Tag: Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices

‘People of Praise leaders failed me’: Christian group tied to Justice Amy Coney Barrett faces reckoning over sexual misconduct

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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — In December, Katie Logan called the police in this Minneapolis suburb to unearth a buried secret: Her high school physics teacher had sexually assaulted her two decades earlier, she said. She was 17 and had just graduated from a school run by a small Christian group called People of Praise. He was 35 at the time, a widely admired teacher and girls’ basketball coach who lived in a People of Praise home for celibate men.

Logan told police she reported the June 2001 incident to a dean at the school five years after it happened. Police records show the dean believed Logan and relayed the complaint to at least one other senior school official.

But the teacher, Dave Beskar, remained at Trinity School at River Ridge until 2011, when he was hired to lead a charter school in Arizona. In 2015, he returned to the Minneapolis area to become headmaster of another Christian school. Beskar denies that any inappropriate sexual activity took place. Continue reading.

Justice Ginsburg sends out dire warning about the new Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin election case

AlterNet logoJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a disturbing dissent on Monday as the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in Tuesday’s upcoming Wisconsin election with a move she warned could result in “massive disenfranchisement.”

The election, which includes the Democratic presidential primary, a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and a raft of other local campaigns, has become embroiled in controversy as observers warn the coronavirus pandemic threatens the safety and integrity of the election. While Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has pushed to delay the election until June in light of the pandemic, the Republican-dominated legislature has refused to act, apparently believing the chaos caused by the crisis will depress turnout and benefit the GOP.

A federal district court had previously stepped in and issued a ruling extending the deadline for the state to accept absentee ballots because, due to the pandemic, demand for such ballots has surged. Some fear that not all eligible voters will receive their ballots by April 7, election day, so the lower court had ruled that any ballot that was mailed in to the state by April 13 would be valid. Continue reading.