The Conservative and “Pro-Life” Catholic Leaders Who Are Backing Voter Suppression

Photo by Tiffany Tertipes on Unsplash

Christopher White reports:

Conservative Catholic philanthropists and pro-life leaders are key players behind efforts to limit voter access in a number of states, where such suppression could obstruct the right to vote for economically marginalized populations and racial minorities for years to come….

In March, Georgia’s legislature — a state with a long history of denying racial groups and impoverished populations the right to vote — passed new legislation that limits the window in which voters may request mail-in ballots, prohibits groups or individuals from passing out food or water at polling locations, reduces the number of drop boxes for early voting ballots, and enacts new voter ID laws that are likely to disproportionately affect low-income individuals and persons of color.

In response, the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life advocacy organization, praised Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for signing the bill into law, saying his “leadership has helped galvanize an election integrity movement surging toward restored trust & confidence in elections where it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

The Susan B. Anthony List is led by Catholic convert Marjorie Dannenfelser, who spearheaded Trump’s pro-life coalition in 2016 and 2020….

Shortly after Trump’s defeat last November, the Susan B. Anthony List joined forces with the American Principles Project to launch the Election Transparency Initiative, a $5 million voting reform campaign targeting states with “close 2020 margins and a pro-life GOP-controlled legislature.”…

A key backer to the two organizations behind the Election Transparency Initiative is Catholic philanthropist Sean Fieler, president and chief investment officer of the New York City hedge fund Equinox Partners. Fieler is a board member of the Susan B. Anthony List and chairman of the American Principles Project board….Fieler also serves as a board member of the Manhattan Institute, the Acton Institute, the Witherspoon Institute, and is the chairman of the Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund….

Princeton University Professor Robert P. George, also one of the project’s founders and a current board member, is one of the nation’s leading conservative constitutional law scholars and also serves on the board of the Heritage Foundation, which through its advocacy arm, Heritage Action for America, plans to spend $24 million on voter restriction efforts….

In a parallel effort, the Honest Elections Project, which warns that the legitimacy of elections is under attack, is financially backed by Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund, which has pledged tens of millions of dollars into conservative election efforts across the country….

Both Crawford and Daniels have been active in the pro-life movement for many years and are concerned that Catholic pro-life leaders seem to have embraced a strategy motivated by partisan politics rather than objective truth.

“Instead of talking about how best to protect and support unborn children and their mothers, some pro-life groups are lobbying and fundraising for racially charged voter restriction efforts,” said Daniels. “It’s another sign of the moral costs of the transactional politics of the last four years.”…

You can read the full report here.

10 Years of Murder, Destruction, and Brutal Repression in Syria

Arwa Damon writes:

Long gone is the illusion that any reporting out of Syria will change the realities on the ground. That was painfully eliminated early on.

It ripped many of us journalists to shreds, left us flailing, wondering what more we could have done, or what we should have done better. It gutted us to hear from contacts and activists, who became friends over the years, repeatedly ask: “why doesn’t anyone care?”

Eventually, they went silent, many of them either killed or disappeared.

In Idlib, I stare down at a fresh mural that commemorates 10 years of war, its colors almost too bright, too bold against the gray tones of the rebel-held city. It depicts the passage of the Syrian war, beginning with an image of demonstrators calling for the downfall of the Bashar al-Assad regime. The same artist painted a mural of George Floyd in the ruins of a bombed out building, out of solidarity with the notion that they, Syrians, know what it is like not to breathe.

To not breathe because of chemical weapons. To be suffocated by the thick dust and debris of bombs, and crushed under the weight of a totalitarian system.

When I close my eyes, I can still hear the excitement in protesters’ voices during the early days of the uprising a decade ago. How full of hope they were, how utterly convinced that, if they just hung in there long enough, there would be change. Surely, they thought, if world powers saw their suffering, something would be done.

Oz Katerji writes:

But this solemn date marks only the start of the Syrian revolution, not the opening shot of the Syrian civil war, which began only after months of a brutal crackdown that had already left thousands of people dead at the hands of the regime’s security forces. That violence, initiated by President Bashar al-Assad, began the largest human-made human catastrophe since World War II, on a scale so unfathomable that the United Nations officially abandoned trying to count the death toll in January 2014. It’s a conflict that isn’t over—and that never had to happen.

The U.N.’s last attempt at an estimate was 400,000 dead, issued by then-Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura in 2016. Even at that time, the number barely reflected the actual human cost. It became impossible to count the death toll from the daily bombardments, and even more impossible to set a figure for those who later succumbed to their wounds, died from preventable diseases, or starved to death as a result of barbaric sieges—or the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who disappeared, summarily executed or tortured to death in the Assad regime’s death camps. The circle of suffering goes beyond the dead: rape victims, torture victims, traumatized children, widows and widowers, displaced people. It’s a list with no end….

The Syrian civil war must be defined not by the defiance and courage of those who took to the streets in 2011 but instead by the slogan Assad’s personal militias used to drive fear into the hearts of the Syrian people: “Assad or no one. Assad or we burn the country.” This is the only promise the regime has ever kept. This is why it is wrong to mark this date as the start of the Syrian civil war: Syrians did not choose to become the victims of a violent military crackdown for one man’s lust for power; it was a crime perpetrated against them.

Quote of the Day

Pope Francis: “Everyone needs assistance, especially the most vulnerable. Only together can we build a more just and health world. All of us are called to combat the pandemic and vaccines are an essential tool in this fight.”

Solidarity and Fratelli Tutti


via Georgetown:

Pope Francis’ 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti (On Fraternity and Social Friendship) sets out the spirit and principle of solidarity—our ineradicable human bonds to one another—as the basis for Catholic social teaching and the underpinning of truly humane economics, politics, and culture. Francis’ insights are powerfully consonant with the insights of a number of the Anglophone world’s most original and influential public intellectuals.

This virtual conversation invited three such figures—philosopher Michael J. Sandel, novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson, and essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra—to speak to the themes of Fratelli Tutti in terms they have developed in their own work. Georgetown President John J. DeGioia introduced the conversation. Paul Elie, author and Berkley Center senior fellow, moderated.

The White House on César Chávez Day

via the White House:

In his time, César E. Chávez witnessed a booming economy that served those at the top, but left millions of hardworking Americans behind — and he earned an enduring place in history by standing strong for the rights and dignity of the working people who built and sustained our Nation.  Today, on what would have been his 94th birthday, we summon his courage and moral clarity to guide us as we face the ongoing challenges of a pandemic, a deeply unequal economic crisis, and a long overdue national reckoning on racial and economic justice.  As we work to recover and rebuild an economy that rewards hard work and brings everyone along — including the immigrants and farm workers he championed, as well as the essential workers carrying our Nation on their backs today — we have no finer role model than César Chávez.

His legacy as the founder, along with Dolores Huerta, of the United Farm Workers of America, reminds us of the central place that organizing and collective bargaining holds in advancing the dignity and wellbeing of working Americans.  It’s a reminder that the power of workers coming together to bargain for a better deal is what built the American middle class and made possible the American dream.  Chávez taught us:  “Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.”…

He fasted.  He marched.  He organized.  He stayed true to his convictions, and brought hope to millions for whom hope had often seemed too far away.  To him, “La Causa” meant elevating our common humanity to the center of an agenda for progress.  And that elevation meant organizing for safe and healthy workplaces, a living wage, protections against sickness and disability, time with family, and so much else that we continue to prize and fight for today.

I keep that lesson in my heart every day — and I was proud to place a bust of César Chávez in the Oval Office, so that no one who enters that historic room may forget the powerful truths his farm worker hands imparted.  On César Chávez Day, let us recommit ourselves to the duty we have in service to one another to work toward equity and justice across our communities.