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THE LINCOLN PROJECT PRESS RELEASE

THE THOMAS COURT AND THE LEGAL STRATEGY OF THE ULTRA-MAGA MOVEMENT

June 28, 2022 – The Lincoln Project released the following takeaways on the Dobbs v Jackson decision:

• The Republican Party – backed up by the current Supreme Court – is making radical intrusions into individual liberty and privacy well beyond the Dobbs decision. The recent abortion ruling overturning Roe v. Wade is just one piece of a culture war being waged on Americans.

• The Republican Party is now the ULTRA-MAGA party. There are no center-right voices left; no traditional conservatives. The ULTRA-MAGA movement explicitly  tells us they want a legal framework that rolls back the clock to a time where interracial marriage was forbidden, segregation was left to the states, gays were in the closet, men controlled their home, and women had no agency over their own bodies.

• In his ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Clarence Thomas indicated he wants to revisit the legality of gay marriage and birth control. With his wife Ginni as one of its key leaders, Thomas has made the Court a tool of the ULTRA-MAGA movement that threatens the rights of anyone who doesn’t hold his beliefs. 

• The abortion ruling is only one in a handful of recent Supreme Court rulings rolling back the progress of the 20th century. The Court also carved out an exception to the separation of church and state to allow teachers and coaches to drive religion into classrooms and onto sport fields. 

• As part of their efforts to start an authoritarian movement that rolls back rights for those that aren’t in lock-step agreement, the Court ruled that police should no longer face consequences when violating an individual’s civil rights. Clarence Thomas also suggested that the Court should examine if the media should still be protected by the first amendment, a bedrock concept since the nation’s founding. 

• The bottom line is that Clarence Thomas is working with other ULTRA-MAGA activists to build a legal framework for the dissolution of rights and freedoms based on his ideology, not the Constitution. This authoritarian framework is deeply radical and empowers a government that exercises enormous power over individual lives.

• January 6th, the court rulings, and recently implemented state policies are all inextricably linked. The insurrection on the Capitol was not the end of Trump’s campaign for re-election, but the emergence of a wider, more direct effort to impose an authoritarian government. 

• ULTRA-MAGA is working to shut down any opposition to their movement. Doug Mastriano, a christian nationalist who is the GOP nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, promised to eliminate hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania residents’ ability to vote under the guise of fake voter fraud allegations. Other efforts include Steve Bannon assembling an “army” of operatives to contest elections. 

• ULTRA-MAGA has moved to limit corporate free speech to stop companies from speaking out about laws that will adversely impact their workforce. They also want to force social media platforms to carry their lies and limit the speech of groups with whom they disagree in an attempt to strangle any opposition. 

• Even Americans who would not choose abortion should be concerned with ULTRA-MAGA polices being implemented across the nation. 

• ULTRA-MAGA are now looking to attack some of the most successful programs in our nation’s history. They want to reduce taxes for the billionaire class, raise taxes on the poorest, defund public schools, and kill Social Security as we know it. 

• Despite what slick Washington operators will say to the national news cameras, the ULTRA-MAGA base is telling us exactly what they want and exactly what they’ll do; wage a culture war that turns back the clock 150 years.

• Both parties are no longer equivalent. The nation no longer has policy debates about how to best solve the country’s problems. Republicans are now the party of ULTRA-MAGA and have no interest in compromise or governing. They want to control the levers of power to force their world-view on everyone and make them live their ideal version of life that favors wealthy white christian nationalists. 

• No one is safe anywhere. Living in a liberal enclave like New York or California doesn’t make you immune. The ULTRA-MAGA are working to implement their dystopian vision everywhere. Mike Pence is already declaring that letting states regulate abortion and IVF and birth control isn’t enough – it’s time for the federal government to ban abortion. Everyone must conform and everyone must comply. 

• Every single American must choose if they are the side of the seditionists who tried to tear down a free and fair election, or do they support our Republic and its democratic principles?

The Lincoln Project is a leading pro-democracy organization in the United States — dedicated to the preservation, protection, and defense of democracy.

To learn more about The Lincoln Project, go to lincolnproject.us.

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