Minnesota shootings fuel more Reich-wing spin

 

As I'm writing this, the suspect in the apparently targeted shootings of two Democratic legislators and their spouses in Minnesota, Vance Luther Boelter, has recently been captured and arrested, after a two-day multi-state manhunt that was reported to be the largest manhunt in Minnesota's history. Actually, given the details that had emerged about his volatile and troubled life, I was surprised he was found alive; I thought it very possible that he would take his own life, but he was captured near his farm in Green Isle, Minnesota.

People on both sides of the great American political divide seem to agree that the shootings, which killed Representative and Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and gravely injured Senator John Hoffman and his wife, were shocking and tragic and horrifying. (Boelter even shot the Hortmans' dog, Gilbert, who later had to be euthanized due to the severity of his injuries.)

There also seems to be a consensus that the shootings were politically motivated.

It should come as no surprise, however, that while there's general agreement that the shootings were politically motivated, the two sides have sharply differing views of the suspect's actual political affiliation and therefore his motives.

The American Reich -- again, no surprise here -- is spinning it as being totally the fault of the Democrats/left, and they are claiming that suspect Boelter is a Democrat/left winger because:

1. He served as a governor appointee on the Governor's Workforce Development program under two Democratic governors, Governor Tim Walz and his predecessor, Governor Mark Dayton.
2. The lawmaker who died, Melissa Hortman, voted with House republican lawmakers on a budget bill that removed MinnesotaCare health coverage for undocumented immigrant adults. (However, the senator who was injured, John Hoffman, had actually voted against removing that access; more about that in a little while.)
3. A stack of small handwritten signs that simply said, "No Kings" was found in a vehicle that Boelter left at one of the crime scenes when he fled law enforcement officers. (That's according to a widely shared photo; some reports say that there were [also] flyers about a local No Kings event or events.)

One person on a Facebook thread I saw wrote, "This is yet another example of violent hateful Democrats using VIOLENCE against anyone who disagrees with them politically."

Another right-wing commentator blamed the shootings on "left-wing hysteria."

And a devout Trumpster who happens to be a Facebook friend of mine wrote on his timeline:

When I said pretty soon we would start to see Democrats start turning on each other, I didn’t actually mean they would resort to assassinating each other just for voting with Republicans on a single bill.

But if you don’t understand that the Democrat party is full blown EVIL by now, then God help you.

No one should act surprised by the details coming out of Minnesota, where a Gov Tim Walz political appointee gunned down two fellow Democrats and their spouses, while impersonating a police officer.

You don’t have to be Nostradamus to have seen this coming. The only thing surprising is that they didn’t try to frame a Republican…

"JEEZUS Christ on a bicycle!" as my late husband Ron used to say when astounded by some absurdity or sheer stupidity.

Most of the comments to my friend's Dems-are-evil Facebook thread were supportive of the original post, with one person suggesting that the Democrats should officially be declared domestic terrorists. My friend Facebook-liked that comment.

One lone person dissented by presenting some facts that are actually known about Boelter, but my friend just doubled down on insistence that Boelter, while probably having been a republican many years ago, as well as an evangelical Christian, is no longer either of those things and has become a Democrat. Then for good measure my friend attacked the dissenter about the latter's own political leanings.

This story is still developing, and even though he's now in custody, we still don't have a completely clear picture of Boelter's motives. Investigators probably have had a better idea than the rest of us do, but they had mostly been keeping tight-lipped about it during the manhunt, and even now have refrained from sharing certain details. "Don't jump to conclusions," we've been told over and over by various spokespeople in the know.

But I think it is safe to say that there is a growing mountain of evidence that Boelter was not in fact a Democrat bent on murdering fellow Democrats for siding with republicans on a single bill -- and that he was, instead, fueled by "Christian" right-wing zeal and forced-birth fascism.

Some facts that muddy the Reich-wing narrative
Reich-wing talking point number 1. Boelter was an appointee of two different Democratic governors, the most recent being Tim Walz, so that "proves" he's a Democrat.
As soon as the suspect was named, the Reich-wing media and even many of the supposedly mainstream/moderate media began bleating headlines describing Boelter as a "Tim Walz appointee" or some similar description. While this is technically true, it is grossly misleading in the contexts in which it has been presented by those who are trying to prove that Boelter is a Democrat and/or a political ally of Walz. (Some conspiranoids have even claimed that it was Walz who sent Boelter on his deadly mission.)

It's true that Boelter served for a couple of years on the Minnesota governor's Workforce Development Council under Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat, who appointed him in 2016. Later the program was renamed the Workforce Development Board, and Governor Tim Walz, another Democrat, appointed Boelter to that board in 2019.

Here is a link to a document listing Boelter's 2019 appointment to the board. The relevant section on the Governor's Workforce Development Board begins on page 199 of this 475-page document. The section begins with a detailed description of the purpose of the board and a precise breakdown of powers and duties, member restrictions, and other pertinent information. Boelter, whose name appears on page 202, is identified as a "Business Member." And his political affiliation? "No party preference." His term ended in January 2023.

The important point is that the Workforce program is bipartisan, or more accurately, nonpartisan. I will let my Bing CoPilot AI buddy 'splain it:

[That board] is designed to be bipartisan and includes members from across the political and professional spectrum. Appointments often reflect a person’s industry experience or community involvement, not necessarily their political affiliation. In fact, Boelter’s background includes private security work, international business ventures, and affiliations that don’t clearly align with any one party.

And the emerging details of the case—like the manifesto found in his vehicle listing dozens of targets, including abortion providers and Democratic lawmakers—suggest a far more complex and disturbing motive.

Couple of points here regarding that AI-generated info, which is from a "conversation" I had with CoPilot on June 14, shortly after Boelter had been named as the suspect. The AI response was drawing on widespread online reports that were available at that time regarding Boelter's career history, but later reports indicated that Boelter had exaggerated or outright lied about some of his C.V., particularly the parts about security work (see section below, regarding "Fantasy careers..." etc.). Still, the point remains valid that Boelter's work background doesn't strongly indicate political party alignment one way or the other.

Secondly, the target lists found in Boelter's vehicle were, according to several later reports, not part of a "manifesto" per se; the AI response drew from existing early reports that referred to the presence of a manifesto. But again, the basic point is valid: those lists do not indicate that Boelter is a Democrat. They're much more indicative that he loathes Democrats.

Boelter's appointments to Minnesota's Workforce Development program under two Democratic governors appears to have been based not on his political leanings but primarily on his role as a member of the business community, which would make sense, given that the program is, after all, focused on making improvements to Minnesota's workforce. There's no indication that he had much if any interaction with the governors themselves, and certainly no evidence that he was a staunch political ally of either.

Reich-wing talking point number 2. Shortly before her death, Representative Melissa Hortman had voted with republican lawmakers to take healthcare access away from "illegals," and Boelter was angry because he felt that she had betrayed the Democratic party line.
MAGA has been all over this, praising Representative Hortman's courage for standing up against her evil party and then paying the ultimate price for doing so. The provision in the budget bill for which Hortman voted in accord with her republican colleagues took MinnesotaCare health coverage away from undocumented people over the age of 18.

The very sensible arguments made in favor of keeping this coverage was that it would ultimately be less expensive for Minnesotans, since the uninsured tend to go to eye-poppingly expensive hospital emergency rooms for their care, and they can't pay for those trips, but somebody has to pay, and that will cost the state more in the long term. But the republicans were having none of these arguments.

Hortman clearly agonized over this vote, which was an aberration from her usual voting pattern. It was a compromise she felt that she was forced to make, however, in order to pass the larger budget bill and prevent a partial state government shutdown. The vote left her and several of her Democratic colleagues in tears.

She acknowledged that this bill was going to hurt many people. It was obvious that she felt horrible about it (though of course MAGA has spun her tearful statements as an expression not of sadness for the people being hurt, but as fear for her life as a result of going against her party). But she explained that it was clear to her that her republican colleagues' top priority was to strip healthcare rights from undocumented adult immigrants, and they refused to budge at all on that matter.

Should she have held out anyway? That's open to debate, but the point is that she's not some kind of evil DINO (Democrat in Name Only). And even if that had been the case... with all due respect (emphasis on the word "due") to my Facebook friend quoted above, Democrats are not in the habit of offing each other over disagreements, even passionate disagreements. Dems tend to deal with their offending colleagues by canceling them or threatening to primary them or shaming them into resigning.

Also -- and this bears repeating -- despite some early Reich-wing narratives to the contrary, Senator John Hoffman, another one of Boelter's shooting victims, did not vote with Senate republicans on this matter. He remained a steadfast supporter of retaining healthcare access for the immigrants in question. So if Boelter supposedly shot Hortman for "betrayal" of Democratic party principles, due to her vote that would hurt some immigrants, why would he also want to kill Hoffman, who stood firm for the rights of those same immigrants?

The story gets both more complicated and possibly more simple as additional details are released about Boelter's spree on the morning of June 14, 2025. It has now come out that in addition to visiting the Hoffman and Hortman homes, he also visited the homes of two other legislators. The first would-be target, Representative Kristin Bahner, one of Representative Hortman's colleagues, was not at her Maple Grove home because her family was on vacation. Unlike Hortman, Representative Bahner did not vote with House republicans on the controversial budget bill.

The other, Senator Ann Rest of New Hope, was spared due to the fact that cops had already been alerted regarding Boelter's previous activity, and they were in the area. Senator Rest did vote with her republican Senate colleagues on the budget bill.

It's also important to note that like Hortman and Hoffman, both Ann Rest and Kristin Bahner are strong supporters of abortion rights and reproductive freedom.

Reich-wing talking point number 3. Stacks of "No Kings" signs and/or flyers (depending upon the report you read) were found in Boelter's vehicle.
Whatever you choose to call them, these could have been there for a number of reasons that had nothing to do with the anti-Trump sentiment driving the "No Kings" movement. It could have been that Boelter was planning on attending one of the local No Kings events to harass or harm protesters (that possibility apparently led to official cancellations of No Kings events across the state and warnings not to attend such events, but these warnings did not keep Minnesotans from turning out in force in St. Paul).

There was also some speculation that Boelter has "sovereign citizen" leanings and is driven by a general anti-government fanaticism, and therefore was just co-opting the current "No Kings" movement to further his own radical agenda. That seems to me to be the least credible theory, but investigations into motives are ongoing.

Or he could have just put the pieces of paper there to confound investigators; killers sometimes like to do things like that just to muddy the waters, as I noted in the August 2019 post linked to in this sentence (see under the subhead, "Forensic manifestering").

In short, it's highly unlikely that this stack of papers was evidence that Boelter was sympathetic to the the current "No Kings" anti-Trump movement. Brett Molnar, who runs the Voice of Reason Facebook page, posted this on June 16, 2025:

They’re at it again—WorldStar thumbnails, rage-bait tweets, “antifa inside job” TikToks spinning like a slot machine—anything to flip Vance Boelter’s massacre from MAGA blood‐sport to progressive false flag. Let’s burn the fog off the facts, paragraph by paragraph, before the algorithm cements another lie.

The flyer photo is real. Yes, Sheriff’s deputies found a shrink-wrapped stack of “NO KINGS” handouts in Boelter’s Chevy. They were zip-tied together, never unfolded, never handed out. Evidence tag reads: “Unmarked leaflets, approx. 150 count, recovered from trunk.” Full stop.

Where did they come from? Detectives traced the design to a carton printed for Minneapolis’ June 13 No Kings Day march. Volunteers noticed one bundle missing after teardown. Same printer, same cheap 20-lb copy paper, same smudge on the K in KINGS. Boelter didn’t design them—he shoplifted them.

Why steal protest flyers? Classic disinfo prop: stash your enemy’s logo in your kit so online partisans will screech “SEE? ANTIFA!” the moment the evidence table hits local news. Lone-wolf terrorists have been planting decoys since the Unabomber mailed false leads about woodworkers.

No Kings organizers aren’t hiding. They posted the original Adobe file plus the printer’s timestamp on Instagram within hours of the rumor. They condemned the murders, offered to testify, and published their entire expense spreadsheet—$87.41 at FedEx Office, line item and all.

Boelter’s digital footprint shreds the hoax. Phone forensics show Telegram channels called “Patriot Purge,” “Infowars Live,” and a meme folder titled “BuildTheWall.” Voter file: registered Republican. Roommate’s CBS interview: “He wore a Trump beanie to bed.” That’s not antifa cosplay.

Law enforcement statements tell the same story. Ramsey County Sheriff: “No evidence links organized activist groups to the suspect’s planning or motive.” FBI spokesperson: “Currently classified as a politically motivated violent extremist with anti-immigrant ideology.” Translation: right-wing lone actor.

But the right-wing spin machine is faster than the press release...

I did see an article on one site that described "No Kings" as a radical anti-government movement. Umm.... no, it's not. The "No Kings" movement behind the current wave of protests is very much PRO-government, at least the government that was envisioned by America's founders, not the totalitarian nightmare that Trump et al. are trying so hard to create.

Also -- and this cannot be over-emphasized -- consider the fact that the apparent hit lists that were reportedly found in Boelter's abandoned vehicle contained a list of Democratic politicians (including Governor Tim Walz) and abortion-rights activists, as well as information about clinics. Add to this the clear indications on Boelter's social media that he was sympathetic to Christian nationalist organizations and causes, and fiercely opposed to abortion and LGBTQ rights.

Here's a closer look at Boelter and his apparent love for a theology of violence. It's very much worth reading.

All of the above would suggest that if these were indeed politically motivated shootings, and not just random craziness, then Vance Luther Boelter is most likely not a Democrat who was miffed by fellow Democrats voting with republicans on a bill.

In other words, all indications are that he is the exact opposite of the man in the Reich fever-swamp narrative.

Fantasy careers, evangelicalism, and forced-birth fascism
Investigators as well as reporters are still trying to piece together a more comprehensive portrait of Vance Boelter, but sussing out his career path is proving to be no small challenge, since he has apparently embellished his resume. From NPR, June 15, 2025:

Authorities said Boelter disguised himself as a law enforcement officer during the attack and news reports have focused on his apparent work as a security professional. But NPR's review of Boelter's online records and employment history found many of those claims about his professional life appear untrue.

In social media posts and websites, Boelter said he had extensive experience as a security professional with "training by both private security firms and by people in the U.S. Military."

NPR found little evidence to support Boelter's account. He appears to have worked most of his career in the food service industry and one long-time friend described parts of Boelter's narrative about his life as "fantasy."...

...On the website for a company called Praetorian Guard Security Services, LLC, Boelter described himself as part of the "leadership team."

NPR found no record of the firm having clients or providing any services. A call to the company's phone number connected to what appears to be a private phone line, not a business. The address listed in incorporation papers appeared to be that of a law firm specializing in divorce litigation.

Boelter himself appears to have no history working in law enforcement, the military or private security...

...In an interview with Fox News 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, one of Boelter's long-time friends, David Carlson, downplayed the idea that he had any real-world military or security experience. "He was always kind of into the military stuff, but it was just, we were always like that. Me and him, we would play army men," Carlson said.

CNN has been keeping a running update on this case. On June 14 segment titled "10 things to know about the shooting suspect," among the items noted were:

• He is an outspoken evangelical Christian who traveled to Africa to tell his faith story and, in at least one sermon, pointedly questioned American morals on sexual orientation, according to videos and social media posts reviewed by CNN.

• Names on a list found in his car, which CNN obtained, are largely Democrats or figures with ties to Planned Parenthood or the abortion rights movement. The list included prominent lawmakers like Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Tina Smith as well as Planned Parenthood leaders.

There's much more on that page about Boelter that seem to offer significant clues as to his probable motives. Here's that link again.

And on a June 15, 2025 piece, SFGate (among numerous other outlets) published an AP article that lays out as good a summary as I've seen bolstering the case that Boelter is not a disgruntled Dem but is actually pro-Trump -- and, not irrelevant to possible motives, very much anti-abortion.

Friends and former colleagues interviewed by The Associated Press described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don’t list party affiliation.

Near the scene at Hortman’s home, authorities say they found an SUV made to look like those used by law enforcement. Inside they found fliers for a local anti-Trump “No Kings” rally scheduled for Saturday and a notebook with names of other lawmakers. The list also included the names of abortion rights advocates and health care officials, according to two law enforcement officials who could not discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.

Both Hortman and Hoffman were defenders of abortion rights at the state legislature.

It's important to note that these friends told the AP that even though they knew Boelter was religious and conservative, he didn't talk about politics often and didn't seem extreme. But apparently he was hiding his more strident beliefs from his friends at home, letting his true self out on the stage when he preached in the Democratic Republic of Congo a couple of years ago. In one sermon he told the congregation that the U.S. was a "bad place" where most churches didn't oppose abortion.

Here is a link to a video of a 2023 sermon; Boelter's part begins at about 36:35. And here's a link where you can watch part of a 2021 sermon in which Boelter performs an unhinged Jeezus dance.

All in all, and I hope you'll forgive me for belaboring a point, he really doesn't sound much like your typical Democrat to me.

The probable real reasons Boelter targeted Hortman and Hoffman (and Rest and Bahner et al.)
Melissa Hortman was a strong advocate for abortion rights and numerous other progressive causes, including transgender rights, according to The19th news site. She was also a tireless champion for Minnesota families, according to colleagues. Regarding her stance and actions on abortion, The19thNews reported:

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in June 2022, Minnesota emerged as a key access point for abortion as other Midwestern states moved to ban the procedure. 

“There was a simmering rage that did not stop,” Hortman said after the 2022 election, according to Minnesota Public Radio. “I was hopeful that voters would take that energy and put it on the ballot and vote for Democrats. And thankfully they did.”

In 2023, Hortman led the Minnesota House in passing the PRO Act, legislation that codified the legality of abortion and other forms of reproductive health care in the state. In subsequent bills, the Minnesota legislature eliminated other restrictions on abortion, passed protections for abortion providers, boosted state funding for clinics providing abortion and eliminated funding for anti-abortion counseling centers.     

Hoffman, too, is pro-choice, if his voting records on the abortion issue are any indication. He is also deeply concerned with helping some of the most vulnerable people. Health care and education have been among his pet causes. He has been a staunch advocate for people with disabilities; his own daughter is an amputee.

Clearly, neither Hortman nor Hoffman was a single-issue legislator. But as the materials reported to be in Boelter abandoned vehicle seemed to focus heavily on abortion rights advocates and providers, and both Hortman and Hoffman have voted in favor of reproductive rights, it's not unreasonable to speculate that Boelter was driven above all by anti-abortion fanaticism -- especially in light of the fact that, as mentioned above, he also targeted two other strong abortion rights lawmakers, Senator Ann Rest and Representative Kristin Bahner.

United we stand... mostly, and for the moment, anyway
There is at least some indication that Democratic and republican leadership, if not the finger-pointing electorate, have declared a temporary truce and are united in their mourning for the victims and their families. Even Trump has issued the obligatory "this is horrible" statement, though it's probably only a matter of time before he starts blaming the Dems. He has already managed to get a gratuitous and egregiously unpresidential dig in at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, within the context of making a statement about the shootings.
UPDATE, June 17, 2025: Trump is in full blame-the-Dems mode now, or at least blame-Walz mode, having declared that he is not going to call Governor Walz (previously he had told reporters that he might call him). Why the decision not to make the call? Because it would be a "waste of time," since the governor is so "whacked out" and "doesn't have a clue" and is "a mess." How very, very presidential.

There is also, as there always is when some horrible act of political violence occurs in our land, a general sentiment that violence should have absolutely no place in American politics. We should all agree on that. I have my political biases, which I freely acknowledge. But if the suspect really had turned out to be a Democrat/liberal/left-winger, I would be as appalled and outraged and sad as I presently am. I would still be calling for him to be captured, tried, and if found guilty punished within the fullest extent of the law.

Even so, unlike my Trumpist Facebook friend, I do not believe that all republicans are evil and prone to violence. And it is worse than stupid -- it's Christ-on-a-bike-level moronic -- to try to pin this horror on the Democrats.

PS ~ In case you still have any doubts... this is from a commentator I follow on BlueSky Social, Machine Pun Kelly. It's a very good and detailed vid that debunks the narrative that Vance Boelter is a lib.

This post has been updated since its original publication on June 15, 2025. I will continue to update as more details emerge.

Before you leave...
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Rabbits and Roe and reproductive rights

 

There's a perversely poetic symmetry in the fact January 22, 2023 marked both the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit* -- that universal symbol of fertility and prolific reproduction -- and the would-be 50th anniversary of Roe versus Wade, the United States Supreme Court ruling that revolutionized women's reproductive rights by effectively legalizing abortion throughout the U.S.

Roe, though widely celebrated by women's rights advocates, was consistently fought from its earliest days, a fight that grew fiercer and more violent over the decades. Arguably, anti-abortion terrorism even helped fuel the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Even so, many of us clung to the increasingly thin hope that Roe would survive at least to the half-century mark. But when SCOTUS overturned Roe on June 24, 2022, that hope was dashed. And this weekend has been filled with marches and demonstrations that both celebrated and protested Roe's demise.

The anti-choice factions, whom I prefer to call the forced-birth fascists, have been exploiting the 50th anniversary of Roe not only to gloat, but also to double down on their commitment to ending abortion in America altogether, with "fetal personhood" being a key obsession. Pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, declare that the fight for reproductive freedom is far from over.

Still, there's no doubt that it is going to be a fight, and in so many ways it seems like we are right back at square one. In an opinion piece in The Guardian, US columnist Moira Donegan wrote:

In contrast to its political controversy, abortion in the Roe era was – as it is now – aggressively common. Approximately one in four American women will have an abortion at some point in the course of their reproductive lives.

The figure lends credence to the pro-choice assertion that everyone loves someone who had an abortion – and the accompanying quip that if you think you don’t know a woman who has had an abortion, you really just don’t know any women who trust you enough to tell you. But part of the legacy of Roe is not just that these women you know and love have been able to have freer, healthier, more volitional lives, but also that their abortions, for many of them, are not worth confessing. For most, abortions were not tragedies to be whispered about, or life-altering moments of shame, but banalities, choices to which they were unquestionably entitled, and from which they could move unconflictedly on. But Roe is gone. Now, for many women, these choices are crimes.

Donegan mused about how Roe opened a door for women to lives of greater dignity and self-determination, even though there were numerous flies in the ointment almost from the beginning.

This, at least, was the aspiration that Roe came to stand for: women’s freedom, their independence, their acceptance as equals in the American project. Of course, it never quite did work out that way: the Hyde amendment, which banned Medicaid funding for abortions, was passed just three years after Roe, in 1976, and effectively excluded poor women from Roe’s promise. Black women faced the dual barriers of moral judgement and eugenicist legacy – for them, often neither the choice to abort nor the choice to parent were fully free. Members of the anti-choice movement, assisted by a judiciary that became increasingly willing to do their bidding, were inventive and sadistically persistent in chipping away at abortion access, making it more expensive, more onerous, and more stigmatized than other kinds of medical care...

In an opinion piece on CNN.com, journalist and journalist professor Claudia Dreifus reflects on the awfulness of life before Roe. She had first-hand experience.

In my college circle, one routinely heard the most horrific stories: operations in motel rooms, surgeries without anesthesia, abortionists who’d raped women seeking their services. Strange as it seems today: this was common. I had a friend who developed a pelvic infection after a back-alley abortion; she was rendered infertile.

I found myself pregnant in 1964. I was 19. At first, I tried to self-abort. I failed. A friend of my mother’s connected me with a doctor in Pennsylvania.

On the way there, I felt terrified. What if he wasn’t a genuine physician? Would I contract an infection like my friend did? The thought that I might die kept repeating itself. As I drove through the bleak January landscape of rural Pennsylvania, I thought “Whatever the risks, you must do this. There’s no turning back.”

I’d drawn the lucky card. He turned out to be a real physician. I had the operation under anesthesia and with proper medication. He provided abortions because he believed in it, never charging more than $100. His community protected him....

But Dreifus' happy-ending story was more the exception than the rule. Horror stories abound.

One of those horror stories was immortalized in the April 1973 issue of Ms. Magazine, in a cover article titled, "Never Again," written by journalist and advocate Roberta Brandes Gratz. The lead photo in the piece shows a nude and bloodied woman, sprawled face down on the floor of a motel room following an illegal septic abortion in 1964. That photo has haunted me, and apparently millions of other people, for decades. It became a graphic symbol of the pro-choice movement.**

Like many millions of other women, I had a safe and legal abortion in the Roe era, in a clinical setting. I was very young, and for many reasons, having a child would have been a disaster both for me and for the child. My procedure occurred during the earlier years of Roe, when widespread anti-abortion demonstrations and violence were still in the future. So I did not have to face a gamut of screaming protestors, or be escorted into the clinic by an armed guard, or go through a metal detector, or communicate to the receptionist through bullet-proof glass.

Yet the procedure was emotionally wrenching for me, as it is for most people who, for one reason or another, have to make this decision. I rode an emotional rollercoaster of fear and doubt and sadness, punctuated heavily by an overwhelming feeling of relief. My nights were marked by a series of vivid dreams, both before and after the procedure. I vowed that I would never again get into a situation where an abortion was necessary. I kept that vow through the years, and in case you're wondering, I had no regrets then, nor do I now, that I chose to end my pregnancy.

It saddens and angers me that regressive forces have worked so hard, and continue to work so hard, to deny other pregnant people the same rights I had so many years ago. But it is encouraging to know that in the highest levels of government there is an ongoing effort to restore and preserve reproductive rights. For instance, there's the official Statement from President Joe Biden on the 50th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Decision:

Today, instead of commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, we are acknowledging that last year, the Supreme Court took away a constitutional right from the American people.
 
Since the Supreme Court’s decision, Americans, time and time again, have made their voices heard:  women should be able to make these deeply personal decisions free from political interference. Yet, Republicans in Congress and across the country continue to push for a national abortion ban, to criminalize doctors and nurses, and to make contraception harder to access. It’s dangerous, extreme, and out of touch. 
 
I’ll continue to fight to protect a woman’s right to choose. Congress must restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law – it’s the only way we can fully secure a woman’s right to choose in every state. 

In keeping with this statement, Vice President Kamala Harris announced President Biden's new memorandum ensuring safe access to medication abortion, and helping to safeguard patient and provider safety and security.

Of course, that's just a presidential memorandum, issued by a president for whom the forced-birth fascists, many of whom are MAGAs, have no respect, and it's a pretty safe bet that they will do everything they can to get around it. But... it's something. And it shows that we have not and will not give in to those who would force a ten-year-old to bear the child of her rapist, or a woman with a dead fetus or an ectopic pregnancy to just grin and bear it.

In the Year of the Rabbit and beyond, reproductive rights, or lack thereof, will remain front and center in political battles all across the United States, and for that matter, in numerous other countries across the globe. We shouldn't expect the issue to go away any time soon. For abortion became a political issue decades ago, and as I've said a few times on this blog, in politix, as in Scamworld, there are no neat and tidy endings. If you want to join the fight for choice and progress, here's a Google link to some resources.

* Note: It is the Year of the Rabbit everywhere except in in Vietnam, which stubbornly insists that this Lunar New Year ushers in the Year of the Cat.

** The April 1973 Ms. article also features a dramatic illustration by the late artist Miriam Wosk. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I took the liberty of snapping a pic of the page in my copy of this issue, as I did the first page. No infringement of copyright is intended.

Overturning Roe: The Handmaid's Tale takes another giant step towards reality

With the not-unexpected but nevertheless disastrous United States Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade on June 24, 2022, Margaret Atwood's famous dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, just took another giant step towards being art imitated by life.

And the late great singer/songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen was wrong: it's theocracy, not democracy, that's coming to the USA.

I don't believe that any thinking person on either side of the abortion issue thinks that the theocrats and Christo-fascists are going to stop at Roe, despite implied assurances within the majority opinion that the June 24 decision is solely about the constitutional right, or lack thereof, to abortion. Senior SCOTUS fascist Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion to the decision, has called for the overturning of other precedents that are founded in principles such as the right to privacy: specifically, decisions protecting the right to contraception, to same-sex intimate relationships, and to same-sex marriage.

Notably, in his opinion Thomas apparently did not mention the Loving v Virginia SCOTUS decision that, in June of 1967, finally legitimized interracial marriages. A few wags on Twitter have suggested that he add the Loving decision to his list of cases to be reconsidered/overturned, since it would most likely be cheaper than a divorce, should Thomas be considering a break from his seditionist, bat-crap crazy wife Ginni. But I digress.

In their dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan made the significance and utter gravity of the SCOTUS decision on abortion very clear:

For half a century, Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), have protected the liberty and equality of women. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that the Constitution safeguards a woman’s right to decide for herself whether to bear a child. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that in the first stages of pregnancy, the government could not make that choice for women. The government could not control a woman’s body or the course of a woman’s life: It could not determine what the woman’s future would be... Respecting a woman as an autonomous being, and granting her full equality, meant giving her substantial choice over this most personal and most consequential of all life decisions....

The dissenting Justices also made it clear that the abortion decision is almost certainly not the end of the line for the theocrats. They're just getting started.

...no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation. Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy arose straight out of the right to purchase and use contraception. See Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972). In turn, those rights led, more recently to rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage. See Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003); Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015). They are all part of the same constitutional fabric, protecting autonomous decisionmaking over the most personal of life decisions.

In a statement sent to People magazine, Jim Obergefell, one of the plaintiffs in the historic Obergefell v. Hodge case that legitimized same-sex marriage, wrote:

"Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice appointed by humans, he is not the Supreme Deity. The millions of loving couples who have the right to marriage equality to form their own families do not need Clarence Thomas imposing his individual twisted morality upon them. If you want to see an error in judgment, Clarence Thomas, look in the mirror."

Indeed.

All in all, things are looking pretty grim, and on track to get even grimmer. So hold on to your white wimples, Handmaids; it's going to be quite a ride -- and the fight is far from over.

Addendum, June 25, 2022: SCOTUS wrecking ball targeted other issues besides Roe
Unfortunately, Roe wasn't the only matter this past week in which the high court managed to do significant damage to more than a half century of progress. Here are its other major achievements for the week:

June 21, 2022: Kicking another big hole in the wall between church and state (and thumbing its nose at LGBTQ rights)

In a 6-3 vote, the court ruled Tuesday that Maine could not prohibit parents from using a state-funded tuition assistance program to pay for their children to attend private religious schools while permitting them to do so in private secular schools. The two schools cited in the case have a history of homophobic and transphobic policies.

The ruling in Carson v. Makin is a continuation of the conservative-majority court’s recent willingness to poke holes in the barrier between church and state. A number of LGBTQ advocacy organizations and other supporters of queer rights are sounding the  alarm about what the decision signals about the court’s direction, especially when it comes to reconciling religious freedom with safeguarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people from discrimination. 

June 23, 2022: Seriously weakening states' rights to impose their own gun control laws

For anyone concerned with the havoc associated with guns in this country, Thursday was a day of highs and lows. The Senate, after decades of inaction, passed a bipartisan gun-safety bill by a vote of 65–33. And the Supreme Court, in its biggest gun ruling in more than a decade, struck down a New York law by a vote of 6the case, New York State Rifle & Pistol –3. The majority opinion in Association v. Bruen, was written by and joined by the Court’s Clarence Thomas five other conservatives, and it is broad and reckless. It will expose any number of well-established laws to similar challenges, and rattle efforts to arrive at a national consensus on guns. If the Senate was the scene of a true breakthrough, the Court was the site of a major breakdown.

June 23, 2022: Kneecapping Miranda

Today, in Vega v. Tekoh, the court backtracked substantially on its Miranda promise. In Vega, the court held 6-3 (over an excellent dissent by Justice Elena Kagan) that an individual who is denied Miranda warnings and whose compelled statements are introduced against them in a criminal trial cannot sue the police officer who violated their rights, even where a criminal jury finds them not guilty of any crime. By denying people whose rights are violated the ability to seek redress under our country’s most important civil rights statute, the court has further widened the gap between the guarantees found in the Bill of Rights and the people’s ability to hold government officials accountable for violating them.

As someone on Twitter wrote, "I went to bed in 2022 and woke up in 1950." If the current SCOTUS majority and the fascist political infrastructure that supports them continue to prevail, the US is going to be plummeted even further back than 1950.

Addendum, July 12, 2022: The worst may be yet to come
The cases above are just a few examples of the destruction SCOTUS wreaked in their latest session. For a more complete review of their "accomplishments," see this.

And the worst may be yet to come when SCOTUS hears and rules on Moore v. Harper, a North Carolina case that is potentially the biggest threat to American democracy since January 6. The case, which will be heard in October 2022, involves independent state legislature doctrine and gerrymandering. If SCOTUS rules in North Carolina's favor, that could seriously impact the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, not to mention numerous local and state elections across the US. In practical terms, it could put the rethuglican party in power in the US indefinitely, regardless of actual popular vote or Electoral College outcomes. And regardless of your party affiliation, that should bother you. A lot. If it doesn't, you are definitely part of a very big problem.

 

There is a bomb in Gilead: SCOTUS advances Texas' mission to become real-life Handmaid's Tale

 

It's September, and a brutally restrictive abortion law is just the tip of the iceberg as the Christo-fascists advance their regressive agenda. Also taking effect September 1 are laws making it far easier to brandish a gun anywhere (whether or not one has a license or any sort of gun safety training), and voter legislation designed to disenfranchise people of color and anyone else likely to vote Democratic. But as Texas goes, so goes the nation, so don't kid yourself that this is just Lone Star lunacy.

In Margaret Atwood's classic 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale (which has also been adapted as a movie, a radio presentation, a stage play and now an ongoing streaming series), much of the continental United States has been taken over by a totalitarian, theocratic regime. A big chunk of the Northeast portion of the former US has become the Republic of Gilead, and in Gilead, women are relegated to subordinate roles; they are not allowed to read, vote, have a job, or own possessions... and forget anything remotely resembling reproductive freedom. Women known as Handmaids are forced to have sex with their "Commanders" in order to provide children for them and the infertile Wives.

The Handmaid's Tale has been invoked every time there has been a setback in abortion rights in the United States, with pro-choice advocates warning that the U.S. is becoming more and more like the fictional Gilead. All too often life does indeed imitate art: as of today -- September 1, 2021 -- Texas seems to be the front runner in the race to transform into Gilead. The Supreme Court of the United States has opted to let an oppressive state law take effect that bans all abortions after six weeks -- long before many women even know they are pregnant -- because that has been decreed the time when a fetal heartbeat can be detected by a doctor. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

Even more alarming, the bill will allow private citizens to sue anyone involved in helping a woman get an abortion past six weeks, without having to demonstrate any personal connection whatsoever to the woman or the situation.

In other words, there is a bomb in Gilead* -- and unless it is defused, it’s going to blow Roe v Wade, the 1973 SCOTUS decision that legalized abortion nationwide, to smithereens. From Politico:

Beyond outlawing abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, the Texas law, signed in May, would deputize citizens to file civil suits against abortion providers or anyone who helps facilitate the procedure after six weeks, such as a person who drives a pregnant person to the clinic. Individuals found to have violated the law would have to pay $10,000 to the person who successfully brings such a suit — a bounty abortion rights advocates warn will encourage harassment, intimidation and vigilantism.

To say the least. For a more detailed look at the probable effects of the new law, see this Axios summary.

This forced-birth legislation has been brought to you by the same thugs who have been screaming that mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates are government overreach and a dangerous threat to medical privacy and individual freedom. Indeed, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (who tested positive himself for COVID recently) has been at the forefront of the rethuglican movement to quash even the most basic COVID safety measures. Earlier in the summer he issued an executive order banning all mask mandates (though the ban is being fought on several fronts), and in late August he performed the same dark magic on COVID-19 vaccine mandates, regardless of whether the vaccines in question have full FDA approval. Clearly, in the eyes of the GQP, principles of freedom and privacy only apply to those on the "right" side of the culture wars.

Advocacy media such as Ms. Magazine have pointed to the option of ordering abortion pills online. But given the outrageous overreach of the Texas law, it'll be only a matter of time before the forced-birth fascists find a way to prosecute sellers and buyers. In fact they're already working on it, according to the Politico article I linked to above (here's that link again):

And while abortion rights advocates have touted the recent ability to dispense abortion pills via telemedicine and by mail as a way for people in conservative states to evade mounting restrictions on the procedure, the state on Tuesday also sent a ban on mail delivery of the pills to the governor's desk.

So there's that.

Pistol-packin' putzes
If the forced-birth law were the only regressive measure to worry about in Texas it would be bad enough, but wait... there's more! Those "pro-life" bounty hunters and vigilantes will no doubt find it much easier to intimidate pregnant people and healthcare providers with weapons, since a slew of new gun laws are in effect in Texas as of September 1. There'll be guns aplenty -- well, in Texas there always were, but now there will be even more, and now you don't even need special training or licensing in order to openly tote a firearm just about anywhere. All you need is a "clean record" (whatever that means, exactly). The new pile of gun laws are a reflection of Guv'ner Greg Abbott's mission to make Texas a "Second Amendment sanctuary state."

It's not that there wasn't a valiant effort to put the reins on this firearms frenzy. Even (or especially) law enforcement agencies, normally pretty conservative, have spoken out against "constitutional carry," but to no avail. From the Houston Public Media piece I linked to in the previous paragraph:

Many Democratic leaders and gun safety advocates hoped the 2021 session would result in more laws aimed at gun violence prevention. It was the first time lawmakers convened since the 2019 shootings in El Paso and Odessa.

In the aftermath of those attacks, some of the state's top Republican leaders — including Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — signaled an openness to change and voiced concerns about private, "stranger-to-stranger" gun sales that don't require background checks.

However, legislation aimed at closing the background check loophole didn't make it out of session, and most bills filed in response to the mass shootings never landed on the governor's desk.

Of course they didn't. Gun safety laws with teeth would be a stain on the long, proud tradition of Texas exceptionalism (Texceptionalism?).

Taking the battle to the ballot box
Okay... so at least maybe there's a chance of voting some of the forced-birth, firearms-fancying fascists out of office, right? Don't count on it; the rethuglicans have also been hard at work on new voter suppression legislation in Texas, and so far they've been successful. Under the guise of "election integrity," and despite stalwart Texas Democratic legislators who tried to stop it, the rethuglicans are doing absolutely everything they can to disenfranchise people of color and anyone else who is likely to vote Democratic. Their motives couldn't be more transparent.

[Texas] Republicans’ clear goal is to prevent the state’s changing demographics from leading to a shift in political power for as long as possible. The GOP doesn’t need to have the support of a majority of the state’s population if it skews the composition of the electorate to win a majority of votes. As the state becomes younger, more diverse, and more Democratic, power remains concentrated in the hands of politicians who represent constituencies that are whiter, older, more rural, and more conservative than the state as a whole...

...That’s why the new law surgically targets the voting methods that proved most popular among voters of color in large urban areas like Houston’s Harris County in 2020.

It eliminates innovative voting methods set up by Harris County, such as drive-thru voting and extended early voting hours, that were disproportionately used by voters of color during the presidential election.

After mail voting increased across the country in 2020 among communities of color, who favored Joe Biden, the law bans mail ballot drop boxes and makes it a felony for election officials to distribute unsolicited absentee ballot applications.

As well, the law significantly expands access for partisan poll watchers, giving them "free movement" inside a polling place while subjecting election workers to criminal penalties for removing them. Viewed in the context of GOP operatives having pledged to recruit an "army" of poll watchers in Black and Latino neighborhoods in Houston, the motive behind this provision of the law is painfully clear.

In addition to all of that, the law requires monthly "citizenship check" of voter rolls, which is very likely to lead to unfounded voter purges -- like a failed 2019 attempt to delete the registrations of 100,000 overwhelmingly Latino voters, whom the state claimed were noncitizens but turned out to be naturalized US citizens.

If you want to know more about the astounding sweep of new legislation that took effect in Texas September 1, here's a little something straight from the horse's ass. It's a press release on the gov.texas.gov web site listing the highlights of the legislature's accomplishments and providing a link to a full list of new laws. You'll notice, of course, quite a few laws that provide special protection to guns and gun manufacturers and gun nuts, and several protecting fetuses (including a separate bill that will outlaw all abortion in Texas "after Roe v Wade is overturned" (not if, but after).

There's also a law prohibiting "camping in public spaces," offering reinforcement to the time-honored practice of crapping on homeless people, and there are several laws to punish cities that try to "defund the police." And of course there's a law banning the teaching of "critical race theory," though almost none of the pearl clutchers who are so adamantly against it have any idea what CRT actually is. If you click on the link to the complete list, you'll immediately see that the exact number of bills is... 666. Mark of the Beast, anyone?

All is not lost... not yet, anyway.
Clearly the Texas Taliban, or Christian Caliphate if you prefer, is fighting fiercely to maintain supremacy in the Lone Star State. What's sad is that progressives in other states seem hell-bent on abandoning us. Fortunately many others are supporting us in the fight to bring Texas into the twenty-first century, recognizing that, as one person on a thread I've been following on Twitter wrote, "Texas is the canary in the coal mine, not some external enemy. California could be next (hello. recall?) Economic vitality has turned Texas into an essentially purple state. We need to overcome voter suppression. Help turn Texas blue!!"

Yeah, what that person said.

I haven't given up on everything yet, or really on anything. I'm plenty angry about what's happening in my state, but I still have enough faith in the system to believe that people who care about progress and justice and equality can yet make a difference. The Christo-fascists haven't completely won yet, and there's still a chance of preventing Texas and the rest of the nation from turning into Gilead. There are still opportunities to defuse the (metaphorical) bomb -- or, alternatively, to ensure that it (metaphorically) blows up in the faces of those who set it -- and by that, of course, I simply mean that we must ensure that the architects of the reprehensible laws pay politically. In states like Texas, defeating this shrill minority is very much an uphill battle, but it's also very much a battle worth fighting.
* Apologies to those who are fans of the old hymn.

PS added on Sept. 2, 2021: President Biden has spoken out against the draconian Texas abortion law.

PPS added on Sept. 3, 2021: In this Houston Press piece, Jef Rouner nails it re the true origins of the "pro-life" movement in America, as well as the decades of gaslighting by republicans about everything from abortion to race to election fraud.

PPPS added on Sept. 7, 2021: Here's Jef again, explaining why it's wrong to invoke the Taliban when discussing this whole Texmess, since this is all on "Christians." He's right, of course. (Mea culpa.)