions and “the education bureaucracy” that a partywide “parental rights” movement has mobilized both those who want public funds to go directly to parents to use for private and home schools and those who want to control what (and how) public schools teach.

Because the parental-rights movement treats state and local education authorities as inherently untrustworthy, there’s no particular reason its Republican allies should value states’ rights or local autonomy in education. Inevitably, if they are in a position to do so, it is very likely that Republicans in Congress and a future conservative administration will take parental rights national with legislation to keep states and localities from monopolizing public funds or from teaching material conservatives find objectionable (most obviously, on the subject of racism, but also on such conservative religious targets as sex education and evolution).
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[leftstreet]

1. So important the Dems go with bold legislation right now

before the midterms

things that show measurable differences immediately so that voters are motivated not to lose them

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

Filibuster reform that further empowers the GOP

The feasibility of right-wing federal activism, of course, faces one of the same key obstacles Democrats are facing right now: the Senate filibuster.

Mitch McConnell has been adamant in his defense of the filibuster, which currently gives him the power to veto any Democratic initiatives that aren’t packed into a workaround like reconciliation. That may seem a guarantee against filibuster reform once the shoe is on the other foot, but I wouldn’t bet on it. It has been largely forgotten that Donald Trump’s original beef with McConnell was the Kentuckian’s refusal to kill the legislative filibuster in 2017 when Republicans were trying to enact an Obamacare repeal, among other Trump-backed conservative policies. Trump ranted about this McConnell decision endlessly, until the loss of the House by Republicans in the 2018 midterms made the issue largely moot.

Who knows if Mitch McConnell, who is 79 years old, will survive as Senate Republican leader until a hypothetical GOP trifecta in 2025. In any event, there is zero doubt that Trump’s sway over his party is continuing to grow, and given McConnell’s highly transactional (and cynical) approach to doing his job, he could easily flip-flop on the filibuster if Trump demanded it (much as he flipped-flopped on the permissibility of presidential-election-year Supreme Court confirmations when Trump needed one in 2020). Indeed, looking at the list of issues on which Republicans, and particularly Trump, may soon want sweeping federal action, the odds of the traditional filibuster surviving the next Republican trifecta are next to none.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. I doubt travel restrictions, tax levies, non-religious congregation are off the table ./nt

[world wide wally]

4. And they will do it all with a minority party

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. Texas Abortion Ban Architect Now Looking To Recriminalize Gay Sex And Overturn Gay Marriage

This is the asshole who drafted the Texas abortion law. This asshole wants to strike down the implied right of privacy by getting Roe overruled which would/could lead to striking down the right to same sex marriage and other rights

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https://www.comicsands.com/jonathan-mitchell-overturn-gay-marriage-2655065691.html

Though Mitchell's brief, also signed by his co-counsel Adam Mortara, dedicates much of its time to the Texas abortion law's defense, it also questions "lawless" pieces of legislation, namely the Lawrence v. Texas ruling, which decriminalized gay sex nationwide, and the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage.

Though the brief does not say reversing Roe v. Wade would threaten the same-sex marriage ruling, it does say that

""the news is not as good for those who hope to preserve the court-invented rights to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage …
"These 'rights,' like the right to abortion from Roe, are judicial concoctions, and there is no other source of law that can be invoked to salvage their existence."

It goes on to add that while the Supreme Court should not necessarily overturn Lawrence and Obergefell, it should consider these two rulings as "lawless" as Roe v. Wade and, by extension, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

"This is not to say that the Court should announce the overruling of Lawrence and Obergefell if it decides to overrule Roe and Casey in this case."
"But neither should the Court hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread. Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are as lawless as Roe."

The brief drew the attention of Melissa Murray, who teaches at New York University's School of Law.

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