John Washington, “The Case for Open Borders”
So, that number actually extends to the year 2000: there were less than 15 militarized borders throughout the world. And when I say militarized, I also mean just with wall infrastructure, and there’s less than 15 of them. Now it’s approaching 80, but it’s a little bit difficult to keep track because it keeps popping up. But yes, just look at the United States. Until the ‘90s, there was really no significant infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border at all. For the first 100 years of the United States existence as a country, there were zero federal immigration laws. And just think about ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). ICE did not exist for over 95% of this country’s history. And now, people say that without a wall—without a border—countries don’t exist. Did we not exist?
… Immigrants are good for your GDP, but fuck your GDP. Honestly, that is a secondary benefit. The primary focus, I think, should be on the moral case, or the human argument, and I think there are two basic ways to make it. One is to talk about this border: where was it drawn, how was it drawn there, and who drew it? And if you look at pretty much any country in the world right now, and we can just stick with the United States for our current audience, the way that we drew this border line, and the reason we drew it where we did, is because we engaged in genocidal slaughter of the people who lived here before, we needed a train line running from the ports around Louisiana to the southwest coast, and we stole it through bloody conquest of Mexico. So, that’s how we drew this line that we now purport to say that is ours, and we can decide who gets to cross and not. And the second is, you can look towards any religion or any set of moral code in the world, and it says to help the aggrieved neighbor.
Atrios (Duncan Black), “Who’s the Boss?”
In very general terms, you can divide our glorious Thinkfluencers (columnists, etc.) and journalists into those think their role is to hold the powerful to account, and those who think their role is to hold (select) members of the public to account.
Joey Cochran, “And Come To The Defense Of Those Targeted”
Protecting and maintaining power, rather than sharing it liberally within a global community, is instinctual for white Christian nationalists. They value preserving privilege and power at all costs, through fear and intimidation that divides people, fashions imagined foes, and marginalizes those outside the ethnic ideal. These forces are organizing campaigns to cancel liberal discourse nationwide and strategically prevent it in our colleges and universities. Naming these campaigns as such, as organized white Christian supremacist and nationalist efforts, is a first step to dismantling this idolatrous worldview and divesting it of its influence in orthodox Christianity. A second step is for Christian institutions and leaders to come publicly to the defense of those targeted by white Christian nationalist campaigns.
Kristin Du Mez, “A word of advice for Christian college presidents”
Outside groups like Turning Point USA and media outlets like the Daily Wire are providing communities and constituents with a playbook. Christian college administrators may think that by caving to the pressure they’ll save their institutions from bad press and protect their reputations in conservative circles, but that’s a short-sighted move. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. This is how this works. …
Give in to the pressure tactics one time, they will come back for more. You may think you’re dodging a bullet, but you’re placing yourself squarely in the line of fire.
More importantly, what is Christian education for? What have you hired your professors to do? What sort of thinking do we want to cultivate in our students?
Osita Nwanevu, “US students, once again, have led the way”
The student left is the most reliably correct constituency in America. Over the past 60 years, it has passed every great moral test American foreign policy has forced upon the public, including the Vietnam war, the question of relations with apartheid South Africa, and the Iraq war. Student activists were at the heart of the black civil rights movement from the very beginning. To much derision and abuse, they pushed for more rights, protections and respect for women and queer people on their campuses than the wider world was long willing to provide. And over the past 20 years in particular, policymakers have arrived belatedly to stances on economic inequality, climate change, drug policy and criminal justice that putative radicals on campus took up long before them.
They have not always been right; even when right, their prescriptions for the problems they’ve identified and their means of directing attention to them have not always been prudent. But time and time and time again, the student left in America has squarely faced and expressed truths our politicians and all the eminent and eloquent voices of moderation in the press, in all of their supposed wisdom and good sense, have been unable or unwilling to see.
Orlando Sentinel, Florida Sentinel, “Editorial: A frightening tyranny over Florida women”
The greatest immediate danger is denial of emergency care to women with pregnancy complications. Physicians will necessarily think twice about what care to provide, even if delaying it might have lifelong consequences.
Nadija Reiser, “I’m an ER Doctor. If the Supreme Court Upends EMTALA, Patients Will Die.”
EMTALA, which Congress passed in 1986, ensures doctors like me cannot turn away anyone from the emergency room until we know it is safe to do so. More specifically, it ensures that anyone who visits a hospital receiving Medicare funding is screened and medically stabilized, regardless of their ability to pay.
Pregnancy complications, such as an ectopic pregnancy or a septic miscarriage, can be life threatening. They may require procedures (like dilation and evacuation, or D&E) or medication that anti-choice groups claim should be illegal. States with increasingly restrictive abortion laws have been battling over what can and cannot be done without violating EMTALA. If the pregnant person’s life is at risk, providers are legally obligated to perform these procedures to stabilize them.
… Simply put, pregnancy can be dangerous. In the ER, we are trained to recognize and treat life-threatening pregnancy-related emergencies. We stabilize so an OB-GYN can perform procedures or give medication necessary to save lives. I have resuscitated too many women whose hearts have stopped beating because they were bleeding so much internally from ectopic pregnancies. I have watched as a young woman hemorrhaged from an active miscarriage that could only be saved in an operating room, keeping her alive until the specialist could arrive.
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