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Amanda Becker, The 19th

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    Campaign Finance

    How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

    Amanda Becker, The 19th
    June 24, 2022
    abortion law historian Mary Ziegler

    Abortion law historian Mary Ziegler

    Mary Ziegler

    Originally published by The 19th.

    Donald Trump’s political ascent was initially greeted warily by both the Republican establishment and the anti-abortion groups in the party’s base. But in her latest book published this week, abortion law historian Mary Ziegler argues that Trump was able to reach the White House because of, not in spite of, the grassroots anti-abortion movement.

    In “Dollars for Life,” Ziegler, who recently joined the law school faculty at the University of California, Davis, traces how some prominent leaders in the anti-abortion movement were also instrumental in the push to relax campaign finance laws. One result was the rise of populism within the Republican Party that opened the door for candidates like Trump.

    The 19th spoke to Ziegler ahead of the book’s release about the anti-abortion movement, campaign finance rules, and how the two intersected to create an opportunity for a non-establishment GOP figurehead.

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    Leveraging big ideas

    Pennsylvania didn’t have a pipeline for candidates like Summer Lee — so she helped build one

    Amanda Becker, The 19th
    April 26, 2022
    Pennsylvania congressional candidate Summer Lee
    Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    Originally published by The 19th.

    When Summer Lee moved back home to the Pittsburgh area in 2015 after graduating from Howard University Law School, she did not plan to run for office.

    Lee was an organizer. She supported Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential primary bid, then Hillary Clinton in the general election. The next year, when the high school Lee graduated from became engulfed in scandal after video surfaced showing school officials using stun guns and physical force on Black students, including some with special needs, she attended her first school board meeting.

    “It was Black kids who were facing the worst outcomes, who were facing the worst and least amount of opportunities, who were being abused,” Lee recalled in a recent interview with The 19th. Most of the board members were White, and they were “so nonchalant about it,” she said.

    Lee is the presumed front-runner in the Democratic primary to fill an open U.S. House seat in a recently redrawn Pittsburgh-area House district when Pennsylvanians vote May 17. Her progressive primary campaign faces headwinds from the local party, which backed one of her opponents, a more moderate, White man without political experience. If elected in November, she would be the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress.

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