A Brief History of the American Descent into Fascism: Bush v. Gore to the end of Roe v. Wade.
December 12th, 2000: Following a close presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore in which the election result came down to a contested vote count in Florida, the United States Supreme Court rules against allowing a state-wide recount of the the Florida votes. Despite the initial count resulting in Bush winning by just 537 votes in the state, a later media analysis revealed that in a state-wide recount, Al Gore would have been the winner of Florida and therefore the presidency.
October 31, 2005: President George W. Bush nominates Judge Samuel Alito upon the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. During Alito’s confirmation hearing, he tells the Senate that he will keep an “open mind” regarding any cases affecting Roe v. Wade. He is confirmed on January 31, 2006 by a vote of 58–42.
February 13, 2016: Justice Antonin Scalia dies suddenly, leaving a vacancy on the Supreme court
March 2016: President Barack Obama nominates Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Despite having ten months left in his presidential term, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to hold hearings for Judge Garland, citing the proximity to the presidential election. Democrats do not force the issue, expecting a Hillary Clinton victory in November
November 2016: Donald J Trump defeats Hillary Clinton in the presidential election with an electoral college victory of 304 to 227 electoral votes. Despite this, Trump loses the popular vote by nearly three million votes, the largest popular vote margin loss in American history
January 31st, 2017: Donald Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, filling the vacancy held open for over a year by Republicans to replace Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch is confirmed on April 7th, 2017 by a vote of 54–45 in the Senate
July 31, 2018: Justice Anthony Kennedy retires from the Supreme Court, granting President Donald Trump a second Supreme Court nomination. Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh on July 9th, 2018. Despite credible accusations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, investigations into these allegations are limited in both duration and scope by the Justice Department and are never sufficiently examined. Kavanaugh is confirmed to the court on October 6th, 2018 by a vote of 50–48.
September 18th, 2020: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies after years of fighting cancer, opening a third vacancy of Donald Trump to fill
September 26th, 2020: President Donald Trump nominates Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court. Despite the rhetoric that Republicans and used to deny hearings for Merrick Garland just four years earlier on the grounds that it was too close to a presidential election, Barrett is nominated just over a month before the election.
November 7th, 2020: Several days after the 2020 presidential election, media organizations project former Vice President Joe Biden as President-Elect. Delays in the vote count occurred as a result of many people voting by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump and Republicans viciously challenge this result, claiming that the election was stolen from Trump. More than sixty court cases are resolved without any evidence of widespread voter fraud of election tampering.
September 1st, 2021: Texas enacts a law known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, or Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) which bans abortion in the state after the sixth week of pregnancy, before most women know that they are pregnant. Despite this bill being a blatant constitutional violation of the precedents set by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, this law evades judicial review by a novel enforcement mechanism; the law explicitly forbids state enforcement of the law and instead grants anybody who desires it the ability to sue anybody suspected of having an abortion of aiding in somebody having an abortion for a sum of $10,000. This mechanism makes it virtually impossible to sue for this law to be struck down, because it is not technically enforced by the state.
May 17th 2021: The Supreme Court grants the petition for a writ of certiorari in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. This case challenges the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It is widely expected that a ruling in this case in favor of the defendant will overturn the precedents in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey
May 2nd, 2022: Politico is first to report a draft majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization which would overturn the precedents set in both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which both protect women’s right to have an abortion. In doing so, it appears that the court overturns nearly fifty years of precedent. The decision, if ratified by the Supreme Court is notable for removing a right that has broad popular support in a decision written by the nominee of a president who only held office because the court did not allow a state-wide recount, and supported by a president elected with three million fewer votes than his opponent. One of the conservative Justices expected to vote for the decision occupies the seat denied by Republicans to Merrick Garland in violation of the constitution. Two of them have been credibly accused of sexual assault or harassment (Justices Kavanaugh and Thomas). One of those Justices sits on the court as a result of Republicans hypocritically ramming through her confirmation process with record speed before losing both the White House and the Senate in the 2020 election.