The Fringe Fanatic Behind the Scariest Abortion Bill in America

[Celerity]

Before his new pet project, Danny McCormick was known for taking a chainsaw to a mask—and for spreading antisemitic bile.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/danny-mccormick-anti-mask-extremist-in-louisiana-is-behind-the-scariest-abortion-bill-in-america



The bombshell leaked draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s potential majority opinion in Dodd v. Jackson Women’s Health concludes by purporting to be returning the “authority” to regulate or prohibit abortion “to the people and their elected officials.” In Louisiana, that could mean State Rep. Danny McCormick—a Republican who once took a chainsaw to a mask and has been accused of trafficking in antisemitism.

McCormick began a journey from fringe state legislator to national figure last week, when his once-quixotic quest to potentially charge women who get abortions with murder suddenly took on new urgency with the looming gutting of reproductive rights in America. But whether his bill—which has cleared committee and would classify abortion as homicide—passes into law or not, figures like McCormick are increasingly poised to help set reproductive policy in America. It’s not just advocates for reproductive rights who are concerned about a fringe figure like him residing in a position of power.

“We are troubled by his continued willingness to spread harmful and false conspiracy theories and promote inaccuracies about issues ranging from public-health efforts to election outcomes, some of which touch upon antisemitic tropes,” Aaron Ahlquist, Southern policy director for the Anti-Defamation League, told The Daily Beast. A spokesperson for McCormick did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

McCormick is an oilman who owns a company in Oil City, a hamlet in the ArkLaTex hinterlands of only 1,000 people. He decided to run for office after successfully preventing, as he put it, what might be “the biggest loss of freedom of our lifetime.” Four years ago, McCormick has said, he caught wind of what he imagined to be a conspiracy by Reps. Louie Gohmert, Mike Johnson, and John Ratliffe, and Sen. Bill Cassidy to implement the federal government’s plans for a stealth land-grab along the Texas-Louisiana border. Specifically, he thought his fellow Republicans would do this by designating Caddo Lake as a National Heritage Area.

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