Post #3718447

#heathercoxrichardson Reacting to that nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) recognized the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to equality: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….” At the time, Bork’s supporters expressed outrage at what they insisted was Kennedy’s smear campaign, for surely the right-wing attack on the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment would never so completely undermine modern society. And yet in 2026, here we are.