Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV

On May 16th, the governor of the state of Texas, Gregg Abbott, pardoned Daniel S. Perry, who was convicted of shooting a man five times at a Black Lives Matter protest in the state capital, Austin, in 2020. Perry was serving a 25-year term for murder in the state penitentiary. At a court hearing last year, evidence was presented attesting to Perry’s racism and his desire to shoot or run over protesters a few days after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “The blacks … gathering up in a group I think something is about to happen,” Perry texted a friend after bars were closed in an area of Dallas due to the protests against Floyd’s killing. He added, “I wonder if they will let me cut the ears off of people who’s decided to commit suicide by me.”

In April of 2020, Perry posted a meme on social media showing a woman holding a child’s head under water in a bathtub with the comment, “WHEN YOUR DAUGHTERS FIRST CRUSH IS A LITTLE NEGRO BOY.” 

Abbott pardoned Perry immediately after the state pardon board had recommended a pardon. Conservatives, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and former Fox News star Tucker Carlson, had been after Abbott to pardon Perry for months. 

When after the killing of George Floyd the Texas Pardon Board made a recommendation to pardon Floyd posthumously for a minor drug offense he had committed some years before while living in Houston, Governor Abbott rejected the board’s recommendation and did not pardon Floyd.

On May 7, a committee of the Republican-controlled Louisiana House of Representatives rejected a bill that would have added exceptions for rape and incest to the state’s total ban on abortions. A bill last year that would have added the same exceptions to Louisiana’s abortion law failed in the same committee. 

“We have cases here in Louisiana with children being raped and then subjected to carrying a child to term,” said Democratic state Rep. Delisha Boyd, who had added an amendment intended to address the problem of underage girls being raped and forced to give birth to their rapists’ children by limiting the exceptions to persons under the age of 17. That amendment was rejected also.

Of 14 states that passed laws completely banning abortion after the Dobbs case overturned Roe v. Wade, eight have no exceptions for rape or incest. A ninth state has an exception for incest.

Today, the New York Times reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Dobbs decision ending the right of all women to abortion, including underage girls, had an upside down flag on a pole outside his home in Northern Virginia on January 17, 2021, shown in the photo above. Neighbors interviewed by the Times said the flag had been displayed for several days that week, just days after pro-Trump insurrectionists had assaulted the United States Capitol, many of them carrying the same upside-down American flag as a symbol of “stop the steal,” the Trump motto during his attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In an email to the Times, Alito claimed his wife had hung the flag upside-down because she was engaged in a dispute with a neighbor on their block over a yard sign Mrs. Alito found objectionable.

At the time Alito was displaying the “stop the steal” flag in front of his house, the Supreme Court was considering whether to accept one of the cases filed by the Trump campaign to overturn election results in a battleground state. Alito voted to accept the case, but the Supreme Court ended up not taking the case.

The Supreme Court has rules that forbid its employees from engaging in partisan political activities, including “displaying signs or bumper stickers, or stating positions on social media.” The Supreme Court refused to answer a question from the Times about whether the rules for its employees apply to the justices themselves. A judicial code of ethics that applies to every judge in the Federal Judiciary has similar rules against engaging in partisan political activities. That Federal code of judicial ethics does not apply to Supreme Court justices. 

Between now and the end of the Supreme Court term in late June, the court will issue rulings on two cases involving the Jan. 6 insurrection, including the case filed by Donald Trump asserting that he has absolute immunity from prosecution for his actions while he was president. Alito has participated in arguments on both Jan. 6 cases and made statements and asked questions indicating he looked favorably on the claims of Trump in the immunity case. He did not recuse himself from either case, even though he knew that the “stop the steal” symbol flag had been flown in front of his house shortly after Jan. 6. 

This is the country they want us to live in. It is a country in which the power of the pardon, by either the president of the United States or governors of states, has been made a mockery of by Donald Trump and Gregg Abbott. The “founders” in writing the Constitution to include the power of the pardon, which they acknowledged was one of the few trappings of the Monarchy they fought a revolution to throw off, obviously had no intention for that power to be misused by presidents for political purposes, as Trump did when he pardoned several political allies for crimes they committed to aid his election in 2016. Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists convicted of crimes on Jan. 6 that include assaulting police officers and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct the United States government. He has promised to “go after” the “Biden crime family” if he is elected, and there is no doubt whatsoever that he will continue to wield the pardon power as a political weapon.

The Supreme Court that stripped women of the right to control their own reproductive health has been transformed by political operatives and a criminally indicted president into yet another political weapon in the war of so-called “conservatives” to “take back” the country from political opponents the Republican Party has called “enemies” for nearly 50 years. 

States freed by the Supreme Court to do what they want about abortion, voting rights, civil rights, and the right to an education are rushing to turn back the clock to a time they consider closer to the America they want. Justices Alito and Thomas have both made repeated references to the 1700’s and 1800’s as a time when the laws were more favorable to the kind of country they want America to be. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are engaged in a full-on political war to make that happen, using the slogan “make America great again.” 

The “great” America they desire is already here, where racist murderers are pardoned, where women are denied full rights of citizenship, and where wealthy billionaires are allowed to use their money to buy a Congress and a president and a Supreme Court that will work their will. 

This is the country they want us to live in. Vote as if your life depended on it because it does.