LEGAL Sure Enough, Protesters Have Shown Up Outside Homes of Supreme Court Justices, As Justice Alito Moved to Undisclosed Location

jward

passin' thru
Abortion battle moves to homes of Supreme Court justices
Alex Gangitano, John Kruzel

7-9 minutes



Abortion rights activists in recent days have gathered outside the homes of three conservative Supreme Court justices to protest Roe v. Wade’s potential demise, taking their advocacy in an intensely personal and politically divisive direction.
The targeting of the residences — belonging to Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts — has forced the White House to navigate a thorny question about the proper bounds of political discourse, one with sharply divided views over whether the tactic marks a worrisome escalation or an impassioned response befitting the likely loss of an almost 50-year-old constitutional right.

The Biden administration attempted this balancing act on Monday, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki denouncing the prospect of threats or violence but stopping short of condemning the protests outside of justices’ homes.
“We are a country that promotes democracy, and we certainly allow for peaceful protest in a range of places in the country,” Psaki said. “None of it should violate the law.”
Some political analysts viewed that response as tepid. Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, said the Biden administration’s message could have been stronger.
“They’re trying to walk a line, pretty clearly, between a firm stance against violence toward judges while not alienating their pro-Roe base,” Wheeler said.
The recent demonstrations played out as street protests in major American cities and a suspected arson attack Sunday on a Wisconsin anti-abortion group have fueled concerns over whether Roe’s potential demise could spark a new wave of political violence in the U.S.

Robert Blair, coordinator of the Democratic Erosion consortium at Brown University, argued that the risk of political violence in the U.S. is very high and anything that contributes to the problem should be avoided. He said leaders need to say these protests cross a line in order to curtail violence.
“One of the fundamental problems of Jan. 6 is people in positions of leadership weren’t coming out and saying, ‘Hey, stop this.’ Most obvious: Donald Trump,” Blair said. “To the extent that you have folks like [President] Biden, or folks who are known to be supporters of abortion rights, coming out and denouncing these kinds of tactics, that’s important because it sends a really important signal that this is alienating people and I think that’s valuable.”
Other experts expressed less concern. Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on political violence, agreed that government officials’ homes should be off limits, but she said she’s “not particularly worried” about the prospect of political violence erupting in response to overturning Roe.

“The vast majority of political and criminal violence globally is committed by men. The people most enraged by the Roe decision are women,” said Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in democracy, conflict and governance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “While men may be in the streets, their feelings are on the whole less visceral.”
On the political left, she added, those who most strongly support violence are the least close to the Democratic Party: “That makes their violence more spontaneous and less politically organized,” she said.
In discussing her opposition to protests outside people’s homes on either side, Kleinfeld said “there should be a separation between where people live and the jobs they do, to protect their children from trauma, as well as for democratic reasons.”
ShutDownDC, which is organizing the demonstration in Alito’s neighborhood this week, defended its decision to protest outside of individual homes because “it’s clear that the Justices don’t want to hear public opinion.”
“If they won’t listen to us at the building that symbolizes the power they have over us, then they’ll have to listen enough to us at a building that symbolizes just how personal this is—their homes,” Hope Neyer, a communications team member with ShutDownDC, told The Hill.

“To those suggesting that protests like this go too far, or cross a line, we say this leaked decision, if officially announced, crosses a line,” Neyer added.
Republican leaders forcefully denounced the demonstrations outside of justices’ homes as an intimidation tactic.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday called the protests an attempt to “scare federal justices into ruling a certain way” and “far outside the bounds of First Amendment speech or protest.”
Lawmakers are moving to quickly try to pass legislation that would extend the security Supreme Court justices have to their family members. A close ally of Biden, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), was among the senators who introduced the legislation.
A draft Supreme Court opinion last week revealed that a bare 5-4 majority of the court’s most conservative justices are reportedly poised to overturn the landmark decision in Roe, which for nearly five decades has guaranteed a federal right to abortion access.
Within hours of the Monday evening leak, published by Politico, large crowds had gathered outside the Supreme Court. By Tuesday, law enforcement officials had installed 7-foot, black security fencing around the building and subsequently closed off portions of adjacent streets.

The fencing is part of stepped-up crowd-control precautions in the wake of the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump’s supporters breached the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. Security fencing was up around the Capitol’s grounds for nearly five months after the insurrection.
The latest tumult comes amid a steep drop-off in recent years of the Supreme Court’s public standing, which has sunk to a historic low, and as new polling suggests the 6-3 conservative court is moving even further out of step with Americans, a majority of whom want to see Roe upheld.
Amid the fallout last week, critics accused the three Trump-appointed justices of having lied to the American public during their confirmation hearings by indicating they viewed Roe as settled law, only to endorse striking down the landmark 1973 decision soon after joining the bench. Many also recalled the Senate GOP’s refusal in 2016 to let then-President Obama fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a move which would have insulated Roe.
The fallout over the draft opinion has created a messaging problem for the Biden administration. Although the White House has clearly condemned the attack at an anti-abortion group’s office in Madison, Wis., the more difficult response has concerned the demonstrations in the D.C. area.

Asked on Monday if Biden plans to condemn the protests at the homes of Supreme Court justices, Psaki noted there has not been violence or vandalism against justices.
“As an independent body, how they are influenced or if they are influenced is not for me to make a determination of, but we do believe in peaceful protests,” she said.
 

jward

passin' thru
Charlie Kirk
@charliekirk11

12h

How is it possible that we still don't know the name of the person who leaked the Roe v. Wade opinion? Same reason we still don't know the name of the person who planted the Pipe Bombs on J6?
1f914.svg
 

vector7

Dot Collector
Democrats are putting out calls to arms

Republicans putting out statements
View: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1523861422039613449?t=SydYvbQDT-iqZpczeXDivg&s=19

1/6 was kind of a call to arms

No it kinda wasn’t, it was a protest where a few hundred people split off from the March and caused trouble. It wasn’t even in the same league as what BLM did for months.
View: https://twitter.com/BrantheBuoyant/status/1523879583543615488?t=MhoaTZ6T651xle8B_CDMUQ&s=19

I love this (comparison) game
View: https://twitter.com/CaseyWrightTx/status/1523888843761594368?t=ZlAN5jxkYwG2GNxQhs27FQ&s=19
 

night driver

ESFP adrift in INTJ sea
Even HOTTER than expected if Joe6pack takes down Grampy's Shotgun off the mantlepiece over the electric fireplace and oils it up and USES it!
 

night driver

ESFP adrift in INTJ sea
We're going to have people hurt or killed here and the inciting idiots will get off scot-free. Nauseating this is.
 

GammaRat

Veteran Member
If someone dies in the commission of a felony, isn't it considered 'Murder'?

Anyone caught in commission of the felony would be considered Murderers.

Doesn't that mean it's "Open Season" on these scum bags?
 

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
What prevents the Justices from using officers of the courts, or convening a "posse" of sworn law enforcement officers to round these folks up and arrest them?

Only their imagination and desire to keep an air of being above politics, staying within imaginary lines the Left continues to paint over and demand only exist for their opponents.
 

Dobbin

Faithful Steed
Jen Psaki compares protests outside of SCOTUS justice's homes to parents at School Board protests and "threats made to women seeking reproductive healthcare."
I'm sure Merrick Garland will get right on those.

Just like Virginia woman says FBI staked out school board meeting

Similar to those "threats to Democracy" posed by Arizona Ballot Canvassers who were given a "cease & desist order" by Federal Judges.

Good thing the Just-Us Department is keeping us "safe."

Dobbin
 

jward

passin' thru
Some Democrats warn abortion rights demonstrators not to go overboard
Amid protests of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on abortion, Republicans say some activism is getting out of hand, while Democrats say the complaints are a fabricated distraction
By Ashley Parker
and
Annie Linskey

Today at 5:59 p.m. EDT

Listen to article
8 min


Abortion rights demonstrators near the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in Chevy Chase, Md. (Craig Hudson/For the Washington Post)



On Monday morning, White House press secretary Jen Psaki sent out a 42-word tweet.
“@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety,” she wrote.

The Twitter missive was unremarkable — President Biden and his team have long denounced violence at protests — but for the fact that it seemed penned in response to recent abortion rights demonstrations, an attempt to head off what Republicans are trying to weaponize as a political issue.

After a leaked draft opinion one week ago indicated that the Supreme Court is preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion rights supporters have organized protests at the homes of some of the conservative Supreme Court justices, and the headquarters of an antiabortion group in Madison, Wis., was vandalized.

Two molotov cocktails were found inside the headquarters of Wisconsin Family Action, which was set on fire Sunday, as well as defaced with graffiti reading, “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either.” The same evening, two molotov cocktails were thrown at the Oregon Right to Life office in a suburb of Salem, and last week, two Catholic churches in Colorado, including one known for its antiabortion stance, were vandalized.
Republicans were quick to pounce, with GOP lawmakers sending more than a dozen tweets attacking Biden and Democrats and calling on them to condemn the abortion rights demonstrators.

“Joe Biden should call on his supporters to stand down,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wrote in a tweet. “Stop burning prolife offices, stop threatening violence against Supreme Court Justices. These are Biden’s people. Do something about it.”

Many Democrats and abortion rights activists say the complaints are a willful distraction from the real issue — that the high court seems poised to roll back rights that have been in place for a half-century. Disruptive abortion rights demonstrations have been minimal, they add, especially in comparison to the hostile demonstrations that targeted abortion clinics for decades.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Tuesday he was comfortable with activists demonstrating outside the justices’ homes, as long as they are not violent. “If protests are peaceful, yes,” Schumer said. “There’s protests three or four times a week outside my house. That’s the American way.”

But Republicans have seized on the issue. Some are even implicitly comparing the demonstrations to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which resulted in numerous injuries, several deaths and significant damage.

“Will the DOJ be issuing arrest warrants for abortion protesters trying to intimidate Justices to change their minds on overturning Roe?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted, referring to the Department of Justice. “Do laws matter anymore or just politics?”
A White House official said that Psaki’s tweet was in line with Biden’s long-held position condemning violence of any sort, including after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man murdered by a White Minneapolis police officer.

In the days after Floyd’s death, as violent protests erupted across the nation, Biden repeatedly called for calm. “This is no time for incendiary tweets,” Biden said. “It’s no time to encourage violence.”
While Democrats dismissed the Republican complaints as disingenuous, a person familiar with the White House’s thinking said that there is potential risk if the abortion rights demonstrations do turn violent, or if there is a marked uptick in vandalism targeting antiabortion groups and organizations.

Democrats hope the draft opinion — and the expected final opinion in the coming weeks — will galvanize voters to turn out for the midterms and back their candidates. But if the passion turns violent, it could backfire, this person said.

Already, a fence surrounds the Supreme Court, in anticipation of protests of the court’s decisions before its work is completed sometime this summer, in late June or early July. There was also enhanced security last week at the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference, a gathering of judges and lawyers where Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas spoke.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the author of the draft opinion, canceled an appearance last week at a different conference, and his planned appearance at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University has been turned into a virtual event.

Sens. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) introduced legislation this week that would expand security protection to Supreme Court justices’ family members, and it quickly passed the Senate. In Maryland, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan announced that he is ordering state law enforcement to help protect the homes of the justices who live in Maryland.

For now, most Democratic strategists and operatives say they are not worried about political blowback from Republicans seizing on what are so far isolated incidents and peaceful, if sometimes raucous, demonstrations at justices’ homes.
“Let’s just be real about what’s important and what’s not,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone.
“If you are a pro-choice suburban woman, or you are a non-college-educated woman, White or Black, if you are distressed about what is about to happen, there is not going to be much of anything that’s going to get in the way of you being distressed,” added Anzalone, who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign. “They’re taking away an incredibly important right that could criminalize your behavior and potentially lead to people’s deaths.”


Sonja Spoo, director of reproductive rights campaigns for UltraViolet, a gender justice advocacy group, argued that Democratic leaders should focus on the threat of abortion rights being taken away — and added that the antiabortion movement has regularly employed threatening and violent tactics.
“I would ask that Democratic leaders focus on the violence that’s already being inflicted on abortion providers and people seeking abortions in Republican-controlled states, and of course the people who ultimately can’t access care as their health and lives are being targeted right now,” Spoo said.
According to the Justice Department’s National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers, 10 people employed by abortion clinics as doctors, staffers or patient or doctor escorts have been killed in antiabortion incidents since 1993, and several others have suffered life-threatening injuries.


Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign, said that Republicans are playing a “twofer” game. First, by trying to gin up outsize outrage over protests, she said, “they are trying to distract from their really, really out of the mainstream position.”

Second, Lake said, the GOP is bracing for the report of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. Republicans “know they’re about to have a major accusation that Trump Republicans were supportive of violence” and are trying to “inoculate” themselves, she said.
Some Democrats said they welcome the demonstrations as a reflection of an impassioned base willing to fight for Democratic candidates who support abortion rights. The leaked draft opinion prompted American Bridge, a Democratic opposition research and rapid response group, to accelerate plans to focus on abortion.

The group rushed to finish a website that details positions taken on abortion by Republican candidates and officeholders in key states. The site, which went live Tuesday, includes detailed dossiers of public positions that candidates have taken over the years, including quotes from news interviews and social media. One aim is to highlight any suggestions by candidates that women might be arrested for getting abortions, or doctors imprisoned for performing them.
“For years, many Republican candidates and officeholders have thrown out these platitudes about their position on abortion, but they’ve really never been held to account for the impact on women and pregnant people,” said Cecile Richards, a co-chair at American Bridge and former president of Planned Parenthood.

Richard said she is not worried that the information will cause activists to improperly target antiabortion figures.
“The rhetoric and the incendiary activity has, to me, been part of the antiabortion movement,” she said. “We are simply trying to hold candidates and elected officials accountable for the positions they take.”
The group will put “six figures” toward promoting the site, according to Tiffany Vaughn, a spokeswoman for American Bridge. The money will be redirected from the $100 million the group unveiled in February to bolster Democrats in the midterm elections and defend Biden’s record more broadly.
Republicans continue to suggest that there is a rash of violent protest across the country.
“Attacking and threatening pro-life people because they value children — just think about that,” tweeted Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla). “The disruption at churches, pregnancy resource centers, and threats of violence against justices cannot continue.”
But Psaki on Tuesday reiterated the administration’s message that protests should remain peaceful, and suggested they generally are. “Just because people are passionate, that does not mean they are violent,” she said.
Over the weekend, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) called the police after an abortion rights message was written in sidewalk chalk in front of her house in Bangor, Maine.

Asked for a response to Collins’s decision to call the police, Psaki said, “Even as passions are high, even as people are fearful, even as people are scared and frustrated, which is understandable, we should not — no one should resort to violence, of course, nor threats nor intimidation nor vandalism.”
Pressed on whether she considers sidewalk chalk vandalism, Psaki declined to comment. “I’ll let others define that, but there are lots of ways to peacefully protest,” she said.
Robert Barnes and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

 

jward

passin' thru
Barr on SCOTUS Home Protests: ‘Federal Crime’ to Go to Judge’s Residence to Influence Decisions
5,811

Pam Key9 May 20222,303

1:29


Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Monday on FNC’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” that the protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices after a draft opinion leaked that would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling were a violation of both federal and state law.
Waters said, “You see these protesters at the homes of these justices, what goes through your mind?”
Barr said, “Well, that’s not a valid form of protest because it’s a violation of the law. There is time and place for protests, and the federal statute makes it clear if you go to the house of a judge, the residence of a judge to influence the judge in his decisions and demonstrate that that’s a federal crime.
He added, “It’s a state crime and the state of Virginia, at least. So, those are not valid forms of protest. They are obviously meant to intimidate. There is a parallel between January 6, which Republican leadership condemned the violence there. The forceful entry into the Capitol and the fighting with police. But what was really bad about that was it was an attempt to intimidate the Senate and the vice president in carrying out their duties. What’s happening now, while not as much violence has been involved yet, it’s no different. It’s an attempt to interfere and to intimidate the officials who are carrying out their duties under the Constitution.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

 

jward

passin' thru

Dobbin

Faithful Steed
Barr on SCOTUS Home Protests: ‘Federal Crime’ to Go to Judge’s Residence to Influence Decisions
5,811

Pam Key9 May 20222,303

1:29


Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Monday on FNC’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” that the protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices after a draft opinion leaked that would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling were a violation of both federal and state law.
Waters said, “You see these protesters at the homes of these justices, what goes through your mind?”
Barr said, “Well, that’s not a valid form of protest because it’s a violation of the law. There is time and place for protests, and the federal statute makes it clear if you go to the house of a judge, the residence of a judge to influence the judge in his decisions and demonstrate that that’s a federal crime.
He added, “It’s a state crime and the state of Virginia, at least. So, those are not valid forms of protest. They are obviously meant to intimidate. There is a parallel between January 6, which Republican leadership condemned the violence there. The forceful entry into the Capitol and the fighting with police. But what was really bad about that was it was an attempt to intimidate the Senate and the vice president in carrying out their duties. What’s happening now, while not as much violence has been involved yet, it’s no different. It’s an attempt to interfere and to intimidate the officials who are carrying out their duties under the Constitution.”

Patel Patriot (Devolution) seems to have the idea that Barr is some sort of Trump supporter. And may be part of Trump's plan. As he says for Pence...

Well, there are different ways to hold the reins. And at least one of them is "disinformative."

Dobbin
 

Groucho

Has No Life - Lives on TB
If you want to be effective cut out the money funding this and those doling it out and giving them instructions. Without them these people become ineffective quickly.
The left-wing dark money group despicably organizing protestors at the justices’ homes is called “Ruth Sent Us.”
It makes one wonder how the late Justice Ginsburg would feel about her name being invoked on behalf of this brutish cause. /1Leftist Groups Direct Protesters To Descend Upon Supreme Court Justices’ Homes | The Daily Wire
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) May 5, 2022
The main question is, how do we stop the money flow? We're on our own. We certainly can't expect the "just us" department to step in and stop this madness. Homeland Insecurity will have nothing to do with stopping the crime. The Fedgov is all in favor of this massive travesty.

Now, if there really were enough patriots.......
 

jward

passin' thru
Surprised someone aint already been shot; this really was for all the marbles and they apparently intend to burn it to the ground.

..some mashup between 1984, the hunger games, the handmaiden tales and Idocracy await..
 

jward

passin' thru
Sebastian Gorka DrG
@SebGorka

5h

Just got off the phone with a very senior former officer with the VA State Police. He confirmed what I suspected. @GlennYoungkin is totally empowered to deploy State Troopers to protect the Conservative Justices living in the Commonwealth. For some reason he isn’t. Why?

I hope the SCOTUS judges have a security protocol in place to address the issues of the Orcs trying to invade their airspace....
 
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