Confidence in U.S. Supreme Court Sinks to Historic Low

Jeffrey Jones

Gallup.com

Originally posted 23 JUN 22

Story Highlights

• 25% of Americans have confidence in Supreme Court, down from 36% in 2021
• Current reading is five percentage points lower than prior record low
• Confidence is down among Democrats and independents this year

With the U.S. Supreme Court expected to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision before the end of its 2021-2022 term, Americans' confidence in the court has dropped sharply over the past year and reached a new low in Gallup's nearly 50-year trend. Twenty-five percent of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court, down from 36% a year ago and five percentage points lower than the previous low recorded in 2014.

These results are based on a June 1-20 Gallup poll that included Gallup's annual update on confidence in U.S. institutions. The survey was completed before the end of the court's term and before it issued its major rulings for that term. Many institutions have suffered a decline in confidence this year, but the 11-point drop in confidence in the Supreme Court is roughly double what it is for most institutions that experienced a decline. Gallup will release the remainder of the confidence in institutions results in early July.

The Supreme Court is likely to issue a ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case before its summer recess. The decision will determine the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. A leaked draft majority opinion in the case suggests that the high court will not only allow the Mississippi law to stand, but also overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court ruling that prohibits restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. Americans oppose overturning Roe by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

In September, Gallup found the Supreme Court's job approval rating at a new low and public trust in the judicial branch of the federal government down sharply. These changes occurred after the Supreme Court declined to block a Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, among other controversial decisions at that time. Given these prior results, it is unclear if the drop in confidence in the Supreme Court measured in the current poll is related to the anticipated Dobbs decision or had occurred several months before the leak.

The info is here.

These Evangelical Women Are Abandoning Trump and the Church

Sara Stankorb
gen.medium.com
Originally posted 23 July 20

Here is an excerpt:

In exit polls from the 2016 election, 80% of white evangelicals and the majority of self-identified Christians said they voted for Donald Trump. The thrice-married, profane, biblically illiterate, sexually predacious candidate mirrored no beatitudes. While some believers rejected Trump for lack of decency, for many Christian voters, his personal failings were not disqualifying — here, at last, was a president who could muscle forward their political interests.

In her 2019 book, Red State Christians, journalist and Lutheran pastor Angela Denker describes traveling across the country after the election, talking to Christian voters and trying to understand their relationship with Donald Trump. Denker argues Trump may not know much about the Bible or evangelical Christianity, but his rhetoric resonated with a civic religion common in many Evangelical churches, especially in the South, “with its unique blend of nostalgia, plus a little misogyny and dog-whistle race politics on the side.” There’s a degree to which many churches have adopted a Christian nationalism that has wrapped faith tightly in patriotism and relies, in some cases, less on the gospel and more on “God, guns, and country.”

Many Southern Baptist churches celebrate the Sundays closest to the Fourth of July and Veterans Day with as much fervor as Easter, with services that might feature the Pledge of Allegiance, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” sermons on American exceptionalism, and video montages of war veterans. It’s a church-country linkage popularized during the Cold War, a perceived battle against threats to “Christian America” rooted in a dominionist theology that portrays the white European settlement of America as a fulfillment of God’s promise. Winning the culture wars and “restoring” Christian political primacy became a spiritual mandate, a restoration of God’s promise. By the time Obama’s administration championed same-sex marriage and birth control coverage, “Democrats sounded like foreigners to Red State Christians across the South and rural America,” writes Dennker.

The info is here.

Trump Administration Rolls Back Birth Control Mandate

Robert Pear, Rebecca R. Ruiz, and Laurie Godstein
The New York Times
Originally published October 6, 2017

The Trump administration on Friday moved to expand the rights of employers to deny women insurance coverage for contraception and issued sweeping guidance on religious freedom that critics said could also erode civil rights protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The twin actions, by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department, were meant to carry out a promise issued by President Trump five months ago, when he declared in the Rose Garden that “we will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced anymore.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions quoted those words in issuing guidance to federal agencies and prosecutors, instructing them to take the position in court that workers, employers and organizations may claim broad exemptions from nondiscrimination laws on the basis of religious objections.

At the same time, the Department of Health and Human Services issued two rules rolling back a federal requirement that employers must include birth control coverage in their health insurance plans. The rules offer an exemption to any employer that objects to covering contraception services on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.

More than 55 million women have access to birth control without co-payments because of the contraceptive coverage mandate, according to a study commissioned by the Obama administration. Under the new regulations, hundreds of thousands of women could lose those benefits.

The article is here.

Italics added.  And, just when the abortion rate was at pre-1973 levels.

Feminist Political Philosophy

First published Sun Mar 1, 2009; substantive revision Tue Apr 1, 2014
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Feminist political philosophy is an area of philosophy that is in part focused on understanding and critiquing the way political philosophy is usually construed—often without any attention to feminist concerns—and on articulating how political theory might be reconstructed in a way that advances feminist concerns. Feminist political philosophy is a branch of both feminist philosophy and political philosophy. As a branch of feminist philosophy, it serves as a form of critique or a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricœur 1970). That is, it serves as a way of opening up or looking at the political world as it is usually understood and uncovering ways in which women and their current and historical concerns are poorly depicted, represented, and addressed. As a branch of political philosophy, feminist political philosophy serves as a field for developing new ideals, practices, and justifications for how political institutions and practices should be organized and reconstructed.

The entire article is here.

Editorial note: Feminist Political Philosophy is relevant to the practice of psychology: think therapeutic relationship, certain clinical interventions, Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Girls and Women, and advocacy work.

Chief of Army message regarding unacceptable behaviour

Published on Jun 12, 2013

Message from the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison, AO, to the Australian Army following the announcement on Thursday, 13 June 2013 of civilian police and Defence investigations into allegations of unacceptable behaviour by Army members.





This video was made in response to news reports to the following:

Australian news outlets reported last week that at least 17 soldiers circulated video of themselves having sex with women. The videos were shared without the women's knowledge. Some of the material was distributed over military computer networks, and those under investigation include a lieutenant colonel and a major, Morrison told reporters on Thursday.

The following quote is from a CNN story found here.

Editorial notes: This video is an interesting and thought-provoking way to share unequivocal moral and ethical standards to the military community under his leadership.  Also interesting is the number of comments and the wide variety of responses to this video.

Additionally, compare and contrast this response to the United States military's response to the increased reports of sexual assault in our military community.  The responses are not the same.

Students say Swarthmore has been soft on sex crime, and they’re fed up

By Will Bunch
Philadelphia Daily News
Originally published May 10, 2013

IN THE DARKNESS of night, the complaints were etched in chalk up and down the walkways of Swarthmore College, a 399-acre oasis of green quads and liberal student activism southwest of Philadelphia.

"Welcome to Swarthmore," said one of the scribblings that recently confronted students - and administrators - when the sun rose. "Home of my rapist."

The so-called chalkings, which infuriated Swarthmore's president, were a turning point in a controversy that has rattled one of America's top-ranked liberal-arts schools. It has also placed female students there on the cutting edge of a national movement - charging that colleges and universities are systematically ignoring, downplaying and underreporting sexual assault and sexual harassment.

Hope Brinn says administrators were dismissive after a male student showed up in her room when she was unclothed and refused to leave, and Mia Ferguson says she was an assault victim. The two 19-year-old sophomores organized 20 other students and alums to complain to federal authorities that Swarthmore is violating the 1990 Clery Act that requires full reporting of campus crimes, including sexual assaults.

"Swarthmore will lead on this issue," said Ferguson, an engineering major who was born in England and grew up outside Boston. She acknowledged that their complaint that Swarthmore is soft on alleged perpetrators of sex crimes and underreporting incidents is at odds with the Delaware County school's reputation as a liberal oasis - one of many contradictions in a controversy that has now sparked campus protests and teach-ins.

The entire article is here.