Coach Joe Kennedy Calls It Quits 1 Game after Winning Epic SCOTUS Battle

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Coach Joe Kennedy Calls It Quits 1 Game after Winning Epic SCOTUS Battle

(Headline USA) A high school football coach in Washington state who won his job back after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled he could pray on the field resigned Wednesday after just one game back.

Assistant Bremerton High School coach Joe Kennedy made the announcement on his website, citing several reasons, including that he needed to care for an ailing family member out of state. He had been living full-time in Florida, and before the first game last Friday he said he didn’t know if he’d continue coaching.

“I believe I can best continue to advocate for constitutional freedom and religious liberty by working from outside the school system so that is what I will do,” Kennedy wrote. “I will continue to work to help people understand and embrace the historic ruling at the heart of our case.”

Kennedy was not immediately available for comment Wednesday. His publicist, Jennifer Willingham, told The Associated Press he was on a plane back to Florida.

In a statement, the Bremerton School District confirmed Kennedy had submitted his resignation. School officials declined to comment on his exit, calling it a personnel matter.

Kennedy lost his job in 2015 and waged a seven-year legal battle to get it back.

School district officials had asked him to keep any on-field praying non-demonstrative or apart from students, saying they were concerned that tolerating his public post-game prayers would suggest government endorsement of religion, in violation of the separation of church and state.

He insisted exercising his religious freedoms on praying publicly at midfield after games, and the district placed him on leave and declined to renew his contract.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority sided with him, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing that “the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit organization that represented the school district in the case, argued that the Supreme Court should have dismissed the case as moot, as Kennedy no longer lived in Bremerton and had failed to notify the court of his 3,000-mile move to Florida.

“That Kennedy doesn’t want to coach at Bremerton School District isn’t a surprise,” said Rachel Laser, the group’s chief executive. “It’s just one more example of why the Supreme Court should not have taken this case in the first place.”

Kennedy was back on the sideline for the first time in nearly eight years last Friday night, but he said beforehand that he had mixed feelings about it and wasn’t sure he’d keep coaching.

“Knowing that everybody’s expecting me to go do this kind of gives me a lot of angst in my stomach,” Kennedy told the AP. “People are going to freak out that I’m bringing God back into public schools.”

After the game — a 27-12 win over visiting Mount Douglas Secondary School — Kennedy strode alone to midfield, then knelt and prayed for about 10 seconds.

Kennedy was not joined by any athletes or others on the nearly empty field. There was scattered applause from the modest crowd.

Kennedy’s fight to get his job became a cultural touchstone, pitting the religious liberties of government employees against efforts to kick religion to the curb. He appeared at a 2016 rally for Donald Trump.

He and his wife recently had dinner with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential hopeful who asked for his help on the campaign trail. Kennedy declined, saying he’s loyal to Trump.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

‘Another Nail in the Coffin’: Biden Admin Cancels Last Remaining Oil and Gas Leases in Alaska

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‘Another Nail in the Coffin’: Biden Admin Cancels Last Remaining Oil and Gas Leases in Alaska

(Kim Jarrett, The Center Square) The Biden administration said Wednesday it was canceling seven Alaskan oil and gas leases issued by the Trump administration.

The Department of Interior put the leases, located on 365,000 acres in the Coastal Plain region, on hold in June 2021.

“With climate change warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, we must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said.

“President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in history. The steps we are taking today further that commitment, based on the best available science and in recognition of the Indigenous Knowledge of the original stewards of this area, to safeguard our public lands for future generations.”

The Trump administration awarded nine leases on more than 430,000 acres shortly before the former president left office, according to a news release from the Department of Interior. The two other leases were previously canceled at the lessee’s request.

Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, blasted the Biden administration in a post on Twitter.

“This war on Alaska is devastating for not only Alaska but also the energy security of the nation,” Sullivan said.

“This unlawful cancellation of leases brings us to 55 executive orders and actions specifically targeting Alaska since President Biden assumed office,” he added. “This is a grave injustice to the Inupiat people of the North Slope, especially in Kaktovik—the only village in ANWR. As evidenced by this and so many of the admin’s actions, the idea of ‘equity’ is being exploited as a hollow political soundbite.”

The public has 45 days to comment on the department’s decision.

“This is another nail in the coffin of the White House lie that Joe Biden isn’t standing in the way of American energy production,” said Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power The Future, in a statement. “As families are dealing with rising gas prices, President Biden is working to ensure his radical green agenda comes first.”

The DOI also proposes new regulations for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska that could limit oil and gas leases in the area.

A 60-day comment period will open after it is published in the National Register, the department said.

Federal Judge Temporarily Scuttles Texas’s Floating Border Barrier

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Federal Judge Temporarily Scuttles Texas’s Floating Border Barrier

(Headline USA) A federal judge advanced the Biden regime’s open border policies with an assault on efforts to curb illegal immigrants from overrunning Texas, ordering the state to remove a large floating barrier that Gov. Greg Abbott placed on the river between the U.S. and Mexico this summer.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra stopped short of ordering Texas to dismantle the wrecking-ball sized buoys on the Rio Grande but called them a threat to safety and relationships between the neighboring countries, apparently dismissing the safety of Texas residents. His preliminary injunction instructs Texas, for now, to move the barrier out of the water and onto the riverbank by Sept. 15.

Ezra also cast doubt on Texas’ rationale for the barrier, writing that the state produced no “credible evidence that the buoy barrier as installed has significantly curtailed illegal immigration.” Texas officials said they would appeal.

“Today’s court decision merely prolongs President Biden’s willful refusal to acknowledge that Texas is rightfully stepping up to do the job that he should have been doing all along,” Abbott said.

Abbott invoked “invasion” powers to deploy aggressive new tactics starting last year. Texas’ use of dozens of bright orange buoys to create a barrier longer than a soccer field on a stretch of river where migrants often try crossing from Mexico is just one piece of his multibillion-dollar border mission known as Operation Lone Star. The state has also installed razor-wire fencing along the river and allowed troopers to arrest migrants on trespassing charges, among other things.

Ezra, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, rejected Abbott’s justification for all of Texas’ actions.

“Under this logic, once Texas decides, in its sole discretion, that it has been invaded, it is subject to no oversight of its ‘chosen means of waging war,’” Ezra wrote. “Such a claim is breathtaking.”

In challenging Texas’ use of the buoys, the U.S. Justice Department accused the state of putting a barrier on the international boundary without permission, not surprising given the Biden administration has actively encouraged illegal immigration. The Biden administration also said the water barrier raised humanitarian and environmental concerns.

“We are pleased that the court ruled that the barrier was unlawful and irreparably harms diplomatic relations, public safety, navigation, and the operations of federal agency officials in and around the Rio Grande,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement.

Texas installed the barrier near the border town of Eagle Pass by putting anchors in the riverbed. Eagle Pass is part of a Border Patrol sector that has seen the second-highest number of migrant crossings this fiscal year with about 270,000 encounters — though that is lower than it was at this time last year.

The Biden administration has said illegal border crossings declined after new immigration rules took effect in May as pandemic-related asylum restrictions expired, despite evidence of a surge that has impacted states across the country, not just the border.

Like other pieces of Operation Lone Star, the buoys pick up where former President Donald Trump left off. Plans for the same water barrier were in the pipeline in 2020, according to Mark Morgan, who at the time was the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Morgan said the plans were scrapped after Biden took office. He called the barrier a “water wall” and said it was intended to be used as a stopgap in sections of the border where fences were not yet built or were impractical.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Cori Bush’s Staff Threatens Attorney Who Filed Ethics Complaint

Molly Bruns
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Cori Bush’s Staff Threatens Attorney Who Filed Ethics Complaint

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., threatened an attorney who filed a complaint against her congressional campaign’s payouts made to her husband.

David Mitriani, counsel for Cori Bush for Congress, sent a letter to Dan Backer, the lawyer who submitted the initial complaint to multiple governmet agencies, requesting that he retract the complaints, according to the Daily Caller.

In the letter, filed on behalf of the Committee to Defeat the President—a group dedicated to removing President Joe Biden from power—Mitriani claimed the allegations of the payouts were false and warned of possible legal retaliation.

“We demand that you retract the complaints you have filed that are demonstrably false,” the letter said. “Failure to do so—or continued repetition of these false statements with knowledge that they are false and without merit may result in liability for your client.”

The letter acknowledged that Cortney Merritts, Bush’s husband, had received more than $60,000 in payment for security services throughout the 2022 campaign cycle.

However, Mitriani insisted that they were “for bona fide services, directly related to work provided to the campaign” and that “Mr. Merritts has a long history working in the precise field where he has provided services.”

At the time, Merritts did not have the security licensure necessary to provide services in St. Louis, where Bush’s district is located, or in Washington D.C.

Bush for Congress paid Merritts for his services on five separate occasions from January to March 2023.

The Campaign to Defeat the President filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission after the campaign issued more suspicious deposits to Merritt’s account.

“She’s either falsifying FEC reports that her husband illegally provided security services he’s not licensed to provide, or he did illegally provide them and she violated the law prohibiting paying for illegal things,” the complaint said.

After receiving the threat from Bush’s lawyer, Baker wrote back suggesting that he and the CDP stood by their initial assertions as being factually sound and warning that Bush’s lawfare attack might only add to the evidentiary record.

“You have not identified any false statements of fact—as opposed to non-frivolous legal conclusions and non-actionable opinions based on disclosed facts— in any of CDP’s filings,” he said.

“Nor have you provided any actual evidence establishing any of CDP’s assertions were false,” he added. “To the contrary, several of the factual claims you make in the Threat Letter actually bolster CDP’s complaints.”

Baker, who previously worked with the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, is no stranger to watchdog advocacy when it comes to Democrats’ suspicious campaign-finance dealings.

He previously filed multiple FEC ethics complaints against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y., and deserves credit for having effected one of the sole measures of accoutability against the Hilllary Clinton campaign related to its corrupt Steele dossier hoax.

Bush’s efforts to use her husband as private security may be particularly offensive due to the double layer of duplicity involved, however.

While other Squad members, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., have attempted to pay their lovers questionably for campaign services rendered, Bush was one of Congress’s most outspoken “defund the police” advocates during and after the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots.

Thus, while she was more than happy to leave the citizens of her St. Louis district to fend for themselves amid a violent crime wave, she not only was benefiting from private security but was profiting off it.

Bush appears, in fact, to have been the biggest individual spender on private security for the year 2021, totaling an estimated $200,000 in one year alone, but shrugged it off when confronted.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

DHS Caught Using Fake Social Media Accounts

Ken Silva
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DHS Caught Using Fake Social Media Accounts

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A sprawling and possibly illegal Homeland Security program to use fake social media accounts for undercover operations has been revealed by a lawsuit from the non-profit Brennan Center for Justice.

The Brennan Center said Wednesday that it has obtained 35 Social Media Operational Use Templates, which are forms that DHS agencies submit to the department’s privacy office to obtain approval for proposed uses of social media.

Of these, at least 14 allow officers to use accounts that do not “indicate an official DHS affiliation” or are not registered using a DHS email, the organization said. Twelve of these explicitly permit the use of fake accounts, the organization said.

“In addition, we received a template authorizing undercover social media use by ICE’s powerful law enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations, which asserts that ‘undercover operations often require’ criminal investigators to ‘appear to be engaged in a criminal enterprise and to befriend or become business associates’ with the targets of their investigation,” the Brennan Center said.

The DHS’s online tactics likely violate the policies of major social media companies, which have restrictions on using fake accounts to impersonate others. For instance, Facebook sent the Los Angeles Police Department a cease-and-desist letter after the Brennan Center exposed the LAPD’s online covert social media program.

“While the legitimacy of such policies may be up to the LAPD, officers must abide by Facebook’s policies when creating accounts on our services,” Facebook attorney Roy Austin told LAPD Chief Michel Moore in November 2021.

“The Police Department should cease all activities on Facebook that involve the use of fake accounts, impersonation of others, and collection of data for surveillance purposes.”

With the DHS, the Brennan Center—which is non-partisan, but leans left—raised particular concern about immigrants being targeted.

But similar tactics have been used to provoke terrorism plots, such as when FBI informants used Facebook accounts to network with militias in 2020 in a supposed conspiracy to kidnap Michigan’s Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In that case, the informants used their real names on Facebook, but they were secretly working on behalf of the U.S. government.

While Facebook told the LAPD to stop abusing its platform, the social media company has been silent on the FBI using it to provoke terrorism.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that he was aware of the Whitmer conspiracy, but it’s unclear whether he knows whether the illegal activity on his platform was driven by the FBI.

“Over the last four years in particular, we’ve built closer partnerships with law enforcement and the intelligence community to be able to share those types of signals,” Zuckerberg told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in October 2020, days after the FBI announced the Whitmer kidnap conspiracy.

“We’re doing more of that, including in the case you mentioned before, around the attempted kidnapping of Governor Whitmer.”

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Mask-Rebel Biden Begs Labor Unions Not to Rat Him Out to Handlers

Corine Gatti
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Mask-Rebel Biden Begs Labor Unions Not to Rat Him Out to Handlers

(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) President Joe Biden was slammed on conservative social media Wednesday after the signing of a contract between labor unions and shipping companies in West Coast ports, and pleaded to those in the audience not to tell his handlers he wasn’t wearing a mask.

“I’ve been tested again today, I’m clear across the board,” Biden jokingly said, entering the room, without a mask. “But they keep telling me because this has to be ten days or something, I’ve got to keep wearing it. But don’t tell them I didn’t have it on when I walked in,” Biden added, failing to mention the First Lady had COVID, and those exposed must wear a mask when indoors and around other people according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Earlier on Wednesday press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre deflected questions about the president not adhering to White House COVID protocols during Biden’s shameful and potentially dangerous behavior during Tuesday’s Medal of Honor ceremony honoring Army Capt. Larry Taylor. Biden removed his mask to deliver remarks and never put it back on, leaving in the middle of the event.

Jean-Pierre said Biden’s premature departure was to minimize contact with the hundreds of attendees in the room. And yet, Biden’s latest public appearance without a mask contradicted Jean-Pierre, who said Biden was “going to be masking in this 10-day period” by CDC recommendations.

The flippant attitude on Tuesday and Wednesday from Jean-Pierre and Biden’s overall aloofness regarding masking angered conservatives, who noted children were forced to mask up at schools because of the CDC’s mask recommendations.

“If only children in Montgomery County public schools also had the freedom to not wear a mask,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote in a social media post. “Whether it’s requiring a 437th booster or a mask mandate, leftists’ COVID policies are about control.”

Cruz was referring to Rosemary Hills Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland, a wealthy D.C. suburb, that announced it has reinstated a mask mandate for third graders after a few kids tested positive for the virus. 

Conservative reporter Charlie Spiering joined the chorus on Twitter. “Now, it appeared Biden was a masked rebel after he spent months condemning Americans for failing their patriotic duty.” 

Town Hall writer Phil Holloway criticized the president with a tweet that proclaimed, “The mask theater has reached ultra-clown levels,” and posted a quartet of clown emojis.

“It’s cute and funny until they are forcing this on everyday people, closing stores and ruining lives,” one conservative posted.

As Covid cases and hospitalizations reportedly increased in the U.S., and new variants of the virus emerged, mask mandates popped up in mostly blue cities across the nation, including California, Arizona, New York, Georgia, Alabama and recently in Maryland.  

Amid the rise in COVID-19 cases, Newsweek reported that a few companies and organizations have enforced mask mandates. The list included Lionsgate and Kaiser Permanente in California, United Health Services in New York, Auburn Community Hospital in New York and Upstate Medical in Syracuse, New York.

Whistleblowers Flagged Hunter Biden’s Shady Schemes as Early as 2015

Ken Silva
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Whistleblowers Flagged Hunter Biden’s Shady Schemes as Early as 2015

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Investigative reporter John Solomon obtained and published Hunter Biden whistleblower records Thursday, showing that the president’s son was raising red flags as early as 2015 over a fraudulent bond scheme with the Native American Wakpamni tribe.

The documents published by Solomon include a May 2015 internal compliance report from Morgan Stanley, which raised concerns about Hunter’s background, his expulsion from the Navy and his association with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

“The presentation is one of the earliest known whistleblower activities to raise serious questions about Hunter Biden and his foreign business exploits,” Solomon said of the document, which has also been provided to Congress.

“It triggered suspicious activity reports (SARS) filed by banks and a SEC complaint that would eventually lead to the 2016 indictment of several Hunter Biden business partners in a bond fraud scheme and later FBI and IRS investigations targeting Hunter Biden himself for tax evasion.”

The internal Morgan Stanley report led to two of the bank’s officials filling whistleblower complaints seeking investigations with federal agencies, Solomon said, citing people involved with the complaints. To date, it’s unclear how those federal agencies under Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump or Joe Biden handled the information, Solomon said.

As has been reported, Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer and several other associates were indicted over the Native American Wakpamni bond scheme in 2016.

Hunter was never mentioned in those indictments. But according to Solomon, “the investigation spurred panic inside Hunter Biden’s world.”

“Hunter Biden’s concerns included the fact that he had not paid taxes on about $400,000 in income he had received from Burisma, the very same firm the Morgan Stanley whistleblower had flagged a year earlier in the compliance presentation,” Solomon said.

Solomon also published a 2016 Securities and Exchange Commission whistleblower complaint, which flagged concerns about Biden and Archer’s Rosemont Seneca investment firm.

“The complaint itself did not directly mention Hunter Biden but a series of attachments incorporated in the complaint clearly did, including the May 2015 compliance presentation complete with the Hunter Biden dossier,” Solomon said.

The whistleblower who provided Solomon the abovementioned documents has seemingly been working with Congress for months. Solomon first previewed the whistleblower’s allegations in an interview on American Sunrise in June.

“One other thing I’ll mention because it’s very important: Another whistleblower, who provided the SEC a detailed report in November 2016 of allegations of wrongdoing against the Biden family, he is emerging and beginning to cooperate with members of Congress. We could have something on that as early as next week,” Solomon said in June.

“The storm clouds are darkening over the Biden family.”

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

‘Abysmal’ Harvard Univ. Falls Dead Last in College Free Speech Rankings

Robert Jonathan
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‘Abysmal’ Harvard Univ. Falls Dead Last in College Free Speech Rankings

(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) Once considered the archetype of academic excellence, Harvard University has flunked out on campus free speech.

In fact, the Ivy League institution ranked 248th out of a list of 248 schools, according to a new survey of about 55,000 students across America conducted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

FIRE pointed out that Harvard has always fared near the bottom of its annual evaluation that is based on various metrics, including an openness to discussing or platforming challenging topics and/or visiting controversial campus speakers, whether the campus administration protects or penalizes free speech, and an evaluation of so-called speech codes.

“And this year, Harvard completed its downward spiral in dramatic fashion, coming in dead last with the worst score ever: 0.00 out of a possible 100.00,” FIRE revealed, even describing the zero classification as “generous.”

FIRE added that “This earns [Harvard] the notorious distinction of being the only school ranked this year with an ‘Abysmal’ speech climate.”

Although college traditionally provided a forum for the exchange all kinds of ideas, controversial, weird and otherwise, last-place Harvard’s track record includes “attempts to sanction students, student groups, scholars, and speakers for speech protected under First Amendment standards,” FIRE noted.

“The administration really sets the tone for a campus,” FIRE official Sean Stevens told Fox News.

Unfortunately, Harvard and other perceived prestigious educational institutions can still provide a crucial credential necessary for big jobs in government, the corporate sector, journalism, in Silicon Valley and in academia itself.

Joining Harvard at the bottom is another Ivy, the University of Pennsylvania, the second worst for free speech, along with University of South Carolina (which would seem to be a red-state surprise) Georgetown University and Fordham University.

As a practical matter, normal students who purse degrees on campuses captured by the far left, often have little choice other than the need to grin and bear (including self-censorship) the intolerance and indoctrination until they get their degree and can move on to their careers.

Along those lines, “More than half of students (56%) expressed worry about damaging their reputation because of someone misunderstanding what they have said or done, and just over a quarter of students (26%) reported that they feel pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their classes,” the FIRE report explained, in part, about its findings.

It’s also no wonder that some high school graduates are eschewing colleges and universities altogether given the woke factories that they have become.

Michigan Technological University is the top college for free speech in the rankings with a score of 78, followed by Auburn University, the University of New Hampshire, Oregon State University and Florida State University.

Stevens remarked to the New York Post that “I’m not necessarily surprised that a technological school has a better speech climate, primarily for the reason that they don’t really talk as much about controversial topics. They’re there to make things work as engineers.”

In what could apply beyond just the Cambridge, Mass-based university, FIRE asserted that “Only time will tell if Harvard can climb out of the hole it has dug for itself over the past five years. But one thing’s for sure: It must start with promoting free expression on campus, making room for more speech, not less.”

FIRE excluded six schools, including Hillsdale College, from the rankings because of policies that allegedly prioritize “other values over a commitment to freedom of speech.”

Fulton Co. Judge Casts Doubt on Fani Willis’s Ludicrous Trial Timeframe

Jacob Bruns
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(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Though he said that he would move forward with plans for an Oct. 23 trial, the Georgia judge presiding over former President Donald Trump‘s upcoming 2020 racketeering case expressed concerns about bringing all of the defendants to court at such a rapid-fire pace, Politico reported.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who will handle the case, noted that prosecutor Fani Willis’s proposed timeline will be difficult to meet.

“It just seems a bit unrealistic to think that we can handle all 19 in forty-something days,” McAfee said at a recent hearing, casting doubt on the proposed timeline just as things began getting under way.

Despite the difficult timeline, McAfee said that he would do his best to keep things on time.

“We’re planning to make that Oct. 23 trial date stick,” the judge said, referring to the cases of two Trump allies, attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, who have been charged together despite acting independently of each other and not knowing each other.

The trial as a whole, according to prosecutors, is expected to last approximately four months.

“That is our time estimate,” prosecutor Nathan Wade told McAfee, adding that he expected a jury to be selected promptly.

Further complicating an already-complex situation, McAfee noted last week that there could be months of uncertainty regarding the validity of state court proceedings.

“It could potentially even be a six-month turnaround just for the 11th Circuit to come up with a decision,” said McAfee, referring to an Atlanta federal appeals court that would handle parts of the case.

“Where does that leave us in the middle of a jury trial?” the judge queried.

Despite the rushed process, Chesebro’s defense attorney, Scott Grubman, made note of an important point: that Chesebro’s role in crafting Trump’s strategy after the 2020 election is not substantially different from casting a vote for Trump.

“Before we know it, millions of people, literally millions of people, could’ve been charged in this conspiracy,” Grubman said.

“Half of the United States took some act towards electing Donald Trump. … If that were the only thing that mattered in terms of connecting these as a common conspiracy, there would be no rules of due process.”

Mexico Assuages Left-Wing Fears over Lack of ‘Abortion Access’

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Mexico Assuages Left-Wing Fears over Lack of ‘Abortion Access’

(Headline USA) As pro-abortion left-wingers consider permanently fleeing the United States over worries that a federal abortion ban may one day restrict their right to promiscuous, unprotected sexual intercourse, the porous southern border may prove to be a godsend.

Only, this time, the immigration may be flowing in the reverse direction, sending shiftless and irresponsible undesirables southward where the may be guaranteed unfettered access to abortions that are legal, safe—and possibly even free.

A Mexican Supreme Court decision to end the federal ban on abortion extended a regional trend of increasing access to the procedure, but left in place a patchwork of varying state restrictions.

The high court on Wednesday threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion, in a ruling that will require the federal public health service to offer the procedure to anyone who requests it.

That will mean access for millions of Mexicans since the social security service and other federal institutions provide health care to most people who work in the formal economy.

Some 20 Mexican states, however, still criminalize abortion. Those laws were not affected by the Supreme Court ruling, but abortion advocates will likely ask state judges to follow its logic.

Abortions are not widely prosecuted as a crime in Mexico, but many doctors refuse to provide them, citing the law.

Celebration of the ruling soon spilled out onto social media.

“Today is a day of victory and justice for Mexican women!” Mexico’s National Institute for Women wrote in a message on Twitter. The government organization called the decision a “big step” toward gender equality.

Sen. Olga Sánchez Cordero, a former Supreme Court justice, applauded the ruling, saying that it represented an advance toward “a more just society in which the rights of all are respected.”

She called on Mexico’s Congress to pass legislation in response.

But others in the highly religious country decried the decision. Irma Barrientos, director of the Civil Association for the Rights of the Conceived, said opponents will continue the fight against expanded abortion access.

“We’re not going to stop,” Barrientos said. “Let’s remember what happened in the United States. After 40 years, the Supreme Court reversed its abortion decision, and we’re not going to stop until Mexico guarantees the right to life from the moment of conception.”

In its ruling, the Mexican court said that “the legal system that criminalized abortion” in federal law was unconstitutional because it “violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.”

The decision came two years after the court ruled that abortion was not a crime in one northern state. That decision set off a slow state-by-state process of decriminalizing it.

Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th to drop criminal penalties.

Abortion activists will have to continue seeking legalization state by state, though Wednesday’s decision should make that easier. State legislatures can also act on their own to erase abortion penalties.

For now, the ruling does not mean that every Mexican woman will be able to access the procedure immediately, explained Fernanda Díaz de León, sub-director and legal expert for women’s rights group IPAS.

What it does do—in theory—is obligate federal agencies to provide the care to patients. That’s likely to have a cascade of effects.

Díaz de León said removing the federal ban takes away another excuse used by care providers to deny abortions in states where the procedure is no longer a crime.

It also allows women with formal employment who are part of the social security system and government employees to seek the procedure in federal institutions in states where the abortion is still criminalized, she said.

Díaz de León and officials at other feminist organizations worry that women, particularly in more conservative areas, may still be denied abortions.

“It’s a very important step,” Díaz de León said. But “we need to wait to see how this is going to be applied and how far it reaches.”

Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 16 years ago.

Observers in Mexico agreed that it would take time to see how Wednesday’s ruling is applied.

In the southern state of Guerrero, Marina Reyna, director of the Guerrero Association Against Violence toward Women, cautioned that challenges would persist. Her state decriminalized abortion last year, but there are 22 open investigations against women accused of ending their pregnancies.

“There is still a lot of resistance,” she said.

Meanwhile, U.S. women have an array of options to choose from even after the overturn of Roe v. Wade triggered a raft of so-called heartbeat laws from red states—and, in some cases, activated laws that had been in place before the 50-year-old decision legalized abortion nationwide during the peak of the 1970s “free love” movement.

Across Latin America, countries have made moves to lift abortion restrictions in recent years, a trend often referred to as a “green wave,” in reference to the green bandanas carried by women protesting for abortion rights in the region.

After decades of work by activists across the region, the trend picked up speed in Argentina, which in 2020 legalized the procedure. In 2022, Colombia, a highly conservative country, did the same.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

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