Weekly Roundup: September 20—26

The Weekly Roundup by GWCD is a collaboration between members of the news & blog committee to compile three main headlines from the week. As one of the goals of the committee is to keep our GWCD community updated on current events, the Weekly Roundup is intended as an easy way for members to read up on the highlights from each week in addition to the articles published regularly by our members.

What You Need to Know About Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee

By Alisa Kingsbury

President Trump has selected Amy Coney Barrett as his third Supreme Court Justice nominee.

Barrett, a 48-year old jurist who currently serves as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, was confirmed for her first judgeship in 2017. She has written 97 majority opinions, six dissents, and four concurring opinions. She has been praised by social conservatives not only for her strong Christian beliefs but also for issuing several conservative decisions from the bench on issues such as immigration and the Second Amendment. Her constitutional philosophy has drawn comparisons to Antonin Scalia, her former mentor and boss, for whom she clerked.

Read full story here.

One of three officers involved in Breonna Taylor case indicted on light charges

By Abby Osborne

A grand jury indicted Brett Hankinson, one of the Louisville police officers who killed Breonna Taylor, on September 23. Just not for the actual murder of Breonna Taylor.

Hankinson was charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment, which is considered a class D felony in Kentucky punishable by up to five years in prison. State law says that wanton endangerment is when someone “wantonly engages in conduct which creates a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury to another person.”

This endangerment was not towards Breonna Taylor but towards three neighboring apartments.

The other two officers involved—Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove—were not indicted by the Jefferson County grand jury.

Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky Attorney General, has said that he doesn’t anticipate any further charges to be brought up in connection to Taylor’s case.

This comes after Taylor’s family received a $12 million settlement from a wrongful death lawsuit earlier this month. This agreement didn’t require the city of Louisville to admit any sort of wrongdoing, but it promised to “institute changes” that would try to prevent any further deaths at the hands of police.

Winter is coming: a predictably turbulent end of election season

By Jack Castanoli

With the recent passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the nomination of far-right judge Amy Coney Barrett to the nation’s highest court, tensions have never been higher leading up to an election. The series of crises the United States has encountered this year has tested the country’s stability.

Covid-19, race relations, and the Supreme Court come to the nation’s capital as a trifecta of crises that call for true leadership — which has been evidently lacking under President Trump. Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if Biden wins the election and instead insisted on a “continuation.” Instead of vowing to honor the peaceful transition of power that has been in place since the nation’s founding, Trump commented on “the ballots.”

“I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots,” Trump said. “The ballots are out of control.”

Trump continues to flaunt this claim and even stated that he will only accept the election results if he wins.

November 3 — being only a little more than a month away — comes with an onslaught of crises and a President who flaunts that he will only accept the results if he wins. It is clear Trump will do anything to stay in power — even nominating a Supreme Court justice who helped secure the victory in Bush v. Gore. Whatever the results may be this November, prepare for a result that will take weeks to be confirmed and a very interesting Thanksgiving.