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After that the cost is $6.99 monthly or $69.99 yearly. 2 28 2 0 2 r e b o t c O FEATURES + 16 The Elephant in the Room 36 Masters and Commander BY DAVID CORN BY NOAH LANARD We have some bad news for those who wish Right-wing tech mogul Peter Thiel has poured r that today’s unhinged Republican Party would millions into the Senate campaign of protégé just return to normal. Blake Masters. Their goal? Disrupting democracy. e 22 A Dangerous Mind 46 In the Eye of the Storm b BY JOSHUA KENDALL BY BECCA ANDREWS Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee was thrown under For 50 years, a Kansas abortion clinic has been the bus for sounding the alarm about Donald at the center of “pro-life” attacks. Now, Trust m Trump. Turns out she was right. Women is facing its biggest threat yet. 28 Swag & Circuses 54 The Censor BY STEPHANIE MENCIMER BY ADAM HOCHSCHILD How did maga extremists take over the Before Donald Trump and “Don’t Say Gay,” e gop? Look no further than the right-wing there were Woodrow Wilson and Albert conference circuit. Sidney Burleson. t p DEPARTMENTS 61 MIXED MEDIA The Russian trolls in Blackface 4 TO OUR READERS e What is a dog whistle, anyway? 7 OUTFRONT Within Alito’s opinion on abortion is an 70 FOOD + HEALTH S argument about Black genocide. Don’t buy it. Virtual learning programs are keeping Disability benefi ts are not working. the pandemic alive for preschoolers. How to save a life without calling the cops Stop calling it curry. VOLUME 47 NUMBER 5 ABOVE: DAVID BUTOW I N T H I S I S S U E INSTEAD OF CONTRIBUTORS BY THE NUMBERS How we covered In the lead-up to the abortion and far-right 2016 presidential extremism this issue: election, a Kremlin- ESCAPING linked agency created social media accounts to help inflame America’s internal conflicts. Popular accounts posed as Black Americans and hijacked racial justice issues. STATE CONTROL, More than Reporter Becca Andrews 66% of its profiled the staff of a Facebook advertising Kansas abortion clinic (and content the protesters outside) contained a for her book No Choice, word related MASTERS AND to race. excerpted here (“In the Eye Other of the Storm,” page 46). 96% of its YouTube content was devoted to THIEL NOW HOPE “racial issues and police brutality.” Other 9M Photographer Zoe Freilich TO USE ITS POWER. was already working on a project about abortion when we tapped her to snap pictures of the Kansas clinic staff and protesters on the sidewalk (“In the Eye of the Storm,” page 46). people watched the Conservative Political Action Conference on YouTube in 2020. From reporter Noah Lanard’s profile of Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, a Trump-backed $60K Thiel protégé (“Masters and Commander,” page 36) ON THE COVER Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor, The potential visual metaphors picks apart Justice Alito’s for Republicans’ long descent into misuse of racial justice madness and conspiracy-mongering are was paid to TV personality rhetoric one flagrant endless. For David Corn’s look at this Kimberly Guilfoyle by misconception at a time phenomenon, justin metz nails the Turning Point Action for a (“The Race Card,” page 7). combination of bizarre and grotesque. three-minute speech. To see our masthead, visit motherjones.com/about. For questions about your subscription or to make a tax-deductible donation to support our journalism, call (800) 438-6656. To advertise or for other questions, call (415) 321-1700. 2 MOTHER JONES | SEPTEMBER + OCTOBER 2022 978-0-77663-789-1 · $29.95 9780-7-7663-781-5 · $39.95 978-0-77662-969-8 · $29.95 Legislatures in Evolution advances core This book is a much-needed new This is a truly engaging book that debates about Canada’s parliaments. resource about an issue immediately highlights the impact of local Bringing together scholars, practitioners, important to some, and ultimately community-level advocacy, while and advocates, this timely volume is important to all of us. [...] Separate situating this work within a broader required reading for students of Canadian school education is about more than context of complex migration issues parliamentarism and those committed education. 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Border culture is the vessel assumptions underlying open data, such A work that will go down in the annals of engagement between countries and as assumed data quality and accessibility, of Jewish history in Canada. peoples—assuming many forms—yet, data security, and equitable access. remaining a thread in globalization. www.Press.uOttawa.ca T O O U R R E A D E R S institutions—gerrymandered state leg- islatures, the US Senate, the Supreme TRUTH AND Court—are held captive by a far-right minority, the will of the majority is PUNISHMENT being subsumed. “The defeat of Roe was made possible by cutting corners and seizing every advantage in an un- Does it matter if no one goes to jail? democratic system,” my colleague Tim CEO MONIKA Murphy wrote the day the Dobbs deci- BY MONIKA BAUERLEIN BAUERLEIN sion came down. “It was a redistribu- tion of power bordering on theft.” history will judge. History will judge. Party spin. If Democrats say the sky is But in the end, those who steal or History will judge. blue and Republicans insist it is red, will cheat their way into power don’t have a Those were the words that kept ringing cnn steer clear of stating the color of solid hold on it. They know the people in my head as my teenager and I began the sky? aren’t with them. That’s why they run to watch the January 6 hearings. It was “We must confront the truth with from the truth. Their power is fragile, surreal, seeing Donald Trump once more candor, resolve, and determination,” and history will judge them. commanding his supporters to “fight like Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said One of the things I love about Mother hell.” It was shocking and yet entirely un- as he opened the hearings. “We need Jones is that we publish not just online— surprising to hear Cassidy Hutchinson to show that we are worthy of the gifts where our journalists dig deep on the describe the abuse Trump heaped on sub- that are the birthright of every Amer- issues of the day—but in this print mag- ordinates when they failed to accede to ican.” Those gifts include finding and azine that you’re holding in your hands. his putschist demands. speaking the truth, regardless of who is It feels like making a historical record When these proceedings are shown offended. I’m so grateful that that’s what that you, or someone who follows in in classrooms one day, I wondered, will your hellraising footsteps, can pick up people see it as the beginning of some- a year or 20 down the road to see what thing, or the end? Will they mourn that this moment was like. we were not able to reverse America’s It so happens that this issue was the slide into authoritarianism—or see, in the last one for Claudia Smukler, our pro- fact that the coup did not succeed, the The free press is at duction director who sweated over beginning of something more hopeful? risk over the pressure every single page of every single issue “To my Republican colleagues who to supply Amazon for 13 years. She wrote a gripping tale are defending the indefensible,” Rep. Prime delivery boxes. (you can read it at motherjones.com/ Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in her opening paper) about how harrowing it has been statement. “There will come a day when to keep the presses rolling. Not just be- Donald Trump is gone. But your dis- cause of the 40 percent increase in the honor will remain.” History will judge. we get to do at Mother Jones because we price of paper, the 10 percent increase “Does it matter,” my kid asked, “if no are accountable to independent-minded in postage, the 7 percent in freight, an- one gets punished?” readers like you and not some corporate other 7 percent in health insurance, That depends in part on the media board or hedge-fund investor. That’s and the list goes on; but because sup- and how the story is presented to those why we have been investigating attacks ply-chain challenges made it so that Americans—about 60 percent of us— on democracy for decades, and will keep giant rolls of paper sat frozen on a train who assign Trump some or much of the doing it long after these hearings are when they needed to be at our printer, blame for the attack. As MoJo’s Washing- done. (This entire issue, with in-depth and because mills no longer make much ton bureau chief, David Corn, pointed coverage of tech industry authoritari- magazine paper because packaging ma- out, “Much coverage of the January 6 anism, the long-running antidemocratic terial is more profitable. committee and its hearings has up to streak in the Republican Party, and the That’s where the American economy now focused on the political implica- dangerous mind of Donald Trump, is a is right now: The free press is at risk tions: Will this help the Democrats for testament to that.) over the pressure to supply Amazon the coming midterm elections?” Inves- Ultimately, that’s what all of the big Prime delivery boxes. So if you’re able tigating a coup is not horse-race stuff, stories of this moment come back to: to help us confront the truth with nor does it call for media coverage that attacks on democracy. Broad majori- candor, resolve, and determination—in sacrifices truth to false equivalence. Yet ties of Americans agree that abortion the pages of this and future issues, and cnn’s new ceo, Chris Licht, announced should be legal, that people should be every single day online—by donating that he would prefer if his network’s able to marry whom they love, and that today, we’d be so grateful. People like journalists did not use the term “Big we should act on climate change and you reading this make it all possible: Lie” because he saw it as Democratic gun violence. But because some of our motherjones.com/donate. (cid:81) 4 MOTHER JONES | SEPTEMBER + OCTOBER 2022 “Chrzan and Cargill dissect our urge “Lucid, comprehensive history “A bold and penetrating collection to control our bodies through food of Fragile X. A compassionate of essays about the most important intake, a perennially and vitally medical account. Blending stories problems of our time.” important topic.”—Ken Albala, author and interviews with science and —Frances Fox Piven, author of of At the Table: Food and Family statistics, The Carriers balances Challenging Authority: How Ordinary Around the World the worldwide scope of a disease People Change America with intimate details.” “[A] smart and comprehensive survey.”—Publishers Weekly —Foreword Reviews “Elegantly written and carefully “Remarkably illuminating ... This is “This marvelous and surprising book reasoned, this is a fascinating look at a truly exceptional book from a leading offers the first satisfying account of the political evolution of thinker on the meaning of why offense is an essential idiom of a key literary figure.” moral progress.” secular politics.” —Publishers Weekly —Tommie Shelby, author of Dark —Kathryn Lofton, author of Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform Consuming Religion C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU P R E S S A WILD AND HARROWING STORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S DECADES-LONG RELATIONSHIP WITH FAR-RIGHT EXTREMISM, BIGOTRY, AND PARANOIA. BY #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER DAVID CORN ON SALE SEPTEMBER 13, 2022 AUTHOR PHOTO © TONY POWELL T N O R F T U WOKE WARRIORS O THE RACE CARD The Supreme Court’s radical wing is happy to embrace social justice arguments that serve a pro-gun, anti-abortion agenda. B Y M E L I S S A M U R R A Y ILLUSTRATIONS BY NATE KITCH O U T F R O N T amid the tumult surrounding the Su- preme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jack- son Women’s Health Organization, the June 24 ruling that ended Roe v. Wade, one curious detail went largely over- looked. Nestled among Justice Samuel Alito’s arguments laying waste to nearly 50 years of abortion precedent was an unassuming footnote documenting a narrative advanced in amicus briefs sub- mitted to the high court. These “friend of the court” briefs, Alito explained, “present arguments about the motives” of people and groups favoring “liberal access to abortion,” namely “that some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population.” Portraying abortion as a tool of racial genocide is not a bridge too far, Alito Y insisted: “It is beyond dispute that Roe T T E has had that demographic effect,” given G / Y that a “highly disproportionate per- C N E centage of aborted fetuses are Black.” G A U He also cited Justice Clarence Thomas’ L O D concurring opinion in 2019’s Box v. A N A Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Ken- / K R tucky, Inc., a challenge to an Indiana law U T Z that prohibited abortions undertaken O N for reasons of race or sex selection, or SI A Y nonlethal fetal anomalies. The justices, ultimately helped empower women to moored from constitutional text and Y, T Thomas included, had deferred con- make their own decisions about child- lacks deep roots in the country’s history T E G sideration of such “reason bans” for bearing. and traditions, there was no need to Y/ C N another day, but Thomas wanted it on Thomas, uninterested in such nu- invoke racial eugenics. So why did Alito, E G A the record that the court ultimately ances, maintained that the work a shrewd tactician when it comes to ad- U L would have “to confront the constitu- of these birth control pioneers was vancing the conservative legal project, O D A tionality of laws like Indiana’s,” which tainted by racial animus. Sanger, he insist on this unusual aside? N A / reflected a “compelling interest in pre- wrote, “campaigned for birth control Perhaps it was merely an anodyne N U K venting abortion from becoming a tool in black communities,” creating a clinic gesture of collegiality toward Thomas, S O C of modern- day eugenics.”   in Harlem as well as the “Negro Proj- who, as the senior justice in the major- N U F Thomas argued that the abortion ect,” which worked with Black clergy ity—Chief Justice John Roberts voted to Y A T legalization movement stemmed and leaders including W.E.B. Du Bois uphold the challenged Mississippi law, ), 3 ( from the birth control movement to promote birth control in “poor, yet sided with the liberals on retain- Y T T of the early 1900s, which had “de- Southern black communities.” His ing Roe—could have written this plum E G veloped alongside the American eu- implication is clear: Contraception opinion himself, but instead allowed E: V O genics movement.” Indeed, Planned and abortion—the twin pillars of re- Alito to spear the conservative move- B A Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger productive rights—are not merely rife ment’s great white whale. Or perhaps M; L B and Alan Guttmacher, the organiza- with “eugenic potential”; they are tools the curious footnote was an acknowl- ), 2 ( tion’s president during the 1960s, en- of racial injustice.  edgment of Thomas’ magnanimity. Y T T dorsed contraception and abortion as Alito’s decision to include the foot- Thomas, after all, has husbanded the E G / effective methods for “controlling the note, with its not-so-subtle association notion of “eugenic abortion” to great FP A / population and improving its quality,” of abortion with eugenics and racial effect, helping it flourish among con- F F A as Thomas put it. But if the broader genocide, in the Dobbs opinion is puz- servative jurists in the lower courts. H C S eugenics movement was fixated on zling if only because, as a matter of law, When the 6th Circuit, for example, re- N RI E optimizing the genetic profile of the it is entirely gratuitous. Having laid out fused to enjoin an Ohio law that barred S: U white race, the reproductive freedoms his case that Roe is “egregiously wrong” doctors from performing abortions O VI pioneered by Sanger and Guttmacher because the right to an abortion is un- for women who choose to terminate RE P 8 MOTHER JONES | SEPTEMBER + OCTOBER 2022