Mother Jones - September 01, 2022

76 Pages·2022·56.3 MB·English

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16 The Elephant in the Room 36 Masters and Commander
BY DAVID CORN BY NOAH LANARD
We have some bad news for those who wish Right-wing tech mogul Peter Thiel has poured r
that today’s unhinged Republican Party would millions into the Senate campaign of protégé
just return to normal. Blake Masters. Their goal? Disrupting democracy. e
22 A Dangerous Mind 46 In the Eye of the Storm
b
BY JOSHUA KENDALL BY BECCA ANDREWS
Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee was thrown under For 50 years, a Kansas abortion clinic has been
the bus for sounding the alarm about Donald at the center of “pro-life” attacks. Now, Trust
m
Trump. Turns out she was right. Women is facing its biggest threat yet.
28 Swag & Circuses 54 The Censor
BY STEPHANIE MENCIMER BY ADAM HOCHSCHILD
How did maga extremists take over the Before Donald Trump and “Don’t Say Gay,”
e
gop? Look no further than the right-wing there were Woodrow Wilson and Albert
conference circuit. Sidney Burleson.
t
p
DEPARTMENTS 61 MIXED MEDIA
The Russian trolls in Blackface
4 TO OUR READERS
e
What is a dog whistle, anyway?
7 OUTFRONT
Within Alito’s opinion on abortion is an
70 FOOD + HEALTH S
argument about Black genocide. Don’t buy it.
Virtual learning programs are keeping
Disability benefi ts are not working. the pandemic alive for preschoolers.
How to save a life without calling the cops Stop calling it curry. VOLUME 47
NUMBER 5
ABOVE: DAVID BUTOW
I N T H I S I S S U E
INSTEAD OF
CONTRIBUTORS BY THE NUMBERS
How we covered In the lead-up to the
abortion and far-right 2016 presidential
extremism this issue: election, a Kremlin-
ESCAPING linked agency created
social media accounts to
help inflame America’s
internal conflicts. Popular
accounts posed as Black
Americans and hijacked
racial justice issues.
STATE CONTROL,
More than
Reporter Becca Andrews
66% of its
profiled the staff of a Facebook
advertising
Kansas abortion clinic (and
content
the protesters outside)
contained a
for her book No Choice, word related
MASTERS AND
to race.
excerpted here (“In the Eye Other
of the Storm,” page 46).
96% of its
YouTube
content was
devoted to
THIEL NOW HOPE
“racial issues
and police
brutality.”
Other
9M
Photographer Zoe Freilich TO USE ITS POWER.
was already working on
a project about abortion
when we tapped her to
snap pictures of the Kansas
clinic staff and protesters
on the sidewalk (“In the
Eye of the Storm,” page 46). people watched the
Conservative Political
Action Conference on
YouTube in 2020.
From reporter Noah Lanard’s profile of Arizona
Senate candidate Blake Masters, a Trump-backed
$60K
Thiel protégé (“Masters and Commander,” page 36)
ON THE COVER
Melissa Murray, a New York
University law professor, The potential visual metaphors
picks apart Justice Alito’s for Republicans’ long descent into
misuse of racial justice madness and conspiracy-mongering are was paid to TV personality
rhetoric one flagrant endless. For David Corn’s look at this Kimberly Guilfoyle by
misconception at a time phenomenon, justin metz nails the Turning Point Action for a
(“The Race Card,” page 7). combination of bizarre and grotesque. three-minute speech.
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T O O U R R E A D E R S
institutions—gerrymandered state leg-
islatures, the US Senate, the Supreme
TRUTH AND Court—are held captive by a far-right
minority, the will of the majority is
PUNISHMENT being subsumed. “The defeat of Roe
was made possible by cutting corners
and seizing every advantage in an un-
Does it matter if no one goes to jail?
democratic system,” my colleague Tim
CEO
MONIKA Murphy wrote the day the Dobbs deci-
BY MONIKA BAUERLEIN
BAUERLEIN
sion came down. “It was a redistribu-
tion of power bordering on theft.”
history will judge. History will judge. Party spin. If Democrats say the sky is But in the end, those who steal or
History will judge. blue and Republicans insist it is red, will cheat their way into power don’t have a
Those were the words that kept ringing cnn steer clear of stating the color of solid hold on it. They know the people
in my head as my teenager and I began the sky? aren’t with them. That’s why they run
to watch the January 6 hearings. It was “We must confront the truth with from the truth. Their power is fragile,
surreal, seeing Donald Trump once more candor, resolve, and determination,” and history will judge them.
commanding his supporters to “fight like Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said One of the things I love about Mother
hell.” It was shocking and yet entirely un- as he opened the hearings. “We need Jones is that we publish not just online—
surprising to hear Cassidy Hutchinson to show that we are worthy of the gifts where our journalists dig deep on the
describe the abuse Trump heaped on sub- that are the birthright of every Amer- issues of the day—but in this print mag-
ordinates when they failed to accede to ican.” Those gifts include finding and azine that you’re holding in your hands.
his putschist demands. speaking the truth, regardless of who is It feels like making a historical record
When these proceedings are shown offended. I’m so grateful that that’s what that you, or someone who follows in
in classrooms one day, I wondered, will your hellraising footsteps, can pick up
people see it as the beginning of some- a year or 20 down the road to see what
thing, or the end? Will they mourn that this moment was like.
we were not able to reverse America’s It so happens that this issue was the
slide into authoritarianism—or see, in the last one for Claudia Smukler, our pro-
fact that the coup did not succeed, the The free press is at duction director who sweated over
beginning of something more hopeful? risk over the pressure every single page of every single issue
“To my Republican colleagues who to supply Amazon for 13 years. She wrote a gripping tale
are defending the indefensible,” Rep. Prime delivery boxes. (you can read it at motherjones.com/
Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in her opening paper) about how harrowing it has been
statement. “There will come a day when to keep the presses rolling. Not just be-
Donald Trump is gone. But your dis- cause of the 40 percent increase in the
honor will remain.” History will judge. we get to do at Mother Jones because we price of paper, the 10 percent increase
“Does it matter,” my kid asked, “if no are accountable to independent-minded in postage, the 7 percent in freight, an-
one gets punished?” readers like you and not some corporate other 7 percent in health insurance,
That depends in part on the media board or hedge-fund investor. That’s and the list goes on; but because sup-
and how the story is presented to those why we have been investigating attacks ply-chain challenges made it so that
Americans—about 60 percent of us— on democracy for decades, and will keep giant rolls of paper sat frozen on a train
who assign Trump some or much of the doing it long after these hearings are when they needed to be at our printer,
blame for the attack. As MoJo’s Washing- done. (This entire issue, with in-depth and because mills no longer make much
ton bureau chief, David Corn, pointed coverage of tech industry authoritari- magazine paper because packaging ma-
out, “Much coverage of the January 6 anism, the long-running antidemocratic terial is more profitable.
committee and its hearings has up to streak in the Republican Party, and the That’s where the American economy
now focused on the political implica- dangerous mind of Donald Trump, is a is right now: The free press is at risk
tions: Will this help the Democrats for testament to that.) over the pressure to supply Amazon
the coming midterm elections?” Inves- Ultimately, that’s what all of the big Prime delivery boxes. So if you’re able
tigating a coup is not horse-race stuff, stories of this moment come back to: to help us confront the truth with
nor does it call for media coverage that attacks on democracy. Broad majori- candor, resolve, and determination—in
sacrifices truth to false equivalence. Yet ties of Americans agree that abortion the pages of this and future issues, and
cnn’s new ceo, Chris Licht, announced should be legal, that people should be every single day online—by donating
that he would prefer if his network’s able to marry whom they love, and that today, we’d be so grateful. People like
journalists did not use the term “Big we should act on climate change and you reading this make it all possible:
Lie” because he saw it as Democratic gun violence. But because some of our motherjones.com/donate. (cid:81)
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AUTHOR PHOTO
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T
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F
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WOKE WARRIORS
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THE RACE CARD
The Supreme Court’s radical wing is happy to embrace social
justice arguments that serve a pro-gun, anti-abortion agenda.
B Y M E L I S S A M U R R A Y
ILLUSTRATIONS BY NATE KITCH
O U T F R O N T
amid the tumult surrounding the Su-
preme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jack-
son Women’s Health Organization, the
June 24 ruling that ended Roe v. Wade,
one curious detail went largely over-
looked. Nestled among Justice Samuel
Alito’s arguments laying waste to nearly
50 years of abortion precedent was an
unassuming footnote documenting a
narrative advanced in amicus briefs sub-
mitted to the high court. These “friend
of the court” briefs, Alito explained,
“present arguments about the motives”
of people and groups favoring “liberal
access to abortion,” namely “that some
such supporters have been motivated
by a desire to suppress the size of the
African American population.”
Portraying abortion as a tool of racial
genocide is not a bridge too far, Alito
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insisted: “It is beyond dispute that Roe T
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has had that demographic effect,” given G
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that a “highly disproportionate per- C
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centage of aborted fetuses are Black.” G
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He also cited Justice Clarence Thomas’ L
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concurring opinion in 2019’s Box v. A
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Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Ken- /
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tucky, Inc., a challenge to an Indiana law U
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that prohibited abortions undertaken O
N
for reasons of race or sex selection, or SI
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Y
nonlethal fetal anomalies. The justices, ultimately helped empower women to moored from constitutional text and Y,
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Thomas included, had deferred con- make their own decisions about child- lacks deep roots in the country’s history T
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sideration of such “reason bans” for bearing. and traditions, there was no need to Y/
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another day, but Thomas wanted it on Thomas, uninterested in such nu- invoke racial eugenics. So why did Alito, E
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the record that the court ultimately ances, maintained that the work a shrewd tactician when it comes to ad- U
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would have “to confront the constitu- of these birth control pioneers was vancing the conservative legal project, O
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tionality of laws like Indiana’s,” which tainted by racial animus. Sanger, he insist on this unusual aside? N
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reflected a “compelling interest in pre- wrote, “campaigned for birth control Perhaps it was merely an anodyne N
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venting abortion from becoming a tool in black communities,” creating a clinic gesture of collegiality toward Thomas, S
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of modern- day eugenics.”   in Harlem as well as the “Negro Proj- who, as the senior justice in the major- N
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Thomas argued that the abortion ect,” which worked with Black clergy ity—Chief Justice John Roberts voted to Y
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legalization movement stemmed and leaders including W.E.B. Du Bois uphold the challenged Mississippi law, ),
3
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from the birth control movement to promote birth control in “poor, yet sided with the liberals on retain- Y
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of the early 1900s, which had “de- Southern black communities.” His ing Roe—could have written this plum E
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veloped alongside the American eu- implication is clear: Contraception opinion himself, but instead allowed E:
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genics movement.” Indeed, Planned and abortion—the twin pillars of re- Alito to spear the conservative move- B
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Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger productive rights—are not merely rife ment’s great white whale. Or perhaps M;
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and Alan Guttmacher, the organiza- with “eugenic potential”; they are tools the curious footnote was an acknowl- ),
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tion’s president during the 1960s, en- of racial injustice.  edgment of Thomas’ magnanimity. Y
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dorsed contraception and abortion as Alito’s decision to include the foot- Thomas, after all, has husbanded the E
G
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effective methods for “controlling the note, with its not-so-subtle association notion of “eugenic abortion” to great FP
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population and improving its quality,” of abortion with eugenics and racial effect, helping it flourish among con- F
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as Thomas put it. But if the broader genocide, in the Dobbs opinion is puz- servative jurists in the lower courts. H
C
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eugenics movement was fixated on zling if only because, as a matter of law, When the 6th Circuit, for example, re- N
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optimizing the genetic profile of the it is entirely gratuitous. Having laid out fused to enjoin an Ohio law that barred S:
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white race, the reproductive freedoms his case that Roe is “egregiously wrong” doctors from performing abortions O
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pioneered by Sanger and Guttmacher because the right to an abortion is un- for women who choose to terminate RE
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8 MOTHER JONES | SEPTEMBER + OCTOBER 2022