Concerned Women for America Feels Sheer Dread at a Twitter Grandma, Lies about Nominating a New Justice, Projects Its Insecurities about all the Money Koch Gives It, and Rolls up its Sleeves for Battle with the Unhinged

Here is Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America, in an article for Fox News dated September 19, 2020, one day after Justice Ginsburg's death (https://www.foxnews.com/.../ruth-bader-ginsburg-death... ):

"At first glance, they [Democrats] are making the demand that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell apply the rule the Senate used to put a hold on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Only they know that rule does not apply in this case.

"That procedural rule stipulates that, when an opposing party to the president holds the Senate, no Supreme Court confirmation should be confirmed during a presidential election year.

"The reasoning behind it is that the people have spoken both in selecting the president and in giving the Senate to the opposing party, so they should consider that and decide which way to go with the nomination in the election.

"That is not the case now. America elected Donald J. Trump as president (largely on his pledge about the selection of Supreme Court justices) and also voters expressed their complete confidence in that vision by giving the majority to the Republican party in the Senate.

"The left knows this, despite the drum they will be banging for the next few months."

The truth is that there is no "procedural rule" at all. There is only an unwritten Senate practice generally averse to Supreme Court nominations being made in election years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurmond_rule There is also no exception to this nonexistent rule giving this Republican Senate some legitimacy in attempting to install a Supreme Court Justice so close to the election. Nance's statement about this nonexistent "stipulation" is a flat lie.

What Nance lies about, more broadly, is the truth that Democratic objections to such a nomination are actually based on Republicans' blocking a 2016 Democratic nomination during an election year, and Republican hypocrisy and sliminess in inventing a pretextual "exception" this time around to justify ignoring their own 2016 promises to not nominate in 2020. Here's Lindsey Graham, Republican Chair of the Senate Judicial Committee, in 2016 making those promises: https://www.independent.co.uk/.../justice-ruth-bader...

Nance's article generally is about the "unhinged" "Left" threatening her group in 2016 and causing her to experience "sheer dread" about her group's current fervent support for Donald Trump's re-election and actions. The source of her current dread appears to be a few Twitter comments from people like a "grandmother and part of team resistance", who said, “If he tries to appoint someone, it’s civil war, and I’ll be on the front line.” Linda Brown (in her Twitter photo https://twitter.com/LLWBrown) does look awfully scary.

In a richly ironic set of sentences, Nance refers to CWA's campaign to support Justice Kavanaugh's nomination, probably through its legislative arm CWALAC, and how she learned that women opposing Kavanaugh were just projecting their own misery, "stoked" by big-money shadows that are controlling women. "Here were women who had been hurt deeply by this issue in one way or another, who were opposing Justice Kavanaugh based on their personal experiences," she writes. "He was the sacrificial lamb to atone for their offender. It did not matter that the evidence before us was not credible. They just felt deeply. They were ready for war because that was their reality. This was all stoked by big spenders on the left who only wanted to use these women for their own political purposes."

Nance's last sentence reveals the real projecting going on. Concerned Women for America itself is "...closely tied to the Koch Brother’s network, leading to a report by the Bridge Project and NARAL Pro-Choice America titled 'Koch-Cerned Women for America.'" CWA received over $8.4 million from the Koch-tied Freedom Partners from 2012 to 2013, over $1.3 million from the Koch-tied TC4 Trust in 2011, and over $1.6 million from the Koch-tied Center to Protect Patient Rights between 2010 and 2012, including $1.5 million in 2011. CWA ...received $80,100 from DonorsTrust in 2007 and 2010. DonorsTrust is considered a "donor-advised fund," which means that it divides its funds into separate accounts for individual donors, who then recommend disbursements from the accounts to different non-profits. Funds like DonorsTrust are not uncommon in the non-profit sector, but they do cloak the identity of the original donors because the funds are typically distributed in the name of DonorsTrust rather than the original donors. Many DonorsTrust funders have ties to the Koch brothers." https://www.sourcewatch.org/.../Concerned_Women_for_America

This financial support from hidden donors can run into some fancy figures: "CWA ...launched a $500,000 campaign to support the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. . https://www.sourcewatch.org/.../Concerned_Women_for...

CWA has worked with Jay Sekulow, President Trump's personal lawyer. CWA is a stalwart member of the amicus-brief filing stable of the legal "hate group" Alliance Defending Freedom. Through its founder, Beverly LaHaye, and through Penny Nance's current membership, it is intimately associated with the Council for National Policy, the secretive seat of power and money for the Religious Right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_for_National_Policy

Why should radical feminists care about Concerned Women for America? The reason is that CWA has recently befriended what it calls the "self-proclaimed radical feminist group" Women's Liberation Front (WoLF), a sister member of the Alliance Defending Freedom's amicus-brief stable. The two groups held a well-publicized rally in October 2020 to publicize their joint opposition to a trans employee's discrimination case against an employer: https://concernedwomen.org/concerned-women-for-america.../ They have put out a statement together opposing the proposed Equality Act: https://womensliberationfront.org/education-and-advocacy/ The relationship is substantial, photo-oppish, and ongoing.

CWA's involvement with WoLF seems to have resulted, not in strengthening radical feminist objections to trans extremism, but in strengthening the Christian Right and the Republican Party using WoLF: "We found that, in general, anti-trans feminist voices are most impactful at the regulatory and administrative levels when their stories are used to justify the Christian Right’s anti-trans advocacy. In court, despite anti-trans feminists submitting briefs and holding rallies, their arguments are less persuasive, indicating that their influence is largely through reinforcement of Christian Right advocacy, but doesn’t stand up to legal scrutiny, even by more conservative judges. In short, anti-trans feminist advocacy is not effective by itself. But as a part of the larger network of anti-trans organizations and thought leaders, anti-trans feminism provides important support." And: "At another Heritage Foundation panel in April 2018, WoLF’s partnership with Concerned Women for America was raised as an example of bipartisan opposition to the Equality Act." https://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/07/14/room-their-own

In the broad sense, radical feminism is being associated in the public mind with a massive network of Christian Right institutions and organizations that are anti-feminist to the core. In fact, the word "Concerned" in CWA's name refers directly to "concern" that feminism would "ruin" America back in the late 1970s when it was founded. But even worse, according to a liberal ethics watchdog group called Campaign for Accountability in a 2020 report titled "Fake Feminists for Hire", "Over the past roughly 15 years, CWA’s budget has decreased by approximately one-half, and the group has lost nearly a third of its staff.  To survive, CWA appears to have pursued an aggressive strategy of aligning itself with right-wing political powerbrokers.  Evidence suggests that the group may be morphing into a “gun for hire” for conservative organizations in need of an astroturf women’s group to support their cause." https://campaignforaccountability.org/work/fake-feminists-for-hire/

If CWA is serving the Religious Right as an "astroturf women's group" in this manner, WoLF, with its relatively tiny membership and funding, faces being tarred with the same brush the closer it gets to CWA.

Penny Nance says in her article, "The historic effort Concerned Women for America (CWA)...had to deploy to combat the unjust attacks against Justice Brett Kavanaugh prepared the way for what will be needed to withstand the unhinged attacks coming from the radical left."

Preparing the way for what will be needed sounds like it will involve a lot more Koch dark money flowing in to CWA, and a lot more projecting onto feminists of its own problems from this anti-feminist organization.