A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
Sad!
“Prolifewhistleblower.com,” a website run by Texas Right to Life aimed at collecting information on those suspected of helping to provide abortions, has been taken offline yet again.
- Texas Right to Life helped usher in the state’s Draconian new anti-abortion law that not only bans abortion after six weeks, but also essentially puts a $10,000 bounty on anyone who assists with providing access to abortions, including rideshare drivers.
- Their “whistleblower” website got kicked offline by Epik, a site hosting provider, on Saturday for violating the platform’s terms of service.
- Another hosting provider, GoDaddy, had already given the website the boot last week.
Before all that, TikTokers spammed the website’s form with bogus “information.”
- One TikToker even created a special script to make it even easier to flood the website.
@black_madness21Reply to @black_madness21 #texas #abortion #gregabbott♬ original sound – Sean Black
- The programmer said he was inspired by another TikToker who had proposed the idea of bombarding the form with stuff like “Gov. Greg Abbott’s butt stinks” (with the evidence being “Smelled it from here”)
@victoriahammett@0liviajulianna this is genius go give her a follow y’all! Website: prolifewhistleblower.com♬ original sound – Victoria Hammett
- A spokesperson for Texas Right To Life said the spammers “worship at the altar of child sacrifice.”
This is not at all dystopian pic.twitter.com/yGY3yyBxJK
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) September 2, 2021
DOJ Vows To Protect Abortion Rights In Texas
Attorney General Merrick Garland declared that the Justice Department “will continue to protect those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services pursuant to our criminal and civil enforcement of the FACE [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act” after the Supreme Court declined to block Texas’ harsh anti-abortion law.
- The Justice Department “will provide support from federal law enforcement when an abortion clinic or reproductive health center is under attack,” and has also reached out to U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and FBI field offices in “across the country,” according to Garland.
- In the meantime, the Justice Department “urgently explores all options to challenge” the law, the attorney general said.
Meanwhile, the state Republican lawmaker who crafted the bill can’t stop grinning over his success:
Meet State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who wrote the Texas abortion bill.
“We feel good about it,” he says, as millions of women lose reproductive freedoms. pic.twitter.com/82nkW2IFPy
— The Recount (@therecount) September 6, 2021
Abbott Locks In Texas GOP’s Anti-Voting Law
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is slated to sign state Republicans’ notorious voting restrictions into law today.
- The law will, among other things, ban drive-thru voting, slap criminal penalties on elections officials who send unsolicited mail-in ballot applications, and give partisan poll watchers “free movement within a polling place.”
- Abbott, like many a Trump toady aiming to discredit the 2020 elections, claimed after the bill passed last week that he would be “ensuring election integrity” by signing the legislation.
In the face of that law and similar anti-voting legislation in other GOP-controlled states, voting rights advocates are pushing Biden to throw his weight behind filibuster reform in order to get Democrats’ sweeping voting rights bill passed.
Kinzinger Thinks His Own Party Shouldn’t Be In Charge If It Stays This Deranged
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of only two GOP members of the House Jan. 6 select committee, argued the Republican Party doesn’t deserve to regain control of the House if all it will do is keep “pushing conspiracy and pushing division and pushing lies.”
- Kinzinger jabbed at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for threatening telecommunication companies that cooperate with the committee’s record preservation request, saying that the GOP leader’s comments were “really bad politics, to say the least.”
- Rejecting McCarthy’s accusation that the committee was overstepping its authority, Kinzinger asserted that “we have a right and we have the responsibility, and, frankly, we have the legal authority to go through the process of requesting these kinds of things.”
In Case You Missed It
Millions of people lost their unemployment benefits yesterday after the extended aid in the massive COVID-19 relief package Biden signed in March expired.
- States that had already cut extra jobless benefits didn’t see an increase in employment, by the way.
Must Read
“Americans Stretch Across Political Divides to Welcome Afghan Refugees” – The New York Times
A Dystopian Nightmare
Inmates at Washington County Detention Center, in Fayetteville, Arkansas allege that the prison didn’t tell them they were being given ivermectin, a dewormer for horses, as treatment for COVID-19.
- ACLU of Arkansas spokesperson Elsa Rainey told TPM that the organization that there was a “systemic lack of knowledge and consent” to that treatment, which has been boosted in right-wing circles despite the Federal Drug and Food Administration’s warnings against taking the drug for COVID-19.
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