truthout--2020-09-19--GOP’s Strategy for 2020 Election Looks Like an All-Out Assault on Voting Rights

The Republican Party and its allies have relied on voter suppression tactics for decades , but this year they are pulling out all the stops .
“ I don ’ t want everybody to vote , ” right-wing leader Paul Weyrich infamously said back in 1980 .
“ Elections are not won by a majority of people…As a matter of fact , our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
” During a March appearance on Fox & Friends , President Donald Trump echoed that view while blasting congressional Democrats ’ proposals to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ The things they had in there were crazy , ” Trump exclaimed .
“ They had things — levels of voting that , if you ever agreed to it , you ’ d never have a Republican elected in this country again.
” As the nation inches closer to the November elections , one thing is certain : Billionaire-funded , right-wing advocacy groups , working alongside the Trump campaign , the national Republican Party , and state parties around the nation , are determined to undermine Americans ’ right to vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ democracy a democracy — from every possible angle to retain their political power .
Some of the tactics have stunned political observers and raised fears about the future of American democracy .
After months of baseless attacks on voting by mail , Trump succeeded in getting Louis DeJoy , one of his wealthy megadonors , installed as head of the Postal Service , where he promptly enacted a number of measures that brought mail delivery to a crawl .
And Trump admitted on August 13 that he held up congressional negotiations over coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Postal Service in order to prevent widespread mail-in voting .
“ They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots , ” Trump said .
“ If they don ’ t get [ the funding ] , that means you can ’ t have universal mail-in voting because they ’ re not equipped to have it.
” After enormous outcry from Democratic politicians , advocacy organizations , and the general public — and after mail sorting facilities were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — DeJoy claimed to pause these measures , but significant damage has already been done .
Public confidence in voting by mail has been seriously undermined , and DeJoy said he will not order hundreds of mail sorting machines back online , even as his controversial changes have dramatically slowed down mail in an election season that will see an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus .
And he is stonewalling congressional Democrats ’ requests for documents in the days since his House hearing .
Meanwhile , the GOP and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ range of other strategies to make it harder for people to vote in November .
In addition to DeJoy ’ s seemingly intentional sabotage of the USPS , right-wing groups have put vote-by-mail at risk by fabricating voter fraud stories in an attempt to discourage the practice and undermine public confidence in election results .
The GOP and its outside allies have a major incentive to do this : According to a recent Emerson poll , 67 percent of those who plan to vote by mail are Biden supporters , as compared to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Voters who plan to vote in-person on Election Day break for Trump 57 percent to 37 percent .
In the general election so far , Democrats have a “ massive ” lead in mail-in ballot applications in key battleground states .
The GOP effort to associate mail-in voting with widespread fraud is fundamentally dishonest .
Eliza Sweren-Becker , counsel in the Democracy Program at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice , told CMD , That is precisely what GOP-aligned groups are doing .
The Honest Elections Project ( HEP ) , a group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Leo and led by former Heritage Foundation staffer Jason Snead , has also attacked mail-in voting this year , spending $ 250,000 on ads and calling the practice “ brazen attempt to manipulate the election system for partisan advantage.
” HEP is a legal alias of the 85 Fund , which was formerly named the Judicial Education Project and is almost entirely funded by a dark-money pass-through fund , DonorsTrust , which GOP megadonors such as Charles Koch and the DeVos family use to make nonprofit contributions .
Other major donors to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Charitable , a donor-advised fund sponsor ( $ 215,000 ) , and the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation ( $ 125,000 ) , the charity of Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein , the biggest donor family to GOP outside election spending groups from 2019 through June 2020 .
While at Heritage , Snead developed the think tank ’ s “ Election Fraud Database , ” which the Brennan Center for Justice says “ grossly exaggerated ” the existence of voter fraud .
In August , HEP and a polling firm formerly run by Trump adviser @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fraud that was facilitated by an official from the State Policy Network , a web of right-wing , free-market “ think tanks ” that influences state legislation .
Snead and “ the polling company ” CEO Brent Loyd presented a poll on vote-by-mail messaging , sharing with the viewers that while partisan messaging around the issue isn ’ t very effective , playing up fears of fraud is .
HEP participated in another webinar in May from the Texas Public Policy Foundation ( TPPF ) , a right-wing think tank that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which guests , including Snead , cast mail-in voting as ripe for fraud .
Citing Democrats ’ efforts to encourage safe voting during a massive pandemic , Snead claimed , without irony , “ The purpose behind I think all of this , whether it ’ s through legislation or litigation , is to manipulate the election process to structurally advantage one side at the expense of the other.
” TPPF launched its “ Election Integrity Project ” in March along with a short video alleging that ballot harvesting leads to vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ webinar on Sep. 10 , featuring Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton , who filed a lawsuit to stop Harris County — which includes Houston and is by far the biggest county in the state — from mailing ballot applications to all registered voters .
Paxton made wild claims , without evidence , including that some people want mail-in voting in order to change the election results , and that U.S .
Postal Service workers might commit election fraud because their union endorsed Trump ’ s opponent , Joe Biden .
Paxton even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of an unspecified “ quid-pro-quo ” scheme .
The TPPF moderator , for his part , suggested that young people are fraudulently claiming they ’ re disabled in order to receive mail-in ballots , and that counting votes after Election Day will lead to “ manufacturing ” of votes .
The biggest known recent funder of TPPF is , by far , the Charles Koch Foundation , which donated $ 3.4 million from 2014 to 2018 .
Other large donors since 2014 include the Deason Foundation , the family charity of Texas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 1.7 million ) , DonorsTrust ( $ 1.4 million ) , the Bradley Foundation ( $ 400,000 ) , the Adolph Coors Foundation ( $ 250,000 ) , and the Ed Uihlein Foundation ( $ 200,000 ) .
Mainstream donor-advised fund sponsors have also given big , with Fidelity Charitable ( $ 772,000 ) , Schwab Charitable ( $ 379,000 ) , and Vanguard Charitable ( $ 221,000 ) contributing large amounts since 2014 .
Conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation also puts out a regular stream of misleading voter fraud allegations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the foundation ’ s Election Law Reform Initiative and one of the country ’ s most influential advocates of voter suppression , has recently argued that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud .
Trump and Spakovsky , who has been pushing “ the voter-fraud myth ” for many years , fixate on one example of alleged fraud in a Paterson , NJ race as evidence that the entire vote-by-mail method is untenable .
The reality is that five states conduct their elections entirely by mail , and “ there is not any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fraud ” in these states , according to The Washington Post .
Spakovsky was a member of Trump ’ s “ election integrity ” commission , which Trump created in an attempt to find evidence that millions of people voted illegally for his 2016 opponent .
Trump dissolved in 2018 after it found no evidence of voter fraud in the 2016 elections .
The Heritage Foundation has long been funded by a collection of reliable right-wing foundations .
Since 2014 , the Pittsburgh-based Sarah Scaife Foundation has donated over $ 5.3 million .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ include the donor-advised fund sponsor Schwab Charitable ( $ 3.3 million ) , the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation ( $ 2.2 million ) , the Mercer Family Foundation ( $ 1.5 million ) , the Searle Freedom Trust ( $ 900,000 ) , and the Charles Koch Foundation ( $ 817,000 ) .
Additional foundations linked to GOP megadonors , such as the Wisconsin-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation ( $ 752,000 ) and the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation ( $ 370,000 ) , have also given large sums since 2014 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the innocuously named Public Interest Legal Foundation ( PILF ) , a voter suppression organization led by J. Christian Adams , a member of Trump ’ s failed election integrity commission , and directed by voter suppression attack dogs Mitchell and von Spakovksy .
Adams , testified before the House Judiciary Committee on June 2-3 , during which he lambasted vote-by-mail .
Trump recently tweeted out a video of Adams ’ appearance on Fox Business , during which he fearmongered about inflated mail-ballot fraud .
In July , conserative group the Election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Election Integrity Alliance , wrote a letter to the president , demanding an “ immediate summit ” with Trump to relate “ vital information ” about the alleged dangers of vote-by-mail .
Voter suppression group True the Vote is part of the mail-in ballot fearmongering campaign as well .
In a May episode of the organization ’ s podcast , True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht enlisted the two Republican members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to argue against mail-in voting .
One of the commissioners , Cathy McCormick , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ failed election integrity commission .
As a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP , top vote suppressor Cleta Mitchell has legally represented True the Vote .
She successfully requested a donation to the group in 2013 from the Bradley Foundation , according to documents obtained by CMD .
Mitchell is currently secretary of the Bradley Foundation ’ s Board of Directors .
A recent CMD review of True the Vote ’ s funding found that the largest known donors are the Bradley Foundation and its sister charity , the Bradley Impact Fund , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the group from 2014 to 2018 .
Some elected officials are helping create the narrative that mail-in voting leads to fraud .
On Sep. 8 , Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that 1,000 Georgians voted twice in the state ’ s June 9 primary .
But elections expert and University of Florida professor Michael MacDonald tweeted , “ It is abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis of the primary data posted by the Georgia Secretary of State ’ s office that it is riddled with errors .
Many counties didn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters recorded as casting an accepted mail ballot with no vote history , etc.
” Just a few days earlier , Trump told North Carolinians to vote twice , once by mail and once in-person , which is a felony .
A new ProPublica investigation found that Raffensperger and other Republican state elections officials took part in secret conference calls with Spakovsky .
Raffensperger attended one in April , coordinated by the Heritage Foundation , and he ’ d met with Spakovsky in-person in 2019 .
It ’ s unclear what the participants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ goal ” of the call was to “ gather the chief state election officials together to strategize on advancing their shared goal of ensuring the integrity of the elections they administer in their home states.
” In its 2013 Shelby County v. Holder , the Supreme Court removed a key provision from the Voting Rights Act that subjected areas with a history of racial discrimination to federal preclearance before enacting voting law changes .
After the verdict , states including Texas and Georgia began purging voters from their rolls at much higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center report found that states ’ purges are riddled with errors , and from 2013 to 2018 , four states conducted illegal purges , while four more implemented unlawful purge rules .
In 2017 , Georgia ’ s secretary of state , Brian Kemp , purged hundreds of thousands of voters , at least 107,000 of whom lost their rights because they hadn ’ t voted in previous elections , a policy that disproportionately affects people more likely to vote for Democrats .
The following year , Kemp , who oversaw that state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s race by about 55,000 votes , a race that his Democratic opponent , Stacey Abrams , never conceded .
The state continued to remove voters at a swift pace .
A new report commissioned by the ACLU of Georgia found that the state wrongfully purged nearly 200,000 voters from its rolls in 2019 , an error rate of 63 percent .
A planned voter purge of 235,000 voters in Ohio in 2019 would have wrongfully removed at least 40,000 eligible voters if citizen activists hadn ’ t stepped in to conduct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible because Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose gave the League of Women Voters of Ohio a list of the names in advance .
Similar purges have occurred in many states in recent years , and this year , in Wisconsin , a potential purge has hung in the balance .
The state ’ s elections commission had planned to give voters until 2021 to confirm their addresses and registration status before being removed from the rolls , but the Bradley Foundation and Charles Koch-backed Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty ( WILL @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immediate purge of 232,000 voters .
The purge would disproportionately affect people who tend to be liberal ; voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods or areas with large student populations were at the highest risk of being disenfranchised .
The right-wing WILL wanted this purge of liberal voters to occur before the 2020 presidential election in a swing state that Trump won by just 22,000 votes in 2016 .
A judge blocked the fast-tracked purge in February , and the state Supreme Court will hear the case on Sept. 29 .
Since the state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have confirmed their information , but as of May , 129,000 Wisconsinites were set to be purged .
The Bradley Foundation is by far the biggest known donor to WILL , having given nearly $ 6 million to the group since 2011 .
Other top contributors include the foundation of the Waltons , who own Walmart ( $ 1.5 million since 2014 ) , the Kern Family Foundation ( $ 1.5 million since 2012 ) , and DonorsTrust ( $ 343,000 since 2014 ) .
Individual conservative donor Dianne Hendricks , a former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individual WILL donor , gave WILL $ 75,000 in 2014 , a fraction of the more than $ 800,000 she has donated since 1991 , according to CMD ’ s research .
In a pressure campaign , the Honest Elections Project is targeting election officials in three key swing states : Colorado , Florida , and North Carolina .
The group is using misleading data to accuse jurisdictions of having bloated voter rolls and threatening legal action , ” according to The Guardian and the Center for Responsive Politics .
PILF has engaged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for years and continued to do so during this election in swing states such as Florida , Michigan , and North Carolina .
“ PILF uses an unreliable and inaccurate assessment of voter registration rates ” to make false claims about the numbers of registered voters , according to the Brennan Center for Justice .
In 2017 , PILF , along with other right-wing operations including True the Vote , sent threatening letters to 250 election officials to compel the officials to remove voters from the rolls , threatening litigation .
Also that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ names of alleged undocumented immigrants who had voted , resulting in a legal settlement with three plaintiffs who were U.S. citizens , represented by progressive groups , in 2019 .
The lawsuit accused PILF of defamation and voter intimidation .
PILF removed the names , and Adams apologized .
A lawyer for the League of Women Voters who has opposed PILF in legal matters , told Reuters that the group has a pattern of “ targeting minority communities , especially Black and brown ones , if it turns out they could influence an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Adams , who has claimed there is an “ alien invasion ” at the voting booth , to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Aug. 6 .
The Bradley foundations , again , lead PILF ’ s known donor list .
Together , the Bradley Foundation and the Bradley Impact Fund have combined to donate over $ 1.4 million to PILF since 2014 .
Also since then , DonorsTrust ( $ 651,000 ) , the Sarah Scaife Foundation ( $ 600,000 ) , Wall Street executive , the John William Pope Foundation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ megadonor Paul Singer ( $ 250,000 ) , have given to PILF .
Art Pope , chairman of the Pope Foundation , is also chairman of the Bradley Foundation board and a close ally of Charles Koch , having co-founded Koch ’ s main political advocacy organization , Americans for Prosperity .
Two more conservative groups , Judicial Watch and Election Integrity Project California , are jointly pressuring officials to purge their voter rolls .
In April , Judicial Watch filed lawsuits in the swing states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania to urge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups began working together in California , an effort that could result in Los Angeles Country removing 1.5 million voters from its rolls .
Since 2014 , Judicial Watch has received $ 1.4 million from the foundation of Home Depot co-founder and GOP megadonor Bernie Marcus , as well as nearly $ 1.3 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation .
Donor-advised fund sponsors Fidelity Charitable ( $ 1.3 million ) , Schwab Charitable ( $ 846,000 ) , and Vanguard Charitable ( $ 247,000 ) gave large sums .
DonorsTrust has added $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ NBC News reported that the Republican Party was seeking to recruit 50,000 volunteers to act as “ poll watchers ” in the 2020 general elections .
Voting rights advocates warn that this effort by the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign could target and intimidate voters of color , who tend to vote for Democrats .
The alleged reason for the poll watcher recruitment is widespread voter fraud , something that researchers and even Trump ’ s own commission could not prove exists .
The GOP has a history of using poll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In 1981 , the Democratic Party sued the GOP for allegedly sending armed , off-duty police officers to patrol the polls in minority neighborhoods , resulting in a consent decree requiring Republicans to get judicial approval before coordinating poll watching .
The decree expired in 2017 , and a judge resisted renewing it the following year .
In some states , including the swing state of Michigan , these volunteers can challenge a voter ’ s eligibility .
In Michigan , if a poll watcher has “ good reason ” to believe a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leave the line , answer questions about their citizenship , age , residency , and date of voter registration , take an oath attesting that their answers are true , and vote using a special ballot .
As the GOP organizes its largest poll watching operation in decades , allied outside groups are doing the same .
True the Vote was accused of using poll watchers to intimidate minority voters in 2010 .
This year , the group is at it again .
True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht even floated the idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Seals , to police the polls at a meeting of the right-wing Council for National Policy in February .
She recently told Reuters that her group hopes to sign up 10,000 poll watchers for the general election and is especially focused on recruiting ex-law enforcement and veterans .
True the Vote offers free poll watcher training on its website .
“ This course is led by Alan Vera , head of Republican Party Ballot Security in Harris County , Texas , however be assured this is nonpartisan training , ” the site dubiously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Carolina case this year in defense of the state ’ s poll observer law , representing the Voter Integrity Project-N.C. , a “ founding member ” of the Election Integrity Alliance .
According to the president of the Asheville , NC League of Women Voters in 2014 , the Voter Integrity project “ targets minority and Democratic-leaning districts , leading to voter disenfranchisement and voter intimidation , ” and has worked to remove homeless people from the rolls .
Voter Integrity Project-N.C. ’ s founder , Jay DeLancy , originally founded a North @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but the latter group severed ties with DeLancy over his anti-immigrant views .
Two think tanks funded by Art Pope , a co-founder of Koch ’ s Americans for Prosperity and part of the Koch political donor network , have praised and shared the Voter Integrity Project ’ s work .
Pope is on the Bradley Foundation board along with Mitchell .
As GOP-led state legislatures advocated numerous bills to restrict access to voting this year , the Republican National Committee ( RNC ) launched a $ 20 million legal initiative called “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight Democrats ’ “ assault on the integrity of our elections , ” which , allegedly , will “ eliminate nearly every safeguard in our elections.
” What the program is actually doing is trying to hinder Americans ’ opportunities to vote in every way possible .
The RNC was involved in 41 lawsuits in 19 states as of late August , according to Chair Ronna McDaniel .
“ We have seen across the country efforts [ by the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign ] to challenge new legislation or new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to access ballot applications or the ballots themselves , ” said the Brennan Center ’ s Sweren-Becker .
The Trump campaign and the RNC are suing states that have enacted measures to encourage voting by mail .
In August , they filed lawsuits in New Jersey and Nevada after the states ’ governors announced that all registered voters would receive mail-in ballots .
In May , the RNC and the California GOP sued Democratic Gov .
Gavin Newsome over the state ’ s plans to send ballots to all active registered voters .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ from easily accessing the ballot , Trump and the RNC want to hinder their ability to deliver the ballot back to elections boards .
They sued the Secretary of State of Pennsylvania in hopes of preventing the use of mail-ballot drop boxes , “ which are widely used and have been a secure method of returning ballots in many states for many years , ” according to Sweren-Becker .
In Arizona , Trump and the RNC sued to block a lawsuit from six Navajo plaintiffs who say that the state ’ s requirements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by 7pm on Election Day , as opposed to a postmark deadline that day , will disenfranchise Native Americans .
Most recently , the Trump campaign , the RNC , the National Republican Senatorial Campaign , and the Montana GOP sued Montana after Gov .
Steve Bullock and the Secretary of State gave counties the option of holding all-mail elections .
Incumbent Republican Sen. Steve Daines faces a tough challenge from Bullock in November .
A legal complaint from the plaintiffs calls the mail-in policy a “ brazen power grab , ” despite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by mail for years .
“ In the primary , even *state Republicans* supported mailing every voter a ballot , & even many GOP counties have opted to do so for November , ” Daily Kos ’ s Stephen Wolf pointed out in a tweet .
Local Republican parties are also waging lawsuits to restrict residents ’ voting rights .
Republicans in Harris County , Texas sued the county clerk over a plan to send ballot applications , which voters need to send to the county in order to receive actual ballots , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over two million .
On Sep. 2 , the state Supreme Court temporarily halted the ballot plan .
Attorney General Paxton launched his own challenge to the plan as well .
While it fights ballot applications in Harris County , the state GOP is sending ballot applications and pro-Trump literature to potential Republican voters .
Overturning the Will of the People In at least one state , Republican politicians have overturned the will of their state ’ s voters to expand the electorate , with potentially major implications for the presidential election .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ passed a constitutional amendment granting ex-felons the right to vote .
These felons , many of whom are people of color , were more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans , and the GOP-controlled state legislature passed a law , supported by GOP Gov .
Ron DeSantis , requiring ex-felons to pay all outstanding fines and legal fees before being allowed to participate in our democracy .
HEP filed an amicus brief in support of the law , while opponents say it amounts to a poll tax on ex-felons .
Lawyers argued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Court of Appeals in August , and on Sep. 11 , the court upheld the GOP-backed law , meaning hundreds of thousands of ex-felons will not be able to vote in November .
Of the 10 judges on the court who heard the case , five are Trump appointees .
These five joined Chief Justice William Pryor , Jr. , a George W. Bush appointee , in the majority decision .
According to Slate justice reporter Mark Joseph Stern , “ Judge Bill Pryor ’ s decision upholding Florida ’ s poll tax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dishonest , misleading , and despicable voting rights opinions I have ever read .
It is shockingly bad—an affront of the very notion that Americans have a right to vote.
” The conservative voter suppression network is large but contains many overlapping operatives and initiatives .
One initiative that ties many of these actors together is PILF ’ s national task force on “ election integrity , ” a virtual who ’ s who of voter suppression , which published “ Standards for Voting by Mail ” in June .
Members include : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Claremont Institute ’ s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence • Rep. Shawnna Bolick , Republican Arizona legislator and spouse of Clint Bolick , an Arizona Supreme Court Justice and former president of litigation for the Goldwater Institute Two members of the PILF task for are also leading a secret working group of the American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC ) that is focused on redistricting and election law .
ALEC , a pay-to-play network of corporate lobbyists and state lawmakers who write model legislation together , created the group in 2019 .
Mitchell , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Action president Michael Bowman chair the working group .
ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson invited ten state legislators to join the group in an email obtained by Documented .
CMD identified over $ 77 million that prominent right-wing funders and donor-advised funds have pumped into groups with voter suppression operations since 2014 .
The largest funders are listed below .

The Republican Party and its allies are taking an “all-of-the-above” approach to restrict voting as much as possible.
The Republican Party and its allies have relied on voter suppression tactics for decades, but this year they are pulling out all the stops.
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” right-wing leader Paul Weyrich infamously said back in 1980. “Elections are not won by a majority of people…As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
During a March appearance on Fox & Friends, President Donald Trump echoed that view while blasting congressional Democrats’ proposals to make voting easier during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The things they had in there were crazy,” Trump exclaimed. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
As the nation inches closer to the November elections, one thing is certain: Billionaire-funded, right-wing advocacy groups, working alongside the Trump campaign, the national Republican Party, and state parties around the nation, are determined to undermine Americans’ right to vote — the very practice that makes a democracy a democracy — from every possible angle to retain their political power.
Some of the tactics have stunned political observers and raised fears about the future of American democracy. After months of baseless attacks on voting by mail, Trump succeeded in getting Louis DeJoy, one of his wealthy megadonors, installed as head of the Postal Service, where he promptly enacted a number of measures that brought mail delivery to a crawl.
And Trump admitted on August 13 that he held up congressional negotiations over coronavirus relief to block increased funding for the Postal Service in order to prevent widespread mail-in voting.
“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said. “If they don’t get [the funding], that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
After enormous outcry from Democratic politicians, advocacy organizations, and the general public — and after mail sorting facilities were strewn with dead animals and rotting food — DeJoy claimed to pause these measures, but significant damage has already been done.
Public confidence in voting by mail has been seriously undermined, and DeJoy said he will not order hundreds of mail sorting machines back online, even as his controversial changes have dramatically slowed down mail in an election season that will see an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus. And he is stonewalling congressional Democrats’ requests for documents in the days since his House hearing.
Meanwhile, the GOP and outside groups are aggressively pursuing a wide range of other strategies to make it harder for people to vote in November.
Undermining Mail-in Voting
In addition to DeJoy’s seemingly intentional sabotage of the USPS, right-wing groups have put vote-by-mail at risk by fabricating voter fraud stories in an attempt to discourage the practice and undermine public confidence in election results.
The GOP and its outside allies have a major incentive to do this: According to a recent Emerson poll, 67 percent of those who plan to vote by mail are Biden supporters, as compared to just 28 percent of Trump fans. Voters who plan to vote in-person on Election Day break for Trump 57 percent to 37 percent.
In the general election so far, Democrats have a “massive” lead in mail-in ballot applications in key battleground states.
The GOP effort to associate mail-in voting with widespread fraud is fundamentally dishonest. Eliza Sweren-Becker, counsel in the Democracy Program at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, told CMD,
Voter fraud is exceedingly rare. It is exceedingly rare also in mail-voting systems. The five states that do their elections predominantly or almost exclusively by mail have had no major voter fraud scandals in the many years that they’ve been conducting elections in that way. This is once again an effort to gin up the myth of voter fraud to justify either restrictions on elections or how voters can cast their ballots to scare voters off from using an absolutely valid method of casting and returning their ballots.
That is precisely what GOP-aligned groups are doing.
The Honest Elections Project (HEP), a group tied to former Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo and led by former Heritage Foundation staffer Jason Snead, has also attacked mail-in voting this year, spending $250,000 on ads and calling the practice “brazen attempt to manipulate the election system for partisan advantage.”
HEP is a legal alias of the 85 Fund, which was formerly named the Judicial Education Project and is almost entirely funded by a dark-money pass-through fund, DonorsTrust, which GOP megadonors such as Charles Koch and the DeVos family use to make nonprofit contributions. Other major donors to the Judicial Education Project since 2014 include Vanguard Charitable, a donor-advised fund sponsor ($215,000), and the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation ($125,000), the charity of Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the biggest donor family to GOP outside election spending groups from 2019 through June 2020.
While at Heritage, Snead developed the think tank’s “Election Fraud Database,” which the Brennan Center for Justice says “grossly exaggerated” the existence of voter fraud.
In August, HEP and a polling firm formerly run by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway held a webinar on voter fraud that was facilitated by an official from the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing, free-market “think tanks” that influences state legislation. Snead and “the polling company” CEO Brent Loyd presented a poll on vote-by-mail messaging, sharing with the viewers that while partisan messaging around the issue isn’t very effective, playing up fears of fraud is.
HEP participated in another webinar in May from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a right-wing think tank that’s part of the State Policy Network, in which guests, including Snead, cast mail-in voting as ripe for fraud.
Citing Democrats’ efforts to encourage safe voting during a massive pandemic, Snead claimed, without irony, “The purpose behind I think all of this, whether it’s through legislation or litigation, is to manipulate the election process to structurally advantage one side at the expense of the other.”
TPPF launched its “Election Integrity Project” in March along with a short video alleging that ballot harvesting leads to vote tampering.
The group hosted an anti-mail-in-ballots webinar on Sep. 10, featuring Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed a lawsuit to stop Harris County — which includes Houston and is by far the biggest county in the state — from mailing ballot applications to all registered voters. Paxton made wild claims, without evidence, including that some people want mail-in voting in order to change the election results, and that U.S. Postal Service workers might commit election fraud because their union endorsed Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden. Paxton even claimed that people commit voter fraud as part of an unspecified “quid-pro-quo” scheme.
The TPPF moderator, for his part, suggested that young people are fraudulently claiming they’re disabled in order to receive mail-in ballots, and that counting votes after Election Day will lead to “manufacturing” of votes.
The biggest known recent funder of TPPF is, by far, the Charles Koch Foundation, which donated $3.4 million from 2014 to 2018. Other large donors since 2014 include the Deason Foundation, the family charity of Texas GOP megadonors Doug and Darwin Deason ($1.7 million), DonorsTrust ($1.4 million), the Bradley Foundation ($400,000), the Adolph Coors Foundation ($250,000), and the Ed Uihlein Foundation ($200,000). Mainstream donor-advised fund sponsors have also given big, with Fidelity Charitable ($772,000), Schwab Charitable ($379,000), and Vanguard Charitable ($221,000) contributing large amounts since 2014.
Conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation also puts out a regular stream of misleading voter fraud allegations. Hans von Spakovsky, the manager of the foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and one of the country’s most influential advocates of voter suppression, has recently argued that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud. Trump and Spakovsky, who has been pushing “the voter-fraud myth” for many years, fixate on one example of alleged fraud in a Paterson, NJ race as evidence that the entire vote-by-mail method is untenable. The reality is that five states conduct their elections entirely by mail, and “there is not any evidence of routine or even statistically significant fraud” in these states, according to The Washington Post.
Spakovsky was a member of Trump’s “election integrity” commission, which Trump created in an attempt to find evidence that millions of people voted illegally for his 2016 opponent. Trump dissolved in 2018 after it found no evidence of voter fraud in the 2016 elections.
The Heritage Foundation has long been funded by a collection of reliable right-wing foundations. Since 2014, the Pittsburgh-based Sarah Scaife Foundation has donated over $5.3 million. Other top funders of the Heritage Foundation include the donor-advised fund sponsor Schwab Charitable ($3.3 million), the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation ($2.2 million), the Mercer Family Foundation ($1.5 million), the Searle Freedom Trust ($900,000), and the Charles Koch Foundation ($817,000). Additional foundations linked to GOP megadonors, such as the Wisconsin-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation ($752,000) and the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation ($370,000), have also given large sums since 2014.
Also involved in the vote-by-mail misinformation campaign is the innocuously named Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a voter suppression organization led by J. Christian Adams, a member of Trump’s failed election integrity commission, and directed by voter suppression attack dogs Mitchell and von Spakovksy. Adams, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on June 2-3, during which he lambasted vote-by-mail. Trump recently tweeted out a video of Adams’ appearance on Fox Business, during which he fearmongered about inflated mail-ballot fraud.
In July, conserative group the Election Integrity Project California, which is part of the Election Integrity Alliance, wrote a letter to the president, demanding an “immediate summit” with Trump to relate “vital information” about the alleged dangers of vote-by-mail.
Voter suppression group True the Vote is part of the mail-in ballot fearmongering campaign as well. In a May episode of the organization’s podcast, True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht enlisted the two Republican members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to argue against mail-in voting. One of the commissioners, Cathy McCormick, was a member of Trump’s failed election integrity commission.
As a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, top vote suppressor Cleta Mitchell has legally represented True the Vote. She successfully requested a donation to the group in 2013 from the Bradley Foundation, according to documents obtained by CMD. Mitchell is currently secretary of the Bradley Foundation’s Board of Directors.
A recent CMD review of True the Vote’s funding found that the largest known donors are the Bradley Foundation and its sister charity, the Bradley Impact Fund, which combined to give $367,000 to the group from 2014 to 2018.
Some elected officials are helping create the narrative that mail-in voting leads to fraud. On Sep. 8, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that 1,000 Georgians voted twice in the state’s June 9 primary. But elections expert and University of Florida professor Michael MacDonald tweeted, “It is abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis of the primary data posted by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office that it is riddled with errors. Many counties didn’t enter late rejected ballots, voters recorded as casting an accepted mail ballot with no vote history, etc.”
Just a few days earlier, Trump told North Carolinians to vote twice, once by mail and once in-person, which is a felony.
A new ProPublica investigation found that Raffensperger and other Republican state elections officials took part in secret conference calls with Spakovsky. Raffensperger attended one in April, coordinated by the Heritage Foundation, and he’d met with Spakovsky in-person in 2019. It’s unclear what the participants discussed, but one invitation said the “goal” of the call was to “gather the chief state election officials together to strategize on advancing their shared goal of ensuring the integrity of the elections they administer in their home states.”
Voter Purges
In its 2013 Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court removed a key provision from the Voting Rights Act that subjected areas with a history of racial discrimination to federal preclearance before enacting voting law changes. After the verdict, states including Texas and Georgia began purging voters from their rolls at much higher rates than before. A 2018 Brennan Center report found that states’ purges are riddled with errors, and from 2013 to 2018, four states conducted illegal purges, while four more implemented unlawful purge rules.
In 2017, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, purged hundreds of thousands of voters, at least 107,000 of whom lost their rights because they hadn’t voted in previous elections, a policy that disproportionately affects people more likely to vote for Democrats. The following year, Kemp, who oversaw that state’s elections, won the governor’s race by about 55,000 votes, a race that his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, never conceded.
The state continued to remove voters at a swift pace. A new report commissioned by the ACLU of Georgia found that the state wrongfully purged nearly 200,000 voters from its rolls in 2019, an error rate of 63 percent.
A planned voter purge of 235,000 voters in Ohio in 2019 would have wrongfully removed at least 40,000 eligible voters if citizen activists hadn’t stepped in to conduct a huge investigation, which was only possible because Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose gave the League of Women Voters of Ohio a list of the names in advance.
Similar purges have occurred in many states in recent years, and this year, in Wisconsin, a potential purge has hung in the balance. The state’s elections commission had planned to give voters until 2021 to confirm their addresses and registration status before being removed from the rolls, but the Bradley Foundation and Charles Koch-backed Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) sued the commission to force an immediate purge of 232,000 voters. The purge would disproportionately affect people who tend to be liberal; voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods or areas with large student populations were at the highest risk of being disenfranchised. The right-wing WILL wanted this purge of liberal voters to occur before the 2020 presidential election in a swing state that Trump won by just 22,000 votes in 2016.
A judge blocked the fast-tracked purge in February, and the state Supreme Court will hear the case on Sept. 29. Since the state notified the 232,000 flagged voters, some have confirmed their information, but as of May, 129,000 Wisconsinites were set to be purged.
The Bradley Foundation is by far the biggest known donor to WILL, having given nearly $6 million to the group since 2011. Other top contributors include the foundation of the Waltons, who own Walmart ($1.5 million since 2014), the Kern Family Foundation ($1.5 million since 2012), and DonorsTrust ($343,000 since 2014). Individual conservative donor Dianne Hendricks, a former Bradley Foundation board member and the largest individual WILL donor, gave WILL $75,000 in 2014, a fraction of the more than $800,000 she has donated since 1991, according to CMD’s research.
In a pressure campaign, the Honest Elections Project is targeting election officials in three key swing states: Colorado, Florida, and North Carolina. The group is using misleading data to accuse jurisdictions of having bloated voter rolls and threatening legal action,” according to The Guardian and the Center for Responsive Politics.
PILF has engaged in politically motivated scrutiny of voter rolls for years and continued to do so during this election in swing states such as Florida, Michigan, and North Carolina.
“PILF uses an unreliable and inaccurate assessment of voter registration rates” to make false claims about the numbers of registered voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In 2017, PILF, along with other right-wing operations including True the Vote, sent threatening letters to 250 election officials to compel the officials to remove voters from the rolls, threatening litigation.
Also that year, PILF listed on its website names of alleged undocumented immigrants who had voted, resulting in a legal settlement with three plaintiffs who were U.S. citizens, represented by progressive groups, in 2019. The lawsuit accused PILF of defamation and voter intimidation. PILF removed the names, and Adams apologized.
A lawyer for the League of Women Voters who has opposed PILF in legal matters, told Reuters that the group has a pattern of “targeting minority communities, especially Black and brown ones, if it turns out they could influence an election.”
Trump appointed PILF’s Adams, who has claimed there is an “alien invasion” at the voting booth, to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Aug. 6.
The Bradley foundations, again, lead PILF’s known donor list. Together, the Bradley Foundation and the Bradley Impact Fund have combined to donate over $1.4 million to PILF since 2014. Also since then, DonorsTrust ($651,000), the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($600,000), Wall Street executive, the John William Pope Foundation ($350,000), and GOP megadonor Paul Singer ($250,000), have given to PILF. Art Pope, chairman of the Pope Foundation, is also chairman of the Bradley Foundation board and a close ally of Charles Koch, having co-founded Koch’s main political advocacy organization, Americans for Prosperity.
Two more conservative groups, Judicial Watch and Election Integrity Project California, are jointly pressuring officials to purge their voter rolls. In April, Judicial Watch filed lawsuits in the swing states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania to urge purges. In 2017, the two groups began working together in California, an effort that could result in Los Angeles Country removing 1.5 million voters from its rolls.
Since 2014, Judicial Watch has received $1.4 million from the foundation of Home Depot co-founder and GOP megadonor Bernie Marcus, as well as nearly $1.3 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Donor-advised fund sponsors Fidelity Charitable ($1.3 million), Schwab Charitable ($846,000), and Vanguard Charitable ($247,000) gave large sums. DonorsTrust has added $91,000 since 2014.
Voter Intimidation
In June, NBC News reported that the Republican Party was seeking to recruit 50,000 volunteers to act as “poll watchers” in the 2020 general elections. Voting rights advocates warn that this effort by the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign could target and intimidate voters of color, who tend to vote for Democrats. The alleged reason for the poll watcher recruitment is widespread voter fraud, something that researchers and even Trump’s own commission could not prove exists.
The GOP has a history of using poll watchers to intimidate likely Democratic voters. In 1981, the Democratic Party sued the GOP for allegedly sending armed, off-duty police officers to patrol the polls in minority neighborhoods, resulting in a consent decree requiring Republicans to get judicial approval before coordinating poll watching. The decree expired in 2017, and a judge resisted renewing it the following year.
In some states, including the swing state of Michigan, these volunteers can challenge a voter’s eligibility. In Michigan, if a poll watcher has “good reason” to believe a voter is ineligible, the voter must leave the line, answer questions about their citizenship, age, residency, and date of voter registration, take an oath attesting that their answers are true, and vote using a special ballot.
As the GOP organizes its largest poll watching operation in decades, allied outside groups are doing the same.
True the Vote was accused of using poll watchers to intimidate minority voters in 2010. This year, the group is at it again. True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht even floated the idea of using veterans, even retired Navy Seals, to police the polls at a meeting of the right-wing Council for National Policy in February. She recently told Reuters that her group hopes to sign up 10,000 poll watchers for the general election and is especially focused on recruiting ex-law enforcement and veterans.
True the Vote offers free poll watcher training on its website. “This course is led by Alan Vera, head of Republican Party Ballot Security in Harris County, Texas, however be assured this is nonpartisan training,” the site dubiously claims.
PILF intervened in a North Carolina case this year in defense of the state’s poll observer law, representing the Voter Integrity Project-N.C., a “founding member” of the Election Integrity Alliance. According to the president of the Asheville, NC League of Women Voters in 2014, the Voter Integrity project “targets minority and Democratic-leaning districts, leading to voter disenfranchisement and voter intimidation,” and has worked to remove homeless people from the rolls.
Voter Integrity Project-N.C.’s founder, Jay DeLancy, originally founded a North Carolina branch of True the Vote, but the latter group severed ties with DeLancy over his anti-immigrant views. Two think tanks funded by Art Pope, a co-founder of Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and part of the Koch political donor network, have praised and shared the Voter Integrity Project’s work. Pope is on the Bradley Foundation board along with Mitchell.
GOP Lawsuits
As GOP-led state legislatures advocated numerous bills to restrict access to voting this year, the Republican National Committee (RNC) launched a $20 million legal initiative called “Protect the Vote,” claiming to fight Democrats’ “assault on the integrity of our elections,” which, allegedly, will “eliminate nearly every safeguard in our elections.”
What the program is actually doing is trying to hinder Americans’ opportunities to vote in every way possible. The RNC was involved in 41 lawsuits in 19 states as of late August, according to Chair Ronna McDaniel.
“We have seen across the country efforts [by the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign] to challenge new legislation or new executive actions that actually make it easier to access ballot applications or the ballots themselves,” said the Brennan Center’s Sweren-Becker.
The Trump campaign and the RNC are suing states that have enacted measures to encourage voting by mail. In August, they filed lawsuits in New Jersey and Nevada after the states’ governors announced that all registered voters would receive mail-in ballots. In May, the RNC and the California GOP sued Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsome over the state’s plans to send ballots to all active registered voters.
In addition to trying to block voters from easily accessing the ballot, Trump and the RNC want to hinder their ability to deliver the ballot back to elections boards. They sued the Secretary of State of Pennsylvania in hopes of preventing the use of mail-ballot drop boxes, “which are widely used and have been a secure method of returning ballots in many states for many years,” according to Sweren-Becker. In Arizona, Trump and the RNC sued to block a lawsuit from six Navajo plaintiffs who say that the state’s requirements that elections boards must receive all ballots by 7pm on Election Day, as opposed to a postmark deadline that day, will disenfranchise Native Americans.
Most recently, the Trump campaign, the RNC, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign, and the Montana GOP sued Montana after Gov. Steve Bullock and the Secretary of State gave counties the option of holding all-mail elections. Incumbent Republican Sen. Steve Daines faces a tough challenge from Bullock in November. A legal complaint from the plaintiffs calls the mail-in policy a “brazen power grab,” despite that Montana has held its elections mostly by mail for years.
“In the primary, even *state Republicans* supported mailing every voter a ballot, & even many GOP counties have opted to do so for November,” Daily Kos’s Stephen Wolf pointed out in a tweet.
Local Republican parties are also waging lawsuits to restrict residents’ voting rights.
Republicans in Harris County, Texas sued the county clerk over a plan to send ballot applications, which voters need to send to the county in order to receive actual ballots, to its registered voters, who total over two million. On Sep. 2, the state Supreme Court temporarily halted the ballot plan. Attorney General Paxton launched his own challenge to the plan as well.
While it fights ballot applications in Harris County, the state GOP is sending ballot applications and pro-Trump literature to potential Republican voters.
Overturning the Will of the People
In at least one state, Republican politicians have overturned the will of their state’s voters to expand the electorate, with potentially major implications for the presidential election.
In 2019, two-thirds of Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment granting ex-felons the right to vote. These felons, many of whom are people of color, were more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans, and the GOP-controlled state legislature passed a law, supported by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, requiring ex-felons to pay all outstanding fines and legal fees before being allowed to participate in our democracy.
HEP filed an amicus brief in support of the law, while opponents say it amounts to a poll tax on ex-felons. Lawyers argued the case before the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in August, and on Sep. 11, the court upheld the GOP-backed law, meaning hundreds of thousands of ex-felons will not be able to vote in November. Of the 10 judges on the court who heard the case, five are Trump appointees. These five joined Chief Justice William Pryor, Jr., a George W. Bush appointee, in the majority decision.
According to Slate justice reporter Mark Joseph Stern, “Judge Bill Pryor’s decision upholding Florida’s poll tax on ex-felons is one of the most dishonest, misleading, and despicable voting rights opinions I have ever read. It is shockingly bad—an affront of the very notion that Americans have a right to vote.”
A Growing Voter Suppression Network
The conservative voter suppression network is large but contains many overlapping operatives and initiatives. One initiative that ties many of these actors together is PILF’s national task force on “election integrity,” a virtual who’s who of voter suppression, which published “Standards for Voting by Mail” in June. Members include:
J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel, PILF
Robert Alt, president and CEO, The Buckeye Institute
Ken Blackwell, senior fellow, Family Research Council
Francisco R. Canseco, director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Election Integrity Project
Chuck DeVore, vice president of national initiatives, Texas Public Policy Foundation
John Eastman, director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
Pete Hutchinson, president, Landmark Legal Foundation
Cleta Mitchell, chairman, PILF; secretary, Bradley Foundation
David Norcross, general counsel, RNC
Linda Paine, president, Election Integrity Project California
Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative
Rep. Shawnna Bolick, Republican Arizona legislator and spouse of Clint Bolick, an Arizona Supreme Court Justice and former president of litigation for the Goldwater Institute
Two members of the PILF task for are also leading a secret working group of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that is focused on redistricting and election law. ALEC, a pay-to-play network of corporate lobbyists and state lawmakers who write model legislation together, created the group in 2019.
Mitchell, Arizona state Rep. Bolick, and ALEC Action president Michael Bowman chair the working group. ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson invited ten state legislators to join the group in an email obtained by Documented.
CMD identified over $77 million that prominent right-wing funders and donor-advised funds have pumped into groups with voter suppression operations since 2014. The largest funders are listed below.
David Armiak contributed research to this report.
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truthout--2020-09-19--Hospitals Serving the Poor Close as Investors and Electeds Refuse to Rescue Them

Victor Coronado felt lightheaded one morning last month when he stood up to grab an iced tea .
The right side of his body suddenly felt heavy .
He heard himself slur his words .
“ That ’ s when I knew I was going to have a stroke , ” he said .
Coronado was rushed to Mercy Hospital & Medical Center , the hospital nearest his home on Chicago ’ s South Side .
Doctors there pumped medicine into his veins to break up the clot that had traveled to his brain .
Coronado may outlive the hospital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago as the city ’ s first hospital , Mercy survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 but is succumbing to modern economics , which have underfinanced the hospitals serving the poor .
In July , the 412-bed hospital informed state regulators it planned to shutter all inpatient services as soon as February .
“ If something else happens , who is to say if the responders can get my husband to the nearest hospital ?
” said Coronado ’ s wife , Sallie .
While rural hospitals have been closing at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a number of inner-city hospitals now face a similar fate .
And experts fear that the economic damage inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic on safety-net hospitals and the ailing finances of the cities and states that subsidize them are helping push some urban hospitals over the edge .
By the nature of their mission , safety-net hospitals , wherever they are , struggle because they treat a large share of patients who are uninsured — and can ’ t pay bills — or are covered by Medicaid , whose payments don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confront additional threats beyond what rural hospitals do .
State-of-the-art hospitals in affluent city neighborhoods are luring more of the safety-net hospitals ’ best-insured patients .
These combined financial pressures have been exacerbated by the pandemic at a time their role has become more important : Their core patients — the poor and people of color — have been disproportionately stricken by COVID-19 in metropolitan regions like Chicago .
“ We ’ ve had three hospital closures in the last year or so , all of them Black neighborhoods , ” said Dr. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community health equity at Rush University Medical Center , a teaching hospital on Chicago ’ s West Side .
He said the decision to close Mercy “ is really criminal in my mind , because people will die as a result.
” Mercy is following the same lethal path as did two other hospitals with largely lower-income patient bases that shuttered last year : Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia , and Providence Hospital in Washington , D.C. , which ended its inpatient services .
Washington ’ s only public hospital , United Medical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poorest ward — is slated to close in 2023 as well , and some services are already curtailed .
So far , urban hospital closures have remained infrequent compared with the cascading disappearance of their rural counterparts .
But the closing of a few could portend problems at others .
Even some of those that remain open may cut back crucial specialties like labor and delivery services or trauma care , forcing patients to travel farther for help when minutes can matter .
Nancy Kane , an adjunct professor at Harvard T.H .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ studied urban safety-net hospital changes since 2010 , said that “ some close , but most of them have tried to get into a bigger system and hang on for a few more years until management closes them.
” For much of the 20th century , most cities ran their own hospitals to care for the indigent .
But after the creation of Medicare and Medicaid , and as the rising cost of health care became a burden for local budgets , many jurisdictions turned away from that model .
Today only 498 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are owned by governments or a public hospital district .
Instead , many hospitals in low-income urban neighborhoods are run by nonprofits — often faith-based — and in some cases , for-profit corporations .
In recent years owners have unloaded safety-net hospitals to entities with limited patience for keeping them alive .
In 2018 , the for-profit hospital chain Tenet Healthcare Corp. sold Hahnemann to Joel Freedman , a California private equity investor , for $ 170 million .
A year later , Freedman filed for bankruptcy on the hospital , saying its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ real estate , including the physical building , into another corporation , which could ease its sale to developers .
In 2018 , Tenet sold another safety-net hospital , Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park , Illinois , a suburb west of Chicago , to a private investment company .
Two weeks after the sale , the firm announced it would close the hospital , which ultimately led the owners to pay Melrose Park $ 1.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging they had misled local officials by claiming before the sale they would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are also struggling to stay open .
Hoping to stem losses , the District of Columbia outsourced management of United Medical Center to private consulting firms .
But far from turning the hospital around , one firm was accused of misusing taxpayer funds , and it oversaw a string of serious patient safety incidents , including violations in its obstetrics ward so egregious that the district was forced to shut the ward down in 2017 .
Earlier this year , the district struck a deal with Universal Health Services , a Fortune 500 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ billion in revenues , to run a new hospital that would replace United , albeit with a third fewer beds .
Universal also operates George Washington University Hospital in the city in partnership with George Washington University .
That relationship has been contentious : Last year the university accused the company of diverting $ 100 million that should have stayed in the medical system .
In June , a judge dismissed most of the university ’ s complaint .
Chicago has three publicly owned hospitals , but much of the care for low-income @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mercy that are near their homes and have strong reputations .
These hospitals have been sources of civic pride as well as major providers of jobs in neighborhoods that have few .
Fifty-five percent of Chicagoans living in poverty and 62 % of its African American residents live within Mercy ’ s service area , according to Mercy ’ s 2019 community needs assessment , a federally mandated report .
The neighborhoods served by Mercy are distinguished by higher rates of death from diabetes , cancer and stroke .
Babies are more likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weight or die in infancy .
The nearest hospitals from Mercy can be 15 minutes or more away by car , and many residents don ’ t have cars .
“ You ’ re going to have this big gap of about 7 miles where there ’ s no hospital , ” Ansell said .
“ It creates a health care desert on the South Side.
” Dr. Maya Rolfe , who was a resident at Mercy until July , said the loss of the hospital ’ s labor and delivery department would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American women suffer from a higher rate of maternal mortality than do white women .
“ Mercy serves a lot of high-risk women , ” she said .
Mercy , a nonprofit , has been in financial trouble for a while .
In 2012 , it joined Trinity Health , a giant nonprofit Roman Catholic health system headquartered in Michigan with operations in 22 states .
In the next seven years , Trinity invested $ 124 million in infrastructure improvements and $ 112 million in financial support .
During that time , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facing hospitals everywhere , including the migration of well-reimbursed surgeries and procedures to outpatient settings .
Likewise , patients with private insurance , which provides higher reimbursements than government programs do , departed to Chicago ’ s better-capitalized university hospitals , including Rush , the University of Chicago Medical Center and Northwestern Memorial Hospital .
Seventy-five percent of Mercy ’ s revenues come from government insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid .
Only 42 % of its beds were occupied on average , according to the most recent state data , from 2018 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 4 million a month and required at least $ 100 million in additional building upgrades to operate safely .
Trinity said it spent more than a year shopping for a buyer .
After that yielded no success , Mercy joined forces with three other struggling South Side hospitals to consolidate into a single health system planning to build one hospital and a handful of outpatient facilities to replace their antiquated buildings .
They sought state financial help .
The plan would have cost $ 1.1 billion over a decade .
At the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawmakers — already strapped for funding because of the economic effects of the pandemic — balked at the hospitals ’ request for the state to cover half the cost .
Lamont Robinson , a Democratic state representative whose district includes Mercy Hospital , said that was because the group did not declare where the new hospital would be built .
“ We were all supportive of the merger but not with the lack of information , ” Robinson said .
Mercy said in an email that the location would have been chosen after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaders .
Trinity said in a statement : “ We are committed to continuing to serve the Mercy Chicago community through investment in additional ambulatory and community-based services that are driven by high-priority community needs.
” Blame for Mercy ’ s closure has been spread widely to include the city and state governments as well as Mercy ’ s owner .
Trinity Health had $ 8.8 billion in cash and liquid investments at the end of March and until the pandemic hit had been running a slight profit .
Earlier this year in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phase out inpatient services at another of its safety-net hospitals , Mercy Catholic Medical Center-Mercy Philadelphia Campus , a 157-bed hospital that has been around since 1918 .
“ People put their money where they want to , ” said Rolfe , the former medical resident at Mercy in Chicago .
Noting that the city has no qualms about spending large sums to beautify its downtown while other neighborhoods are in danger of losing a major institution , she said : “ It shows to me that those patients are not that important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Kaiser Health News ( KHN ) is a national health policy news service .
It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente .

Victor Coronado felt lightheaded one morning last month when he stood up to grab an iced tea. The right side of his body suddenly felt heavy. He heard himself slur his words. “That’s when I knew I was going to have a stroke,” he said.
Coronado was rushed to Mercy Hospital & Medical Center, the hospital nearest his home on Chicago’s South Side. Doctors there pumped medicine into his veins to break up the clot that had traveled to his brain.
Coronado may outlive the hospital that saved him. Founded 168 years ago as the city’s first hospital, Mercy survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 but is succumbing to modern economics, which have underfinanced the hospitals serving the poor. In July, the 412-bed hospital informed state regulators it planned to shutter all inpatient services as soon as February.
“If something else happens, who is to say if the responders can get my husband to the nearest hospital?” said Coronado’s wife, Sallie.
While rural hospitals have been closing at a quickening pace over the past two decades, a number of inner-city hospitals now face a similar fate. And experts fear that the economic damage inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic on safety-net hospitals and the ailing finances of the cities and states that subsidize them are helping push some urban hospitals over the edge.
By the nature of their mission, safety-net hospitals, wherever they are, struggle because they treat a large share of patients who are uninsured — and can’t pay bills — or are covered by Medicaid, whose payments don’t cover costs. But metropolitan hospitals confront additional threats beyond what rural hospitals do. State-of-the-art hospitals in affluent city neighborhoods are luring more of the safety-net hospitals’ best-insured patients.
These combined financial pressures have been exacerbated by the pandemic at a time their role has become more important: Their core patients — the poor and people of color — have been disproportionately stricken by COVID-19 in metropolitan regions like Chicago.
“We’ve had three hospital closures in the last year or so, all of them Black neighborhoods,” said Dr. David Ansell, senior vice president for community health equity at Rush University Medical Center, a teaching hospital on Chicago’s West Side. He said the decision to close Mercy “is really criminal in my mind, because people will die as a result.”
Mercy is following the same lethal path as did two other hospitals with largely lower-income patient bases that shuttered last year: Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, and Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C., which ended its inpatient services. Washington’s only public hospital, United Medical Center — in the city’s poorest ward — is slated to close in 2023 as well, and some services are already curtailed.
Slow Death of Urban Safety Nets
So far, urban hospital closures have remained infrequent compared with the cascading disappearance of their rural counterparts. But the closing of a few could portend problems at others. Even some of those that remain open may cut back crucial specialties like labor and delivery services or trauma care, forcing patients to travel farther for help when minutes can matter.
Nancy Kane, an adjunct professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has studied urban safety-net hospital changes since 2010, said that “some close, but most of them have tried to get into a bigger system and hang on for a few more years until management closes them.”
For much of the 20th century, most cities ran their own hospitals to care for the indigent. But after the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, and as the rising cost of health care became a burden for local budgets, many jurisdictions turned away from that model. Today only 498 of 5,230 general hospitals in the country are owned by governments or a public hospital district.
Instead, many hospitals in low-income urban neighborhoods are run by nonprofits — often faith-based — and in some cases, for-profit corporations. In recent years owners have unloaded safety-net hospitals to entities with limited patience for keeping them alive.
In 2018, the for-profit hospital chain Tenet Healthcare Corp. sold Hahnemann to Joel Freedman, a California private equity investor, for $170 million. A year later, Freedman filed for bankruptcy on the hospital, saying its losses were insurmountable, while separating its real estate, including the physical building, into another corporation, which could ease its sale to developers.
In 2018, Tenet sold another safety-net hospital, Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago, to a private investment company. Two weeks after the sale, the firm announced it would close the hospital, which ultimately led the owners to pay Melrose Park $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging they had misled local officials by claiming before the sale they would keep it open.
Some government-run hospitals are also struggling to stay open. Hoping to stem losses, the District of Columbia outsourced management of United Medical Center to private consulting firms. But far from turning the hospital around, one firm was accused of misusing taxpayer funds, and it oversaw a string of serious patient safety incidents, including violations in its obstetrics ward so egregious that the district was forced to shut the ward down in 2017.
Earlier this year, the district struck a deal with Universal Health Services, a Fortune 500 company with 400 hospitals and $11 billion in revenues, to run a new hospital that would replace United, albeit with a third fewer beds. Universal also operates George Washington University Hospital in the city in partnership with George Washington University. That relationship has been contentious: Last year the university accused the company of diverting $100 million that should have stayed in the medical system. In June, a judge dismissed most of the university’s complaint.
No Saviors for Mercy
Chicago has three publicly owned hospitals, but much of the care for low-income patients falls on private safety-net hospitals like Mercy that are near their homes and have strong reputations. These hospitals have been sources of civic pride as well as major providers of jobs in neighborhoods that have few.
Fifty-five percent of Chicagoans living in poverty and 62% of its African American residents live within Mercy’s service area, according to Mercy’s 2019 community needs assessment, a federally mandated report. The neighborhoods served by Mercy are distinguished by higher rates of death from diabetes, cancer and stroke. Babies are more likely to be born early and at low weight or die in infancy. The nearest hospitals from Mercy can be 15 minutes or more away by car, and many residents don’t have cars.
“You’re going to have this big gap of about 7 miles where there’s no hospital,” Ansell said. “It creates a health care desert on the South Side.”
Dr. Maya Rolfe, who was a resident at Mercy until July, said the loss of the hospital’s labor and delivery department would cause substantial harm, especially since African American women suffer from a higher rate of maternal mortality than do white women. “Mercy serves a lot of high-risk women,” she said.
Mercy, a nonprofit, has been in financial trouble for a while. In 2012, it joined Trinity Health, a giant nonprofit Roman Catholic health system headquartered in Michigan with operations in 22 states. In the next seven years, Trinity invested $124 million in infrastructure improvements and $112 million in financial support.
During that time, the hospital continued to be battered by headwinds facing hospitals everywhere, including the migration of well-reimbursed surgeries and procedures to outpatient settings. Likewise, patients with private insurance, which provides higher reimbursements than government programs do, departed to Chicago’s better-capitalized university hospitals, including Rush, the University of Chicago Medical Center and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Seventy-five percent of Mercy’s revenues come from government insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid.
Only 42% of its beds were occupied on average, according to the most recent state data, from 2018. Mercy told state regulators it is losing $4 million a month and required at least $100 million in additional building upgrades to operate safely.
Trinity said it spent more than a year shopping for a buyer. After that yielded no success, Mercy joined forces with three other struggling South Side hospitals to consolidate into a single health system planning to build one hospital and a handful of outpatient facilities to replace their antiquated buildings. They sought state financial help.
The plan would have cost $1.1 billion over a decade. At the close of the legislative session, Illinois lawmakers — already strapped for funding because of the economic effects of the pandemic — balked at the hospitals’ request for the state to cover half the cost. Lamont Robinson, a Democratic state representative whose district includes Mercy Hospital, said that was because the group did not declare where the new hospital would be built.
“We were all supportive of the merger but not with the lack of information,” Robinson said.
Mercy said in an email that the location would have been chosen after the hospital organizations combined and chose new leaders. Trinity said in a statement: “We are committed to continuing to serve the Mercy Chicago community through investment in additional ambulatory and community-based services that are driven by high-priority community needs.”
Blame for Mercy’s closure has been spread widely to include the city and state governments as well as Mercy’s owner. Trinity Health had $8.8 billion in cash and liquid investments at the end of March and until the pandemic hit had been running a slight profit. Earlier this year in Philadelphia, Trinity Health announced it would phase out inpatient services at another of its safety-net hospitals, Mercy Catholic Medical Center-Mercy Philadelphia Campus, a 157-bed hospital that has been around since 1918.
“People put their money where they want to,” said Rolfe, the former medical resident at Mercy in Chicago. Noting that the city has no qualms about spending large sums to beautify its downtown while other neighborhoods are in danger of losing a major institution, she said: “It shows to me that those patients are not that important as patients that exist in other communities.”
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
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truthout--2020-09-21--Ginsburg’s Legacy Is Vast, But a Trump Appointee Could Overturn Her Best Rulings

When I was sworn in to practice before the Supreme Court in 2007 , I sat near the front of the gallery .
Ruth Bader Ginsburg , the five-foot-tall justice , was barely visible over the bench behind which she sat .
On two occasions , Ginsburg visited the law school where I taught for many years .
She graciously created the Thomas Jefferson School of Law Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture Series at our annual Women and the Law Conference , which featured leading feminist scholars .
In all three instances , I was struck by the stark contrast between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Now , in death , Ginsburg commands the national discourse .
How , when and who will fill her vacant seat promises to have a powerful , even determinative , effect on the election and the future of the Supreme Court itself .
After Justice John Paul Stevens retired 10 years ago , Ginsburg assumed the role of leader of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court .
During her tenure on the high court , Ginsburg wrote landmark decisions — many of them in dissent — upholding the rights of women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of color , criminal defendants , people with mental disabilities , workers , and the poor .
Ginsburg “ cast more liberal votes than any other justice in the court ’ s weightiest cases , ” law professor and political scientist Lee Epstein from Washington University in St. Louis told The New York Times .
Before her confirmation to the Court in 1993 , Ginsburg had already distinguished herself as a leader in the fight for gender equality .
As a lawyer for the ACLU during the 1970s , Ginsburg handled six cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of them .
In 1971 , she scored her first victory in Reed v. Reed , a case in which the Court for the first time struck down a state law as violative of equal protection based on sex discrimination .
Ginsburg filed an 88-page brief that detailed the ways in which the law perpetuated the oppression of women .
Known as the “ grandmother brief , ” it provided a model for lawyers litigating gender rights cases .
In the brief , Ginsburg argued laws that discriminate based on sex , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , should be judged with strict judicial scrutiny .
Women , like people of color , she noted , have suffered a history of discrimination under the law .
In perhaps her most significant majority opinion as a Supreme Court justice , Ginsburg wrote in the 1996 case of U.S. v. Virginia that excluding women from admission to the Virginia Military Institute violated equal protection .
She maintained that sex differences may not be used “ for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , can not “ create or perpetuate the legal , social , and economic inferiority of women.
” One of Ginsburg ’ s monumental dissents came in the 2007 case of Ledbetter v. Tire and Rubber Co. , in which the majority upheld strict time limits for filing employment discrimination claims under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act .
She pointed out that pay discrimination is not always easy to identify , writing , “ Comparative pay information , moreover , is often hidden from the employee ’ s view .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ differentials maintained among supervisors , no less the reasons for those differentials.
” Ginsburg challenged Congress to overturn the ruling by changing the law , writing , “ the ball is in Congress ’ court.
” Congress complied by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 .
Another momentous Ginsburg dissent came in 2013 in the case of Shelby County v. Holder , in which the majority struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act , that had established a formula for preclearance of jurisdictions with a history of racial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.
” Ginsburg ’ s critique has particular resonance as the GOP increases its voter suppression efforts in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election .
When she read her dissent from the bench , Ginsburg departed slightly from its written version in quoting Martin Luther King Jr. ’ s famous statement , “ The arc of the moral universe is long , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adding , “ if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.
” One of Ginsburg ’ s most noteworthy dissents came in the 2000 case that anointed George W. Bush president of the United States .
In Bush v. Gore , a 5-4 majority of the Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court ’ s order for a statewide manual recount in a very close election .
Although conservatives usually champion states ’ rights , they turned that proclivity on its head to hand the election to Bush .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ he Court ’ s conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court ’ s own judgment will not allow to be tested .
Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States.
” Bush v. Gore is especially ironic in light of Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ’ s unconscionable and hypocritical rush to confirm Ginsburg ’ s successor before Inauguration Day .
It remains to be seen whether , with the election less than six weeks away , four Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refrain from filling Ginsburg ’ s seat and leave the decision for the next president .
The Court now has eight members , three liberals and five conservatives .
Chief Justice John Roberts , mindful of the legacy of the Roberts Court , ruled with the liberals to strike down an abortion restriction and uphold the Affordable Care Act .
Until Ginsburg ’ s death , Roberts had been the swing vote on the Court .
A Trump appointment would substitute a right-wing justice for Ginsburg , making a 6-3 conservative majority .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Roe v. Wade and strike down the Affordable Care Act .
During her 27 years on the Supreme Court , Ginsburg distinguished herself as a protector of the poor and the disenfranchised .
One must hope that the next justice who fills her seat will rule in the tradition of this legendary liberal justice .

Part of the Series Human Rights and Global Wrongs
When I was sworn in to practice before the Supreme Court in 2007, I sat near the front of the gallery. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the five-foot-tall justice, was barely visible over the bench behind which she sat. On two occasions, Ginsburg visited the law school where I taught for many years. She graciously created the Thomas Jefferson School of Law Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture Series at our annual Women and the Law Conference, which featured leading feminist scholars.
In all three instances, I was struck by the stark contrast between her diminutive stature and her commanding presence. Now, in death, Ginsburg commands the national discourse. How, when and who will fill her vacant seat promises to have a powerful, even determinative, effect on the election and the future of the Supreme Court itself.
After Justice John Paul Stevens retired 10 years ago, Ginsburg assumed the role of leader of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court. During her tenure on the high court, Ginsburg wrote landmark decisions — many of them in dissent — upholding the rights of women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people of color, criminal defendants, people with mental disabilities, workers, and the poor. Ginsburg “cast more liberal votes than any other justice in the court’s weightiest cases,” law professor and political scientist Lee Epstein from Washington University in St. Louis told The New York Times.
Before her confirmation to the Court in 1993, Ginsburg had already distinguished herself as a leader in the fight for gender equality. As a lawyer for the ACLU during the 1970s, Ginsburg handled six cases in the Supreme Court, winning five of them. In 1971, she scored her first victory in Reed v. Reed, a case in which the Court for the first time struck down a state law as violative of equal protection based on sex discrimination. Ginsburg filed an 88-page brief that detailed the ways in which the law perpetuated the oppression of women. Known as the “grandmother brief,” it provided a model for lawyers litigating gender rights cases. In the brief, Ginsburg argued laws that discriminate based on sex, like those that discriminate on account of race, should be judged with strict judicial scrutiny. Women, like people of color, she noted, have suffered a history of discrimination under the law.
In perhaps her most significant majority opinion as a Supreme Court justice, Ginsburg wrote in the 1996 case of U.S. v. Virginia that excluding women from admission to the Virginia Military Institute violated equal protection. She maintained that sex differences may not be used “for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity.” Differential treatment, Ginsburg wrote, cannot “create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.”
One of Ginsburg’s monumental dissents came in the 2007 case of Ledbetter v. Tire and Rubber Co., in which the majority upheld strict time limits for filing employment discrimination claims under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. She pointed out that pay discrimination is not always easy to identify, writing, “Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials.” Ginsburg challenged Congress to overturn the ruling by changing the law, writing, “the ball is in Congress’ court.” Congress complied by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.
Now, in death, Ginsburg commands the national discourse.
Another momentous Ginsburg dissent came in 2013 in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, in which the majority struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, that had established a formula for preclearance of jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination. Ginsburg wrote, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Ginsburg’s critique has particular resonance as the GOP increases its voter suppression efforts in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. When she read her dissent from the bench, Ginsburg departed slightly from its written version in quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” and adding, “if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.”
One of Ginsburg’s most noteworthy dissents came in the 2000 case that anointed George W. Bush president of the United States. In Bush v. Gore, a 5-4 majority of the Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a statewide manual recount in a very close election. Although conservatives usually champion states’ rights, they turned that proclivity on its head to hand the election to Bush. Ginsburg noted, “[T]he Court’s conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court’s own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States.”
A Trump appointment would substitute a right-wing justice for Ginsburg, making a 6-3 conservative majority. There would be solid votes to overrule Roe v. Wade and strike down the Affordable Care Act.
Bush v. Gore is especially ironic in light of Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s unconscionable and hypocritical rush to confirm Ginsburg’s successor before Inauguration Day. It remains to be seen whether, with the election less than six weeks away, four Republican senators will vote with the Democrats to refrain from filling Ginsburg’s seat and leave the decision for the next president.
The Court now has eight members, three liberals and five conservatives. Chief Justice John Roberts, mindful of the legacy of the Roberts Court, ruled with the liberals to strike down an abortion restriction and uphold the Affordable Care Act. Until Ginsburg’s death, Roberts had been the swing vote on the Court. A Trump appointment would substitute a right-wing justice for Ginsburg, making a 6-3 conservative majority. There would be solid votes to overrule Roe v. Wade and strike down the Affordable Care Act.
During her 27 years on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg was a consistent protector of the poor and the disenfranchised. One must hope that the next justice who fills her seat will rule in the tradition of this legendary liberal justice.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.