Birth Control is under Attack

Has the option to choose birth control always been there for you and your family?

People of my age (older adults) remember the days before contraceptive medications, such as the pill, were options for women and the choices were vaginal diaphragms, which had to be fitted, then strategically inserted, condoms for men, and the Catholic Church’s advised “rhythm method”. The rhythm method used a calendar and daily temperature measurements to determine the most fertile times in a woman’s cycle. Those who wanted to get pregnant made use of this information; those who did not, abstained during these times. Few of these methods were consistent or helpful in the long run.

During the 1950s, scientists were encouraged to find better methods and eventually developed what we now know as the birth control pill. We can thank the knowledge passed down from the Aztecs and still used by some Mexican women today for the development of the first prescription birth control pill. According to an article from Planned Parenthood, women in Mexico used a type of yam, called the Barbaco Root, to prevent pregnancy. Investigation of this plant determined that it produced progestin which, when combined with estrogen, prevented pregnancy. Progestin is a hormone synthetically produced, while Progesterone is a hormone that the body produces and is used to keep a pregnancy viable. Estrogen allows the body to regulate the menstrual cycle and affects the reproductive tract and other important organs. A smaller amount is also present in males.

After many years of research, clinical trials, and field studies, the FDA approved the first prescription Birth Control pill in 1960. That medication, called Enovid, was not without controversy as many trials were conducted in Puerto Rico, where the women were frequently illiterate and might not have understood the medication instructions. This first pill had some side effects as it contained higher levels of hormones and some users reported problems with blood clots, fluid retention, and headaches, among others. (Pills used today contain only a fraction of the hormonal doses used in the early pills as scientists learned their goals could be accomplished with less medication.)

The ability to take the pill was a game changer for many women, although this, too, caused social disruption. Critics warned that this would lead to immorality if women were free to decide about pregnancies. But, for women, it meant that they could make career and educational choices, they could space the births of their children, and not be subjected to yearly births. Of course, there were those back then who fought the legality of birth control, as many states previously made promoting or prescribing it illegal. In cases decided by the Supreme Court (Griswold vs. Connecticut,1965) the use of contraception was permitted for married couples, and in 1972 (Eisenstadt vs. Baird) unmarried women could purchase the medications. (Doesn’t this totally sound quaint some 50 + years later?)

The singer Loretta Lynn even sang a tune in 1975 called ‘The Pill’ about the freedom the pill gave to women. When NPR interviewed women who lived during that era, sixty years after the pill was introduced, they spoke of the changes this made in their lives.

“When the pill was approved in 1960, women had relatively few contraceptive options, and the pill offered more reliability and convenience than methods like condoms or diaphragms, said Dr. Eve Espey, chair of the Department of Ob/Gyn and Family Planning at the University of New Mexico.

“There was a huge, pent-up desire for a truly effective form of contraception, which had been lacking up to that point,” Espey said.

By 1965, she said, 40% of young married women were on the pill.”

According to data from the CDC, contraceptive use is across all communities.

Data from the 2015–2017 National Survey of Family Growth

“In 2015–2017, 64.9% of the 72.2 million women aged 15–49 in the United States were currently using contraception. The most common contraceptive methods currently used were female sterilization (18.6%), oral contraceptive pill (12.6%), long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) (10.3%), and male condom (8.7%).

Use of LARCs was higher among women aged 20–29 (13.1%) compared with women aged 15–19 (8.2%) and 40–49 (6.7%); use was also higher among women aged 30–39 (11.7%) compared with those aged 40–49.

Current condom use did not differ among non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic women (about 7%–10%).

Female sterilization declined and use of the pill increased with higher education. Use of LARCs did not differ across education (about 10%–12%).

Nearly all women use contraception in their lifetimes (1), although at any given time, they may not be using contraception for reasons such as seeking pregnancy, being pregnant, or not being sexually active. Using data from the 2015–2017 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), this report provides a snapshot of current contraceptive status, in the month of interview, among women aged 15–49 in the United States. In addition to describing use of any method by age, Hispanic origin and race, and education, patterns of use are described for the four most commonly used contraceptive methods: female sterilization; oral contraceptive pill; long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), which include contraceptive implants and intrauterine devices; and male condom.

According to the Planned Parenthood article mentioned above:

“As more and more women are able to plan their families with modern methods of contraception — the IUD and methods such as the implant and the shot, which derive from the research that developed the pill — the number of pregnancies per woman has decreased worldwide. This decrease has been identified as one of the key factors associated with recently reported and significant reduction in the rate of maternal mortality around the globe (Hogan et al., 2010).

As former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pointed out during the G8 Conference in Gatineau, Quebec, “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health, and reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortions”

So, as we have already seen after Dobbs, abortion access remains under attack across the country. A determined effort is underway to limit the usage of birth control pills, as well as other contraceptive methods like implants and abortion pills. Over 60% of all abortions currently happening in the US use the medication method; some states are trying to add requirements for additional in-person doctor visits and deny mail-order uses of these drugs.

Another tactic uses the “conscientious objector or conscience” method, claiming that if birth control is against one’s beliefs, providers, and employers can legally avoid providing such services. The Supreme Court affirmed this argument in the Hobby Lobby case and for inclusion in the ACA.

In an article for MSNBC, professor Mary Ziegler claims the war on birth control has already started as she shows here:

“Conscience arguments are the most familiar among conscientious objectors to war, but in the 1970s, antiabortion lawyers repurposed them to carve out exemptions for medical professionals who did not want to participate in abortions. At the beginning, these conscience rules enjoyed bipartisan support: a right to conscience resonated with both progressives committed to pluralism and conservatives uncomfortable with legal abortion. But soon, abortion opponents found new uses for these arguments for conscience: Antiabortion lawyers and politicians relied on such arguments to support the Hyde Amendment, a ban on Medicaid reimbursement for abortion. Reimbursing Medicaid patients with taxpayers’ money, they argued, violated the conscience of those with objections to abortion. Their solution: ban all reimbursement for all low-income patients—and suggest that the ban actually helped Medicaid patients by forcing them into a better choice.

‘Paragraph omitted’………Conscience arguments have also transformed legal fights about birth control. ADF played a central role in fighting the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, which required employers to cover all FDA-approved contraceptives without co-pay. In 2014’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, ADF defended employers who believed that common contraceptives, including IUDs and the morning-after pill, were to be abortifacients. The group has framed this cause as a fight for pluralism: just as the law should not force anyone not to use contraception, the law should not force employers to subsidize a pill they believe to kill a rights-holding fetal person. Sears’ comments show that conscience claims can be the cornerstone of a new conservative incrementalism that erodes access to birth control and lays the groundwork for a future ban. In Hobby Lobby, ADF already created the foundation for this new strategy: suggesting that religious employers had a sound reason for objecting to birth control drugs that might be abortifacients. Other powerful antiabortion groups, like Students for Life, take the same position, suggesting that common forms of birth control actually prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg and thus qualify as abortion drugs.

The Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the ADF’s work against transgender rights has provided the group with an equally important resource for anti-birth control incrementalism: history and tradition as a limit on constitutional rights. The Dobbs ruling rejected the idea of a right to choose abortion by stressing that it is not deeply rooted in our nation’s history and tradition, understood to mean the years around 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.

The “history and tradition” argument can apply even to drugs that even abortion opponents may concede are contraceptives.

Dobbs has become central to the defense of laws banning gender-affirming care for minors, many of which ADF had a hand in drafting. Parents who have pushed back against these laws have argued that the Constitution protects parents’ rights to make decisions in their children’s own best interest. Courts sympathetic to ADF responded that after Dobbs, the Constitution recognizes only rights that are deeply rooted in history and tradition—and that because gender-affirming care is new and experimental, there can be no deeply rooted right for parents to seek out that care for their children.

It would not be hard for ADF to make the same argument about birth control in the future. Some abortion opponents will argue that Dobbs already addressed the issue when it comes to many drugs—including the birth control pill—because those drugs count as abortion. But the “history and tradition” argument can apply even to drugs that even abortion opponents may concede are contraceptives. It was in the late nineteenth century, after all, that many states began criminalizing contraception, and that the federal government passed the Comstock Act, which made it a federal crime to mail contraceptives. This kind of evidence convinced the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority that there was no right to abortion. ADF knows that at some later point, similar evidence might convince the Court that there is no right to contraception either.

In the short term, access to birth control is likely to remain unchanged. In the longer term, however, ADF has made clear that it is far from safe. And anyone looking to predict how the attack on it will unfold knows just where to look: fights about sexual orientation, gender identity, and the right to conscience.”

Mary Ziegler Professor at the UC Davis School of Law Oct. 10, 2023

The Washington Post published two articles recently that exposed the campaign by some on the right to discourage the use of birth control by spreading false rumors about complications and side effects. And, as noted earlier, the initial pills used higher doses of hormones and patients had a higher rate of side effects. However, now, information is provided to patients that during the first couple of months, their bodies may experience changes as they get used to the new medication. This is not unique to contraceptive medications.

“The backlash to birth control comes at a time of rampant misinformation about basic health tenets amid poor digital literacy and a wider political debate over reproductive rights, in which far-right conservatives argue that broad acceptance of birth control has altered traditional gender roles and weakened the family.”

The second article in the Post provides explanations to counter the claims made in the previous article.

As I asked last week in my blog about the ERA, what is it about women’s autonomy and empowerment that so frightens the right?

Some Blue states are stockpiling Mifepristone; I hope they will not have to do that for contraceptive options. The Economist reports that an average of 400 women per day (or 160,000 last year) are crossing state boundaries to access abortion services. The Supreme Court will hear arguments against the FDA approval of Mifepristone this week, with Senator Josh Hawley’s wife Erin arguing against approval. What a power couple they are!

The Economist also presents a case to reject this petition, stating that the drug is safer than Tylenol and was not rushed to a decision. Mifepristone is used in 90% of abortions conducted in England, Wales, and many Scandinavian countries today. The World Health Organization (WHO) approved it. The arguments against it are described as spurious. (But. then. many on the right, reject the WHO!)

Till next week-Peace!

What Happened With the ERA?

 

 

Since March is Women’s History Month, I thought it was time to look at where we’ve been, where we are going, and discuss what might lie ahead. Women have come a long way down the road, as they say, but the road remains steep, full of pot-holes, detours, and switchbacks, as I see it. If you are a woman who looks at the world through rose-colored glasses and applauds the fact that women now head universities, have been propelled into space, and have long been Cabinet Secretaries and Governors, I can say okay but..? What else could they have done were not other obstacles put in their path? We have not yet seen our first female president. Women still face workplace discrimination and suffer a wage deficit when compared to men, and women of color find even more disparities.

When the Founding Fathers created the rules for the first United States of America’s national elections, only white males who owned property could vote. By 1850, the government dropped the property requirement and permitted states to set their specific rules; most continued with the male-only rule. As women’s suffrage became more of an issue at the beginning of the twentieth century, women took to the streets to demand their individual rights and the right to vote. Finally, on August 18, 1920, the 19^th Amendment was ratified. It guaranteed the right to vote for women. Native American women were granted the same right a few years later, in 1924.

Despite having the right in law, women of color, especially black women, rarely could exercise their right to vote because of the passage of laws that made voter registration more challenging. Constitution tests, poll taxes, and intimidation all were used to hold down the free exercise of these rights. Similar tactics continue in many states under Republican control today.

As soon as suffrage passed, Alice Paul, a leader in the movement, proposed that in 1923 an Equal Rights Amendment be added to the Constitution. Her proposal was short and succinct. Such a proposal was introduced annually but was never passed by Congress, so in 1943, the Congress received a revised version that said:

Section 1: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or byany state on account of sex.
Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, byappropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

The wording was eventually changed, as noted below:

Beginning in the 113th Congress (2014-2015), the text of the ERA ratification bill introduced in the House of Representatives has differed slightly from both the traditional wording and its Senate companion bill. It reads:

“Section 1: Women shall have equal rights in the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2: Congress and the several States shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.”

The addition of the first sentence specifically names women in the Constitution for the first time and clarifies the intent of the amendment to make discrimination based on a person's sex unconstitutional. The addition of "and the several States" in Section 2 restores wording that was drafted by Alice Paul but removed before the amendment's 1972 passage. It affirms that enforcement of the constitutional prohibition of sex discrimination is a function of both federal and state levels of government.

It is interesting to also note that in 2011, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia remarked, that the Constitution does not protect against sex discrimination.

The Washington Post notes Scalia gave this analysis of the 14th Amendment back in September. Furthermore, his position on protection from discrimination on the basis of gender was exhibited in 1996, when he was the only justice to dissent from the Supreme Court decision to end the Virginia Military Institute's 157-year-old, state-supported tradition of only accepting male students.

Marcia Greenberger, founder and co-president of the National Women's Law Center, told the Huffington Post that Scalia's most recent remarks were "shocking in light of the decades of precedents and the numbers of justices who have agreed that there is protection in the 14th Amendment against sex discrimination, and struck down many, many laws in many, many areas on the basis of that protection."

(This remark was made before the court decisions in Windsor in 2013 and Obergefell in 2015 striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and upholding same-sex marriages. Scalia wrote minority dissents in both cases.)

The Equal Rights Amendment, proposed in 1943, finally passed both the Senate and the House by the required majorities in 1972 and then sent to the states for ratification with a seven-year deadline to accomplish the task. When that date was not met, the deadline was extended to 1982. At that time, only 35 of the required 38 states (a three-fourths majority), had ratified the amendment.

As reported in ERA FAQ:  The Equal Rights Amendment has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since 1982. In the 115thCongress (2017-2018), ERA ratification bills were introduced as S.J.Res. 6 (lead sponsor, Senator Robert Menendez, D-NJ) and H.J.Res. 33 (lead sponsor, Representative Carolyn Maloney, D-NY). A bill to remove the ERA’s ratification deadline ex post facto and make it part of the Constitution when 38 states ratify was introduced as S.J. Res. 5 by Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and as H.J.Res. 53 by Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA).

By 2020, eventually the 38^{t th} state, Virginia, ratified as Nevada, and Illinois did in the years prior. But then we have to look at politics even more closely as the end get in sight.  For years, Republicans fought the Amendment, a departure from their early support.  A movement attributed to Phyllis Schlafly, a Republican activist in the 1980s who claimed the ERA would deprive women of their rights, created an organization called STOP to derail ratification. She and others claimed that women would be subject to the draft and lose other privileges they long enjoyed, such as the right to stay at home. In the current Congress, only Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine supported these efforts; their Leader Senator Mitch McConnell strongly opposed them.

But, wait, there is more! None other than DJT (the former president) and his Department of Justice, starting in 2017, set out to stop any attempts to certify this amendment. They argued the extensions were illegal and that if some wanted the ERA to pass; the process needed to start again from the beginning. (Hey, guys, it has been 100 years in the trying!!) Their efforts succeeded, so the three-state rule that added Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia, and had taken so much effort to achieve was negated when the national archivist refused to certify the votes. At the same time, Attorney Generals in some red states tried to pull back the previous state approvals. Five states have now attempted unsuccessfully to rescind a previous approval: ID, KY, NE, SD, and TN. The states that have never ratified the ERA are AL, AR, AZ, FL, GA, LA, MO, MS, NC, OK, SC, and UT. We might note also that many of these same states restrict voting access and reproductive freedom.

Why is the passage so important?  Just think of the rights that have already been lost and those that are threatened, such as abortion, IVF, and contraception.  Consider equal pay for equal work and the right to speak out. As Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. reported recently in MS Magazine voters have concerns about the following:

“Seventy-four percent of voters support a person’s right to make their own reproductive decisions, including abortion, contraception and continuing a pregnancy. 

Threats to democracy and abortion/women’s rights were the second and third top-of-mind issues for all voters after inflation. 

Fifty-nine percent of voters consider themselves feminists.

Voters are overwhelmingly in support of the ERA: It is a universal value for Democrats and very strong with Independents, especially Independent women voters. 

“Without a fundamental right to equality, we won’t have an equal society,” said Zakiya Thomas, president and CEO of the ERA Coalition and the Fund for Women’s Equality. Thomas recounted the significant value of the diversity and equal economic opportunities the ERA could bring about. 

“If equality and the Equal Rights Amendment, in particular, weren’t so important, they wouldn’t be fighting so hard to keep it from us,” said Thomas––referencing that the forces fighting against reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights.”

So, this is an election year, and as voters, we all have choices to make. Are you registered? If not, get registered. Do you know your polling place; will you vote by mail? Whichever – just VOTE. Have you ever asked yourself, why should there be such a battle to keep this straightforward measure from being ratified? Why indeed? Those who say abortion can be passed into law by legislation should look at the ERA and think sobering thoughts. None of this is easy. Opposing oppression in any form is difficult.

Till next week, Peace!

The State of the Union- 2 Views

Does it sometimes appear to you that Americans are living in separate bubbles or parallel universes that seldom communicate?

This was never more obvious than when I watched President Biden give his State of the Union (SOTU) address to Congress and the American people. His words were strong, his delivery was forceful, and his style was combative, leaving no doubt that ‘fighting Joe” was ready to take on his predecessor, as he called him, once again. Described by Peter Baker in the New York Times as:

“This was not Old Man Joe. This was Forceful Joe. This was Angry Joe. This was Loud Joe. This was Game-On Joe.

In an in-your-face election-year State of the Union address, President Biden delivered one of the most confrontational speeches that any president has offered from the House rostrum, met by equally fractious heckling from his Republican opponents.”

Although never mentioning his name, Biden stated that allowing a person who would give Russian President Putin free rein was not now, and should never be an option. He spoke of history and the days before America entered World War ll, and even mentioned Ronald Reagan, possibly reaching out to Independents and disaffected Haley voters. He promised if given a Democratic House and Senate majority, he would work to codify abortion rights as the law of the land. Chastising the Supreme Court for some of their recent decisions, he reminded them of the power of women voters. (Many Democratic women legislators wore white both this year and in 2020 to signify fighting for women's rights and reproductive freedom.)

Biden sparred with raucous Republican members who called out about various proposals around tax reform and border security. He ignored the lack of decorum, as some members, such as MTG, wore Maga campaign gear and touted crime by illegal immigrants. Some pundits noted that the once dry-as-a-bone recitation of successful programs and suggestions for new proposals has almost turned into a call-and-response repartee. The president, anticipating such pauses, built into his speech some ad-libs to address these interruptions. Condemned by some as giving more of a campaign speech than a report to the nation, the president’s defenders countered that the room had changed, so the speech needed to meet the new normal.

The President spoke about the problems with the war in Gaza, the Israeli response, Hamas, and the plight of the Palestinians. He inferred a ceasefire was upcoming; many have noted his desire to have this in place before the start of Ramadan this week. I certainly hope this happens.

(Food is being delivered in a modest but inefficient way with airdrops, but so much more needs to happen. US military forces will soon create a landing site on the Mediterranean Sea bordering Gaza to allow food and medical supplies to be delivered by naval vessels since other avenues have been blocked. This will take some time, hopefully, it will be ready before full famine sets in.)

Biden also noted that some are trying to rewrite the story of January 6^th, but indicated that the American people know and will continue to remember what really happened that day when the actions taken were not those of patriots but those who wished to destroy the American system. Democracy is at stake in the upcoming election he claimed and the American people will have a clear choice.

Although there were a few word stumbles and the unfortunate use of the word “illegals”, Biden shut down the right-wing media and Maga storm claiming he was a mumbling, out of touch leader afflicted by stumbling senior moments. On the day of the State of the Union, the Maga campaign aired a doctored campaign ad seeming to show the president could not finish a sentence, when in the actual speech, he had paused to make a point. Sadly, I assume that this will be the first of many such attempts by the right, even as their candidate, now firmly headed to the nomination since Nikki Haley dropped out, is making ever wilder statements on the stump.

Moving forward to the usually lame Republican response, we were instead met with remarks by the youngest Republican Senator, a woman from Alabama. Kaie Britt did not appear at a lectern as is customary, but spoke from her kitchen table as she tried to meet women where she said they and their families discussed important issues, such as meeting their budgets and planning for the future. If she had stopped there, that might have passed as an okay response, but her delivery, in an overly emoting and sometime breathless style, found by many to be cringe-worthy caused some to ask what the point was. The style, described in the New York Times as jarring:

“With a sunny, inviting smile, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama welcomed Americans into her kitchen on Thursday night.

Many soon backed away nervously.

In the Republican Party’s official response to President Biden’s State of the Union address, Ms. Britt delivered a jarring speech that toggled between an increasingly strained cheerfulness and a fierce glare as she gave ominous warnings about illegal immigration.

Ms. Britt, 42, has been seen as a rising Republican star and floated as a possible running mate for former President Donald J. Trump. But in the biggest moment of her fledgling political career, she delivered a tonally uneven speech that was made more unusual by the setting of her own house in Montgomery, Ala., where she sat at her kitchen table and painted a dark picture of an America in decline.

“Our commander-in-chief is not in command,” Ms. Britt said. “The free world deserves better than a dithering and diminished leader.”

 

The selection of the 42-year-old Senator was supposed to contrast age-wise with the president and make up for the male dominance in the Republican Congressional delegations, however, her phrasing and speech patterns, seen by some as “fundie” or following fundamentalist guidelines for women, turned off many as noted below in the Times. Her dramatic recitation of the sex trafficking of migrants (which reprised a twenty-year-old Republican story and talking point) seemed out of context to many.

“But the scene seemed to confuse viewers on social media, where Ms. Britt was mocked by some for using a dramatic, breathy voice to deliver critiques of the president.

“Under his administration, families are worse off — our communities are less safe, and our country is less secure,” she said. “I just wish he understood what real families are facing around kitchen tables just like this one.”

 

Writing in the Atlantic, Elaina Plott Calabro noted the following about the Senator:

 

“It was just five days ago that Newt Gingrich was imagining the possibilities for Britt’s future, framing the freshman senator from Alabama’s coming rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as her “big audition.” “It will be interesting to see if Britt rises to the occasion,” the former House speaker had mused to a New York talk-radio host. “If she does, it will be a major step up in her potentially being Trump’s vice-presidential candidate.”

(After the speech, Gingrich had no comment.)

 

“You might not have known it from Katie Britt’s State of the Union rebuttal last night—a performance derided by members of her own party as “bizarre” and “confusing”—but up until then, Britt had distinguished herself in the Senate with a reputation for being startlingly, well, normal.

Her own Senate colleague’s clumsy assessment of the speech seemed to reinforce precisely the stereotype of the GOP that Katie Britt, in being tapped to deliver the party’s response to Biden, was theoretically meant to counteract. “She was picked as a housewife, not just a senator, somebody who sees it from a different perspective,” Tuberville told reporters today. (Britt’s office did not respond to an interview request, but in a statement to Business Insider, her spokesperson said: “Joe Biden angrily screamed for an hour and was roundly praised for a ‘fiery’ speech. Katie Britt passionately made the case on the need for a new direction and is being criticized by the liberal media. Color me surprised.”)

Maybe it was bad coaching or poor talking points, but the rebuttal did not fly well. Do we live in such different Americas that some thought her remarks would resonate with insecure suburban women or stay-at-home parents on the prairie? I do not know for certain, but she offered no comfort that a Republican administration would change anything or improve the immigration picture at the border, especially as she voted against the long-awaited compromise worked out in the Senate, but killed by words from DJT. How would Republicans who tout tax cuts for the wealthy bring down food costs or make housing more affordable? Since they wish to destroy Obamacare, what is their alternative suggestion?

Where do we go from here? The campaigns are just starting in earnest now; hang on for a long and bumpy ride to November!

Til next week- Peace!

Golden Sneakers, Tees, and Democracy

 

You know the former president always has some kind of game going, whether it is a scheme like his real estate courses and universities or merchandise such as steaks and water. The latest grift involves garish and pricy golden sneakers embellished with a "T", stars, and stripes of red, white, and blue. One can choose either low tops or high tops with the latter costing $399.00. In a speech in South Carolina recently, DJT pushed the "merch", as they say, by touting the appeal of the sneakers and his indictment tee shirts to the African American community. Claiming they knew a lot about indictments, and were thus more attracted to the shirts (which included his mug shot) than perhaps others. He claimed his indictments made more black people like him because they have been discriminated against and they can now view me as I am being discriminated against (with his 91 indictments). 

Reporting by CNN noted:

“Black conservatives, Trump told the crowd gathered for the gala hosted by the Black Conservative Federation, "understand better than most that some of the greatest evils in our nation's history have come from corrupt systems that try to target and subjugate others to deny them their freedom and to deny them their rights. You understand that. I think that's why the Black people are so much on my side now, because they see what's happening to me happens to them."

The GOP front-runner also claimed that Black Americans have "embraced" his mug shot more than anyone else.

"The mug shot, we've all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. It's incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know they do shirts," he said."

"Trump, who has a history of using racist language, railed during his remarks against President Joe Biden, his likely general election rival, accusing him of being a "vicious racist."

He attacked Biden over the 1994 crime bill – which Biden has repeatedly defended his role in but has also pointed to mistakes in the legislation – and over comments the president made in which he recalled working with segregationist senators.

"On top of everything else, Joe Biden really has proven to be a very nasty and vicious racist. He's been a racist," Trump said.

Many African Americans viewed the former president's remarks as insulting. The Biden campaign quickly responded, as reported in the same CNN article:

In a statement following Trump's remarks, Jasmine Harris, the Black media director for the Biden campaign, called the former president "an incompetent, anti-Black tyrant," noting his meeting with a White nationalist shortly after declaring his 2024 candidacy.

Prior to the event, Biden's campaign had put out a statement calling Trump "the proud poster boy for modern racism." It detailed what it described as his "racist record," which included his role in the Central Park Five case and his promotion of the “birtherism" conspiracy theory that targeted former President Barack Obama.

"Come November, no matter how many disingenuous voter engagement events he attends, Black Americans will show Donald Trump we know exactly who he is," Harris said."

Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Washington Post recently, also looked at the issue of racism in the Maga campaign. In this article, she noted:

"The Republican Party wants to have it both ways: appeal to white Christian nationalists and peel off Black voters from Democrats; play up the "great replacement" theory while wooing Hispanics. MAGA Republicans often pull off such jaw-dropping hypocrisy because the docile right-wing media will not ask Republicans hard questions nor point to obvious contradictions. However, now and then, the gap between Republicans' pretense of decency and their real attitudes toward Black people and immigrants becomes glaring to all but the most rabid MAGA voters.

On race, Trump's apologists, including those in "respectable" conservative quarters, insist — despite his rhetoric (e.g., "s-hole countries," "very fine people on both sides") and downplaying endemic racism in policing — that we cannot assume he is a racist. We also are expected to ignore, one supposes, his vendetta against the Central Park Five, his real estate company's history of discrimination, and his failure to appoint a single African American to the circuit courts or the Supreme Court. His slurs against Black female prosecutors and vivid social media posting showing him attacking Black Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg get brushed off by his supporters, who portray him as the real victim."

In other remarks on the campaign trail at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), DJT appeared to go off the rails and move away from his stump speech to predict an apocalyptic future should he not be elected:….

As reported by Jonathan Swan and Michael C. Bender in the New York Times:

"If Mr. Biden is re-elected for a second four-year term, Mr. Trump warned in his speech, Medicare will "collapse." Social Security will "collapse." Health care, in general, will "collapse." So, too, will public education. Millions of manufacturing jobs will be "choked off into extinction." The U.S. economy will be "starved of energy" and there will be "constant blackouts." The Islamist militant group Hamas will "terrorize our streets." There will be a third world war and America will lose it. America itself will face "obliteration."

On the other hand, Mr. Trump promised on Saturday that if he is elected, America will be "richer and safer and stronger and prouder and more beautiful than ever before." Crime in major cities? A thing of the past.

"Chicago could be solved in one day," Mr. Trump said. "New York could be solved in a half a day there."

(Author note -I watched this video. And this was spoken in such a smarmy way, one, only a carnival barker could appreciate. Snake oil sales, anyone? I guess he will just wave his magic wand, the one that takes away our rights as he destroys the Civil Service and our social safety net, or invokes martial law or whatever.

Streets paved with gold–the better to walk on with one's golden sneakers, maybe? The American public, in some places, seems to be buying this propaganda!  As for solving the issues in the cities, remember when he wanted to send troops into Portland? It could well get worse, should he be elected and not have anyone in the Oval Office to tell him NO!)

The reporters provided some fact checking with this article and said:

"In his 2020 campaign, Mr. Trump warned that Mr. Biden would "confiscate your guns," and "destroy your suburbs." He predicted that the economy would sink into a depression worse than the 1930s Great Depression and that the "stock market will crash." A Biden presidency, he predicted four years ago, "would mean that America's seniors have no air conditioning during the summer, no heat during the winter and no electricity during peak hours." And, he warned in July 2020, "you will have no more energy coming out of the great state of Texas, out of New Mexico, out of anywhere."

Some of those past predictions are now checkable, and have turned out to be fictions. The stock market has hit record highs under the Biden administration. Guns haven't been confiscated. Air conditioning is as good or bad as it ever was. And under Mr. Biden, the United States is producing more oil — not only more than it did under Mr. Trump but more than any country ever has."

The fact-checking as above is often missing from reporting.  Major media outlets seldom challenge these wild statements on the campaign trail as the campaigner takes no questions.

Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Washington Post, notes that the former president is losing many voters in the Republican primaries, with only 60% in SC, 50% in Iowa caucuses, and under 60% in NH, even with only token opposition. When a person, claiming incumbency cannot barely win over half of his most committed voters, trouble is in the air.

Rubin further notes that there are Republicans and others out there who can be reached by President Biden:

"Country club Republicans, small-business owners, and many other voters live orderly lives, follow the rules, and rely on stable government with predictable laws and economic policies. With GOP state parties and the House caucus in constant turmoil, Trump's rants flooding social media, and the real risk he will be convicted, Republicans do not offer sane, orderly government. No wonder former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has associated Trump with "chaos."

Biden will seize every opportunity to revisit the chaotic Trump years: fights with allies, a daily barrage of insane tweets, bizarre media conferences, the coronavirus running rampant, spilling classified information (even before leaving office!), and schools closing. (They reopened under Biden.) And, worst of all, he instigated an insurrection, plunging the Capitol into violence and threatening his own vice president's life."

Tonight, the Supreme Court suggested it will have a decision announcement tomorrow. Many assume that the Supreme Court's decision will be about the concern of prohibiting an insurrectionist from running for the highest office in the land. Most conclude that the Court will allow DJT to appear on the state election ballots in question.

However, on the immunity issue that the Appeals Court so tightly summarized against the defendant, causing many to guess the Court would pass on a ruling, the experts were wrong as the Court this week took up a narrow review of the matter, setting oral arguments for April 22nd, seven weeks from now. Thus, in their own sweet partisan way, they further delayed the insurrection trial, quietly fulfilling the wishes of the former president, who still hopes to be elected and make these unpleasant trials and indictments disappear.

(But, wait, there's more – a small matter of fines, fees, and other assessments coming due to the tune of half a billion dollars or so from the two civil trials– AND he says he cannot pay this – stay tuned for the next drama in this saga.)

Watch out, Justices, your party stripes are showing under those robes, leaving many, such as myself, to further doubt the fairness of this and future rulings. Enough for tonight- it is getting dismal out there!

Til next week-Peace!