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Democratic lawmaker has an idea to save women's freedoms and keep the Supreme Court away from taking them again
July 03, 2022
Speaking to MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan on Sunday, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), a Harvard Law School graduate, explained that Congress could protect the freedoms of women and his plan doesn't have anything to do with an attempt to overthrow the government.
"I knew that we would arrive at this point," Jones explained. "My colleague scoffed at me at the time that I introduced the bill, in April of 2021. Of course, the American people are on our side, when you look at poll after poll. And thankfully, we do have about 58 House members who are supportive of adding four seats to the Supreme Court, but that is not nearly enough. We can't pass the Women's Health Protection Act, after getting rid of the filibuster, which we obviously need to do. But this Supreme Court has shown a willingness to strike down newly enacted laws by Congress. They did so with the decision after decision of the Voting Rights Act, which has been authorized nearly unanimously. I'm under no illusions anything short of court reform, specifically adding seats to the Supreme Court, is going to preserve fundamental rights permanently."
He disputed President Joe Biden's statement that adding seats to the court would be "polarizing." Already, the American people have the lowest opinion level of the Supreme Court in history. Jones said that the more polarizing thing is the degradation of the most fundamental rights in America: personal freedoms.
"Whether it is the right to abortion, which is a 50-year-old Constitutional right, or of course, eminently, the right to contraception, and the right to marriage equality, and the right to same-sex intimacy," Jones continued, citing key court decisions cited by Justice Clarence Thomas that he wants to see fall next.
Jones went on to say that one of his ideas with the new voting rights bill was to add a provision that would deprive the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to review the constitutionality and legality of the statute.
"We have seen that this supreme court majority, this far-right majority is hostile to democracy itself," said Jones. "If we are to vote on the Women's Health Protection Act for the second time this term, I am pushing to include a provision to deprive the Supreme Court of review of that statute. There is precedent for this, it has been done before, and it is a practice that has been upheld before. We know that most of the cases the Supreme Court decides, it is only able to decide because of the jurisdiction that Congress has explicitly legislated it to have. The Constitution is very narrow in terms of the scope of jurisdiction that it grants to the Supreme Court. We have tools at our disposal here."
See the full conversation below:
Dem has an idea to save women's freedoms and keep the Supreme Court away from taking them again www.youtube.com
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Republicans had the opportunity to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, but instead of green-lighting the option, the House and Senate Republicans opposed it. It means there would be a House committee, but when Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was told he couldn't have members on it that could very well end up as witnesses, he "took his ball and went home."
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said as much while attacking McCarthy, Donald Trump, and other Republicans like Kristi Noem (R-SD) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) on Twitter Sunday.
"When your friends say this committee isn’t fair, maybe remind them that those testifying are all Republicans, appointed by Trump," Kinzinger explained. "That Kevin McCarthy got a fair deal in a split commission, but then took his ball and went home."
The committee was formed and three members were going to be on it, but McCarthy pulled them off because there were two "who fomented the insurrection, were not allowed to stay on." As Kinzinger continued, "Kevin McCarthy could have then added two more, but Trump told him to pull his members."
Because Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Kinzinger joined the committee, the plot to make it a partisan hack job failed, making it a bipartisan effort that Americans overwhelmingly believe is legitimate.
Kinzinger explained that they have been able to find out things that up until recently were denied by the Jan 6th truthers. So, they are left with trying to discredit a young woman with more courage than they could muster in a lifetime. Except that isn’t working. Cassidy doesn’t seek the limelight, but she is compelled with honor. She didn’t even have to swear an oath to the Constitution like Kevin, Elise, Kristi Noem and others did. But she volunteered to come under oath to tell what she knows. She is a better person than them all. They’re all scared. They should be."
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The number of people who say that they are "extremely proud to be an American" has dropped to a historic low, the Gallup poll shows.
A CNN report showed surveys about attitudes Americans have during the 246th anniversary of Independence Day reveal levels of pride have continued to fall since 2017. After Sept. 11, 2001, for example, American pride increased to 91 percent, whereas in 2017 it plummeted to 75 percent. It has dropped another ten percent in the past five years.
While "extremely" and "very proud" numbers remain high, the number of people "extremely proud" is what reached a historic low for the 21st century.
The other piece of the survey asked some of the questions that are on the U.S. Citizenship Questionnaire. While people applying for citizenship must know the answers, native-born Americans apparently don't.
A YouGov explained, that there are 100 citizenship questions and an applicant must get 6 out of 10 correct. Using an online study tool, people can practice with 20 randomly chosen questions on the website. What they've found is that 91 percent of citizenship applicants pass the test, while four in five (about 85 percent) Americans pass it.
That means "they answer at least 12 out of 20 questions correctly — or at least 60%, the proportion of correct answers needed to pass the real test," the site explained.
Older people are more likely to pass the test as civics classes were once more of a priority in schools.
The 2018 Brown Center Report on American Education outlined the status of civics education compared to that of math and reading scores, which has increased over the past decades.
"While 42 states and the District of Columbia require at least one course related to civics, few states prioritize the range of strategies, such as service learning which is only included in the standards for 11 states, that is required for an effective civic education experience," The Brookings Institute explained. "The study also found that high school social studies teachers are some of the least supported teachers in schools and report teaching larger numbers of students and taking on more non-teaching responsibilities like coaching school sports than other teachers. Student experience reinforces this view that civic learning is not a central concern of schools. Seventy percent of 12th graders say they have never written a letter to give an opinion or solve a problem and 30 percent say they have never taken part in a debate—all important parts of a quality civic learning."
A 2016 survey by Annenberg Public Policy Center revealed that 1in 4 Americans are unable to name the three branches of government. The Pew Research Center revealed that as of March 2019, only 17 percent of Americans trust the government in Washington to do the right thing.
See the brief segment on CNN below:
Those 'extremely proud' to be an American drops to historic low: survey shows youtu.be
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