3 Stories You Should Read 10/9/2020: Militia, Eroding voter confidence, Undue burden
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In the category of: Civil War
FBI busts militia ‘plot’ to abduct Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer
In the category of: Voter suppression
For decades, federal prosecutors have been told not to mount election fraud investigations in the final months before an election for fear they could depress voter turnout or erode confidence in the results. Now, the Justice Department has lifted that prohibition weeks before the presidential election.
The move comes as President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr have promoted a false narrative that voter fraud is rampant, potentially undermining Americans’ faith in the election.
A Justice Department lawyer in Washington said in a memo to prosecutors on Friday that they could investigate suspicions of election fraud before votes are tabulated. That reversed a decadeslong policy that largely forbade aggressively conducting such inquiries during campaigns to keep their existence from becoming public and possibly “chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities” or “interjecting the investigation itself as an issue” for voters.
In the category of: We´ll get to that later…
The bizarre abortion order just handed down by the Supreme Court, briefly explained
The Supreme Court handed down an order Thursday night that doesn’t so much resolve a significant fight over abortion as delay a resolution — postponing it just long enough to ensure that the justices won’t need to weigh in until after the election.
The case, FDA v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, involves a dispute over whether abortion patients should have an easier time obtaining a pill used as part of a two-drug regimen to terminate a pregnancy. Mifepristone, the drug at the center of American College, causes pregnancy tissue and the lining of the uterus to break down and separate from the uterus itself. About a day or two after taking mifepristone, the patient takes a second drug, misoprostol, which causes uterine contractions and expels the uterus’s contents.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of mifepristone for this purpose in 2000. Yet, while patents often take the drug at home, the FDA requires them to pick the drug up at a hospital, clinic, or medical office — it cannot be dispensed by a retail or mail-order pharmacy.
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