#currie — Public Fediverse posts

https://www.europesays.com/at/180660/ Eishockey – 99ers halten „Säulen“ der Meistermannschaft #AT #Austria #Conley #Currie #FrankHora #Graz #JoshCurrie #KevinConley #KevinRoy #Österreich #PaulHuber #PhilippPinter

On Twitter, #PamBondi also has a statement on #LindseyHalligan and her departure. But it has little basis in truth or the #law so let's #fisk it.

> During her 120-day tenure as Interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of #Virginia

- Judge Currie expressly ruled that Lindsey Halligan was never lawfully appointed as U.S. Attorney at all.
- Her actions were therefore void ab initio — not merely defective, not expired, but never authorized.
- You cannot have a “120-day tenure” in an office you never legally held.

Also, it's a bit weird that NOW you say "interim" which Halligan was not using the filings.

> Lindsey Halligan served with the utmost distinction and an unwavering commitment to the rule of law.

Directly contradicted by multiple federal judges.
- Judge #Currie: held that #Halligan ignored statutory limits, bypassed Congress, and acted without constitutional authority.
- Judge #Novak: described her filing as “containing a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show” and emphasized that she ignored every lawful avenue to resolve the issue.

Serving “with distinction” does not include:
- Acting without legal authority
- Continuing to sign filings with a title a federal judge ruled invalid
- Filing briefs that do not answer the court’s question
- Treating binding judicial rulings as optional

> By prosecuting the most serious offenders including violent criminal illegal aliens, murderers, and child abusers,

Misleading at best; likely false as a justification.

This is credit-laundering: attributing the ordinary work of career prosecutors to an unlawfully appointed political figure with no prosecutorial experience.

The Carolina pale crawler tale that got my attention

A creepy tale from North Carolina is making the rounds on social media and causing a huge stir in the paranormal community. Remarkably, this one comes with details, a genuine 911 distress call, and police reports. This isn’t your average ghost tale. It is considerably weirder. Trying to debunk it would be a lost cause.

I started hearing bits of this story in the past few days. It was described as the story of a cryptid that jumped in a truck. It seemed outrageous. Considering how difficult it is to find reliable sources online these days, the Carolina Case Files YouTube channel has a real life presenter who was really at the location and had really gathered the pieces. They delivered a solid report. Their video (necessary viewing) is linked below, but here is the story:

A young man driving a pickup truck was travelling on Route 210 north near Currie, NC just before 11 PM on July 31, 2021. While still moving, he places a call to Pender County 911 to report that he saw what appeared to be a man on the roadside, bleeding from the head. The witness, clearly upset, reported seeing red streaks on the torso, with the man just staring at the driver as he passed.

A half a minute later, as the dispatcher continued to talk to the driver, there was an audible thump on his end. He swore and yelled that something was in the bed of the truck. Then he screamed, “It’s not human, it’s not human!” and he accelerated. The dispatcher continued to ask for information as he tells her he slammed on the brakes, knocking the thing over the hood and onto the road.

He took off down the road again. The dispatcher tried to get him to say what he thought the thing was, but he couldn’t. He rejected her idea that it might have been a turkey, insisting that it didn’t have feathers but was pale, light-colored. He continued on, admitting to the dispatcher he was too shaken and freaked out to stop, until he got to a store on Route 421 several minutes later. During the call, he ticked off landmarks to indicate where he was. He waited several minutes at the store for the arrival of police and an EMT crew.

The officers had him take them to the spot where he saw the bleeding man and had the encounter with the mystery thing in the truck. There was nothing found. The truck, however, apparently had scratch marks on the roof.

Story known for years

The story has just spread widely on social media, showing up on websites and social media, even though it took place in 2021. The incident was known in the area, spread by friends of the driver or the responders. However, the witness didn’t want to tell this story; he wanted to forget it. Carolina Case Files followed up on the details and tracked him down, convincing him to recollect what happened. They posted the video below on September 13, 2025 including interviews with the witness and the sheriff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acK1v75u6CM

The witness, still wishing to remain anonymous and referred to as “T”, recounts the story with additional detail about the first encounter – what has been interpreted as a Civil War ghost soldier near the Moore’s Creek Battlefield – and the subsequent truck incident. The two entities are assumed to not be related. Paranormalists, however, contend that there is a history of spooky encounters in this area making it a window area.

The driver states that he could see the thing in the truck when he turned on the bed lights. Its head was at the back window. He described it as having a white face with sunken eyes and skin stretched over the skull. After it was ejected from the truck, he saw it stand up on the road. He says it had an excessively thin “scrawny” long body, like a human but stretched out, about 7-feet tall.

Comparing the official record with the story, some inconsistencies emerged. Carolina Case Files made a follow-up video noting an error they made in the time stamp of the call, and explaining that in the 4 years that had passed, the witness no longer had the photo evidence because he wanted to move past this incident forever. The host, Rusty Martin, assured the audience that this was definitely a recorded incident, just as described. No hoaxing. They had obtained the 911 recording and police reports through regular investigative channels. They also recreated the trip along the same route while playing the extended version of the call. The timeline matched. The police apparently had used a drone to search for reported entities but found nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbKXep5LTk

BroBible, a site I normally refuse to link to because it’s ad-heavy clickbait, actually did a decent summary of the case here.

“And all I see is this just this super scrawny long body just fly over my truck in a ball, rolling,” T recalls. “As I’m swerving to the left, I see it stand up. And it is easily taller than that truck. I’m 5′ 10”. The truck is about 2 inches taller than I am. And this thing was easily, like, maybe 7 feet. And, as I pass it, I look in my mirror, and I see it bolt to the left into the woods.”

“It looked like somebody took a normal human and stretched them out, starting with the limbs,” he says. “Abnormally long legs and arms. And it just took off into the woods.”

The Rake

It’s one thing to claim to see a roadside ghost – one of many thousands of similar experiences reported worldwide. I have nothing to say about that other than it’s interesting. But the truck entity is really intriguing. If not for the recording, I’d have a hard time imagining anything like the second part of this account really occurred. We can speculate all day about what reasonably might have happened. That’s not the point. The point is the story is being interpreted as an encounter with a pale crawler, a rake, a shrink-wrapped humanoid monster. And people are eating it up.

I’m not going to dance around the fact that rakes are made up monsters. There is a whole genre of hairless elongated humanoids including Slenderman, gray aliens, the “tall man”, etc. Its name comes from its rake-like claws. We know the rake is fiction. It was created in 2005 when writers on 4chan collaborated to create a monster. And it caught on. It became a pop cryptid, usually supernatural, always menacing. It’s a form that people seem to “see” a lot, just like the hairy man. Stories, art and videos are shared everyday about the array of pale crawlers. That form fits this story exactly.

I don’t know what this driver saw, and we likely will never know. This tale does not make the rake real. Could a deer or another animal have run into his truck? Was he already so upset that he misinterpreted the awful incident that followed the first? How can we account for his description of the monster’s face and height? We can’t. We can only speculate. I won’t do that.

This story has legs; it will inject megawatts of energy into the haunted lore of this area. There is little value in making the effort to “explain” it because most people don’t want an explanation. They want the story. This gripping, amazing account is what it is: a real life paranormal tale.

Post Script 28-Sept-2025: I hear a lot of people commenting that this is a hoax. That’s always a possibility. If it is a hoax, it involves several people over a long time. The evidence at least shows that this story was circulated as early as December 2024. So Carolina Case Files would have had to make up a series of facts and make it match with existing times and places. And the Sheriff would be lying. That’s a big deal. Police reports aren’t available online, and likely because the person wished to remain anonymous, that report it’s floating around for everyone to see. If additional evidence were to show up that disputes the claims – such as local residents reporting it was a manufactured tale, or that some aspect of the interview video were faked – then the likely conclusion shifts.

Sometimes the skeptic looks ridiculous by saying “it’s a hoax!”, accusing someone of making it up when the hoax would involve a considerable number of people whose reputation would be on the line. That’s why I don’t see hoax as an obvious answer here. I think something happened to this guy; we just don’t know, and may never know, what that was.

7-Oct-2025: Now the story has made it to several other sources and even Snopes has checked into it. As usual, it takes a week or so to rise to wider coverage. So, yeah, all you doubters, the caller didn’t hoax this, as I stated above.

29-Oct-2025: Check out the Skeptoid episode that covers this story.

#Currie #ghost #humanoid #ItSNotHuman #MooreSCreek #NorthCarolina #PaleCrawler #PenderCounty #Route210 #theRake #truckAttack

https://sharonahill.com/?p=10391

The Carolina pale crawler tale that got my attention

A creepy tale from North Carolina is making the rounds on social media and causing a huge stir in the paranormal community. Remarkably, this one comes with details, a genuine 911 distress call, and police reports. This isn’t your average ghost tale. It is considerably weirder. Trying to debunk it would be a lost cause.

I started hearing bits of this story in the past few days. It was described as the story of a cryptid that jumped in a truck. It seemed outrageous. Considering how difficult it is to find reliable sources online these days, the Carolina Case Files YouTube channel has a real life presenter who was really at the location and had really gathered the pieces. They delivered a solid report. Their video (necessary viewing) is linked below, but here is the story:

A young man driving a pickup truck was travelling on Route 210 north near Currie, NC just before 11 PM on July 31, 2021. While still moving, he places a call to Pender County 911 to report that he saw what appeared to be a man on the roadside, bleeding from the head. The witness, clearly upset, reported seeing red streaks on the torso, with the man just staring at the driver as he passed.

A half a minute later, as the dispatcher continued to talk to the driver, there was an audible thump on his end. He swore and yelled that something was in the bed of the truck. Then he screamed, “It’s not human, it’s not human!” and he accelerated. The dispatcher continued to ask for information as he tells her he slammed on the brakes, knocking the thing over the hood and onto the road.

He took off down the road again. The dispatcher tried to get him to say what he thought the thing was, but he couldn’t. He rejected her idea that it might have been a turkey, insisting that it didn’t have feathers but was pale, light-colored. He continued on, admitting to the dispatcher he was too shaken and freaked out to stop, until he got to a store on Route 421 several minutes later. During the call, he ticked off landmarks to indicate where he was. He waited several minutes at the store for the arrival of police and an EMT crew.

The officers had him take them to the spot where he saw the bleeding man and had the encounter with the mystery thing in the truck. There was nothing found. The truck, however, apparently had scratch marks on the roof.

Story known for years

The story has just spread widely on social media, showing up on websites and social media, even though it took place in 2021. The incident was known in the area, spread by friends of the driver or the responders. However, the witness didn’t want to tell this story; he wanted to forget it. Carolina Case Files followed up on the details and tracked him down, convincing him to recollect what happened. They posted the video below on September 13, 2025 including interviews with the witness and the sheriff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acK1v75u6CM

The witness, still wishing to remain anonymous and referred to as “T”, recounts the story with additional detail about the first encounter – what has been interpreted as a Civil War ghost soldier near the Moore’s Creek Battlefield – and the subsequent truck incident. The two entities are assumed to not be related. Paranormalists, however, contend that there is a history of spooky encounters in this area making it a window area.

The driver states that he could see the thing in the truck when he turned on the bed lights. Its head was at the back window. He described it as having a white face with sunken eyes and skin stretched over the skull. After it was ejected from the truck, he saw it stand up on the road. He says it had an excessively thin “scrawny” long body, like a human but stretched out, about 7-feet tall.

Comparing the official record with the story, some inconsistencies emerged. Carolina Case Files made a follow-up video noting an error they made in the time stamp of the call, and explaining that in the 4 years that had passed, the witness no longer had the photo evidence because he wanted to move past this incident forever. The host, Rusty Martin, assured the audience that this was definitely a recorded incident, just as described. No hoaxing. They had obtained the 911 recording and police reports through regular investigative channels. They also recreated the trip along the same route while playing the extended version of the call. The timeline matched. The police apparently had used a drone to search for reported entities but found nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbKXep5LTk

BroBible, a site I normally refuse to link to because it’s ad-heavy clickbait, actually did a decent summary of the case here.

“And all I see is this just this super scrawny long body just fly over my truck in a ball, rolling,” T recalls. “As I’m swerving to the left, I see it stand up. And it is easily taller than that truck. I’m 5′ 10”. The truck is about 2 inches taller than I am. And this thing was easily, like, maybe 7 feet. And, as I pass it, I look in my mirror, and I see it bolt to the left into the woods.”

“It looked like somebody took a normal human and stretched them out, starting with the limbs,” he says. “Abnormally long legs and arms. And it just took off into the woods.”

The Rake

It’s one thing to claim to see a roadside ghost – one of many thousands of similar experiences reported worldwide. I have nothing to say about that other than it’s interesting. But the truck entity is really intriguing. If not for the recording, I’d have a hard time imagining anything like the second part of this account really occurred. We can speculate all day about what reasonably might have happened. That’s not the point. The point is the story is being interpreted as an encounter with a pale crawler, a rake, a shrink-wrapped humanoid monster. And people are eating it up.

I’m not going to dance around the fact that rakes are made up monsters. There is a whole genre of hairless elongated humanoids including Slenderman, gray aliens, the “tall man”, etc. Its name comes from its rake-like claws. We know the rake is fiction. It was created in 2005 when writers on 4chan collaborated to create a monster. And it caught on. It became a pop cryptid, usually supernatural, always menacing. It’s a form that people seem to “see” a lot, just like the hairy man. Stories, art and videos are shared everyday about the array of pale crawlers. That form fits this story exactly.

I don’t know what this driver saw, and we likely will never know. This tale does not make the rake real. Could a deer or another animal have run into his truck? Was he already so upset that he misinterpreted the awful incident that followed the first? How can we account for his description of the monster’s face and height? We can’t. We can only speculate. I won’t do that.

This story has legs; it will inject megawatts of energy into the haunted lore of this area. There is little value in making the effort to “explain” it because most people don’t want an explanation. They want the story. This gripping, amazing account is what it is: a real life paranormal tale.

Post Script 28-Sept-2025: I hear a lot of people commenting that this is a hoax. That’s always a possibility. If it is a hoax, it involves several people over a long time. The evidence at least shows that this story was circulated as early as December 2024. So Carolina Case Files would have had to make up a series of facts and make it match with existing times and places. And the Sheriff would be lying. That’s a big deal. Police reports aren’t available online, and likely because the person wished to remain anonymous, that report it’s floating around for everyone to see. If additional evidence were to show up that disputes the claims – such as local residents reporting it was a manufactured tale, or that some aspect of the interview video were faked – then the likely conclusion shifts.

Sometimes the skeptic looks ridiculous by saying “it’s a hoax!”, accusing someone of making it up when the hoax would involve a considerable number of people whose reputation would be on the line. That’s why I don’t see hoax as an obvious answer here. I think something happened to this guy; we just don’t know, and may never know, what that was.

7-Oct-2025: Now the story has made it to several other sources and even Snopes has checked into it. As usual, it takes a week or so to rise to wider coverage. So, yeah, all you doubters, the caller didn’t hoax this, as I stated above.

29-Oct-2025: Check out the Skeptoid episode that covers this story.

#Currie #ghost #humanoid #ItSNotHuman #MooreSCreek #NorthCarolina #PaleCrawler #PenderCounty #Route210 #theRake #truckAttack

https://sharonahill.com/?p=10391

The Carolina pale crawler tale that got my attention

A creepy tale from North Carolina is making the rounds on social media and causing a huge stir in the paranormal community. Remarkably, this one comes with details, a genuine 911 distress call, and police reports. This isn’t your average ghost tale. It is considerably weirder. Trying to debunk it would be a lost cause.

I started hearing bits of this story in the past few days. It was described as the story of a cryptid that jumped in a truck. It seemed outrageous. Considering how difficult it is to find reliable sources online these days, the Carolina Case Files YouTube channel has a real life presenter who was really at the location and had really gathered the pieces. They delivered a solid report. Their video (necessary viewing) is linked below, but here is the story:

A young man driving a pickup truck was travelling on Route 210 north near Currie, NC just before 11 PM on July 31, 2021. While still moving, he places a call to Pender County 911 to report that he saw what appeared to be a man on the roadside, bleeding from the head. The witness, clearly upset, reported seeing red streaks on the torso, with the man just staring at the driver as he passed.

A half a minute later, as the dispatcher continued to talk to the driver, there was an audible thump on his end. He swore and yelled that something was in the bed of the truck. Then he screamed, “It’s not human, it’s not human!” and he accelerated. The dispatcher continued to ask for information as he tells her he slammed on the brakes, knocking the thing over the hood and onto the road.

He took off down the road again. The dispatcher tried to get him to say what he thought the thing was, but he couldn’t. He rejected her idea that it might have been a turkey, insisting that it didn’t have feathers but was pale, light-colored. He continued on, admitting to the dispatcher he was too shaken and freaked out to stop, until he got to a store on Route 421 several minutes later. During the call, he ticked off landmarks to indicate where he was. He waited several minutes at the store for the arrival of police and an EMT crew.

The officers had him take them to the spot where he saw the bleeding man and had the encounter with the mystery thing in the truck. There was nothing found. The truck, however, apparently had scratch marks on the roof.

Story known for years

The story has just spread widely on social media, showing up on websites and social media, even though it took place in 2021. The incident was known in the area, spread by friends of the driver or the responders. However, the witness didn’t want to tell this story; he wanted to forget it. Carolina Case Files followed up on the details and tracked him down, convincing him to recollect what happened. They posted the video below on September 13, 2025 including interviews with the witness and the sheriff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acK1v75u6CM

The witness, still wishing to remain anonymous and referred to as “T”, recounts the story with additional detail about the first encounter – what has been interpreted as a Civil War ghost soldier near the Moore’s Creek Battlefield – and the subsequent truck incident. The two entities are assumed to not be related. Paranormalists, however, contend that there is a history of spooky encounters in this area making it a window area.

The driver states that he could see the thing in the truck when he turned on the bed lights. Its head was at the back window. He described it as having a white face with sunken eyes and skin stretched over the skull. After it was ejected from the truck, he saw it stand up on the road. He says it had an excessively thin “scrawny” long body, like a human but stretched out, about 7-feet tall.

Comparing the official record with the story, some inconsistencies emerged. Carolina Case Files made a follow-up video noting an error they made in the time stamp of the call, and explaining that in the 4 years that had passed, the witness no longer had the photo evidence because he wanted to move past this incident forever. The host, Rusty Martin, assured the audience that this was definitely a recorded incident, just as described. No hoaxing. They had obtained the 911 recording and police reports through regular investigative channels. They also recreated the trip along the same route while playing the extended version of the call. The timeline matched. The police apparently had used a drone to search for reported entities but found nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbKXep5LTk

BroBible, a site I normally refuse to link to because it’s ad-heavy clickbait, actually did a decent summary of the case here.

“And all I see is this just this super scrawny long body just fly over my truck in a ball, rolling,” T recalls. “As I’m swerving to the left, I see it stand up. And it is easily taller than that truck. I’m 5′ 10”. The truck is about 2 inches taller than I am. And this thing was easily, like, maybe 7 feet. And, as I pass it, I look in my mirror, and I see it bolt to the left into the woods.”

“It looked like somebody took a normal human and stretched them out, starting with the limbs,” he says. “Abnormally long legs and arms. And it just took off into the woods.”

The Rake

It’s one thing to claim to see a roadside ghost – one of many thousands of similar experiences reported worldwide. I have nothing to say about that other than it’s interesting. But the truck entity is really intriguing. If not for the recording, I’d have a hard time imagining anything like the second part of this account really occurred. We can speculate all day about what reasonably might have happened. That’s not the point. The point is the story is being interpreted as an encounter with a pale crawler, a rake, a shrink-wrapped humanoid monster. And people are eating it up.

I’m not going to dance around the fact that rakes are made up monsters. There is a whole genre of hairless elongated humanoids including Slenderman, gray aliens, the “tall man”, etc. Its name comes from its rake-like claws. We know the rake is fiction. It was created in 2005 when writers on 4chan collaborated to create a monster. And it caught on. It became a pop cryptid, usually supernatural, always menacing. It’s a form that people seem to “see” a lot, just like the hairy man. Stories, art and videos are shared everyday about the array of pale crawlers. That form fits this story exactly.

I don’t know what this driver saw, and we likely will never know. This tale does not make the rake real. Could a deer or another animal have run into his truck? Was he already so upset that he misinterpreted the awful incident that followed the first? How can we account for his description of the monster’s face and height? We can’t. We can only speculate. I won’t do that.

This story has legs; it will inject megawatts of energy into the haunted lore of this area. There is little value in making the effort to “explain” it because most people don’t want an explanation. They want the story. This gripping, amazing account is what it is: a real life paranormal tale.

Post Script 28-Sept-2025: I hear a lot of people commenting that this is a hoax. That’s always a possibility. If it is a hoax, it involves several people over a long time. The evidence at least shows that this story was circulated as early as December 2024. So Carolina Case Files would have had to make up a series of facts and make it match with existing times and places. And the Sheriff would be lying. That’s a big deal. Police reports aren’t available online, and likely because the person wished to remain anonymous, that report it’s floating around for everyone to see. If additional evidence were to show up that disputes the claims – such as local residents reporting it was a manufactured tale, or that some aspect of the interview video were faked – then the likely conclusion shifts.

Sometimes the skeptic looks ridiculous by saying “it’s a hoax!”, accusing someone of making it up when the hoax would involve a considerable number of people whose reputation would be on the line. That’s why I don’t see hoax as an obvious answer here. I think something happened to this guy; we just don’t know, and may never know, what that was.

7-Oct-2025: Now the story has made it to several other sources and even Snopes has checked into it. As usual, it takes a week or so to rise to wider coverage. So, yeah, all you doubters, the caller didn’t hoax this, as I stated above.

29-Oct-2025: Check out the Skeptoid episode that covers this story.

#Currie #ghost #humanoid #ItSNotHuman #MooreSCreek #NorthCarolina #PaleCrawler #PenderCounty #Route210 #theRake #truckAttack

https://sharonahill.com/?p=10391

The Carolina pale crawler tale that got my attention

A creepy tale from North Carolina is making the rounds on social media and causing a huge stir in the paranormal community. Remarkably, this one comes with details, a genuine 911 distress call, and police reports. This isn’t your average ghost tale. It is considerably weirder. Trying to debunk it would be a lost cause.

I started hearing bits of this story in the past few days. It was described as the story of a cryptid that jumped in a truck. It seemed outrageous. Considering how difficult it is to find reliable sources online these days, the Carolina Case Files YouTube channel has a real life presenter who was really at the location and had really gathered the pieces. They delivered a solid report. Their video (necessary viewing) is linked below, but here is the story:

A young man driving a pickup truck was travelling on Route 210 north near Currie, NC just before 11 PM on July 31, 2021. While still moving, he places a call to Pender County 911 to report that he saw what appeared to be a man on the roadside, bleeding from the head. The witness, clearly upset, reported seeing red streaks on the torso, with the man just staring at the driver as he passed.

A half a minute later, as the dispatcher continued to talk to the driver, there was an audible thump on his end. He swore and yelled that something was in the bed of the truck. Then he screamed, “It’s not human, it’s not human!” and he accelerated. The dispatcher continued to ask for information as he tells her he slammed on the brakes, knocking the thing over the hood and onto the road.

He took off down the road again. The dispatcher tried to get him to say what he thought the thing was, but he couldn’t. He rejected her idea that it might have been a turkey, insisting that it didn’t have feathers but was pale, light-colored. He continued on, admitting to the dispatcher he was too shaken and freaked out to stop, until he got to a store on Route 421 several minutes later. During the call, he ticked off landmarks to indicate where he was. He waited several minutes at the store for the arrival of police and an EMT crew.

The officers had him take them to the spot where he saw the bleeding man and had the encounter with the mystery thing in the truck. There was nothing found. The truck, however, apparently had scratch marks on the roof.

Story known for years

The story has just spread widely on social media, showing up on websites and social media, even though it took place in 2021. The incident was known in the area, spread by friends of the driver or the responders. However, the witness didn’t want to tell this story; he wanted to forget it. Carolina Case Files followed up on the details and tracked him down, convincing him to recollect what happened. They posted the video below on September 13, 2025 including interviews with the witness and the sheriff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acK1v75u6CM

The witness, still wishing to remain anonymous and referred to as “T”, recounts the story with additional detail about the first encounter – what has been interpreted as a Civil War ghost soldier near the Moore’s Creek Battlefield – and the subsequent truck incident. The two entities are assumed to not be related. Paranormalists, however, contend that there is a history of spooky encounters in this area making it a window area.

The driver states that he could see the thing in the truck when he turned on the bed lights. Its head was at the back window. He described it as having a white face with sunken eyes and skin stretched over the skull. After it was ejected from the truck, he saw it stand up on the road. He says it had an excessively thin “scrawny” long body, like a human but stretched out, about 7-feet tall.

Comparing the official record with the story, some inconsistencies emerged. Carolina Case Files made a follow-up video noting an error they made in the time stamp of the call, and explaining that in the 4 years that had passed, the witness no longer had the photo evidence because he wanted to move past this incident forever. The host, Rusty Martin, assured the audience that this was definitely a recorded incident, just as described. No hoaxing. They had obtained the 911 recording and police reports through regular investigative channels. They also recreated the trip along the same route while playing the extended version of the call. The timeline matched. The police apparently had used a drone to search for reported entities but found nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbKXep5LTk

BroBible, a site I normally refuse to link to because it’s ad-heavy clickbait, actually did a decent summary of the case here.

“And all I see is this just this super scrawny long body just fly over my truck in a ball, rolling,” T recalls. “As I’m swerving to the left, I see it stand up. And it is easily taller than that truck. I’m 5′ 10”. The truck is about 2 inches taller than I am. And this thing was easily, like, maybe 7 feet. And, as I pass it, I look in my mirror, and I see it bolt to the left into the woods.”

“It looked like somebody took a normal human and stretched them out, starting with the limbs,” he says. “Abnormally long legs and arms. And it just took off into the woods.”

The Rake

It’s one thing to claim to see a roadside ghost – one of many thousands of similar experiences reported worldwide. I have nothing to say about that other than it’s interesting. But the truck entity is really intriguing. If not for the recording, I’d have a hard time imagining anything like the second part of this account really occurred. We can speculate all day about what reasonably might have happened. That’s not the point. The point is the story is being interpreted as an encounter with a pale crawler, a rake, a shrink-wrapped humanoid monster. And people are eating it up.

I’m not going to dance around the fact that rakes are made up monsters. There is a whole genre of hairless elongated humanoids including Slenderman, gray aliens, the “tall man”, etc. Its name comes from its rake-like claws. We know the rake is fiction. It was created in 2005 when writers on 4chan collaborated to create a monster. And it caught on. It became a pop cryptid, usually supernatural, always menacing. It’s a form that people seem to “see” a lot, just like the hairy man. Stories, art and videos are shared everyday about the array of pale crawlers. That form fits this story exactly.

I don’t know what this driver saw, and we likely will never know. This tale does not make the rake real. Could a deer or another animal have run into his truck? Was he already so upset that he misinterpreted the awful incident that followed the first? How can we account for his description of the monster’s face and height? We can’t. We can only speculate. I won’t do that.

This story has legs; it will inject megawatts of energy into the haunted lore of this area. There is little value in making the effort to “explain” it because most people don’t want an explanation. They want the story. This gripping, amazing account is what it is: a real life paranormal tale.

Post Script 28-Sept-2025: I hear a lot of people commenting that this is a hoax. That’s always a possibility. If it is a hoax, it involves several people over a long time. The evidence at least shows that this story was circulated as early as December 2024. So Carolina Case Files would have had to make up a series of facts and make it match with existing times and places. And the Sheriff would be lying. That’s a big deal. Police reports aren’t available online, and likely because the person wished to remain anonymous, that report it’s floating around for everyone to see. If additional evidence were to show up that disputes the claims – such as local residents reporting it was a manufactured tale, or that some aspect of the interview video were faked – then the likely conclusion shifts.

Sometimes the skeptic looks ridiculous by saying “it’s a hoax!”, accusing someone of making it up when the hoax would involve a considerable number of people whose reputation would be on the line. That’s why I don’t see hoax as an obvious answer here. I think something happened to this guy; we just don’t know, and may never know, what that was.

7-Oct-2025: Now the story has made it to several other sources and even Snopes has checked into it. As usual, it takes a week or so to rise to wider coverage. So, yeah, all you doubters, the caller didn’t hoax this, as I stated above.

29-Oct-2025: Check out the Skeptoid episode that covers this story.

#Currie #ghost #humanoid #ItSNotHuman #MooreSCreek #NorthCarolina #PaleCrawler #PenderCounty #Route210 #theRake #truckAttack

https://sharonahill.com/?p=10391

The Great New Zealand Road Trip: What I learned after a 3000km, two-week adventure across the country https://www.byteseu.com/1333738/ #2025 #3000km #3000kmplus #across #adventure #after #country #currie #epic #great #journey #learned #new #NewZealand #people #reflects #road #shayne #stories #the #they #told #trip #twoweek #What #whats #zealand

In the months after Roe fell, their efforts would reach beyond the outlines of that one document.

A.D.F. lawyers would get involved in the two high-profile Supreme Court cases,
argued before the justices this spring,
that could define post-Roe abortion access for American women;

they focused on🔹 the legality of medication that is the most common method of abortion 🔹
and on 🔹emergency care for pregnant women who face grave medical complications🔹 in states where abortion is banned.

But all that was to come.

Onstage that night, Fitch beamed.

For so many decades, Roe had seemed indestructible,

the backdrop to the lives of three generations of American women
and their families.

Soon it would be a relic of an earlier time.

“We’ve got tough times ahead,
but we’re ready,” Fitch told the audience.

“This has been certainly a God thing.
We’ve all been called.
We’ve all been waiting.”

Now, she said, they would not stop.

“Everyone in this room, you’re ready.”

(15/15)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

In the months after Roe fell, their efforts would reach beyond the outlines of that one document.

A.D.F. lawyers would get involved in the two high-profile Supreme Court cases,
argued before the justices this spring,
that could define post-Roe abortion access for American women;

they focused on🔹 the legality of medication that is the most common method of abortion 🔹
and on 🔹emergency care for pregnant women who face grave medical complications🔹 in states where abortion is banned.

But all that was to come.

Onstage that night, Fitch beamed.

For so many decades, Roe had seemed indestructible,

the backdrop to the lives of three generations of American women
and their families.

Soon it would be a relic of an earlier time.

“We’ve got tough times ahead,
but we’re ready,” Fitch told the audience.

“This has been certainly a God thing.
We’ve all been called.
We’ve all been waiting.”

Now, she said, they would not stop.

“Everyone in this room, you’re ready.”

(15/15)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

In the months after Roe fell, their efforts would reach beyond the outlines of that one document.

A.D.F. lawyers would get involved in the two high-profile Supreme Court cases,
argued before the justices this spring,
that could define post-Roe abortion access for American women;

they focused on🔹 the legality of medication that is the most common method of abortion 🔹
and on 🔹emergency care for pregnant women who face grave medical complications🔹 in states where abortion is banned.

But all that was to come.

Onstage that night, Fitch beamed.

For so many decades, Roe had seemed indestructible,

the backdrop to the lives of three generations of American women
and their families.

Soon it would be a relic of an earlier time.

“We’ve got tough times ahead,
but we’re ready,” Fitch told the audience.

“This has been certainly a God thing.
We’ve all been called.
We’ve all been waiting.”

Now, she said, they would not stop.

“Everyone in this room, you’re ready.”

(15/15)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

In the months after Roe fell, their efforts would reach beyond the outlines of that one document.

A.D.F. lawyers would get involved in the two high-profile Supreme Court cases,
argued before the justices this spring,
that could define post-Roe abortion access for American women;

they focused on🔹 the legality of medication that is the most common method of abortion 🔹
and on 🔹emergency care for pregnant women who face grave medical complications🔹 in states where abortion is banned.

But all that was to come.

Onstage that night, Fitch beamed.

For so many decades, Roe had seemed indestructible,

the backdrop to the lives of three generations of American women
and their families.

Soon it would be a relic of an earlier time.

“We’ve got tough times ahead,
but we’re ready,” Fitch told the audience.

“This has been certainly a God thing.
We’ve all been called.
We’ve all been waiting.”

Now, she said, they would not stop.

“Everyone in this room, you’re ready.”

(15/15)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

In the months after Roe fell, their efforts would reach beyond the outlines of that one document.

A.D.F. lawyers would get involved in the two high-profile Supreme Court cases,
argued before the justices this spring,
that could define post-Roe abortion access for American women;

they focused on🔹 the legality of medication that is the most common method of abortion 🔹
and on 🔹emergency care for pregnant women who face grave medical complications🔹 in states where abortion is banned.

But all that was to come.

Onstage that night, Fitch beamed.

For so many decades, Roe had seemed indestructible,

the backdrop to the lives of three generations of American women
and their families.

Soon it would be a relic of an earlier time.

“We’ve got tough times ahead,
but we’re ready,” Fitch told the audience.

“This has been certainly a God thing.
We’ve all been called.
We’ve all been waiting.”

Now, she said, they would not stop.

“Everyone in this room, you’re ready.”

(15/15)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

And now, amid the applause,
A.D.F. leaders looked ahead.

Their ultimate goal was sweeping change across America to preserve the values of conservative Christians.

A.D.F. was, after all, a “religious ministry,”
not just a legal network,
as Kristen Waggoner said in an interview.

Ending abortion was the first target, but A.D.F. had already begun planning for more.

According to an internal strategy document dated to May 2021,
A.D.F. leaders set out to achieve what they called
“generational wins,”

victories that,
like overturning Roe,
would change the law and the culture of America
for an entire generation.

The document, never before reported,
reveals secret details of the legal decisions A.D.F. hopes to challenge in the coming years.

A.D.F. lawyers would work to reverse the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in
🔸Employment Division v. Smith, 🔸
to “fully protect the free exercise of religion,”
the strategy document explained.

That decision, written by Scalia,
ruled that religious beliefs did not excuse disobeying laws.

They would pursue litigation to enforce free-speech rights on college campuses.

They would push legislation to protect the freedom of association there as well,
to eventually overturn a decision that Ginsburg wrote in
🔸Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. 🔸

The ruling allowed a public university not to recognize a Christian student group that excluded gay students.

In his dissent, Alito called the decision a “serious setback for freedom of expression.”

They would target 🔹L.G.B.T.Q. rights and protections 🔹
and “stop efforts to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to protected-class status in the law akin to race.”

They would “work to restore an understanding of marriage, the family and sexuality
that reflects God’s creative order.”

And they wanted the court to
🔹strengthen parental rights over state authority🔹
by having the court revisit the 2000 case 🔸Troxel v. Granville,🔸
which allowed the state to override a parent’s wishes in some circumstances.

A.D.F. would work to pass state legislation, similar to its approach on abortion,
that would prioritize parental rights in medical decisions for minors who say they are transgender,
to prevent parents from “being coerced into consenting to life-changing, ill-advised surgeries and procedures in the wake of gender dysphoria.”

It was an agenda that would inflame their liberal opponents and that not even everyone in the ballroom knew about.

(An A.D.F. official distanced the organization from the specific cases named in the document,
saying its legal strategies shift based on precedent and current events.)

(14/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

And now, amid the applause,
A.D.F. leaders looked ahead.

Their ultimate goal was sweeping change across America to preserve the values of conservative Christians.

A.D.F. was, after all, a “religious ministry,”
not just a legal network,
as Kristen Waggoner said in an interview.

Ending abortion was the first target, but A.D.F. had already begun planning for more.

According to an internal strategy document dated to May 2021,
A.D.F. leaders set out to achieve what they called
“generational wins,”

victories that,
like overturning Roe,
would change the law and the culture of America
for an entire generation.

The document, never before reported,
reveals secret details of the legal decisions A.D.F. hopes to challenge in the coming years.

A.D.F. lawyers would work to reverse the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in
🔸Employment Division v. Smith, 🔸
to “fully protect the free exercise of religion,”
the strategy document explained.

That decision, written by Scalia,
ruled that religious beliefs did not excuse disobeying laws.

They would pursue litigation to enforce free-speech rights on college campuses.

They would push legislation to protect the freedom of association there as well,
to eventually overturn a decision that Ginsburg wrote in
🔸Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. 🔸

The ruling allowed a public university not to recognize a Christian student group that excluded gay students.

In his dissent, Alito called the decision a “serious setback for freedom of expression.”

They would target 🔹L.G.B.T.Q. rights and protections 🔹
and “stop efforts to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to protected-class status in the law akin to race.”

They would “work to restore an understanding of marriage, the family and sexuality
that reflects God’s creative order.”

And they wanted the court to
🔹strengthen parental rights over state authority🔹
by having the court revisit the 2000 case 🔸Troxel v. Granville,🔸
which allowed the state to override a parent’s wishes in some circumstances.

A.D.F. would work to pass state legislation, similar to its approach on abortion,
that would prioritize parental rights in medical decisions for minors who say they are transgender,
to prevent parents from “being coerced into consenting to life-changing, ill-advised surgeries and procedures in the wake of gender dysphoria.”

It was an agenda that would inflame their liberal opponents and that not even everyone in the ballroom knew about.

(An A.D.F. official distanced the organization from the specific cases named in the document,
saying its legal strategies shift based on precedent and current events.)

(14/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

And now, amid the applause,
A.D.F. leaders looked ahead.

Their ultimate goal was sweeping change across America to preserve the values of conservative Christians.

A.D.F. was, after all, a “religious ministry,”
not just a legal network,
as Kristen Waggoner said in an interview.

Ending abortion was the first target, but A.D.F. had already begun planning for more.

According to an internal strategy document dated to May 2021,
A.D.F. leaders set out to achieve what they called
“generational wins,”

victories that,
like overturning Roe,
would change the law and the culture of America
for an entire generation.

The document, never before reported,
reveals secret details of the legal decisions A.D.F. hopes to challenge in the coming years.

A.D.F. lawyers would work to reverse the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in
🔸Employment Division v. Smith, 🔸
to “fully protect the free exercise of religion,”
the strategy document explained.

That decision, written by Scalia,
ruled that religious beliefs did not excuse disobeying laws.

They would pursue litigation to enforce free-speech rights on college campuses.

They would push legislation to protect the freedom of association there as well,
to eventually overturn a decision that Ginsburg wrote in
🔸Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. 🔸

The ruling allowed a public university not to recognize a Christian student group that excluded gay students.

In his dissent, Alito called the decision a “serious setback for freedom of expression.”

They would target 🔹L.G.B.T.Q. rights and protections 🔹
and “stop efforts to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to protected-class status in the law akin to race.”

They would “work to restore an understanding of marriage, the family and sexuality
that reflects God’s creative order.”

And they wanted the court to
🔹strengthen parental rights over state authority🔹
by having the court revisit the 2000 case 🔸Troxel v. Granville,🔸
which allowed the state to override a parent’s wishes in some circumstances.

A.D.F. would work to pass state legislation, similar to its approach on abortion,
that would prioritize parental rights in medical decisions for minors who say they are transgender,
to prevent parents from “being coerced into consenting to life-changing, ill-advised surgeries and procedures in the wake of gender dysphoria.”

It was an agenda that would inflame their liberal opponents and that not even everyone in the ballroom knew about.

(An A.D.F. official distanced the organization from the specific cases named in the document,
saying its legal strategies shift based on precedent and current events.)

(14/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

And now, amid the applause,
A.D.F. leaders looked ahead.

Their ultimate goal was sweeping change across America to preserve the values of conservative Christians.

A.D.F. was, after all, a “religious ministry,”
not just a legal network,
as Kristen Waggoner said in an interview.

Ending abortion was the first target, but A.D.F. had already begun planning for more.

According to an internal strategy document dated to May 2021,
A.D.F. leaders set out to achieve what they called
“generational wins,”

victories that,
like overturning Roe,
would change the law and the culture of America
for an entire generation.

The document, never before reported,
reveals secret details of the legal decisions A.D.F. hopes to challenge in the coming years.

A.D.F. lawyers would work to reverse the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in
🔸Employment Division v. Smith, 🔸
to “fully protect the free exercise of religion,”
the strategy document explained.

That decision, written by Scalia,
ruled that religious beliefs did not excuse disobeying laws.

They would pursue litigation to enforce free-speech rights on college campuses.

They would push legislation to protect the freedom of association there as well,
to eventually overturn a decision that Ginsburg wrote in
🔸Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. 🔸

The ruling allowed a public university not to recognize a Christian student group that excluded gay students.

In his dissent, Alito called the decision a “serious setback for freedom of expression.”

They would target 🔹L.G.B.T.Q. rights and protections 🔹
and “stop efforts to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to protected-class status in the law akin to race.”

They would “work to restore an understanding of marriage, the family and sexuality
that reflects God’s creative order.”

And they wanted the court to
🔹strengthen parental rights over state authority🔹
by having the court revisit the 2000 case 🔸Troxel v. Granville,🔸
which allowed the state to override a parent’s wishes in some circumstances.

A.D.F. would work to pass state legislation, similar to its approach on abortion,
that would prioritize parental rights in medical decisions for minors who say they are transgender,
to prevent parents from “being coerced into consenting to life-changing, ill-advised surgeries and procedures in the wake of gender dysphoria.”

It was an agenda that would inflame their liberal opponents and that not even everyone in the ballroom knew about.

(An A.D.F. official distanced the organization from the specific cases named in the document,
saying its legal strategies shift based on precedent and current events.)

(14/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

And now, amid the applause,
A.D.F. leaders looked ahead.

Their ultimate goal was sweeping change across America to preserve the values of conservative Christians.

A.D.F. was, after all, a “religious ministry,”
not just a legal network,
as Kristen Waggoner said in an interview.

Ending abortion was the first target, but A.D.F. had already begun planning for more.

According to an internal strategy document dated to May 2021,
A.D.F. leaders set out to achieve what they called
“generational wins,”

victories that,
like overturning Roe,
would change the law and the culture of America
for an entire generation.

The document, never before reported,
reveals secret details of the legal decisions A.D.F. hopes to challenge in the coming years.

A.D.F. lawyers would work to reverse the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in
🔸Employment Division v. Smith, 🔸
to “fully protect the free exercise of religion,”
the strategy document explained.

That decision, written by Scalia,
ruled that religious beliefs did not excuse disobeying laws.

They would pursue litigation to enforce free-speech rights on college campuses.

They would push legislation to protect the freedom of association there as well,
to eventually overturn a decision that Ginsburg wrote in
🔸Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. 🔸

The ruling allowed a public university not to recognize a Christian student group that excluded gay students.

In his dissent, Alito called the decision a “serious setback for freedom of expression.”

They would target 🔹L.G.B.T.Q. rights and protections 🔹
and “stop efforts to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to protected-class status in the law akin to race.”

They would “work to restore an understanding of marriage, the family and sexuality
that reflects God’s creative order.”

And they wanted the court to
🔹strengthen parental rights over state authority🔹
by having the court revisit the 2000 case 🔸Troxel v. Granville,🔸
which allowed the state to override a parent’s wishes in some circumstances.

A.D.F. would work to pass state legislation, similar to its approach on abortion,
that would prioritize parental rights in medical decisions for minors who say they are transgender,
to prevent parents from “being coerced into consenting to life-changing, ill-advised surgeries and procedures in the wake of gender dysphoria.”

It was an agenda that would inflame their liberal opponents and that not even everyone in the ballroom knew about.

(An A.D.F. official distanced the organization from the specific cases named in the document,
saying its legal strategies shift based on precedent and current events.)

(14/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

After Stewart argued the case at the Supreme Court in December 2021,
leaders of the anti-abortion movement gathered that evening
at the JW Marriott in Washington
for an invitation-only dinner banquet
sponsored by A.D.F.

Everyone from the network seemed to be there,
and A.D.F. gave out party favors of small wooden plaques
depicting a pregnant woman leaning against a Supreme Court column.

The mood was celebratory even though their ultimate victory wouldn’t come for another six months,
with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that would overturn Roe.

Marjorie Dannenfelser was in the room.
As were local activists who pushed abortion bans through their statehouses.

Authors of the amicus briefs supporting Stewart’s case.
Becky Currie, who believed she had come up with the idea of the 15-week law in Mississippi.

Many participants knew only the small part they played,
not how the whole fit together.

Currie met Stewart briefly that night for the first time.

“He couldn’t pick me out of a crowd,” she said.

Onstage, Lynn Fitch, Scott Stewart and Erin Hawley sat proudly
as they described how they had gotten to this moment.

“First of all, to God be the glory,” Fitch began.

“We all prayed, worked so hard for this day.
It all came together because everyone here,
everyone that’s been involved across our country,
we’re believers,
and we knew this day would come,” she said.

“God selected this case. He was ready.
The justices were ready to hear what we were all going to be talking about.”

For those listening,
the people around them in that ballroom
and all they accomplished represented
a vision of the kingdom of God
coming on Earth,
as Jesus’ prayer taught in the Gospels.

Their work offered a vision of what a modern Christian empire looked like.

It did not involve violent crusaders or declaring an official state religion.

It was not clerics instituting a theocracy.

The anti-abortion movement had used the existing system to define the Constitution the way it saw fit.

A right was not being taken away from women,
the movement argued,
because it never should have existed in the first place.

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg had said Roe,
rooted in a right to privacy,
wasn’t built on the strongest legal ground.

An argument explicitly based on a constitutional right to equal protection would have better protected it from challenges, she argued.

A.D.F.’s strategy on Dobbs reflected how it believed it could reshape America
and overtake majority opinion.

There’s a saying that law is downstream from culture,
said Greg Scott, a former longtime communications strategist for A.D.F.,
explaining the idea in an interview that a cause gains popular support first
and then the law formalizes those beliefs.

“I actually reject that,” he said.

“We are in this feedback loop and this ecosystem where frequently that is true.

But then at other times, the law does drive culture.”

(13/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

After Stewart argued the case at the Supreme Court in December 2021,
leaders of the anti-abortion movement gathered that evening
at the JW Marriott in Washington
for an invitation-only dinner banquet
sponsored by A.D.F.

Everyone from the network seemed to be there,
and A.D.F. gave out party favors of small wooden plaques
depicting a pregnant woman leaning against a Supreme Court column.

The mood was celebratory even though their ultimate victory wouldn’t come for another six months,
with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that would overturn Roe.

Marjorie Dannenfelser was in the room.
As were local activists who pushed abortion bans through their statehouses.

Authors of the amicus briefs supporting Stewart’s case.
Becky Currie, who believed she had come up with the idea of the 15-week law in Mississippi.

Many participants knew only the small part they played,
not how the whole fit together.

Currie met Stewart briefly that night for the first time.

“He couldn’t pick me out of a crowd,” she said.

Onstage, Lynn Fitch, Scott Stewart and Erin Hawley sat proudly
as they described how they had gotten to this moment.

“First of all, to God be the glory,” Fitch began.

“We all prayed, worked so hard for this day.
It all came together because everyone here,
everyone that’s been involved across our country,
we’re believers,
and we knew this day would come,” she said.

“God selected this case. He was ready.
The justices were ready to hear what we were all going to be talking about.”

For those listening,
the people around them in that ballroom
and all they accomplished represented
a vision of the kingdom of God
coming on Earth,
as Jesus’ prayer taught in the Gospels.

Their work offered a vision of what a modern Christian empire looked like.

It did not involve violent crusaders or declaring an official state religion.

It was not clerics instituting a theocracy.

The anti-abortion movement had used the existing system to define the Constitution the way it saw fit.

A right was not being taken away from women,
the movement argued,
because it never should have existed in the first place.

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg had said Roe,
rooted in a right to privacy,
wasn’t built on the strongest legal ground.

An argument explicitly based on a constitutional right to equal protection would have better protected it from challenges, she argued.

A.D.F.’s strategy on Dobbs reflected how it believed it could reshape America
and overtake majority opinion.

There’s a saying that law is downstream from culture,
said Greg Scott, a former longtime communications strategist for A.D.F.,
explaining the idea in an interview that a cause gains popular support first
and then the law formalizes those beliefs.

“I actually reject that,” he said.

“We are in this feedback loop and this ecosystem where frequently that is true.

But then at other times, the law does drive culture.”

(13/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

After Stewart argued the case at the Supreme Court in December 2021,
leaders of the anti-abortion movement gathered that evening
at the JW Marriott in Washington
for an invitation-only dinner banquet
sponsored by A.D.F.

Everyone from the network seemed to be there,
and A.D.F. gave out party favors of small wooden plaques
depicting a pregnant woman leaning against a Supreme Court column.

The mood was celebratory even though their ultimate victory wouldn’t come for another six months,
with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that would overturn Roe.

Marjorie Dannenfelser was in the room.
As were local activists who pushed abortion bans through their statehouses.

Authors of the amicus briefs supporting Stewart’s case.
Becky Currie, who believed she had come up with the idea of the 15-week law in Mississippi.

Many participants knew only the small part they played,
not how the whole fit together.

Currie met Stewart briefly that night for the first time.

“He couldn’t pick me out of a crowd,” she said.

Onstage, Lynn Fitch, Scott Stewart and Erin Hawley sat proudly
as they described how they had gotten to this moment.

“First of all, to God be the glory,” Fitch began.

“We all prayed, worked so hard for this day.
It all came together because everyone here,
everyone that’s been involved across our country,
we’re believers,
and we knew this day would come,” she said.

“God selected this case. He was ready.
The justices were ready to hear what we were all going to be talking about.”

For those listening,
the people around them in that ballroom
and all they accomplished represented
a vision of the kingdom of God
coming on Earth,
as Jesus’ prayer taught in the Gospels.

Their work offered a vision of what a modern Christian empire looked like.

It did not involve violent crusaders or declaring an official state religion.

It was not clerics instituting a theocracy.

The anti-abortion movement had used the existing system to define the Constitution the way it saw fit.

A right was not being taken away from women,
the movement argued,
because it never should have existed in the first place.

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg had said Roe,
rooted in a right to privacy,
wasn’t built on the strongest legal ground.

An argument explicitly based on a constitutional right to equal protection would have better protected it from challenges, she argued.

A.D.F.’s strategy on Dobbs reflected how it believed it could reshape America
and overtake majority opinion.

There’s a saying that law is downstream from culture,
said Greg Scott, a former longtime communications strategist for A.D.F.,
explaining the idea in an interview that a cause gains popular support first
and then the law formalizes those beliefs.

“I actually reject that,” he said.

“We are in this feedback loop and this ecosystem where frequently that is true.

But then at other times, the law does drive culture.”

(13/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

After Stewart argued the case at the Supreme Court in December 2021,
leaders of the anti-abortion movement gathered that evening
at the JW Marriott in Washington
for an invitation-only dinner banquet
sponsored by A.D.F.

Everyone from the network seemed to be there,
and A.D.F. gave out party favors of small wooden plaques
depicting a pregnant woman leaning against a Supreme Court column.

The mood was celebratory even though their ultimate victory wouldn’t come for another six months,
with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that would overturn Roe.

Marjorie Dannenfelser was in the room.
As were local activists who pushed abortion bans through their statehouses.

Authors of the amicus briefs supporting Stewart’s case.
Becky Currie, who believed she had come up with the idea of the 15-week law in Mississippi.

Many participants knew only the small part they played,
not how the whole fit together.

Currie met Stewart briefly that night for the first time.

“He couldn’t pick me out of a crowd,” she said.

Onstage, Lynn Fitch, Scott Stewart and Erin Hawley sat proudly
as they described how they had gotten to this moment.

“First of all, to God be the glory,” Fitch began.

“We all prayed, worked so hard for this day.
It all came together because everyone here,
everyone that’s been involved across our country,
we’re believers,
and we knew this day would come,” she said.

“God selected this case. He was ready.
The justices were ready to hear what we were all going to be talking about.”

For those listening,
the people around them in that ballroom
and all they accomplished represented
a vision of the kingdom of God
coming on Earth,
as Jesus’ prayer taught in the Gospels.

Their work offered a vision of what a modern Christian empire looked like.

It did not involve violent crusaders or declaring an official state religion.

It was not clerics instituting a theocracy.

The anti-abortion movement had used the existing system to define the Constitution the way it saw fit.

A right was not being taken away from women,
the movement argued,
because it never should have existed in the first place.

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg had said Roe,
rooted in a right to privacy,
wasn’t built on the strongest legal ground.

An argument explicitly based on a constitutional right to equal protection would have better protected it from challenges, she argued.

A.D.F.’s strategy on Dobbs reflected how it believed it could reshape America
and overtake majority opinion.

There’s a saying that law is downstream from culture,
said Greg Scott, a former longtime communications strategist for A.D.F.,
explaining the idea in an interview that a cause gains popular support first
and then the law formalizes those beliefs.

“I actually reject that,” he said.

“We are in this feedback loop and this ecosystem where frequently that is true.

But then at other times, the law does drive culture.”

(13/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

After Stewart argued the case at the Supreme Court in December 2021,
leaders of the anti-abortion movement gathered that evening
at the JW Marriott in Washington
for an invitation-only dinner banquet
sponsored by A.D.F.

Everyone from the network seemed to be there,
and A.D.F. gave out party favors of small wooden plaques
depicting a pregnant woman leaning against a Supreme Court column.

The mood was celebratory even though their ultimate victory wouldn’t come for another six months,
with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that would overturn Roe.

Marjorie Dannenfelser was in the room.
As were local activists who pushed abortion bans through their statehouses.

Authors of the amicus briefs supporting Stewart’s case.
Becky Currie, who believed she had come up with the idea of the 15-week law in Mississippi.

Many participants knew only the small part they played,
not how the whole fit together.

Currie met Stewart briefly that night for the first time.

“He couldn’t pick me out of a crowd,” she said.

Onstage, Lynn Fitch, Scott Stewart and Erin Hawley sat proudly
as they described how they had gotten to this moment.

“First of all, to God be the glory,” Fitch began.

“We all prayed, worked so hard for this day.
It all came together because everyone here,
everyone that’s been involved across our country,
we’re believers,
and we knew this day would come,” she said.

“God selected this case. He was ready.
The justices were ready to hear what we were all going to be talking about.”

For those listening,
the people around them in that ballroom
and all they accomplished represented
a vision of the kingdom of God
coming on Earth,
as Jesus’ prayer taught in the Gospels.

Their work offered a vision of what a modern Christian empire looked like.

It did not involve violent crusaders or declaring an official state religion.

It was not clerics instituting a theocracy.

The anti-abortion movement had used the existing system to define the Constitution the way it saw fit.

A right was not being taken away from women,
the movement argued,
because it never should have existed in the first place.

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg had said Roe,
rooted in a right to privacy,
wasn’t built on the strongest legal ground.

An argument explicitly based on a constitutional right to equal protection would have better protected it from challenges, she argued.

A.D.F.’s strategy on Dobbs reflected how it believed it could reshape America
and overtake majority opinion.

There’s a saying that law is downstream from culture,
said Greg Scott, a former longtime communications strategist for A.D.F.,
explaining the idea in an interview that a cause gains popular support first
and then the law formalizes those beliefs.

“I actually reject that,” he said.

“We are in this feedback loop and this ecosystem where frequently that is true.

But then at other times, the law does drive culture.”

(13/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Stewart’s thinking reflected the shifts that had overtaken the anti-abortion movement and the conservative legal project
during the Trump administration.

For four years, they had gone bigger and bolder than what previously felt possible.

Courts blocked many of their state abortion bans. But the efforts themselves had further opened the window of possibilities.

To overturn Roe, conservatives had to directly ask the court to do so.

A.D.F. might have been skittish about making the request, but Fitch and Stewart were not.

While the anti-abortion views of the movement’s leaders still represented a distinct minority of the country,
they had built an elite legal and ideological ecosystem of activists, organizations, lawmakers and pro bono lawyers around their cause.

Their policy arms churned out legal arguments and medical studies.

Their lawyers argued their cases, and their judges ruled on them,
all fostered by the bench that Leo built.

And their allied lawmakers pushed their agenda in statehouses and Congress.

Yet despite their overwhelming success, many on the left continued to underestimate them. It was their greatest strength.

Behind closed doors, Fitch’s team drew up a nine-slide blueprint, marked “Confidential”:
a 12-month political and public-relations strategy in the run-up to the expected court decision on Dobbs in June 2022.

“Strategy to maximize impact at SCOTUS,” it began.

The whole operation was surprisingly low-budget,
estimated as up to $231,000,
to be paid out of the attorney general’s office and Fitch’s political fund,
according to the private document.

When Stewart filed the new brief for Mississippi that July,
his argument was a full-scale assault on a precedent that had defined American life for nearly half a century,
in plain language.

“Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” he wrote.

“The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text,
structure, history,
or tradition.”

That same month, Stewart attended a reunion of Thomas’s law clerks hosted at a West Virginia resort by the justice
— before whom he would soon argue his case.

If Stewart won, Roe would fall.

At least 13 states already had trigger bans on the books,
making them certain to move quickly to ban abortion,
with very limited exceptions.

And at least a dozen more states were likely to follow quickly with their own restrictions.

A victory by Mississippi could make abortion illegal in about half the country.

(12/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Stewart’s thinking reflected the shifts that had overtaken the anti-abortion movement and the conservative legal project
during the Trump administration.

For four years, they had gone bigger and bolder than what previously felt possible.

Courts blocked many of their state abortion bans. But the efforts themselves had further opened the window of possibilities.

To overturn Roe, conservatives had to directly ask the court to do so.

A.D.F. might have been skittish about making the request, but Fitch and Stewart were not.

While the anti-abortion views of the movement’s leaders still represented a distinct minority of the country,
they had built an elite legal and ideological ecosystem of activists, organizations, lawmakers and pro bono lawyers around their cause.

Their policy arms churned out legal arguments and medical studies.

Their lawyers argued their cases, and their judges ruled on them,
all fostered by the bench that Leo built.

And their allied lawmakers pushed their agenda in statehouses and Congress.

Yet despite their overwhelming success, many on the left continued to underestimate them. It was their greatest strength.

Behind closed doors, Fitch’s team drew up a nine-slide blueprint, marked “Confidential”:
a 12-month political and public-relations strategy in the run-up to the expected court decision on Dobbs in June 2022.

“Strategy to maximize impact at SCOTUS,” it began.

The whole operation was surprisingly low-budget,
estimated as up to $231,000,
to be paid out of the attorney general’s office and Fitch’s political fund,
according to the private document.

When Stewart filed the new brief for Mississippi that July,
his argument was a full-scale assault on a precedent that had defined American life for nearly half a century,
in plain language.

“Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” he wrote.

“The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text,
structure, history,
or tradition.”

That same month, Stewart attended a reunion of Thomas’s law clerks hosted at a West Virginia resort by the justice
— before whom he would soon argue his case.

If Stewart won, Roe would fall.

At least 13 states already had trigger bans on the books,
making them certain to move quickly to ban abortion,
with very limited exceptions.

And at least a dozen more states were likely to follow quickly with their own restrictions.

A victory by Mississippi could make abortion illegal in about half the country.

(12/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Stewart’s thinking reflected the shifts that had overtaken the anti-abortion movement and the conservative legal project
during the Trump administration.

For four years, they had gone bigger and bolder than what previously felt possible.

Courts blocked many of their state abortion bans. But the efforts themselves had further opened the window of possibilities.

To overturn Roe, conservatives had to directly ask the court to do so.

A.D.F. might have been skittish about making the request, but Fitch and Stewart were not.

While the anti-abortion views of the movement’s leaders still represented a distinct minority of the country,
they had built an elite legal and ideological ecosystem of activists, organizations, lawmakers and pro bono lawyers around their cause.

Their policy arms churned out legal arguments and medical studies.

Their lawyers argued their cases, and their judges ruled on them,
all fostered by the bench that Leo built.

And their allied lawmakers pushed their agenda in statehouses and Congress.

Yet despite their overwhelming success, many on the left continued to underestimate them. It was their greatest strength.

Behind closed doors, Fitch’s team drew up a nine-slide blueprint, marked “Confidential”:
a 12-month political and public-relations strategy in the run-up to the expected court decision on Dobbs in June 2022.

“Strategy to maximize impact at SCOTUS,” it began.

The whole operation was surprisingly low-budget,
estimated as up to $231,000,
to be paid out of the attorney general’s office and Fitch’s political fund,
according to the private document.

When Stewart filed the new brief for Mississippi that July,
his argument was a full-scale assault on a precedent that had defined American life for nearly half a century,
in plain language.

“Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” he wrote.

“The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text,
structure, history,
or tradition.”

That same month, Stewart attended a reunion of Thomas’s law clerks hosted at a West Virginia resort by the justice
— before whom he would soon argue his case.

If Stewart won, Roe would fall.

At least 13 states already had trigger bans on the books,
making them certain to move quickly to ban abortion,
with very limited exceptions.

And at least a dozen more states were likely to follow quickly with their own restrictions.

A victory by Mississippi could make abortion illegal in about half the country.

(12/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Stewart’s thinking reflected the shifts that had overtaken the anti-abortion movement and the conservative legal project
during the Trump administration.

For four years, they had gone bigger and bolder than what previously felt possible.

Courts blocked many of their state abortion bans. But the efforts themselves had further opened the window of possibilities.

To overturn Roe, conservatives had to directly ask the court to do so.

A.D.F. might have been skittish about making the request, but Fitch and Stewart were not.

While the anti-abortion views of the movement’s leaders still represented a distinct minority of the country,
they had built an elite legal and ideological ecosystem of activists, organizations, lawmakers and pro bono lawyers around their cause.

Their policy arms churned out legal arguments and medical studies.

Their lawyers argued their cases, and their judges ruled on them,
all fostered by the bench that Leo built.

And their allied lawmakers pushed their agenda in statehouses and Congress.

Yet despite their overwhelming success, many on the left continued to underestimate them. It was their greatest strength.

Behind closed doors, Fitch’s team drew up a nine-slide blueprint, marked “Confidential”:
a 12-month political and public-relations strategy in the run-up to the expected court decision on Dobbs in June 2022.

“Strategy to maximize impact at SCOTUS,” it began.

The whole operation was surprisingly low-budget,
estimated as up to $231,000,
to be paid out of the attorney general’s office and Fitch’s political fund,
according to the private document.

When Stewart filed the new brief for Mississippi that July,
his argument was a full-scale assault on a precedent that had defined American life for nearly half a century,
in plain language.

“Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” he wrote.

“The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text,
structure, history,
or tradition.”

That same month, Stewart attended a reunion of Thomas’s law clerks hosted at a West Virginia resort by the justice
— before whom he would soon argue his case.

If Stewart won, Roe would fall.

At least 13 states already had trigger bans on the books,
making them certain to move quickly to ban abortion,
with very limited exceptions.

And at least a dozen more states were likely to follow quickly with their own restrictions.

A victory by Mississippi could make abortion illegal in about half the country.

(12/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Stewart’s thinking reflected the shifts that had overtaken the anti-abortion movement and the conservative legal project
during the Trump administration.

For four years, they had gone bigger and bolder than what previously felt possible.

Courts blocked many of their state abortion bans. But the efforts themselves had further opened the window of possibilities.

To overturn Roe, conservatives had to directly ask the court to do so.

A.D.F. might have been skittish about making the request, but Fitch and Stewart were not.

While the anti-abortion views of the movement’s leaders still represented a distinct minority of the country,
they had built an elite legal and ideological ecosystem of activists, organizations, lawmakers and pro bono lawyers around their cause.

Their policy arms churned out legal arguments and medical studies.

Their lawyers argued their cases, and their judges ruled on them,
all fostered by the bench that Leo built.

And their allied lawmakers pushed their agenda in statehouses and Congress.

Yet despite their overwhelming success, many on the left continued to underestimate them. It was their greatest strength.

Behind closed doors, Fitch’s team drew up a nine-slide blueprint, marked “Confidential”:
a 12-month political and public-relations strategy in the run-up to the expected court decision on Dobbs in June 2022.

“Strategy to maximize impact at SCOTUS,” it began.

The whole operation was surprisingly low-budget,
estimated as up to $231,000,
to be paid out of the attorney general’s office and Fitch’s political fund,
according to the private document.

When Stewart filed the new brief for Mississippi that July,
his argument was a full-scale assault on a precedent that had defined American life for nearly half a century,
in plain language.

“Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” he wrote.

“The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text,
structure, history,
or tradition.”

That same month, Stewart attended a reunion of Thomas’s law clerks hosted at a West Virginia resort by the justice
— before whom he would soon argue his case.

If Stewart won, Roe would fall.

At least 13 states already had trigger bans on the books,
making them certain to move quickly to ban abortion,
with very limited exceptions.

And at least a dozen more states were likely to follow quickly with their own restrictions.

A victory by Mississippi could make abortion illegal in about half the country.

(12/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Squeezed around a long table,
A.D.F. lawyers lined up on one side
and the Mississippi team on the other.

This private meeting,
one kept secret from the press,
top politicians and even other allies in the anti-abortion coalition,
would signify a pivotal turning point in the strategy of their movement.

This account of the meeting is based on interviews with multiple participants and people familiar with the discussion.

The A.D.F. lawyers outlined their thinking.

Priority No. 1, they argued, was to get the Supreme Court to
remove the viability line established in Roe as the limit for when states could ban abortion.

Removing that limit
— about 24 weeks
— would open the door to all kinds of restrictions being upheld by lower courts.

It would be a huge victory for their cause.

It was a backdoor way of gutting Roe,
invalidating the central principle of the original decision,
without requiring the justices to take the thornier step of overturning 50 years of precedent.

Stewart disagreed.

The lawmakers of Mississippi had enacted a law,
and that law was fundamentally incompatible with Roe, he argued.

“The people of Mississippi are pro-life,” he told the room,
according to Erin Hawley.

“They enacted this law. It is my duty to defend it to the best of my ability, and the right thing to do is to ask the court to overrule Roe.”

The only effective strategy, Stewart said,
according to participants,
was to target the very heart of it all:
the right to abortion that the court had found via
💥a right to privacy 💥
that it decided was protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1973.

The best argument was that Roe was wrong, he decided.

Some of the A.D.F. lawyers bristled.

Stewart’s plan felt risky and aggressive.

If the court wanted to use this case to overturn Roe, it could,
the A.D.F. team argued.

But to ask for that explicitly could be pushing too far too fast,
even for this new court.

A defeat would be devastating,
potentially even going so far as to reaffirm abortion rights in some way
and create another precedent to fight.

There was a lot to consider.

It wasn’t totally clear that they had five votes to fully overturn Roe right now.

Certainly, it was the best court they had faced in a long time.

But the 6-3 conservative majority was still new,
and the country was still reeling from the contentious Supreme Court battles of the Trump era.

And looming over the conversation was the reality that
Stewart had never argued a case at the Supreme Court.

By this point, A.D.F. lawyers had argued and won 12 Supreme Court cases.

The A.D.F. lawyers’ message was clear:
The safest path to victory was their plan.

They should simply ask the court to uphold their 15-week law.

Fitch’s team was grateful for A.D.F.’s help.
But to them, this had the feel of a power grab
— a bunch of Washington lawyers coming down to Jackson to take over once there was a chance to make history.

This was Fitch’s case.

She had chosen Stewart, and Stewart was determined.

Mississippi would forge its own path.

“Like everything else, you get four attorneys in a room, you’re going to get 10 opinions,”
Kevin Theriot, an A.D.F. lawyer, said later in an interview,
adding that he was on the phone for part of the meeting.

“It’s not that our original strategy went out the window.
It was just that instead of making
‘You should overturn Roe’ the second argument,
they made it the first argument.”

(11/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Squeezed around a long table,
A.D.F. lawyers lined up on one side
and the Mississippi team on the other.

This private meeting,
one kept secret from the press,
top politicians and even other allies in the anti-abortion coalition,
would signify a pivotal turning point in the strategy of their movement.

This account of the meeting is based on interviews with multiple participants and people familiar with the discussion.

The A.D.F. lawyers outlined their thinking.

Priority No. 1, they argued, was to get the Supreme Court to
remove the viability line established in Roe as the limit for when states could ban abortion.

Removing that limit
— about 24 weeks
— would open the door to all kinds of restrictions being upheld by lower courts.

It would be a huge victory for their cause.

It was a backdoor way of gutting Roe,
invalidating the central principle of the original decision,
without requiring the justices to take the thornier step of overturning 50 years of precedent.

Stewart disagreed.

The lawmakers of Mississippi had enacted a law,
and that law was fundamentally incompatible with Roe, he argued.

“The people of Mississippi are pro-life,” he told the room,
according to Erin Hawley.

“They enacted this law. It is my duty to defend it to the best of my ability, and the right thing to do is to ask the court to overrule Roe.”

The only effective strategy, Stewart said,
according to participants,
was to target the very heart of it all:
the right to abortion that the court had found via
💥a right to privacy 💥
that it decided was protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1973.

The best argument was that Roe was wrong, he decided.

Some of the A.D.F. lawyers bristled.

Stewart’s plan felt risky and aggressive.

If the court wanted to use this case to overturn Roe, it could,
the A.D.F. team argued.

But to ask for that explicitly could be pushing too far too fast,
even for this new court.

A defeat would be devastating,
potentially even going so far as to reaffirm abortion rights in some way
and create another precedent to fight.

There was a lot to consider.

It wasn’t totally clear that they had five votes to fully overturn Roe right now.

Certainly, it was the best court they had faced in a long time.

But the 6-3 conservative majority was still new,
and the country was still reeling from the contentious Supreme Court battles of the Trump era.

And looming over the conversation was the reality that
Stewart had never argued a case at the Supreme Court.

By this point, A.D.F. lawyers had argued and won 12 Supreme Court cases.

The A.D.F. lawyers’ message was clear:
The safest path to victory was their plan.

They should simply ask the court to uphold their 15-week law.

Fitch’s team was grateful for A.D.F.’s help.
But to them, this had the feel of a power grab
— a bunch of Washington lawyers coming down to Jackson to take over once there was a chance to make history.

This was Fitch’s case.

She had chosen Stewart, and Stewart was determined.

Mississippi would forge its own path.

“Like everything else, you get four attorneys in a room, you’re going to get 10 opinions,”
Kevin Theriot, an A.D.F. lawyer, said later in an interview,
adding that he was on the phone for part of the meeting.

“It’s not that our original strategy went out the window.
It was just that instead of making
‘You should overturn Roe’ the second argument,
they made it the first argument.”

(11/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Squeezed around a long table,
A.D.F. lawyers lined up on one side
and the Mississippi team on the other.

This private meeting,
one kept secret from the press,
top politicians and even other allies in the anti-abortion coalition,
would signify a pivotal turning point in the strategy of their movement.

This account of the meeting is based on interviews with multiple participants and people familiar with the discussion.

The A.D.F. lawyers outlined their thinking.

Priority No. 1, they argued, was to get the Supreme Court to
remove the viability line established in Roe as the limit for when states could ban abortion.

Removing that limit
— about 24 weeks
— would open the door to all kinds of restrictions being upheld by lower courts.

It would be a huge victory for their cause.

It was a backdoor way of gutting Roe,
invalidating the central principle of the original decision,
without requiring the justices to take the thornier step of overturning 50 years of precedent.

Stewart disagreed.

The lawmakers of Mississippi had enacted a law,
and that law was fundamentally incompatible with Roe, he argued.

“The people of Mississippi are pro-life,” he told the room,
according to Erin Hawley.

“They enacted this law. It is my duty to defend it to the best of my ability, and the right thing to do is to ask the court to overrule Roe.”

The only effective strategy, Stewart said,
according to participants,
was to target the very heart of it all:
the right to abortion that the court had found via
💥a right to privacy 💥
that it decided was protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1973.

The best argument was that Roe was wrong, he decided.

Some of the A.D.F. lawyers bristled.

Stewart’s plan felt risky and aggressive.

If the court wanted to use this case to overturn Roe, it could,
the A.D.F. team argued.

But to ask for that explicitly could be pushing too far too fast,
even for this new court.

A defeat would be devastating,
potentially even going so far as to reaffirm abortion rights in some way
and create another precedent to fight.

There was a lot to consider.

It wasn’t totally clear that they had five votes to fully overturn Roe right now.

Certainly, it was the best court they had faced in a long time.

But the 6-3 conservative majority was still new,
and the country was still reeling from the contentious Supreme Court battles of the Trump era.

And looming over the conversation was the reality that
Stewart had never argued a case at the Supreme Court.

By this point, A.D.F. lawyers had argued and won 12 Supreme Court cases.

The A.D.F. lawyers’ message was clear:
The safest path to victory was their plan.

They should simply ask the court to uphold their 15-week law.

Fitch’s team was grateful for A.D.F.’s help.
But to them, this had the feel of a power grab
— a bunch of Washington lawyers coming down to Jackson to take over once there was a chance to make history.

This was Fitch’s case.

She had chosen Stewart, and Stewart was determined.

Mississippi would forge its own path.

“Like everything else, you get four attorneys in a room, you’re going to get 10 opinions,”
Kevin Theriot, an A.D.F. lawyer, said later in an interview,
adding that he was on the phone for part of the meeting.

“It’s not that our original strategy went out the window.
It was just that instead of making
‘You should overturn Roe’ the second argument,
they made it the first argument.”

(11/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Squeezed around a long table,
A.D.F. lawyers lined up on one side
and the Mississippi team on the other.

This private meeting,
one kept secret from the press,
top politicians and even other allies in the anti-abortion coalition,
would signify a pivotal turning point in the strategy of their movement.

This account of the meeting is based on interviews with multiple participants and people familiar with the discussion.

The A.D.F. lawyers outlined their thinking.

Priority No. 1, they argued, was to get the Supreme Court to
remove the viability line established in Roe as the limit for when states could ban abortion.

Removing that limit
— about 24 weeks
— would open the door to all kinds of restrictions being upheld by lower courts.

It would be a huge victory for their cause.

It was a backdoor way of gutting Roe,
invalidating the central principle of the original decision,
without requiring the justices to take the thornier step of overturning 50 years of precedent.

Stewart disagreed.

The lawmakers of Mississippi had enacted a law,
and that law was fundamentally incompatible with Roe, he argued.

“The people of Mississippi are pro-life,” he told the room,
according to Erin Hawley.

“They enacted this law. It is my duty to defend it to the best of my ability, and the right thing to do is to ask the court to overrule Roe.”

The only effective strategy, Stewart said,
according to participants,
was to target the very heart of it all:
the right to abortion that the court had found via
💥a right to privacy 💥
that it decided was protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1973.

The best argument was that Roe was wrong, he decided.

Some of the A.D.F. lawyers bristled.

Stewart’s plan felt risky and aggressive.

If the court wanted to use this case to overturn Roe, it could,
the A.D.F. team argued.

But to ask for that explicitly could be pushing too far too fast,
even for this new court.

A defeat would be devastating,
potentially even going so far as to reaffirm abortion rights in some way
and create another precedent to fight.

There was a lot to consider.

It wasn’t totally clear that they had five votes to fully overturn Roe right now.

Certainly, it was the best court they had faced in a long time.

But the 6-3 conservative majority was still new,
and the country was still reeling from the contentious Supreme Court battles of the Trump era.

And looming over the conversation was the reality that
Stewart had never argued a case at the Supreme Court.

By this point, A.D.F. lawyers had argued and won 12 Supreme Court cases.

The A.D.F. lawyers’ message was clear:
The safest path to victory was their plan.

They should simply ask the court to uphold their 15-week law.

Fitch’s team was grateful for A.D.F.’s help.
But to them, this had the feel of a power grab
— a bunch of Washington lawyers coming down to Jackson to take over once there was a chance to make history.

This was Fitch’s case.

She had chosen Stewart, and Stewart was determined.

Mississippi would forge its own path.

“Like everything else, you get four attorneys in a room, you’re going to get 10 opinions,”
Kevin Theriot, an A.D.F. lawyer, said later in an interview,
adding that he was on the phone for part of the meeting.

“It’s not that our original strategy went out the window.
It was just that instead of making
‘You should overturn Roe’ the second argument,
they made it the first argument.”

(11/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Squeezed around a long table,
A.D.F. lawyers lined up on one side
and the Mississippi team on the other.

This private meeting,
one kept secret from the press,
top politicians and even other allies in the anti-abortion coalition,
would signify a pivotal turning point in the strategy of their movement.

This account of the meeting is based on interviews with multiple participants and people familiar with the discussion.

The A.D.F. lawyers outlined their thinking.

Priority No. 1, they argued, was to get the Supreme Court to
remove the viability line established in Roe as the limit for when states could ban abortion.

Removing that limit
— about 24 weeks
— would open the door to all kinds of restrictions being upheld by lower courts.

It would be a huge victory for their cause.

It was a backdoor way of gutting Roe,
invalidating the central principle of the original decision,
without requiring the justices to take the thornier step of overturning 50 years of precedent.

Stewart disagreed.

The lawmakers of Mississippi had enacted a law,
and that law was fundamentally incompatible with Roe, he argued.

“The people of Mississippi are pro-life,” he told the room,
according to Erin Hawley.

“They enacted this law. It is my duty to defend it to the best of my ability, and the right thing to do is to ask the court to overrule Roe.”

The only effective strategy, Stewart said,
according to participants,
was to target the very heart of it all:
the right to abortion that the court had found via
💥a right to privacy 💥
that it decided was protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1973.

The best argument was that Roe was wrong, he decided.

Some of the A.D.F. lawyers bristled.

Stewart’s plan felt risky and aggressive.

If the court wanted to use this case to overturn Roe, it could,
the A.D.F. team argued.

But to ask for that explicitly could be pushing too far too fast,
even for this new court.

A defeat would be devastating,
potentially even going so far as to reaffirm abortion rights in some way
and create another precedent to fight.

There was a lot to consider.

It wasn’t totally clear that they had five votes to fully overturn Roe right now.

Certainly, it was the best court they had faced in a long time.

But the 6-3 conservative majority was still new,
and the country was still reeling from the contentious Supreme Court battles of the Trump era.

And looming over the conversation was the reality that
Stewart had never argued a case at the Supreme Court.

By this point, A.D.F. lawyers had argued and won 12 Supreme Court cases.

The A.D.F. lawyers’ message was clear:
The safest path to victory was their plan.

They should simply ask the court to uphold their 15-week law.

Fitch’s team was grateful for A.D.F.’s help.
But to them, this had the feel of a power grab
— a bunch of Washington lawyers coming down to Jackson to take over once there was a chance to make history.

This was Fitch’s case.

She had chosen Stewart, and Stewart was determined.

Mississippi would forge its own path.

“Like everything else, you get four attorneys in a room, you’re going to get 10 opinions,”
Kevin Theriot, an A.D.F. lawyer, said later in an interview,
adding that he was on the phone for part of the meeting.

“It’s not that our original strategy went out the window.
It was just that instead of making
‘You should overturn Roe’ the second argument,
they made it the first argument.”

(11/n)

#Waggoner #Hawley #Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

It was not a moment for compromise, Stewart reasoned,
according to people familiar with his thinking.

It was a lesson he had learned from Thomas,
his former boss and mentor,
who was known to hold the line without deviation.

He would be steadfast:
Roe and Casey were wrong and must be reversed.

Within weeks, in early June 2021,
A.D.F. lawyers were on flights to Jackson.

It was a crucial moment for the entire anti-abortion coalition.

But even after years of pushing for this singular goal,
the coalition was not a monolith.

Stewart wanted to openly ask the Supreme Court to
overturn Roe.

A.D.F. also wanted Roe overturned, of course
— its ultimate target was to ban abortion nationwide at conception
— but it favored a more limited, less risky approach,
lawyers at the organization recalled in a series of interviews.

And they saw the Dobbs case as their project.

Now they just had to make sure Stewart and Fitch didn’t jeopardize the plan that had been laid almost six years earlier with Tseytlin at the Mayflower Hotel.

The A.D.F. lawyers rode the old mirrored elevators of the Walter Sillers State Office Building in Jackson to the 12th floor
for a private meeting with Fitch and Stewart.

This could be the case of a generation, and A.D.F. wasn’t about to cede control.

A.D.F.’s incoming president,
Kristen #Waggoner,
brought a core team of top-notch attorneys and media experts,
including a new lawyer A.D.F. had hired:
Erin #Hawley, a graduate of Yale Law School.

She was married to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Overturning Roe was a joint mission for the Hawleys, who met as clerks for Chief Justice Roberts.

(10/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

It was not a moment for compromise, Stewart reasoned,
according to people familiar with his thinking.

It was a lesson he had learned from Thomas,
his former boss and mentor,
who was known to hold the line without deviation.

He would be steadfast:
Roe and Casey were wrong and must be reversed.

Within weeks, in early June 2021,
A.D.F. lawyers were on flights to Jackson.

It was a crucial moment for the entire anti-abortion coalition.

But even after years of pushing for this singular goal,
the coalition was not a monolith.

Stewart wanted to openly ask the Supreme Court to
overturn Roe.

A.D.F. also wanted Roe overturned, of course
— its ultimate target was to ban abortion nationwide at conception
— but it favored a more limited, less risky approach,
lawyers at the organization recalled in a series of interviews.

And they saw the Dobbs case as their project.

Now they just had to make sure Stewart and Fitch didn’t jeopardize the plan that had been laid almost six years earlier with Tseytlin at the Mayflower Hotel.

The A.D.F. lawyers rode the old mirrored elevators of the Walter Sillers State Office Building in Jackson to the 12th floor
for a private meeting with Fitch and Stewart.

This could be the case of a generation, and A.D.F. wasn’t about to cede control.

A.D.F.’s incoming president,
Kristen #Waggoner,
brought a core team of top-notch attorneys and media experts,
including a new lawyer A.D.F. had hired:
Erin #Hawley, a graduate of Yale Law School.

She was married to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Overturning Roe was a joint mission for the Hawleys, who met as clerks for Chief Justice Roberts.

(10/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

It was not a moment for compromise, Stewart reasoned,
according to people familiar with his thinking.

It was a lesson he had learned from Thomas,
his former boss and mentor,
who was known to hold the line without deviation.

He would be steadfast:
Roe and Casey were wrong and must be reversed.

Within weeks, in early June 2021,
A.D.F. lawyers were on flights to Jackson.

It was a crucial moment for the entire anti-abortion coalition.

But even after years of pushing for this singular goal,
the coalition was not a monolith.

Stewart wanted to openly ask the Supreme Court to
overturn Roe.

A.D.F. also wanted Roe overturned, of course
— its ultimate target was to ban abortion nationwide at conception
— but it favored a more limited, less risky approach,
lawyers at the organization recalled in a series of interviews.

And they saw the Dobbs case as their project.

Now they just had to make sure Stewart and Fitch didn’t jeopardize the plan that had been laid almost six years earlier with Tseytlin at the Mayflower Hotel.

The A.D.F. lawyers rode the old mirrored elevators of the Walter Sillers State Office Building in Jackson to the 12th floor
for a private meeting with Fitch and Stewart.

This could be the case of a generation, and A.D.F. wasn’t about to cede control.

A.D.F.’s incoming president,
Kristen #Waggoner,
brought a core team of top-notch attorneys and media experts,
including a new lawyer A.D.F. had hired:
Erin #Hawley, a graduate of Yale Law School.

She was married to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Overturning Roe was a joint mission for the Hawleys, who met as clerks for Chief Justice Roberts.

(10/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

It was not a moment for compromise, Stewart reasoned,
according to people familiar with his thinking.

It was a lesson he had learned from Thomas,
his former boss and mentor,
who was known to hold the line without deviation.

He would be steadfast:
Roe and Casey were wrong and must be reversed.

Within weeks, in early June 2021,
A.D.F. lawyers were on flights to Jackson.

It was a crucial moment for the entire anti-abortion coalition.

But even after years of pushing for this singular goal,
the coalition was not a monolith.

Stewart wanted to openly ask the Supreme Court to
overturn Roe.

A.D.F. also wanted Roe overturned, of course
— its ultimate target was to ban abortion nationwide at conception
— but it favored a more limited, less risky approach,
lawyers at the organization recalled in a series of interviews.

And they saw the Dobbs case as their project.

Now they just had to make sure Stewart and Fitch didn’t jeopardize the plan that had been laid almost six years earlier with Tseytlin at the Mayflower Hotel.

The A.D.F. lawyers rode the old mirrored elevators of the Walter Sillers State Office Building in Jackson to the 12th floor
for a private meeting with Fitch and Stewart.

This could be the case of a generation, and A.D.F. wasn’t about to cede control.

A.D.F.’s incoming president,
Kristen #Waggoner,
brought a core team of top-notch attorneys and media experts,
including a new lawyer A.D.F. had hired:
Erin #Hawley, a graduate of Yale Law School.

She was married to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Overturning Roe was a joint mission for the Hawleys, who met as clerks for Chief Justice Roberts.

(10/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

It was not a moment for compromise, Stewart reasoned,
according to people familiar with his thinking.

It was a lesson he had learned from Thomas,
his former boss and mentor,
who was known to hold the line without deviation.

He would be steadfast:
Roe and Casey were wrong and must be reversed.

Within weeks, in early June 2021,
A.D.F. lawyers were on flights to Jackson.

It was a crucial moment for the entire anti-abortion coalition.

But even after years of pushing for this singular goal,
the coalition was not a monolith.

Stewart wanted to openly ask the Supreme Court to
overturn Roe.

A.D.F. also wanted Roe overturned, of course
— its ultimate target was to ban abortion nationwide at conception
— but it favored a more limited, less risky approach,
lawyers at the organization recalled in a series of interviews.

And they saw the Dobbs case as their project.

Now they just had to make sure Stewart and Fitch didn’t jeopardize the plan that had been laid almost six years earlier with Tseytlin at the Mayflower Hotel.

The A.D.F. lawyers rode the old mirrored elevators of the Walter Sillers State Office Building in Jackson to the 12th floor
for a private meeting with Fitch and Stewart.

This could be the case of a generation, and A.D.F. wasn’t about to cede control.

A.D.F.’s incoming president,
Kristen #Waggoner,
brought a core team of top-notch attorneys and media experts,
including a new lawyer A.D.F. had hired:
Erin #Hawley, a graduate of Yale Law School.

She was married to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Overturning Roe was a joint mission for the Hawleys, who met as clerks for Chief Justice Roberts.

(10/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Over the past decade and a half, the job of state solicitor general had become a coveted slot for ambitious young lawyers,
even a path to more prominent posts like judgeships.

For Stewart, the opportunity was ideal
— representing a Republican state when there was a Democratic president offered the potential for high-profile conflict.

And there was the lure of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health,
the Mississippi case named for its petitioner,
Thomas Dobbs
(whose name was on the case in his capacity as a state health officer),
which had been appealed up to the Supreme Court.

Dobbs could be Stewart’s first chance to argue a case before the justices.

Stewart had clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain,
a pugnacious voice for right-wing judicial thought on the liberal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
and for Clarence Thomas,
parlaying his conservative credentials into a post on Trump’s transition team,
assessing the legality of various potential policies.

When he got the job in Mississippi, a friend he had worked with at Gibson Dunn,
a law firm known in Washington as a conservative powerhouse,
reached out to congratulate him and share advice on becoming a new solicitor general.

It was Misha Tseytlin.

Now Fitch and Stewart watched the Supreme Court seem to ignore their case for months.

And like their opponents, they found the apparent indecision strange.

Everyone had a theory about why the justices were dragging their feet.

Maybe they would decide to not hear the case at all.

The silence broke one morning in May 2021.

Fitch was on her way to the airport after attending an event hosted by the Republican Attorneys General Association.

That weekend, the organization held an exclusive gathering at a private island on the secluded coast of southeast Georgia
nestled between the marsh and the sea.

There, corporate bigwigs schmoozed with top state law-enforcement leaders,
people like Fitch,
who would often determine the fate of their interests in America’s highest courts.

Now Fitch stared at the text from her chief of staff,
Michelle Williams,
trying to absorb the magnitude:
“We just got cert.”

The Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case that could strike at Roe.

The hopes of the conservative movement,
and the fears of those who supported abortion rights,
rested with Mississippi.

Stewart had to decide on a strategy.

Fitch’s petition for certiorari focused on upholding the Mississippi law
and mentioned the possibility of overturning Roe only in a footnote:
“If the Court determines that it cannot reconcile Roe and Casey with other precedents
or scientific advancements showing a compelling state interest in fetal life far earlier in pregnancy than those cases contemplate,
the Court should not retain erroneous precedent.”

Stewart knew that a lot of lawyers would encourage him to continue down that easier path,
to simply argue that Mississippi’s law should be upheld.

To not push for the complete overturn of Roe but to chip away
— as the movement had for so many decades
— and get the court to undo the viability standard.

But for Stewart, these circumstances were different from those in the past.

Trump had pushed their cause from the biggest bully pulpit in the land.

Conservatives now had a majority on the court that seemed to be on their side.

(9/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Over the past decade and a half, the job of state solicitor general had become a coveted slot for ambitious young lawyers,
even a path to more prominent posts like judgeships.

For Stewart, the opportunity was ideal
— representing a Republican state when there was a Democratic president offered the potential for high-profile conflict.

And there was the lure of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health,
the Mississippi case named for its petitioner,
Thomas Dobbs
(whose name was on the case in his capacity as a state health officer),
which had been appealed up to the Supreme Court.

Dobbs could be Stewart’s first chance to argue a case before the justices.

Stewart had clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain,
a pugnacious voice for right-wing judicial thought on the liberal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
and for Clarence Thomas,
parlaying his conservative credentials into a post on Trump’s transition team,
assessing the legality of various potential policies.

When he got the job in Mississippi, a friend he had worked with at Gibson Dunn,
a law firm known in Washington as a conservative powerhouse,
reached out to congratulate him and share advice on becoming a new solicitor general.

It was Misha Tseytlin.

Now Fitch and Stewart watched the Supreme Court seem to ignore their case for months.

And like their opponents, they found the apparent indecision strange.

Everyone had a theory about why the justices were dragging their feet.

Maybe they would decide to not hear the case at all.

The silence broke one morning in May 2021.

Fitch was on her way to the airport after attending an event hosted by the Republican Attorneys General Association.

That weekend, the organization held an exclusive gathering at a private island on the secluded coast of southeast Georgia
nestled between the marsh and the sea.

There, corporate bigwigs schmoozed with top state law-enforcement leaders,
people like Fitch,
who would often determine the fate of their interests in America’s highest courts.

Now Fitch stared at the text from her chief of staff,
Michelle Williams,
trying to absorb the magnitude:
“We just got cert.”

The Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case that could strike at Roe.

The hopes of the conservative movement,
and the fears of those who supported abortion rights,
rested with Mississippi.

Stewart had to decide on a strategy.

Fitch’s petition for certiorari focused on upholding the Mississippi law
and mentioned the possibility of overturning Roe only in a footnote:
“If the Court determines that it cannot reconcile Roe and Casey with other precedents
or scientific advancements showing a compelling state interest in fetal life far earlier in pregnancy than those cases contemplate,
the Court should not retain erroneous precedent.”

Stewart knew that a lot of lawyers would encourage him to continue down that easier path,
to simply argue that Mississippi’s law should be upheld.

To not push for the complete overturn of Roe but to chip away
— as the movement had for so many decades
— and get the court to undo the viability standard.

But for Stewart, these circumstances were different from those in the past.

Trump had pushed their cause from the biggest bully pulpit in the land.

Conservatives now had a majority on the court that seemed to be on their side.

(9/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Over the past decade and a half, the job of state solicitor general had become a coveted slot for ambitious young lawyers,
even a path to more prominent posts like judgeships.

For Stewart, the opportunity was ideal
— representing a Republican state when there was a Democratic president offered the potential for high-profile conflict.

And there was the lure of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health,
the Mississippi case named for its petitioner,
Thomas Dobbs
(whose name was on the case in his capacity as a state health officer),
which had been appealed up to the Supreme Court.

Dobbs could be Stewart’s first chance to argue a case before the justices.

Stewart had clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain,
a pugnacious voice for right-wing judicial thought on the liberal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
and for Clarence Thomas,
parlaying his conservative credentials into a post on Trump’s transition team,
assessing the legality of various potential policies.

When he got the job in Mississippi, a friend he had worked with at Gibson Dunn,
a law firm known in Washington as a conservative powerhouse,
reached out to congratulate him and share advice on becoming a new solicitor general.

It was Misha Tseytlin.

Now Fitch and Stewart watched the Supreme Court seem to ignore their case for months.

And like their opponents, they found the apparent indecision strange.

Everyone had a theory about why the justices were dragging their feet.

Maybe they would decide to not hear the case at all.

The silence broke one morning in May 2021.

Fitch was on her way to the airport after attending an event hosted by the Republican Attorneys General Association.

That weekend, the organization held an exclusive gathering at a private island on the secluded coast of southeast Georgia
nestled between the marsh and the sea.

There, corporate bigwigs schmoozed with top state law-enforcement leaders,
people like Fitch,
who would often determine the fate of their interests in America’s highest courts.

Now Fitch stared at the text from her chief of staff,
Michelle Williams,
trying to absorb the magnitude:
“We just got cert.”

The Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case that could strike at Roe.

The hopes of the conservative movement,
and the fears of those who supported abortion rights,
rested with Mississippi.

Stewart had to decide on a strategy.

Fitch’s petition for certiorari focused on upholding the Mississippi law
and mentioned the possibility of overturning Roe only in a footnote:
“If the Court determines that it cannot reconcile Roe and Casey with other precedents
or scientific advancements showing a compelling state interest in fetal life far earlier in pregnancy than those cases contemplate,
the Court should not retain erroneous precedent.”

Stewart knew that a lot of lawyers would encourage him to continue down that easier path,
to simply argue that Mississippi’s law should be upheld.

To not push for the complete overturn of Roe but to chip away
— as the movement had for so many decades
— and get the court to undo the viability standard.

But for Stewart, these circumstances were different from those in the past.

Trump had pushed their cause from the biggest bully pulpit in the land.

Conservatives now had a majority on the court that seemed to be on their side.

(9/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Over the past decade and a half, the job of state solicitor general had become a coveted slot for ambitious young lawyers,
even a path to more prominent posts like judgeships.

For Stewart, the opportunity was ideal
— representing a Republican state when there was a Democratic president offered the potential for high-profile conflict.

And there was the lure of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health,
the Mississippi case named for its petitioner,
Thomas Dobbs
(whose name was on the case in his capacity as a state health officer),
which had been appealed up to the Supreme Court.

Dobbs could be Stewart’s first chance to argue a case before the justices.

Stewart had clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain,
a pugnacious voice for right-wing judicial thought on the liberal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
and for Clarence Thomas,
parlaying his conservative credentials into a post on Trump’s transition team,
assessing the legality of various potential policies.

When he got the job in Mississippi, a friend he had worked with at Gibson Dunn,
a law firm known in Washington as a conservative powerhouse,
reached out to congratulate him and share advice on becoming a new solicitor general.

It was Misha Tseytlin.

Now Fitch and Stewart watched the Supreme Court seem to ignore their case for months.

And like their opponents, they found the apparent indecision strange.

Everyone had a theory about why the justices were dragging their feet.

Maybe they would decide to not hear the case at all.

The silence broke one morning in May 2021.

Fitch was on her way to the airport after attending an event hosted by the Republican Attorneys General Association.

That weekend, the organization held an exclusive gathering at a private island on the secluded coast of southeast Georgia
nestled between the marsh and the sea.

There, corporate bigwigs schmoozed with top state law-enforcement leaders,
people like Fitch,
who would often determine the fate of their interests in America’s highest courts.

Now Fitch stared at the text from her chief of staff,
Michelle Williams,
trying to absorb the magnitude:
“We just got cert.”

The Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case that could strike at Roe.

The hopes of the conservative movement,
and the fears of those who supported abortion rights,
rested with Mississippi.

Stewart had to decide on a strategy.

Fitch’s petition for certiorari focused on upholding the Mississippi law
and mentioned the possibility of overturning Roe only in a footnote:
“If the Court determines that it cannot reconcile Roe and Casey with other precedents
or scientific advancements showing a compelling state interest in fetal life far earlier in pregnancy than those cases contemplate,
the Court should not retain erroneous precedent.”

Stewart knew that a lot of lawyers would encourage him to continue down that easier path,
to simply argue that Mississippi’s law should be upheld.

To not push for the complete overturn of Roe but to chip away
— as the movement had for so many decades
— and get the court to undo the viability standard.

But for Stewart, these circumstances were different from those in the past.

Trump had pushed their cause from the biggest bully pulpit in the land.

Conservatives now had a majority on the court that seemed to be on their side.

(9/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Over the past decade and a half, the job of state solicitor general had become a coveted slot for ambitious young lawyers,
even a path to more prominent posts like judgeships.

For Stewart, the opportunity was ideal
— representing a Republican state when there was a Democratic president offered the potential for high-profile conflict.

And there was the lure of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health,
the Mississippi case named for its petitioner,
Thomas Dobbs
(whose name was on the case in his capacity as a state health officer),
which had been appealed up to the Supreme Court.

Dobbs could be Stewart’s first chance to argue a case before the justices.

Stewart had clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain,
a pugnacious voice for right-wing judicial thought on the liberal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
and for Clarence Thomas,
parlaying his conservative credentials into a post on Trump’s transition team,
assessing the legality of various potential policies.

When he got the job in Mississippi, a friend he had worked with at Gibson Dunn,
a law firm known in Washington as a conservative powerhouse,
reached out to congratulate him and share advice on becoming a new solicitor general.

It was Misha Tseytlin.

Now Fitch and Stewart watched the Supreme Court seem to ignore their case for months.

And like their opponents, they found the apparent indecision strange.

Everyone had a theory about why the justices were dragging their feet.

Maybe they would decide to not hear the case at all.

The silence broke one morning in May 2021.

Fitch was on her way to the airport after attending an event hosted by the Republican Attorneys General Association.

That weekend, the organization held an exclusive gathering at a private island on the secluded coast of southeast Georgia
nestled between the marsh and the sea.

There, corporate bigwigs schmoozed with top state law-enforcement leaders,
people like Fitch,
who would often determine the fate of their interests in America’s highest courts.

Now Fitch stared at the text from her chief of staff,
Michelle Williams,
trying to absorb the magnitude:
“We just got cert.”

The Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case that could strike at Roe.

The hopes of the conservative movement,
and the fears of those who supported abortion rights,
rested with Mississippi.

Stewart had to decide on a strategy.

Fitch’s petition for certiorari focused on upholding the Mississippi law
and mentioned the possibility of overturning Roe only in a footnote:
“If the Court determines that it cannot reconcile Roe and Casey with other precedents
or scientific advancements showing a compelling state interest in fetal life far earlier in pregnancy than those cases contemplate,
the Court should not retain erroneous precedent.”

Stewart knew that a lot of lawyers would encourage him to continue down that easier path,
to simply argue that Mississippi’s law should be upheld.

To not push for the complete overturn of Roe but to chip away
— as the movement had for so many decades
— and get the court to undo the viability standard.

But for Stewart, these circumstances were different from those in the past.

Trump had pushed their cause from the biggest bully pulpit in the land.

Conservatives now had a majority on the court that seemed to be on their side.

(9/n)

#Barrett #Stewart #Fitch #Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Trump introduced Amy Coney #Barrett as his nominee in the Rose Garden, in the same place where Bill Clinton introduced Ginsburg in 1993.

Back then, Dannenfelser was 27 and dreaming of carving out a more powerful place for conservative anti-abortion women in Washington.

That was half a lifetime ago. Now, at 54, she and those women sat in the Rose Garden watching Barrett,
a Catholic mother of seven whom Trump had said he had been “saving” to succeed Ginsburg,
become the avatar of the culture they wanted to usher in for America.

Barrett was both Christian supermom and high-powered legal scholar,
elite and outsider,
a combination of the more secular conservative Federalist Society credentials
and the beliefs of the emerging Christian legal movement.

This new iteration of conservative feminism didn’t argue that women’s gains should be rolled back
or that women should not be professionally ambitious.

But it wanted those advances not to come at the expense of ideals of motherhood,
Christian morality
and the centrality of human life at conception.

Seven days before the 2020 presidential election,
Leonard Leo tuned in from his home in Maine to watch his close friend
Clarence Thomas swear in Barrett to the court.

Watching her raise her right hand felt like the culmination of the entire project.

It was, he said in an interview,
“exhilarating.”

Trump had become the most successful anti-abortion president America had ever known.

His administration transformed the judiciary.

With his speech to the March for Life in 2020
— the first time a sitting president attended
— and graphic comments in his 2019 State of the Union address about how abortion providers “execute a baby,”
he changed political expectations and red lines for Republican presidents.

What Trump and his Republican allies had done was to change the country
by leveraging political force to conquer the courts.

Trump had promised conservative Christians that
“Christianity will have power.”

And now that vision was at the center of a Republican Party they had remade.

Scott #Stewart had never set foot in Mississippi.

But Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election thrust the young lawyer from the Department of Justice onto the job market,
and Lynn #Fitch, Mississippi’s attorney general, had reached out.

She needed a new solicitor general to lead the state’s biggest cases.

Fitch’s team found Stewart’s name tucked into a pile of résumés from the Republican Attorneys General Association,
a group that had received more than $13 million from Leo’s network of organizations
and whose executive director used to work for the Federalist Society.

(8/n)

#Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Trump introduced Amy Coney #Barrett as his nominee in the Rose Garden, in the same place where Bill Clinton introduced Ginsburg in 1993.

Back then, Dannenfelser was 27 and dreaming of carving out a more powerful place for conservative anti-abortion women in Washington.

That was half a lifetime ago. Now, at 54, she and those women sat in the Rose Garden watching Barrett,
a Catholic mother of seven whom Trump had said he had been “saving” to succeed Ginsburg,
become the avatar of the culture they wanted to usher in for America.

Barrett was both Christian supermom and high-powered legal scholar,
elite and outsider,
a combination of the more secular conservative Federalist Society credentials
and the beliefs of the emerging Christian legal movement.

This new iteration of conservative feminism didn’t argue that women’s gains should be rolled back
or that women should not be professionally ambitious.

But it wanted those advances not to come at the expense of ideals of motherhood,
Christian morality
and the centrality of human life at conception.

Seven days before the 2020 presidential election,
Leonard Leo tuned in from his home in Maine to watch his close friend
Clarence Thomas swear in Barrett to the court.

Watching her raise her right hand felt like the culmination of the entire project.

It was, he said in an interview,
“exhilarating.”

Trump had become the most successful anti-abortion president America had ever known.

His administration transformed the judiciary.

With his speech to the March for Life in 2020
— the first time a sitting president attended
— and graphic comments in his 2019 State of the Union address about how abortion providers “execute a baby,”
he changed political expectations and red lines for Republican presidents.

What Trump and his Republican allies had done was to change the country
by leveraging political force to conquer the courts.

Trump had promised conservative Christians that
“Christianity will have power.”

And now that vision was at the center of a Republican Party they had remade.

Scott #Stewart had never set foot in Mississippi.

But Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election thrust the young lawyer from the Department of Justice onto the job market,
and Lynn #Fitch, Mississippi’s attorney general, had reached out.

She needed a new solicitor general to lead the state’s biggest cases.

Fitch’s team found Stewart’s name tucked into a pile of résumés from the Republican Attorneys General Association,
a group that had received more than $13 million from Leo’s network of organizations
and whose executive director used to work for the Federalist Society.

(8/n)

#Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Trump introduced Amy Coney #Barrett as his nominee in the Rose Garden, in the same place where Bill Clinton introduced Ginsburg in 1993.

Back then, Dannenfelser was 27 and dreaming of carving out a more powerful place for conservative anti-abortion women in Washington.

That was half a lifetime ago. Now, at 54, she and those women sat in the Rose Garden watching Barrett,
a Catholic mother of seven whom Trump had said he had been “saving” to succeed Ginsburg,
become the avatar of the culture they wanted to usher in for America.

Barrett was both Christian supermom and high-powered legal scholar,
elite and outsider,
a combination of the more secular conservative Federalist Society credentials
and the beliefs of the emerging Christian legal movement.

This new iteration of conservative feminism didn’t argue that women’s gains should be rolled back
or that women should not be professionally ambitious.

But it wanted those advances not to come at the expense of ideals of motherhood,
Christian morality
and the centrality of human life at conception.

Seven days before the 2020 presidential election,
Leonard Leo tuned in from his home in Maine to watch his close friend
Clarence Thomas swear in Barrett to the court.

Watching her raise her right hand felt like the culmination of the entire project.

It was, he said in an interview,
“exhilarating.”

Trump had become the most successful anti-abortion president America had ever known.

His administration transformed the judiciary.

With his speech to the March for Life in 2020
— the first time a sitting president attended
— and graphic comments in his 2019 State of the Union address about how abortion providers “execute a baby,”
he changed political expectations and red lines for Republican presidents.

What Trump and his Republican allies had done was to change the country
by leveraging political force to conquer the courts.

Trump had promised conservative Christians that
“Christianity will have power.”

And now that vision was at the center of a Republican Party they had remade.

Scott #Stewart had never set foot in Mississippi.

But Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election thrust the young lawyer from the Department of Justice onto the job market,
and Lynn #Fitch, Mississippi’s attorney general, had reached out.

She needed a new solicitor general to lead the state’s biggest cases.

Fitch’s team found Stewart’s name tucked into a pile of résumés from the Republican Attorneys General Association,
a group that had received more than $13 million from Leo’s network of organizations
and whose executive director used to work for the Federalist Society.

(8/n)

#Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Trump introduced Amy Coney #Barrett as his nominee in the Rose Garden, in the same place where Bill Clinton introduced Ginsburg in 1993.

Back then, Dannenfelser was 27 and dreaming of carving out a more powerful place for conservative anti-abortion women in Washington.

That was half a lifetime ago. Now, at 54, she and those women sat in the Rose Garden watching Barrett,
a Catholic mother of seven whom Trump had said he had been “saving” to succeed Ginsburg,
become the avatar of the culture they wanted to usher in for America.

Barrett was both Christian supermom and high-powered legal scholar,
elite and outsider,
a combination of the more secular conservative Federalist Society credentials
and the beliefs of the emerging Christian legal movement.

This new iteration of conservative feminism didn’t argue that women’s gains should be rolled back
or that women should not be professionally ambitious.

But it wanted those advances not to come at the expense of ideals of motherhood,
Christian morality
and the centrality of human life at conception.

Seven days before the 2020 presidential election,
Leonard Leo tuned in from his home in Maine to watch his close friend
Clarence Thomas swear in Barrett to the court.

Watching her raise her right hand felt like the culmination of the entire project.

It was, he said in an interview,
“exhilarating.”

Trump had become the most successful anti-abortion president America had ever known.

His administration transformed the judiciary.

With his speech to the March for Life in 2020
— the first time a sitting president attended
— and graphic comments in his 2019 State of the Union address about how abortion providers “execute a baby,”
he changed political expectations and red lines for Republican presidents.

What Trump and his Republican allies had done was to change the country
by leveraging political force to conquer the courts.

Trump had promised conservative Christians that
“Christianity will have power.”

And now that vision was at the center of a Republican Party they had remade.

Scott #Stewart had never set foot in Mississippi.

But Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election thrust the young lawyer from the Department of Justice onto the job market,
and Lynn #Fitch, Mississippi’s attorney general, had reached out.

She needed a new solicitor general to lead the state’s biggest cases.

Fitch’s team found Stewart’s name tucked into a pile of résumés from the Republican Attorneys General Association,
a group that had received more than $13 million from Leo’s network of organizations
and whose executive director used to work for the Federalist Society.

(8/n)

#Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

Trump introduced Amy Coney #Barrett as his nominee in the Rose Garden, in the same place where Bill Clinton introduced Ginsburg in 1993.

Back then, Dannenfelser was 27 and dreaming of carving out a more powerful place for conservative anti-abortion women in Washington.

That was half a lifetime ago. Now, at 54, she and those women sat in the Rose Garden watching Barrett,
a Catholic mother of seven whom Trump had said he had been “saving” to succeed Ginsburg,
become the avatar of the culture they wanted to usher in for America.

Barrett was both Christian supermom and high-powered legal scholar,
elite and outsider,
a combination of the more secular conservative Federalist Society credentials
and the beliefs of the emerging Christian legal movement.

This new iteration of conservative feminism didn’t argue that women’s gains should be rolled back
or that women should not be professionally ambitious.

But it wanted those advances not to come at the expense of ideals of motherhood,
Christian morality
and the centrality of human life at conception.

Seven days before the 2020 presidential election,
Leonard Leo tuned in from his home in Maine to watch his close friend
Clarence Thomas swear in Barrett to the court.

Watching her raise her right hand felt like the culmination of the entire project.

It was, he said in an interview,
“exhilarating.”

Trump had become the most successful anti-abortion president America had ever known.

His administration transformed the judiciary.

With his speech to the March for Life in 2020
— the first time a sitting president attended
— and graphic comments in his 2019 State of the Union address about how abortion providers “execute a baby,”
he changed political expectations and red lines for Republican presidents.

What Trump and his Republican allies had done was to change the country
by leveraging political force to conquer the courts.

Trump had promised conservative Christians that
“Christianity will have power.”

And now that vision was at the center of a Republican Party they had remade.

Scott #Stewart had never set foot in Mississippi.

But Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election thrust the young lawyer from the Department of Justice onto the job market,
and Lynn #Fitch, Mississippi’s attorney general, had reached out.

She needed a new solicitor general to lead the state’s biggest cases.

Fitch’s team found Stewart’s name tucked into a pile of résumés from the Republican Attorneys General Association,
a group that had received more than $13 million from Leo’s network of organizations
and whose executive director used to work for the Federalist Society.

(8/n)

#Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

But even as Currie proudly championed the bill, she would not know the full story behind it until after Roe fell more than five years later.

In an interview, she explained that she thought her vision for a 15-week cutoff,
rooted in her foundational story of the beating fetal heart,
had driven the plan.

No one had told her that A.D.F. had coordinated its strategy with Taylor before their meeting,
or that 15 weeks was part of its specific legal plan to undermine Roe, she said.

Or that Tseytlin had brainstormed this possibility at Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society cocktail hour
and advanced it at an upscale California resort alongside Republican leaders and attorneys.

When Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed the bill into law, with Currie smiling next to him,
it became the tightest restriction on abortion in the nation.

It made no exceptions for rape or incest, just a narrow provision to preserve the life of the woman or in cases of “severe” fetal abnormality.

Less than an hour later, Jackson Women’s Health Organization
— the Pink House
— filed a lawsuit through their attorneys at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Pink House performed abortions only until 16 weeks of pregnancy,
the center’s lawyers wrote,
and had done just 78 abortions when the fetus was identified as being 15 weeks or older in 2017.

Going after that small fraction, of course, was exactly the plan.

Not too early in pregnancy and not too late,
but exactly the line that might compel the Supreme Court to wade back into the subject of abortion.

“We were seeking to be incremental and strategic,” Taylor said.

Christian activists, he said, were learning to control their “moral passion” so as not to lose sight of their long-term goal.

There were still so many unknowns.

For the law to serve its intended purpose, anti-abortion activists needed a majority on the Supreme Court.

A.D.F. attorneys and their allies like Tseytlin had designed the legislation to target Kennedy,
but what they couldn’t foresee was that Kennedy would retire that summer,
allowing Trump to fill a second seat,
this time with Brett #Kavanaugh.

Now conservatives had a 5-4 split on the Supreme Court,
with Kavanaugh joining Roberts, Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

And there was more to come.

“As a Christian,” Currie said, “sometimes you don’t know God’s plan, and he kind of makes things happen.”

In her Virginia office just across the Potomac River from Washington,
Marjorie Dannenfelser, of the Susan B. Anthony List
(now known as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America)
and the A.D.F. board,
had a detailed map drawn on a wall-size whiteboard.

From a distance, it looked like the kind used by political campaigns to track polling and turnout, swing districts and congressional votes.

But this one was color-coded to indicate states where Republicans held both the state legislature and the governor’s mansion
and was partitioned by circuit-court-of-appeals jurisdiction.

By early 2019, Republicans held complete control of state governments in 22 states,
giving them total power over abortion legislation.

Some 20 cases, with different legal strategies to gut Roe and Casey, were in litigation in lower courts.

A magenta triangle meant the state had passed a
“heartbeat bill,”
generally a ban that started around six weeks;
a green square signified a “pain-capable” abortion law,
typically a 20-week ban.

Red stars showed the federal appeals courts where judges nominated by Republicans outnumbered those nominated by Democrats
— of the 11 on the board, they controlled seven.

It was a map of how all the laws were moving up toward the ultimate court that mattered.

And now, on Sept. 18, 2020,
with the news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death,
Dannenfelser and her compatriots could capture another majority.

The kind of Supreme Court supermajority that could take down Roe.

(7/n)

#Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

But even as Currie proudly championed the bill, she would not know the full story behind it until after Roe fell more than five years later.

In an interview, she explained that she thought her vision for a 15-week cutoff,
rooted in her foundational story of the beating fetal heart,
had driven the plan.

No one had told her that A.D.F. had coordinated its strategy with Taylor before their meeting,
or that 15 weeks was part of its specific legal plan to undermine Roe, she said.

Or that Tseytlin had brainstormed this possibility at Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society cocktail hour
and advanced it at an upscale California resort alongside Republican leaders and attorneys.

When Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed the bill into law, with Currie smiling next to him,
it became the tightest restriction on abortion in the nation.

It made no exceptions for rape or incest, just a narrow provision to preserve the life of the woman or in cases of “severe” fetal abnormality.

Less than an hour later, Jackson Women’s Health Organization
— the Pink House
— filed a lawsuit through their attorneys at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Pink House performed abortions only until 16 weeks of pregnancy,
the center’s lawyers wrote,
and had done just 78 abortions when the fetus was identified as being 15 weeks or older in 2017.

Going after that small fraction, of course, was exactly the plan.

Not too early in pregnancy and not too late,
but exactly the line that might compel the Supreme Court to wade back into the subject of abortion.

“We were seeking to be incremental and strategic,” Taylor said.

Christian activists, he said, were learning to control their “moral passion” so as not to lose sight of their long-term goal.

There were still so many unknowns.

For the law to serve its intended purpose, anti-abortion activists needed a majority on the Supreme Court.

A.D.F. attorneys and their allies like Tseytlin had designed the legislation to target Kennedy,
but what they couldn’t foresee was that Kennedy would retire that summer,
allowing Trump to fill a second seat,
this time with Brett #Kavanaugh.

Now conservatives had a 5-4 split on the Supreme Court,
with Kavanaugh joining Roberts, Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

And there was more to come.

“As a Christian,” Currie said, “sometimes you don’t know God’s plan, and he kind of makes things happen.”

In her Virginia office just across the Potomac River from Washington,
Marjorie Dannenfelser, of the Susan B. Anthony List
(now known as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America)
and the A.D.F. board,
had a detailed map drawn on a wall-size whiteboard.

From a distance, it looked like the kind used by political campaigns to track polling and turnout, swing districts and congressional votes.

But this one was color-coded to indicate states where Republicans held both the state legislature and the governor’s mansion
and was partitioned by circuit-court-of-appeals jurisdiction.

By early 2019, Republicans held complete control of state governments in 22 states,
giving them total power over abortion legislation.

Some 20 cases, with different legal strategies to gut Roe and Casey, were in litigation in lower courts.

A magenta triangle meant the state had passed a
“heartbeat bill,”
generally a ban that started around six weeks;
a green square signified a “pain-capable” abortion law,
typically a 20-week ban.

Red stars showed the federal appeals courts where judges nominated by Republicans outnumbered those nominated by Democrats
— of the 11 on the board, they controlled seven.

It was a map of how all the laws were moving up toward the ultimate court that mattered.

And now, on Sept. 18, 2020,
with the news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death,
Dannenfelser and her compatriots could capture another majority.

The kind of Supreme Court supermajority that could take down Roe.

(7/n)

#Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin

But even as Currie proudly championed the bill, she would not know the full story behind it until after Roe fell more than five years later.

In an interview, she explained that she thought her vision for a 15-week cutoff,
rooted in her foundational story of the beating fetal heart,
had driven the plan.

No one had told her that A.D.F. had coordinated its strategy with Taylor before their meeting,
or that 15 weeks was part of its specific legal plan to undermine Roe, she said.

Or that Tseytlin had brainstormed this possibility at Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society cocktail hour
and advanced it at an upscale California resort alongside Republican leaders and attorneys.

When Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed the bill into law, with Currie smiling next to him,
it became the tightest restriction on abortion in the nation.

It made no exceptions for rape or incest, just a narrow provision to preserve the life of the woman or in cases of “severe” fetal abnormality.

Less than an hour later, Jackson Women’s Health Organization
— the Pink House
— filed a lawsuit through their attorneys at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Pink House performed abortions only until 16 weeks of pregnancy,
the center’s lawyers wrote,
and had done just 78 abortions when the fetus was identified as being 15 weeks or older in 2017.

Going after that small fraction, of course, was exactly the plan.

Not too early in pregnancy and not too late,
but exactly the line that might compel the Supreme Court to wade back into the subject of abortion.

“We were seeking to be incremental and strategic,” Taylor said.

Christian activists, he said, were learning to control their “moral passion” so as not to lose sight of their long-term goal.

There were still so many unknowns.

For the law to serve its intended purpose, anti-abortion activists needed a majority on the Supreme Court.

A.D.F. attorneys and their allies like Tseytlin had designed the legislation to target Kennedy,
but what they couldn’t foresee was that Kennedy would retire that summer,
allowing Trump to fill a second seat,
this time with Brett #Kavanaugh.

Now conservatives had a 5-4 split on the Supreme Court,
with Kavanaugh joining Roberts, Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

And there was more to come.

“As a Christian,” Currie said, “sometimes you don’t know God’s plan, and he kind of makes things happen.”

In her Virginia office just across the Potomac River from Washington,
Marjorie Dannenfelser, of the Susan B. Anthony List
(now known as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America)
and the A.D.F. board,
had a detailed map drawn on a wall-size whiteboard.

From a distance, it looked like the kind used by political campaigns to track polling and turnout, swing districts and congressional votes.

But this one was color-coded to indicate states where Republicans held both the state legislature and the governor’s mansion
and was partitioned by circuit-court-of-appeals jurisdiction.

By early 2019, Republicans held complete control of state governments in 22 states,
giving them total power over abortion legislation.

Some 20 cases, with different legal strategies to gut Roe and Casey, were in litigation in lower courts.

A magenta triangle meant the state had passed a
“heartbeat bill,”
generally a ban that started around six weeks;
a green square signified a “pain-capable” abortion law,
typically a 20-week ban.

Red stars showed the federal appeals courts where judges nominated by Republicans outnumbered those nominated by Democrats
— of the 11 on the board, they controlled seven.

It was a map of how all the laws were moving up toward the ultimate court that mattered.

And now, on Sept. 18, 2020,
with the news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death,
Dannenfelser and her compatriots could capture another majority.

The kind of Supreme Court supermajority that could take down Roe.

(7/n)

#Currie #Taylor #Fiedorek #Burke #Dannenfelser #AllianceDefendingFreedom #fedsoc #FederalistSociety #viability #Roberts #Kennedy #Alito #Leonard #Leo #Misha #Tseytlin