The Red Folder

Archived from October 28, 2024.

Key stories for the week, brought to you by Lindsey Zhao and the Red Folder team.

Reading for the sake of reading sucks. Telling yourself to read to win a round is nice but ineffective. This condensed news brief helps you understand current domestic and international issues, analyze the news, and gives you opportunities to read more.

Publishing since January 2024.

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Domestic Stories

4 key domestic stories for the week:

1) Will Texas’s Senators be Allred? Meera Menon

The race between Democratic U.S. Representative Colin Allred and Republican Senator Ted Cruz has become increasingly closer and tense as Election Day is approaching. Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker turned civil rights attorney, is currently running against incumbent candidate Ted Cruz for a seat in the Senate in Texas. Recent polls show the race is very close with Cruz holding a one-point lead over Allred – a shift as earlier in the campaign, Cruz had a more clear lead. This can be correlated to how Allred's name recognition has improved significantly as only 10% of voters are now unfamiliar with him when previously it was 18% in early September. Furthermore, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred continues to outraise Sen. Ted Cruz in the month before Election Day, bringing in over $11.8 million in the first 16 days of the month. At the same time, Cruz has raised over $9.9 million, bringing Allred's total fundraising to over $80 million and surpassing the record set by Beto O'Rourke in his 2018 Senate bid. These funds have allowed Allred to run an abundance of television and digital ad campaigns, increasing his visibility and support across the state. Ted Cruz has not backed down though and has strategically focused on his conservative achievements while in office to win votes. Furthermore, he has attacked Allred on issues such as immigration and energy policy to highlight how he is a representative of all Texas Republicans, a large party in the state.

One of the central issues in Allred's campaign that has appealed to a lot of people is abortion rights. In fact, Allred has pledged to restore a woman's right to choose as he is against Texas’s current abortion laws. While this standpoint has already attracted many voters, Allred's campaign has also fixated on other topics of debate such as healthcare, economic inequality, and immigration in order to appeal to an even broader base of voters. Specifically, he wants to gain the votes of independents and moderate Republicans in Texas. To do this, his campaign has concentrated efforts in suburban and urban areas where he believes changing demographics and increasing diversity could give him an edge. Furthermore, Allred's strategy includes appealing to voters who are dissatisfied with Cruz's performance and those who are looking for a change in leadership.

As Election Day approaches, the race between Colin Allred and Ted Cruz remains one of the most closely-watched races in the country. With both candidates neck-and-neck in the polls and significant resources being poured into the campaign, the outcome is far from certain. Ultimately, whether Allred can unseat Cruz will depend on his ability to maintain momentum and resonate with Texas voters.

Read more here:

2) The U.S. Adoption Immigration Loophole Christina Yang

The United States has brought hundreds of thousands of children to be adopted by American families. Decades later, this story of the American dream faces a serious plot twist, as a bureaucratic loophole in the adoption immigration system has failed to grant most of these individuals an automatic citizenship status. In other words, many individuals have grown up unaware that they were not actually American citizens, and are thus deprived of many privileges. This loophole that the government has known about for decades, but has failed to fix, adds to the contentious debate regarding immigration policy as the 2024 election approaches and puts many in jeopardy.

Historically, the modern system of intercountry adoption gained popularity after the Korean War. Many families in the United States were desperate for children as they grappled with the aftermath of the war. As a result of post-war societal consequences, the U.S. faced a sharp decline in the domestic supply of adoptable babies. Simultaneously, Korea and other countries wanted to decrease the mouths that needed to be fed. These two factors in conjunction led U.S. adoption agencies to go abroad to meet this surge in demand for babies. In the process, the U.S. failed to ensure that proper protections were put in place as they attempted to address foreign adoption with the same processes as domestic adoption. State courts handed over shiny new birth certificates, but did not have the power to address the naturalization process, thus leaving this major loophole to arise later on. Due to the heavy expenses that came with adoption, thousands of families never followed through with naturalization, leaving them now left in legal limbo.

These promises of the American dream have since been overshadowed by inefficient government regulation.

In 2000, the U.S. attempted to address this issue by implementing the Child Citizenship Act that streamlined the lengthy citizenship process and cut costs for all adoptees aged 18 and under. However, this age cutoff only undermined the promises brought by this act, as it created a new loophole for over 75,000 adoptees born before the arbitrary date of 1983; thus putting them at risk for falling through the existing cracks of the broken citizenship framework.

Fast forward to the modern day, there is no mechanism for alerting these adoptees that they never obtained citizenship. This creates a major issue, as they usually find out by accident when applying for important documents such as passports and government benefits. Many even live in hiding for fear of tipping off government officials and being deported immediately. For some, this loophole means being denied the senior citizen Social Security guarantees that they’ve paid into their entire life, or deprived of educational loans, or missing out on jobs and drivers licenses, or not being able to cast a ballot in a democracy they’ve dedicated their life to. The fact of the matter is, these individuals were supposed to be granted automatic citizenship, but now simply cannot afford the time, costs, and potential rejections from immigration officers that may arise from the lengthy naturalization process.

In June of 2024, a new Adoption Citizenship Act was introduced to Congress. This bill would grant the intercountry adoptees automatic citizenship regardless of age. Despite widespread bipartisan support, the bill has still failed to pass.This is in part due to the contentious partisan debates surrounding immigration that have stalled any current efforts to extend citizenship to anyone---including those who were adopted legally. Furthermore, depending on which candidate wins the 2024 election would paint a clearer narrative of what the next chapter of this story looks like. Notably, many intercountry adoptees are concerned about what could happen if Trump is re-elected due to his promises of immigration raids and detention camps.

Regardless of the debates, it is clear that action needs to be taken to address these outdated policies that have starved some adoptees from the American dream for far too long. Any action taken will also increase the precedent to potentially further streamline the modern immigration system to reduce future legal limbo.

Despite being out-funded month after month, Trump has managed to claw his way back in the polls, leading Harris in key battleground states just a week before the election.

Both candidates have poured the majority of their financial war chests trying to win the swing states, yet they have adopted different strategies; Trump’s is winning.

While Harris has spent most of her funds on comparison ads and ones introducing her policies to the public, 80% of Trump's have been attack ads. They have focused primarily on linking Harris to the shortfalls of the Biden Presidency: high inflation, immigration, and crime rates. The narrative is not necessarily true, but when viewers witness the same statement being repeated day after day, claims become reality.

The two demographics that have been amongst Trump’s largest gains have been young male African and Latino Americans. Despite the former President’s fiery and often controversial rhetoric about minorities in the past, he understands effective messaging. In the past three decades, both parties have continued to promise progress and equality to minority populations during election season, yet term after term little change has progressed. In the eyes of many voters, they’ve become disenfranchised and unmotivated by candidates who claim progress. That’s why Trump has spent his time not building his campaign up, but tearing Harris’s down.

In Obama’s two terms as president, the vast majority of Hispanic and African Americans were part of the Democrat’s camp, yet the base is now being fractured. Recent polling data suggests that over 30% of African and Hispanic voters are now indicating they will vote for Trump, a huge win for the Republican party that is a testament to Trump’s strategy.

This election shows the danger of ever treating any one group as a monolith, of ever treating one group as an assured base, and of ever treating one group as starry-eyed voters who will believe in flowery policy.

Kamala Harris entered the race with a 3% lead over Trump, but now, it is closer than it's ever been.

4) State Courts Ban Abortion Bans (And Also Let Them Stand) Robert Zhang

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, twenty states have established or begun to enforce abortion restrictions tighter than those outlined in Roe, and fourteen have effectively banned the procedure. (Here’s a helpful map to track abortion laws nationwide.) But while Roe’s overturning meant that access to abortion would no longer receive federal constitutional protection, reproductive rights advocates found a different avenue: challenging state abortion bans in state court by arguing they violated state constitutions. This strategy has had mixed success, with many decisions that expanded access to abortion later being overruled by higher courts. With ten states having ballot measures concerning abortion access and state-level legal battles over abortion continuing to rage, it is critical to understand the litigation that will ultimately decide on access to reproductive healthcare.

Mere hours after Roe’s overturning, Ohio Attorney General David Yost successfully filed a request with a federal court to reinstate the state’s six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, which had until then been dormant due to Roe’s nationwide scope. Less than a week later, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a suit asking the Ohio Supreme Court to block the bill, arguing that it violated the state constitution’s protection of “individual liberties.” However, despite being unsuccessful in this attempt, they would receive a major break in November of 2023, when Ohio voters voted to codify the protection of abortion rights in the state constitution. While this should have been the end of the debate, attorneys who used the new language added to the constitution to argue for the complete repeal of the six-week ban were met with resistance from Attorney General Yost. He has refused to concede, instead using obscure legal arguments in hopes of striking down the ballot measure.

In other states, lower-level judges did rule that their state’s abortion bans were unconstitutional on a state level. In Georgia, Fulton County Superior Court judge Robert McBurney penned a scathing ruling overturning the state’s “heartbeat bill,” in which he used a constitutional balancing test to point out that the state had no legitimate interest in restricting abortion, while pregnant women did. Moreover, in North Dakota, South Central Judicial District Court Judge Bruce Romanick ruled that the state’s total abortion ban was unconstitutional due to its vagueness.

Unfortunately for reproductive rights advocates, these decisions will likely have no significant long-term impact. The conservative-leaning Georgia Supreme Court overruled Judge McBurney’s decision, and attorneys for the state of North Dakota have asked the state’s supreme court to allow the total abortion ban to stand.

These states’ legal battles over the constitutionality of abortion bans have several implications for the status of abortion bans across the rest of the United States. First, Georgia, and likely North Dakota, demonstrate that decisions about laws on abortion made by lower-level judges are almost guaranteed not to stand the test of time if appealed to a higher court with an opposite ideological leaning.

More alarmingly, it suggests that successful abortion access ballot measures are not bulletproof. Indeed, anti-choice state attorneys general know all too well that courts have almost unbridled discretion over how they interpret a law, and in the case of Ohio, if Republicans maintain control of that state’s highest court, ballot measures may be rendered partially or entirely moot.

Finally, the issue of abortion rights will certainly impact the outcome of state supreme court elections. Liberal jurist Janet Protasiewicz won the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election by a large margin over her conservative opponent, in large part due to her open support of abortion rights. This could lead to the election of more liberal justices in historical Republican strongholds. For example, in Montana, a similar phenomenon to Wisconsin could occur, as two seats on the state’s highest court are being contested this November.

In his decision declaring Georgia’s abortion ban to be unconstitutional, Judge McBurney wrote: “Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.” But the reality of the many legal battles over abortion access indicate a more chilling reality—that even if that majority demands bodily autonomy for women, a miniscule minority of judges have the final say.