Jen Psaki schools male reporters after abortion questions: 'You've never faced those choices'

Sarah K. Burris
September 02, 2021

Jen Psaki (AFP)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki had little patience for male reporters demanding she addressed abortion at the Thursday press briefing.

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday and again Thursday that he was committed to protecting women's health and reproductive freedom after the Supreme Court nullified Roe v. Wade by allowing a Texas law to take effect. The key part of the court ruling gave the constitutional right to privacy and an explicit liberty provision. Individuals in Texas can now demand private health details from those they suspect have had an abortion.

"The effort and the focus of the federal government is to look for every resource, every level at our disposal to ensure that women in Texas have the ability to seek healthcare," said Psaki as questions about the ruling began.

"Why does the president support abortion when his own Catholic faith teaches abortion is morally wrong?" asked one reporter.

"He believes that it is a woman's right, a woman's body, her choice," said Psaki. "He believes it is up to a woman to make those decisions and make those decisions with her doctor. I know you have never faced those choices nor have you been pregnant. But for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing in the president believes that their rights should be respected. Go ahead. I think we need to move on. You have had plenty of time today."

See the video below:

Jen Psaki schools male reporters after abortion questions: 'You've never faced those choices'youtu.be

Joe Biden slams US Supreme Court refusal to block Texas' new 'extreme' abortion ban

The US president said the Supreme Court's ruling was "an unprecedented assault on a woman's constitutional rights".

A protest against the six-week abortion ban at the Capitol in Austin, Texas 

Source: Austin American-Statesman

US President Joe Biden lashed out on Thursday at the Supreme Court's refusal to block a Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, warning that it threatens to unleash "unconstitutional chaos."

"The Supreme Court's ruling overnight is an unprecedented assault on a woman's constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for almost fifty years," Mr Biden said in a statement.

Roe v. Wade is the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that enshrined a woman's right to an abortion in the United States.

"This (Texas) law is so extreme it does not even allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest," Mr Biden said.

Texas valedictorian takes aim at state's 'dehumanising' new abortion law in viral graduation speech

The Democratic president took particular aim at a provision of the bill passed by Republican politicians in Texas that allows members of the public to sue doctors who perform abortions or anyone facilitating the procedure.

"By allowing a law to go into effect that empowers private citizens in Texas to sue health care providers, family members supporting a woman exercising her right to choose after six weeks, or even a friend who drives her to a hospital or clinic, it unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts," Mr Biden said.

"Complete strangers will now be empowered to inject themselves in the most private and personal health decisions faced by women," he said.

Mr Biden said he was launching a "whole-of-government effort" to "see what steps the Federal Government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions."

Stephen King buries Susan Collins: 

‘Women in Texas must pay the price for her gullibility’
Bob Brigham
September 02, 2021

Composite image of author Stephen King (screengrab) and Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, photo by Gage Skidmore.

Famous Bangor resident and bestselling author Stephen King on Thursday slammed his home-state's senior senator after the United States Supreme Court refused to block the controversial anti-abortion law passed by Texas Republicans.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the high court and the vote has haunted her since the court's overnight decision, as she repeatedly insisted that Kavanaugh did not pose a threat to abortion rights.

King slammed Collins for being gullible.

"Remember when Susan Collins said she was convinced that Brett Kavanaugh believed a woman's right to choose was 'settled law?' She was wrong," King wrote.



"Women in Texas must pay the price for her gullibility," he added.

King had previously slammed the Texas law as religious extremism.

"The Taliban would love the Texas abortion law," he wrote.

Minnesota braces for influx of out-of-state abortion patients

The U.S. Supreme Court decision on Texas' 6-week ban means more patients will travel to Minnesota for care.
By Emma Nelson Star Tribune
SEPTEMBER 2, 2021 — 6:58PM

LM OTERO - ASSOCIATED PRESS
A security guard opened the door to the Whole Women’s Health Clinic in Fort Worth, Texas, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021.

Minnesota physicians and organizations that help women access abortions are bracing for a spike in demand, days after Texas enacted a law considered the most restrictive abortion ban since Roe v. Wade.

The law prohibits abortions as early as six weeks — before some women know they're pregnant — and is already pushing people in Texas and surrounding states to seek abortions elsewhere. Destinations include Minnesota, where abortion access is constitutionally protected and less restrictive than many states. Meanwhile, in neighboring North Dakota, lawmakers on Thursday signaled that they plan to introduce their own version of the Texas law.

Though reproductive health advocates in Minnesota were anticipating a major challenge to Roe v. Wade, many expected it would come next year, when the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban, said Megumi Rierson, communications manager for Our Justice, a Twin Cities-based organization that helps pay for abortions. The court's decision early Thursday not to block the Texas law changed that calculus.

"Providers and advocates were all preparing for an increase in requests, but we thought that we had a lot longer to develop some infrastructure," she said. "And we don't, because now it's here."

The pressure on Minnesota is only expected to rise if more states follow Texas' lead — something advocates say they predict after the court's decision. Minnesota is home to a handful of abortion clinics in the Twin Cities, Duluth and Rochester, as well as the telemedicine clinic Just the Pill, which provides medication abortions to women in Minnesota and surrounding states.

Dr. Julie Amaon, Just the Pill's medical director, said Thursday she's already hearing from patients in Texas and other states looking to travel to Minnesota for medication abortions. Just the Pill is not currently providing services to those patients and does not provide direct referrals for patients in Texas, according to a statement.

The availability of medication abortions via telemedicine helped lower some barriers to abortion that the pandemic created, and it is seen as a potential solution as state restrictions increase. But "it is not the answer to everything," said Dr. Sarah Traxler, chief medical officer with Planned Parenthood North Central States, which serves Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Patients may need or prefer surgical abortions, Traxler said. And though the pandemic prompted the Food and Drug Administration to temporarily allow doctors to mail the drugs to patients, most states surrounding Minnesota restrict telemedicine abortion, she said. Telemedicine laws apply to the state where the patient is, not the provider, so patients in other states would still need to travel to Minnesota to access it.

That means more pressure on brick-and-mortar clinics, which already face hurdles of their own. Though abortion access is constitutionally protected in Minnesota, there are restrictions including a 24-hour waiting period, mandated counseling and a requirement that minors notify both parents.

"If Minnesota ends up having to take care of a large number of women who come from outside of the state, that may create a further access-to-care problem," said Rep. Kelly Morrison, DFL-Deephaven, an obstetrician-gynecologist who has introduced legislation to strengthen reproductive rights. "This is an American problem, but because it's being fought in state legislatures across the country right now, some of the burden is falling disproportionately on certain areas."

In 2019, the legal and policy advocacy organization Gender Justice sued the state on behalf of a group of plaintiffs to challenge Minnesota's abortion restrictions, arguing that they are unconstitutional. The case is expected to go to trial in Ramsey County District Court in June, said Gender Justice Executive Director Megan Peterson.

Meanwhile, Peterson and other advocates said, abortion access in Minnesota remains unchanged.

"A lot of people, including people who maybe need abortion care, will see the news and be really worried about, what does it mean?" Peterson said. "This is very much worth freaking out over, but we don't want to have people think abortion is illegal in Minnesota — it's not."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Are women people? Why the Supreme Court just signed off on a Texas law that denies women's humanity

Amanda Marcotte, Salon
September 02, 2021

A distraught woman in the waiting room of a doctor's office (Shutterstock.com)

In 1915, the suffragist Alice Duer Miller wrote a delightful book of satirical poetry titled "Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times." Here we are, 106 years later, and Texas and the Supreme Court have weighed in with their opinion, which is very much no, women are not people. They are human-shaped, but they cannot be regarded as full people, capable of making very basic decisions about their own bodies and lives. After a full day of the Supreme Court not yet deciding whether to enjoin a Texas law banning all abortions two weeks after the first missed period, the court finally made a decision late Wednesday night. In full violation of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court is allowing Texas to ban abortion.

This is not, as the mansplainers will let you know, an official overturn of Roe. That is still coming, in the form of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case looking at another abortion ban in Mississippi that has been explicitly held out as an opportunity for the court to simply overturn the 1973 case that legalized abortion. Still, as Jessica Mason Pieklo, a legal expert at Rewire News Group writes, "Let's just get this out of the way: We can stop debating about whether the Court overturned Roe v. Wade. They did. So what if it's on a technicality? It's not a technicality to the people forced to carry pregnancies to term against their will."

The human cost of this last minute abortion ban can be felt in this piece at The 19th that details the scene at a clinic in Fort Worth at 8PM on Tuesday, when providers realized they only had four hours to help "two dozen people [who] were still waiting for the procedure," before the ban went into effect at midnight. It was a nightmare race against the clock, as the "staff worked without stopping to eat, shifting patients in and out of rooms." One woman "dropped to her knees on the cold tile floor," begging to get a place in line before the ban came down. All while a crowd of Christian fundamentalists, drunk on misogyny and their own victory, screamed at top volume outside.

As a writer, I've been covering the religious right over 15 years now. As a person who grew up in Texas, I've known these kinds of broken souls who support this law my whole life. They are small people, who spend their time trying to dominate the lives of others, rather than face up to the fears that prevent them from embracing full lives of their own. Donald Trump spoke to them, despite his barely concealed contempt for their religion, because they saw themselves in him: A man so poisoned by hate that his only real pleasure in life is bullying others. So, I get it, intellectually. On a deeper, emotional level, though, understanding will always elude me. How can so many give up their one precious life to cruelty, rather than just take the easier and humane path of "live and let live?"

At this point, these sadists will try to defend themselves by claiming this is all about "life." It's a lie that worked for decades to give cover to their malice. It's collapsed in the age of a deadly pandemic that conservatives are doing everything in their power to spread, a pandemic that is especially dangerous for the fetal life they only care for when it can be weaponized against women's rights.

No, the Texas law — and the Supreme Court endorsement of it — is about one thing and one thing only: Denying the humanity of women, and, of course, denying the humanity of those who don't neatly fit in that category of "woman," but can get pregnant anyway. This is about reducing these people to mere vessels, and rejecting the idea that they are autonomous human beings who have sovereignty over their bodies and their lives. On the contrary, having a uterus renders you as little more than human livestock in the eyes of conservatives.

We see this attitude in the enforcement mechanism of the law.

The law allows any person – even a complete stranger to the person getting an abortion — to sue an abortion provider or any other person who helps with the abortion. The right to control a pregnant person's body, in this Texas law, belongs quite literally to anyone but the woman herself: Her father, her husband, her ex, her neighbor, some random misogynist who just wants to ruin a life because he spends too much time on incel forums. Just so long as it's not the person actually living in that body.

This rejection of women as autonomous beings is also baked into the parameters of who can be sued. The abortion bounty hunters are permitted to go after health care providers or any other person who helps a woman get an abortion, but they cannot sue the person who wants an abortion. She is viewed simply as an empty vessel, not as a thinking, feeling person who is making a decision. And so the responsibility for the abortion decision is assumed to belong to another person, because conservatives simply cannot admit that women are capable of making such decisions.

This rejection of female autonomy is generally presented as chivalrous in anti-choice rhetoric, as if they are trying to "protect" women from abortion. The Texas Right to Life site defends the law as supposedly saving women "whose lives are irrevocably altered by the death of their children." They even use condescending memes like this, which erase the fact that it's women themselves choosing abortion.

Needless to say, there's piles of research showing that women's main feelings after abortion are relief, not grief. But even without that research, it's clear how offensive it is to pretend that women don't actively choose abortion. It's treating women like dumb animals, refusing to believe they have any more capacity to make reproductive decisions than a feral cat. It's ugly, dehumanizing rhetoric, no matter how much anti-choicers try to pass it off as "compassion."

That some of the people who are behind these kinds of laws are women themselves doesn't change this fact. Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted to uphold the Texas law, but she is also quite famously a religious fundamentalist, a status that reassures the religious right that she's simply upholding beliefs handed down to her by a patriarchal faith. As for the motivations of the female misogynists themselves, well, that's why Aunt Lydia of "The Handmaid's Tale" was such a good character. For women committed to living with, instead of resisting, male dominance, being an enforcer gives them power over other women. It's not quite as good as being a man, but hey, at least it gives you someone else to control and look down on.

Sadly, the misogyny baked into the Texas law is about to spread like wildfire across red America. The Supreme Court will not issue a formal ruling on whether Roe stands until next summer, but this support for the Texas law is an open invitation to every state legislature run by woman-hating Bible thumpers to pass versions of their own. Accompanying the law will be more dehumanizing rhetoric, treating women as livestock who can't be trusted to make decisions, or even acknowledged as capable of making decisions. Because debasing women has always been what the anti-choice movement is about. Now Americans will start to see the real life damage such hatred can wreak in women's lives.

Analysis: Texas legislators, with an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court, open a Pandora’s Box

The country just noticed what Texas was doing, and although Texans have been watching the debate over this anti-abortion law all year, even some of them were surprised at how quickly the legally protected right to abortion disappeared.

BY ROSS RAMSEY 

SEPT. 2, 2021

The Texas Tribune 

Protesters outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2019. Credit: Stefani Reynolds/CNP/ABACAPRESS.COM via REUTERS

The state of Texas has figured out, at least for now, how to do unconstitutional things in a way that doesn’t raise a majority of the eyebrows in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court turned back a legal effort by abortion providers to stop the state’s new ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy while that new law is being litigated. It means most abortions are illegal in Texas and will remain so unless the courts eventually find the new law unconstitutional. Some justices already have said as much.

The peculiar enforcement built into the law seemed to baffle the judges, as it was intended to do. Instead of the state enforcing the law — the normal way these things work — the state’s anti-abortion measure leaves that to private citizens, who are empowered to sue anyone who “aids or abets” someone seeking an abortion — from the doctors who perform abortions to someone who drives a woman to a clinic. It includes a “bounty hunter” provision that allows someone who successfully files a suit to collect $10,000 on top of legal fees.

In its 5-4 ruling, the court didn’t rule on the law itself. The unsigned majority opinion wrestled with the enforcement scheme, saying “it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, in his dissent, called the law “not only unusual, but unprecedented.” He wrote the first of the four dissents: “The State defendants argue that they cannot be restrained from enforcing their rules because they do not enforce them in the first place. I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante — before the law went into effect — so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner.”

Justice Steven Breyer said it this way: “Texas’s law delegates to private individuals the power to prevent a woman from obtaining an abortion during the first stage of pregnancy. But a woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during that first stage.”

Citing a previous opinion, he added: “we have made clear that ‘since the State cannot regulate or proscribe abortion during the first stage… the State cannot delegate authority to any particular person… to prevent abortion during that same period.’ The applicants persuasively argue that Texas’s law does precisely that.”

Here’s a question: If you can impede someone’s constitutional rights with an odd citizen enforcement strategy, what’s the limit? Abortion is in that category because the Supreme Court has ruled that women have such a right. If it can be undermined, other rights, like voting and speech and all the others, are subject to the same risk.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it like this: “The Court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand… In effect, the Texas Legislature has deputized the State’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.”

Put the state’s new voting law through that logic, and the worst scenes from the 2020 elections start to look like a good day at Six Flags Over Texas.

Here’s Justice Elena Kagan: “Without full briefing or argument, and after less than 72 hours’ thought, this Court greenlights the operation of Texas’s patently unconstitutional law banning most abortions. The Court thus rewards Texas’s scheme to insulate its law from judicial review by deputizing private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf.”

The country just noticed Texas, and although Texans have been watching the debate over this law all year, even some of them are surprised at how quickly the legally protected right to abortion disappeared.

Republican voters in Texas (74%) strongly support making abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy — a restriction that eliminates an estimated 85% of all abortions in the state. Among Democrats, 67% oppose that idea, but they’re not in power in state government. Those differences are no surprise to anyone who follows Texas politics.

That enforcement idea, though — bounty-financed citizen brigades in place of law enforcement — is a new twist. The courts will figure it out in time, and if the law remains in place, so will all those fine folks you see on social media. The same kind of crowd-sourcing that makes social media so toxic could do the same for some kinds of law enforcement. Creative lawmakers will use it again, the better to get around investigators and prosecutors they don’t like.

The mob can decide instead.

“It’s Just Unbelievably Cruel”: Texas’s New Abortion Law Is Already Impacting People

“It creates all these hurdles that people have to jump over just to access basic, essential time-sensitive healthcare," one advocate said.

Clarissa-Jan Lim

BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 1, 2021, 

Sergio Flores / Getty Images
A protester outside the Texas state Capitol in Austin after Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law on May 29, 2021.

Hours after Texas’s latest and most draconian abortion law went into effect, the few clinics left in the state opened their doors on Wednesday under a drastically different reality in which patients face a whole new set of challenges.

“It's hard enough yesterday for a person living in rural Texas to make it to one of the very few clinics we have serving our state,” Cristina Parker with the Lilith Fund told BuzzFeed News. “It creates all these hurdles that people have to jump over just to access basic, essential time-sensitive healthcare. It's just unbelievably cruel.”

The law, SB 8, went into effect at the stroke of midnight after the Supreme Court failed to take action on an emergency appeal, effectively outlawing the vast majority of abortion procedures overnight. It bans abortions as soon as cardiac activity is detected in the fetus, which could be as early as 6 weeks, or a single missed period. It also enables members of the public to enforce the law, allowing them to sue anyone involved in the abortion — from abortion providers to the person who drives a patient to the clinic or lends them money for the procedure.

“This law doesn't do anything to prevent unplanned pregnancies, to support people, to build families, and to [give] them resources. It doesn't do anything to comfort people or provide healthcare,” Amy Hagstrom Miller of Whole Woman’s Health, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit to block SB 8, told BuzzFeed News. “It's blocking people who need safe and legal abortion care from getting that care with trained professionals like us.”

Already a state with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, Texas requires patients to undergo a sonogram, where an abortion provider must display and explain the image; receive a state-mandated booklet about the fetus’s development and adoption alternatives that contains false information; and then wait 24 hours before the procedure can be performed. Dozens of abortion clinics in Texas have closed down in the past decade, forcing patients to travel hours to reach a provider. State law also forbids health insurance companies from covering abortion except in extreme situations where the pregnant person’s life is at risk.

Advocates who spoke to BuzzFeed News said the latest restriction will send more people out of state for abortions, but realistically, that option is simply out of reach for many people who do not have the resources to travel and who will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

The law also further complicates things for minors who want to get an abortion without parental consent, said Rosann Mariappuram, the executive director of Jane’s Due Process, a group that helps Texas teenagers under 18 access abortion, including obtaining a court order that allows a minor to bypass parental consent or notification for an abortion.

“It’s incredibly hard because they are minors. They just don't have the resources, or in some cases, the privacy to leave the state, because leaving would then basically reveal they're pregnant,” Mariappuram told BuzzFeed News. “So for our clients, we're concerned that this law is a total abortion ban.”

The Supreme Court’s silence on the case has left Texas abortion rights in limbo. Abortion providers are complying with the new law while waiting for a possible injunction that would provide immediate, though temporary, relief for patients further along than 6 weeks in their pregnancy. But that also forces patients to decide between two difficult options: Do they try to travel out of state for an abortion as soon as they can, or do they wait and hope the Supreme Court blocks the law before they reach the state’s previous limit at 20 weeks gestation?

“Someone who maybe is more able to travel is probably looking at travel as a more viable option, but someone who's not is probably just sitting and hoping that the Supreme Court does the right thing for Texans,” Parker said.

Advocacy groups say they are frustrated that the law essentially happened overnight because of the Supreme Court’s inaction.

“This is basically taking away the right to abortion in Texas — is that not an emergency? Why has the court not intervened?” Mariappuram said.

Many fear that the law will have a chilling effect on Texans who want an abortion. A “haunting quietness” set on the Lilith Fund hotline on Wednesday morning, Parker said, though she hopes it will pick up as people start scheduling appointments out of state.

In the days leading up to the midnight deadline, Fund Texas Choice, a fund that helps Texans pay for travel expenses to go to an abortion clinic, fielded calls from multiple people asking about SB 8, said co-executive director Anna Rupani.

Rupani told BuzzFeed News that Fund Texas Choice has had to stress to patients that abortion, though severely limited, is not totally outlawed in the state.

“People think that it's completely illegal and they're not going to get any access to services, period, from here on out,” she said. “So just reminding folks that, even though it's harder to access, Texas organizations on the ground are willing and able to support you. And if you reach out, we will be there.”

Here's How The Supreme Court Can Rule In A Major Abortion Case In The Dead Of Night

It usually takes the Supreme Court months to rule in a case. But there’s a back door, and it’s getting a lot of use.

Zoe TillmanBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

Washington, DC

Posted on September 2, 2021Co

Pool / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Shortly before midnight, the US Supreme Court released a brief order on a hot-button subject of national importance with potentially massive ripple effects.

That could describe last night’s order explaining the court’s 5–4 decision to let Texas’s 6-week abortion ban take effect while a constitutional challenge works through the lower courts. Or it could describe the order from April pulling back restrictions that California had imposed on small gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic. Or the one issued just before Thanksgiving last year halting certain COVID-19 rules in New York

The Supreme Court’s handling of the Texas abortion law spurred the latest round of scrutiny — and criticism — over how the justices make consequential decisions via the “shadow docket.” The term refers to emergency petitions that ask for a swift ruling on time-sensitive issues, often while a case is still being litigated in the lower courts, without going through the usual monthslong process that involves rounds of briefing, public argument, and, ultimately, an opinion that explains the court’s reasoning and sets precedent for the rest of the country.

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the four justices who disagreed with the majority’s decision to let Texas’s SB 8 go into effect on Wednesday, wrote a short dissent blasting her colleagues for tipping the scales in favor of Texas and dramatically upending the state of abortion law in this way.

“In all these ways, the majority’s decision is emblematic of too much of this Court’s shadow docket decisionmaking — which every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend,” she wrote.

The fight over SB 8 reached the justices on Aug. 30. A federal appeals court had paused proceedings before a federal judge in Austin — including a request by abortion providers to temporarily pause SB 8 while the case was pending — and the abortion providers filed an emergency application asking the justices to intervene. They asked the Supreme Court to either halt SB 8 directly to allow time for the lower courts to sort the case out or to at least allow the judge in Austin to rule before the Sept. 1 start date.

When the clock struck 12 a.m. Central time on Sept. 1, and there was no word from the justices, SB 8 became law in the state. It bans physicians from performing abortions after around the sixth week of a pregnancy and deputizes private individuals to enforce the law by filing a civil lawsuit against any provider they suspect of performing a now-illegal abortion or anyone else who knowingly helped facilitate an abortion covered by the law, including by paying for it. The law allows plaintiffs who win to collect at least $10,000 in damages per abortion, plus their legal costs; if a case is dismissed, however, the law bars judges from ordering the person who filed an unsuccessful claim to similarly pay up.

At 11:58 p.m. on Sept. 1, nearly 24 hours after the justices’ silence meant the law would take effect, the Supreme Court released an order. It confirmed that a majority of justices intended for SB 8 to go forward; four justices — Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Kagan — dissented.

The court has weighed in on a host of major political fights in recent years via the shadow docket — not always literally at midnight, but sometimes close. An Aug. 26 order halting the Biden administration’s effort at keeping a federal eviction moratorium active during the coronavirus pandemic came in a little before 9:30 p.m. Two days earlier, the court issued a one-paragraph order that mandated the administration resume a Trump-era immigration policy that forced people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while their case was pending.

A survey of shadow docket activity during former president Donald Trump’s time in office by Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, found that the Justice Department went to the Supreme Court more than three dozen times to halt lower court rulings against the administration; a majority of the justices sided with the government in more than half of those cases

The shadow docket didn’t start under Trump, although it did get more attention given how frequently legal fights over administration policies and practices landed before the justices on that track. These types of emergency actions have been common for years in death penalty cases. People on death row who have lost every other option for halting their execution have petitioned the justices to step in at the last minute; these efforts are usually unsuccessful.

University of Chicago Law School professor William Baude is credited with coming up with the term “shadow docket.” In a 2015 op-ed in the New York Times, he noted that the court had a history of handling politically and socially fraught issues via the shadow docket. For instance, Baude, who had clerked for Roberts, pointed out that there were orders related to whether same-sex couples could get married while constitutional challenges worked their way through the lower courts, ultimately culminating in 2015’s landmark decision that recognized a nationwide right to marriage.

In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, the justices weighed in on a string of cases via the shadow docket that dealt with how people could cast their ballot during a deadly global pandemic. There were orders that restricted voting options, including allowing Alabama to ban local officials from offering curbside voting for people with disabilities and reinstating a South Carolina law requiring absentee voters to have someone witness the signing of their ballot. There were orders that permitted some states to extend deadlines for absentee voters — including in Pennsylvania and North Carolina — and an order blocking an extended timeline in Wisconsin

The court generally considers four factors when deciding whether to intervene in a case on an emergency basis: whether there’s a good chance at least four justices would vote to hear the case later when it formally reached the court; whether there’s a “fair prospect” that the justices would reverse whatever decision is before them on an emergency basis; whether a party would face “irreparable harm” absent immediate action from the court; and, finally, who would be hurt most in the meantime.In the Texas case, the dissenting justices wrote that their colleagues had turned the purpose of the shadow docket on its head. Roberts pointed out that there hadn’t been any ruling from a federal appeals court yet on the procedural questions that the majority cited in letting SB 8 take effect, and he wrote that the court shouldn’t upend the status quo — all but halting abortion access in Texas — until those issues could at least get a little more airing below.

The other three dissenters wrote separately to make clear they believed SB 8 was unconstitutional; Roberts didn’t go that far. Kagan focused on the shadow docket issue, writing that it was a problem for the court to effectively decide a major case like this one in just a few days.

“Without full briefing or argument, and after less than 72 hours’ thought, this Court greenlights the operation of Texas’s patently unconstitutional law banning most abortions,” Kagan wrote.

Sotomayor and Breyer also called out the majority for letting the law take effect under these circumstances and underscored how much it would harm pregnant people in Texas in the meantime. Sotomayor cited a statistic presented by abortion providers that around 85% of abortions performed in the state took place after the 6-week mark.

“The Court’s order is stunning,” Sotomayor wrote. “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”

HIDING BEHIND MUSK
Defending abortion law, Abbott cites Elon Musk’s support of Texas’ ‘social policies’

By Brendan Case
September 3, 2021

Dallas: Texas Governor Greg Abbott, defending new legislation on elections and abortion, pointed to billionaire Elon Musk as a business leader who likes the state’s “social policies”.

Musk replied with a less-than-ringing endorsement.


Texas Governor Greg Abbott claims Elon Musk is supportive of Texas’ social policies.CREDIT:INTERNET

UTILITARIANISM
“In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximise their cumulative happiness,” the billionaire tweeted on Thursday after Abbott’s remarks hours earlier on CNBC.

“That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics.”

Abbott claimed Musk’s support in arguing that the movement of companies and people to Texas won’t slow down after the state implemented the nation’s most restrictive abortion law and approved new limits on voting access.

In fact, the Governor said, the shift to Texas will speed up as some people leave “the very liberal state of California” partly because of its policies.

“Elon had to get out of California because, in part, of the social policies in California,” Abbott said, adding that he “frequently” talks to the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc.

“Elon consistently tells me that he likes the social policies in the state of Texas.”
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‘Unconstitutional chaos’: Biden directs White House lawyers to fight strict Texas abortion law

Tesla is building a new factory in Austin, Texas, to make its Cybertruck pickup.

Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is expanding its launch facilities near the Mexican border to test its futuristic Starship rocket.

SpaceX also tests rocket engines in McGregor, which is located between Dallas and Austin.

Musk’s companies aren’t alone in moving to the state increasingly defined by hard-right Republican political ideology.

Other companies including Apple and Toyota have moved operations and university -educated, creative-class workers to Texas in recent years; enclaves like Austin and Houston’s Montrose neighbourhood felt a little like San Francisco with withering humidity.

Elon Musk has been moving his companies to Texas but he doesn’t want to get involved in the state’s politics.

CREDIT:AP

Those workers find themselves in a state taking far-right stances in a culture war with national ramifications for women’s autonomy and presidential politics.

“Other states are competing for people,” said Tammi Wallace, chief executive officer of the Greater Houston LGBT Chamber of Commerce.

“If you look at what our state is doing, and then you see another state where they’re not doing some of those things, you might say, ‘Well, the money’s good, but where do I want to raise my family?’”

Even outspoken tech companies have been glaringly silent on the Texas abortion ban

Tesla CEO Elon Musk summed up the mood in a tweet, saying ‘I would prefer to stay out of politics.’

In recent years, tech companies and their executive leaders have gotten more political, weighing in on legislation that discriminates against gay and transgender Americans. But the usually more outspoken industry has been notably silent about Texas legislation that prevents a physician from performing an abortion after roughly six weeks into the pregnancy. This week, the Supreme Court denied a petition for injunctive relief on the rule, allowing it to go into effect. In her dissent, Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor called the decision “flagrantly unconstitutional.”

Abortion remains an untouchable political issue for companies. Though doctors insist that abortion is a health decision that should be made between a doctor and his or her patient, some Americans see it as a choice between the life and death of an unborn child. But anti-abortion regulation inhibits medical choice—not just for women seeking the procedure but also for women experiencing a miscarriage—and forces women to seek care through unconventional and sometimes risky means. For this reason, the Supreme Court’s inaction on the Texas law has elicited public outrage—but not from everyone.
Despite the wave of backlash, Governor Greg Abbott is not the least bit concerned that businesses will pull out of his state. “They are leaving the very liberal state of California,” he said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “Elon [Musk] had to get out of California because of the social policies in California, and Elon consistently tells me he likes the social policies in the state of Texas.” Musk recently relocated to Texas and announced plans for Tesla to build a new factory there.

In response, Musk, capturing the industry’s general mood on the subject so far, tweeted: “In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness. That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics.”

Fast Company reached out to several companies including Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Dell, PayPal, and Salesforce for their comment because they’ve either been vocal on political issues in the past or have offices in Texas. So far only Microsoft’s publicist has responded to say the company has nothing to share.

Internally, some companies are taking steps to ensure their employees have access to abortion care. Match Group CEO Shar Dubey sent out an email to employees promising that she would personally set up a fund for any staff members who need to travel and obtain abortion care out of state. Similarly, Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of dating app Bumble, told employees globally that she would provide financial support to ensure reproductive rights. However, women at these companies likely make enough money and have enough paid time off to travel to another state for reproductive healthcare. Kate Ryder, CEO of Maven Clinic, a company that provides healthcare services to women and families starting at preconception and is now worth more than $1 billion, says that her company has been echoing the message from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which has called the Texas law “a clear attack on the practice of medicine.”

A majority of Americans support keeping abortion legal, according to a 2019 poll from Pew. A more recent poll from YouGov, commissioned by the Tara Health Foundation with support from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, suggests that a majority of college-educated professionals don’t want the court to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which protects a woman’s right to choose whether she wants an abortion. The survey, which went out to 1,800 adults who are either working or looking for work, also indicates that those respondents wouldn’t apply to jobs in states that have laws like Texas’s abortion ban. More than half of respondents want their companies to either make public donations or comment on the issue.

The general quiet on the Texas abortion law is in stark contrast to response on other political issues when companies felt it necessary to throw around their economic weight. In 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke out against Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which could have allowed for discrimination against queer Americans. He wasn’t the only one who took exception to that law and others like it. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff vocally opposed the law and a year later threatened to reduce investments in Georgia over a similar rule. Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, billionaire Richard Branson, and Microsoft president Brad Smith all voiced public opposition to Georgia’s policy.

In 2016, industry played an important role in dismantling a North Carolina law that forced transgender Americans to use bathrooms according to their gender assigned at birth. PayPal withdrew plans to set up a new facility in the state; Ringo Starr and Bruce Springsteen canceled planned concerts; and both the NBA and the NCAA avoided hosting events there. Deutsche Bank and several major investment firms also made their displeasure known. Target promised that transgender Americans could continue to use the bathroom that comports with their gender identity despite the rule and later faced backlash for it. At the time, CNBC estimated that by the end of 2017 North Carolina would forfeit more than $525 million.

CEOs and companies continue to voice their dismay over laws unrelated to their bottom line. In 2018, Cook vocalized his concern in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes over the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, saying, “The DACA situation is not an immigration issue, it’s a moral issue.” And this year, a convoy of tech companies came out to wag their fingers at Georgia’s attempts to erect barriers to the ballot box and voiced support for voting rights laws that enable access like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

They have also, in the last seven years or so, made moves to ensure that their employees adequately reflect America’s demographic makeup, announcing various diversity initiatives. In particular, some companies have made a show of hiring more women. In 2019, Dell announced that by 2030 half of its workforce would be female. But speaking out on access to women’s reproductive care, it seems, remains too taboo. Technology related to women’s health may garner incredible attention as an opportunity for investment, drawing $1.31 billion in funding so far this year according to Pitchbook data, but women’s health as a moral prerogative has yet to seize the hearts and minds of the tech industry’s luminaries. Maybe next year.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruth Reader is a writer for Fast Company. She covers the intersection of health and technology.

SCHADENFREUDE
Former CIA officer turned Q-Anon conspiracy theorist dies of COVID-19 while on anti-vax speaking tour of Florida

Robert David Steele was a former CIA officer who became a big supporter of conspiracy theories

He had become a devotee of QAnon and was in the midst of a tour decrying coronavirus vaccines when he was hospitalized with the virus

He has since died, his friend Mark Tassi announced on Instagram on Sunday

Steele bragged that he was the first person to call the coronavirus a hoax

He had also claimed that child slaves were being sent to Mars, forcing NASA to issue a denial, and said 5G was a weapons system designed to kill humans

By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
 31 August 2021 | 

A former CIA officer who became infamous for his embrace of conspiracy theories had died of COVID-19 - while on an anti-vax tour of Florida.

Robert David Steele had bragged that he was the first person to declare the COVID-19 pandemic a hoax, and refused to believe in the virus until the end.

Steele was in the midst of his Arise USA! tour across the country to 'awaken the nation in truth', promoting his anti-vaccine message and his conspiracy theories.

But he was hospitalized earlier this month after testing positive for the virus, and his death was confirmed by a friend on Sunday.

In his final blog post on August 17, he wrote: 'I will not take the vaccination, though I did test positive for whatever they're calling 'COVID' today, but the bottom line is that my lungs are not functioning.

'The good news is that I will survive with a few days off. I should be back up and at least functional soon.

'This is been a near death experience, very much like a new death experience the whole country is going through right now.

'We will never be the same because now we know that we've all been lied to about everything.'


Robert David Steele, who called himself the first person to describe COVID-19 as a hoax, has died in Florida from the virus. In his final blog post, he said his lungs had failed



Steele's final blog post was published on August 17. His friend announced his death on Sunday

On Sunday his friend Mark Tassi, a fellow conspiracy theorist, confirmed his death. Tassi alleged without evidence that Steele's illness may have been linked to the attention his speaking tour had received

On Sunday his friend Mark Tassi, a fellow conspiracy theorist, confirmed his death.

'Robert has died, and the whole thing is very suspicious,' Tassi said in an Instagram post.

Tassi alleged without evidence that Steele's illness may have been linked to the attention his speaking tour had received.

In a 14-minute video Tassi speculated that Steele was the victim of an 'attack' by a 'vile faction that will go to any length to stop that movement'.

He went on to claim that Steele had got sick in Florida as part of a plot to undermine Republican governor Ron DeSantis.

He said: 'They are trying to make Florida look bad. Why? Because DeSantis is not going along with agenda so they are targeting Florida. Open your eyes.'

Steele was a former CIA analyst, but had in recent years become a prominent supporter of QAnon and other conspiracy theories.

He began issuing warnings that child slaves were being sent to Mars - prompting NASA to issue a denial - and claimed that 5G technology was a weapons system designed to kill humans.

He had a history of antisemitism, and once called for all Jews who are not sufficiently 'loyal to the Republic' to be jailed, Vice reports.

Steele was also a frequent guest on Alex Jones' Infowars show.

QUACK, QUACK, QUACK

Ivermectin Is Anti-Vaxxers’ Latest COVID Drug Of Choice. A Study Promoting It Has Suspect Data.

An influential study from Argentina has been used to argue that ivermectin prevents COVID 100% of the time — but its inconsistencies have led experts to question if it could have actually happened as advertised.

BuzzFeed News / Getty Images / Todo Noticias via YouTube

For anti-vaccine activists, the clinical trial results couldn’t have been better. The drug ivermectin, scientists in Argentina announced last year, prevented 100% of COVID-19 infections.

That glowing finding helped spark a craze for the decades-old medication, which is normally used to delouse people and deworm livestock, and drive the perception that it is a silver bullet against the pandemic.

“If you take it, you will not get sick,” an ivermectin-boosting physician told a Senate committee in December, describing it as a “wonder drug” and citing in part the trial “from Argentina.”

But there are signs that at least some of the experiments — as written up in a paper published in November — didn’t happen as advertised. After BuzzFeed News raised questions about how the study’s data was collected and analyzed, a representative from the Journal of Biomedical Research and Clinical Investigation, which published the results, said late Monday, “We will remove the paper temporarily.” A link was removed from the table of contents — but was reinstated by Thursday. The journal’s explanation, provided after this story was published, was that the author “informed us that he has already provided the evidence of his study to the media.”

The numbers, genders, and ages of the study’s participants were inconsistent. A hospital named in the paper as taking part in the experiments said it has no record of it happening. Health officials in the province of Buenos Aires have also said that they also have no record of the study receiving local approval.

And the researcher overseeing the project, Hector Carvallo, a retired endocrinologist and professor of internal medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, has declined to widely share his data — including with one of his own collaborators, emails show.


Todo Noticias via YouTube / Via youtube.com
Hector Carvallo

In short, independent experts told BuzzFeed News, the oft-cited study has so many red flags that it is, at best, unreliable.

“There is no way in which I could see a trial that actually occurred producing a pattern like this,” said Kyle Sheldrick, a doctor in Sydney and one of the critics who brought the study’s discrepancies to light.

Carvallo, 64, said the study was real. “We would never make up a study because it’s not ethical,” he told BuzzFeed News.

In an interview, Carvallo said he supports vaccines and that he himself is immunized. “What I want for ivermectin is to be considered as another possibility among the repurposed drugs. Not the best one, not the only one, just another one,” he said from Buenos Aires province. “And not to be considered a challenge to vaccines. That would be stupid because they are different.”

But others say that at a time of a global crisis, when vaccination rates are slumping in the face of a relentless virus, Carvallo’s research is being used to give desperate people false, and potentially dangerous, hope about the miraculous properties of a drug proven only to help kill parasites.

“The thing that really worries me is it’s being explicitly used as an alternative to vaccines by some people,” Sheldrick said.


Soumyabrata Roy / NurPhoto via Getty Images

LONG READ CONTINUES HERE 

Ivermectin COVID Study Questioned Over Data Concerns (buzzfeednews.com)

Stephanie M. LeeBuzzFeed News Reporter

Ken BensingerBuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on September 2, 2021, 

INTER IMPERIALIST RIVALRY
Competing for Resource: India-China Rivalry in Central Asia

Published on September 2, 2021
By Anushka Saxena

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of the 5 Central Asian Republics (hereby, CARs) of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, both India and China established diplomatic relations with the nations in the Central Asian region, but the latter, due to its geographical proximity and economic strength, has fared much better than the former. With a rise in its neo-colonial practices, China has used economic coercive methods to utilise the resources the CARs have to offer. From laying Belt and Road projects in the region, to providing loans that, upon non-repayment, would lead China to usurp Central Asian resource-bases in return, China’s unchecked influence in the region has led to growing sentiments of opposition among the masses. Historically, the Soviet Union and the post-1991 Russia did have great relations with and a similar undue influence upon the CARs, but now, as Russia’s relations with China have grown closer, it has become more of a backseat power in Central Asia. Moreover, Russia’s fate in the region was sealed for the worse when it faced sanctions from the west on its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and its aggressiveness with Ukraine. The Kremlin did attempt to reassert its dominance amidst its increasing unease at Beijing’s massive influence in the region, especially through the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) – an organisation focusing on counterterrorism and military preparedness in the region. But this overall strategic push has not veiled the western resentment and the diminishing economic strength faced by Russia today. It’s now safe to say that there’s not much Russia can do about hegemonic Chinese ambitions in the region.

India, on the other hand, still endeavours to make the most of its relations with the CARs. The under-utilised potential lies in energy, trade and cultural ties, as well as in India’s performance in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The SCO, of which India became a permanent member in 2017 with support from Russia and the CARs, can be the negotiating table India needs to come together with China and Pakistan and shape the future of the region. Other initiatives that need immediate attention are energy pipelines that are underway – the Turkmenistan– Afghanistan–Pakistan–India Pipeline, for instance, connecting Central Asia with India through Pakistan, or a new pipeline endeavour that can provide India a route that doesn’t require it to deal with Pakistan – for example, through the Chabahar port in Iran. Another initiative is the International North-South Transport Corridor, which, although ambitious and a tough competition to China/ BRI-centered trade routes, has progressed unsatisfactorily. While there exists geographical distance, cultural closeness can easily be furthered between India and the CARs through historical ties involving soft-power diplomacy, and much more.

First, we must understand China’s stake in the region, and the responses its involvement has incited. Central Asia is an important resource-centre for China, being naturally rich in oil and gas. China’s alternative sources for energy-producing elements like gas have become increasingly unstable (especially the Middle East, which has been in constant turmoil since the 2011 Arab Spring, and now increasingly due to the ill-effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic). China shares a border with three Central Asian nations – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – and stability in the Central Asian region therefore, becomes important for China so as to avoid spillovers of instability, violence, and refugees into its Xinjiang Province. The Xinjiang province is infamous for Chinese internment camps targeting Uighur muslims, and for China to protect its borders from illegal crossing, which may lead to a diplomatic blunder, becomes essential. For this, Central Asian nations bordering China agreed to ban Uighur groups in 1997. In return, China has offered to them, over the years, huge investments. For example, in Kazakhstan, Chinese investments and contracts today have crossed the US $50 billion mark, and have exceeded US $2-3 billion in the other four CARs. Chinese BRI projects have integrated Central Asia into the nexus of global trade more comprehensively. For example, the New Eurasian Land-Bridge corridor links China to Europe (Poland and Germany) via Russia and Kazakhstan. Chinese is building border military posts, especially in collaboration with Tajikistan, for personnel training and security. Amidst the Pandemic, Central Asian hydrocarbon exports to Central Asia have lowered, but a boost has been created by China, in that it gave Central Asian commodities limited access to its own markets. These especially opens China for imports of Central Asian foodstuffs and agricultural produce.

In recent times, citizens of the CARs have shown growing resentment towards Chinese presence in the region. They feel that their governments need to look beyond politico-economic considerations to take harsher steps in dealing with Chinese neo-imperialism. The inhumane treatment of Uighur muslims, that has sparked worldwide condemnation, has also been a matter of concern for the Central Asians, as various families of Uighur muslims have Kazakh and Kyrgyz origins – people belonging to a land called East Turkestan. While East Turkestan became part of mainland China after it fell into the hands of Chinese warlords in 1911, the current and emerging East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM for short), an Islamic fundamentalist initiative to radicalise the Uighurs, has raised a new diplomatic and security challenge for China. Central Asians also launched protests in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan over issues like Chinese companies giving more pay to their own workers than those from the CARs, or China usurping land and resource-blocs when there was non-repayment of loans by the governments. In this light, India has the opportunity to revive its image and interests, establishing friendly political and trade relations with the CARs.

India’s 2012 ‘Connect Central Asia’ and ‘Eurasia’ Policies highlight the significant stake India holds in the region. Two major projects for enhanced connectivity, in this regard, are the TAPI pipeline and the INSTC, both of which have immense potential in terms of tapping Central Asian energy resources, and establishing a freight corridor free of Pakistani and Chinese interventions respectively, but have been taking too long to develop and operationalise. This must be overcome with greater fervour if India is to take its connectivity with the CARs more seriously. Historically, India and Central Asia have engaged in trade and cultural-diasporic exchanges, by virtue of the Silk Road. Shared religious ideals (especially of Islam and Buddhism), a love for folklore and food culture, and an adoration for Bollywood, are striking soft diplomacy tools at India’s hand. The most important aspect of the religious ties would be a revival of the ‘Naqshbandi’, which is an Indo-Islamic way of life that emerged with the interactions of the Mughal empire in India with the Sufi mysticism of Central Asia.

The Afghanistan issue and the recent de-facto takeover of Taliban over the country is a destabilizing matter for the region, and both India and the CARs are stakeholders in the Afghani peace process. While the new US-guided quad, comprising of the United States, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, has left India out, India can use the SCO to earn favour and support of the CARs in bringing peaceful resolution to Afghani infighting, considering both the parties have supported power-sharing between the Taliban and the government, and are afraid of the violent repercussions and the refugee crisis that the Taliban takeover is causing.

The India-China rivalry can be the next big thing in Central Asia, when the dust of the Afghani peace process settles – and India must be ready for it. As the world prepares for reforming post-Pandemic supply chains, and in that context, the India-Central Asia relations can either become better, or decline in the presence of alternatives. Hence, the time for India to a hard look into the Central Asia policy mirror is now.

Russian Far East and Arctic: Emerging Arenas for India-China Competition?


Published on September 1, 2021
By Divyanshu Jindal


In a speech this year in Moscow, Indian Foreign Secretary highlighted the three strategic geographies- Eurasia, Indo-pacific and the Russian Far East (RFE), and the Arctic, which will be the key emerging theatres of geopolitics that upcoming diplomats will be engaged in throughout their careers. He further stressed that not only is Russia crucial to all the three regions, but there is also an inherent need of multi-polarity for the security and prosperity of these regions. Also, a multipolar world and a multipolar Asia is not possible without India and Russia.

Did the Foreign secretary underline the increasing Chinese ambitions in these regions and the need for countering these ambitions by pointing towards the necessity of multipolarity in Asia? Several questions arise when we take in consideration the recent rejuvenation in the relationship between India and Russia, and the narrative that strategic hedging against China is the main motive behind this rejuvenation.

For answering these, one needs to understand why China is interested in these regions and what has been China doing in these key areas. Further, what are India’s stakes in these regions and whether India can think of competing with China here. Moreover, how Russia looks at the competition if it exists. This piece tries to analyze these questions and highlight the ongoing geopolitical dynamics in the RFE and Arctic and the pertaining Indian and Chinese foreign policies, in their past, present, and future goals.

Importance of RFE and Arctic

Geographically, RFE comprises of the Far Eastern Federal district that is the easternmost territory of Russia sandwiched between eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean. The district shares land borders with Mongolia, China, and North Korea to the south and shares maritime borders with Japan to its southeast and with the US to its northeast.

Having never known serfdom, this region has been culturally, religiously and politically different from Moscow and the Russian heartland for a major part of history, by virtue of more entrepreneurism and autonomy. Today there exists an additional dimension to this ‘difference’ between the RFE and the center. In the Soviet period, the region was tied to Europe economically but in past decade it has become increasingly clear that several of the Far Eastern krais and oblasts (units of governance in Russian political system like districts), especially those bordering China are now economically dependent more on Asia than on European region. This situation is compounded by migration related demographic issues. For more than a decade now the region has witnessed exodus of ethnic Russian population and seen a growing influence of Chinese businesses and migrants. The extent of this phenomenon is widely visible as over the years large tracts of land in this region have been leased to Chinese for farming, infrastructure projects and energy exploration, with a low tax regime and a considerable amount of autonomy over the activities. As a result, the region has witnessed emergence of Chinese run farms which look like fortresses, surrounded by high fences and red flags.

The Arctic is deemed as the northernmost region on Earth. While most part of this region used to remain covered with snow for a major part of the year, this phenomenon has been on a downfall due to changes being purported by climate change. The Arctic region not only contains plethora of mineral resources but is extremely important from strategic point of view. During the cold war era, the Arctic held a prominent place in the political and military standoffs between the two superpowers- US and USSR. The region observed a drop in the geopolitical and geostrategic relevance in the 1990s and remained of ‘low tension’ due to commitments made by the Arctic states to keep the Arctic a zone of peace.

The unfreezing of snow makes way for the possibility of opening of the Northern Sea Route which can provide a cost-effective and shorter duration alternative for global shipping routes. Also, scientific developments taking place in hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation can lead to full-scale utilization of the resource base of the Arctic in near future.

Moscow’s Approach

Since the rise of Vladimir Putin at the helm of Russian Federation, Moscow’s approach towards development of the RFE has been to inject money into existing industries which according to many analysts of the field has not worked due to the lacunae in addressing the problems of infrastructure and regional integrity. Moscow desires to integrate the region with the broader Asia-Pacific region to solve the problems of development, investment, and connectivity.

In last few years, Moscow has taken decisions like encouraging the return of Russian ‘compatriots’ from Central Asia to accelerate large scale projects. It has also created Special Economic Zones with low tax regimes, focused on modernizing the ‘Trans-Siberian railway’ network, and emphasized on plans to invite investments in the region from nations like India and Japan, beyond the biggest investor in the region- China.

It has to be noted that any developments in the RFE cannot be in isolation from that in Arctic. With the aim of developing both the regions in concurrence, Moscow created the ‘Ministry of the RFE and the Arctic’ which is now working on creation of a corporation in order to supervise the economy and to assume control over elements like ports and exchanges. For the Arctic, Russia rolled out its ‘Strategy for Developing the Russian Arctic Zone and Ensuring National Security through 2035’ in October last year, which aims to advance the development of the region’s abundant resources (especially oil and gas), and improve living conditions for the population. As a long-term objective, Russia hopes to establish the Northern Sea route as a new global shipping lane. These aims and policies need to be considered while understanding Chinese and Indian policies and ambitions and the emerging geopolitical triangle between the three countries, resulting in both cooperation and competition.

The India-China Competition

The perception of China has seen a rise and fall in the last three decades in Russian society. Unlike the 1990s, when there was much skepticism regarding a rise in Chinese immigration, Russia became less wary of engaging with China when relations with the west deteriorated in the aftermath of conflicts in Georgia in 2008 and in Crimea in 2014. Gradually, China became the leading source of foreign direct investment in the region as well as the leading exporter to the districts at the Russia-China border. The extent of asymmetry in terms of trade resulted in a situation where while the exports from this region are diversified among the three northeast Asian states- South Korea, China and Japan, the imports are heavily dominated by China, mainly consisting of machinery, equipment and metals. This imbalance has been further aggravated by factors such as sanctions by the west- leading to declining investment from European nations, and the dramatic rise of China in realm of manufactured goods- which has led to stagnant conditions for the local industries of these regions which are now dependent on export of mainly raw materials and minerals.

As observed by some experts, Beijing’s interest in the region increased after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 when the Chinese investment was followed by an influx of Chinese migrants in the five districts at Russia-China border, namely- Amur oblast, Jewish autonomous region, Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai. From amongst these regions, Amur oblast has the largest gold reserves in Russia, while in another near-border district of Oktyabrsky, there are large Uranium deposits. Adjoining Amur is Sakha (or Yakutia), which carries the world’s largest diamond deposits.

However, mineral resources are not the only source of motivation for Chinese investment in the region. RFE contains huge potential for infrastructure development in realm of power generation (where Chinese electric companies have already shown interest to gain foothold), and upgradation of railway infrastructure which can connect the RFE, Northeast China and Japan with Europe with a land-based network and thus reduce the sea-dependence. Invariably, there has been an increasingly accepted reality that like the Russian Asia-Pacific policy, the policy in RFE too might become lopsided due to the factor of overdependence on China.

Kremlin on its part remain aware of the increasing dependence on export of raw materials to China. China on the other hand is working actively in diversifying its own energy imports and is now seeking to compete with Russia in realm of exports to traditional Russian markets for weaponry and technology. Ideas like temporary placement of skilled manpower from India in RFE are being explored. Besides this, the pledge by India for a $1 billion Line of Credit for development of the RFE highlights the importance being placed by the two countries to make this region a source of renewed cooperation. For now, the plans have been in phase of conceptualization and once the implementation stage arrives, China’s stance towards the potential competition here will be interesting to observe.

Unlike the case of RFE, the changing dynamics and increasing Chinese interests in the Arctic region have been debated and speculated much more in the global geopolitical arena. In the last two decades, not only has Beijing accumulated memberships in all Arctic-related regional associations in some form, but Beijing has also made it a surety that China actively participates in all international organizations whose responsibilities cover the Arctic Ocean and laws related to it. To this end in the past decade, Beijing has started projecting its interest and speaking up on issues pertaining to Arctic. The extent of this activism can be verified by the aims and objectives mentioned in the white paper published by China on 26 January 2018, titled ‘China’s Arctic Policy’. This policy paper very explicitly states that China will participate in regulating and managing the affairs and activities relating to the Arctic, and that ‘respect’ is the key basis for China’s participation in Arctic affairs.

Beijing has made it clear that it has formulated policies and have interest in every realm in the Arctic, ranging from development of shipping routes, exploration and exploitation of oil, gas and minerals, conservation and utilization of fisheries, tourism, as well as strengthening her leadership credentials by having a say in Arctic governance. In totality, if RFE is a region for China’s increasing influence in Russia’s domestic landscape, Arctic is much more of an opportunity to put on display the increasing clout and aspirations for being accepted as a ‘great power’ who now has interests in every corner of the world. India, even if starting to present itself as an alternative to China in the RFE, will find it difficult to match the Chinese position in the Arctic.

In January this year, India rolled out a draft Arctic policy of its own and highlighted that India seeks to play a constructive role in Arctic by leveraging its vast scientific pool and expertise in Himalayan and polar research. India remains aware that Arctic might be becoming an arena of increasing power competition. But beyond planning, goal setting, and utilizing the existing mechanisms for scientific development, in coming years, the economic base of India will not let New Delhi go all-out for claiming a position on the Arctic high table. This is bound to increase tensions in Moscow who would not want a challenge to its hegemony in the Arctic by an increasingly ambitious China.

Conclusion

On its part, Moscow has taken several steps to develop the RFE region to reduce its overdependence on China. However, remoteness of the region, outmigration and difficult business environment are some other issues which append the complex dynamic of the region. Beijing is aware of the benefits available due to scarce ethnic Russian labor, lack of investment from other sources for Russia, the geographical difficulties for nations like India for smooth access, and the absence of deep pockets like China for other nations. In case of the Arctic, Beijing is going for proactive diplomacy and wooing the smaller states. Although Beijing would not want to come to blows with Washington or Moscow in any ways, creating a discourse where China starts being seen as a ‘Arctic’ and not just a ‘Near-Arctic’ state will be a big win for China even before any other advantages as mentioned above are realized. India while looking to initiate presence in RFE can be deemed capable to some extent, but the credentials in case of Arctic region seems no match to that of China. Russia on her part, will want India to at least think about trying to punch above its weight and rise to the task of providing Moscow a way for hedging against Chinese hegemonic ambitions. Recently, India has expressed interest in cooperating with other nations like Japan in these key strategic areas. How Moscow responds to these plans by New Delhi will shape the geopolitical dynamics between Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi in these two emerging regions which look all set to witness a competition in the coming years.

SEE THE IMPERIALIST STATE N. BUKHARIN 

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/08/nikolai-bukharin-1915-toward-theory-of.html