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A reminder that the right-wing legal movement that has groomed Amy Coney Barrett and managed her ascent to the Supreme Court has a much broader agenda than overturning the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade. A thread. 1/15
The most immediate threat, along with the election itself: Trump admin is coming before SCOTUS next week asking it to do away with the Affordable Care Act, stripping health care coverage from millions of Americans in the midst of a pandemic. 2/15
Trump’s religious-right supporters are intensely focused on overturning Roe v. Wade. Some anti-abortion hard-liners believe God anointed Barrett to serve on the Supreme Court and end abortion in the U.S. 3/15 https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/dominionists-say-god-has-anointed-amy-coney-barrett-for-the-supreme-court/
The religious right is also counting on Barrett to help them overturn the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision in Obergefell, stripping same-sex couples and their families of legal recognition and protection. 4/15 https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/amy-coney-barrett-puts-reversal-of-marriage-equality-clearly-within-sight-says-anti-equality-national-organization-for-marriage/
But Obamacare, Roe, and Obergefell are just for starters. Federalist Society ideologues and their allies in the Republican Party want a right-wing Supreme Court to pull the constitutional rug out from under the New Deal and Great Society. 5/15
In other words, they want a judiciary dominated by the kind of right-wing judges Trump and McConnell have been jamming into lifetime judgeships to shred the social safety net by drastically limiting the authority of the federal government. 6/15 https://www.pfaw.org/blog-posts/how-trump-judges-are-trying-to-repeal-the-new-deal/
When Trump took office and basically outsourced judicial vetting to the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, right-wing strategists started licking their chops over the chance to reverse a century of what they see as federal overreach. 7/15
In 2017, after Trump named Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, a White House aide enthusiastically told religious-right activists that getting a second nominee would let Trump create “epic, titanic shifts.” 8/15 https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-and-gorsuch-have-the-right-wing-thinking-big-really-big/
At the same event, a McConnell aide said right-wing justices could “fundamentally change the country” by undoing New Deal and Great Society programs created when Democrats had wide congressional majorities. 9/15
Trump judges have already unleashed a wave of harmful rulings and opinions on a huge range of issues, as documented by People For the American Way’s “Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” project. 10/15 https://confirmedfears.com/
Btw, every time you hear a Republican whining about potential “court-packing” by Democrats, remember that McConnell and his aides publicly gloat and joke about how they slow-walked Obama nominees to create vacancies for Trump. 11/15 https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/religious-right-on-capitol-hill-right-wing-politics-as-spiritual-warfare-obedience-to-god/
Dismantling much of what the federal government does to address poverty and access to education and health care is a long-term project, reflected in a bit of Federalist Society dark humor: “Rome wasn’t burned in a day.” 12/15 https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/a-trumped-up-judiciary-threatens-social-security-medicare-and-the-rest-of-the-20th-century-social-safety-net/
They’ve been at this for a long time: Here’s a People For the American Way Foundation report from 18 years ago on the Federalist Society’s founding, funding and growth: 13/15 https://www.pfaw.org/report/the-federalist-society-from-obscurity-to-power/
And in case Trump fails to get a second term, and Democrats are able to blunt the impact of his judicial nominations, right-wing activists have other strategies up their sleeve for rewriting the Constitution and reversing a century of progress 14/15 https://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/10/16/will-corporations-the-christian-right-and-the-tea-party-get-to-rewrite-the-constitution
It's a sad and enraging day. Let's use our anger as motivation to do everything we can over the next week to get Trump out of the White House and Republicans out of the Senate majority. 15/15
BONUS: Clarence Thomas will reportedly administer the oath to Barrett at the White House tonight. Barrett will be a powerful ally in Thomas's efforts to remake constitutional law https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/a-quiet-army-in-himself-trump-judges-are-giving-clarence-thomas-the-judicial-troops-to-remake-constitutional-law/
BONUS 2: @jackmjenkins on Amy Coney Barrett's likely use of "religious liberty" as a de-regulatory force that would undermine the Establishment Clause, nondiscrimination law, and more https://religionnews.com/2020/10/22/what-putting-amy-coney-barrett-on-the-supreme-court-could-mean-for-religious-liberty/
