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Tag: Abortion

  • Tammy Baldwin Calls Out Ron Johnson And GOP For ‘Taking Women Back To 1849’

    Tammy Baldwin Calls Out Ron Johnson And GOP For ‘Taking Women Back To 1849’

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    Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) took off the gloves to deliver a stinging blow to her home-state Republican colleague Sen. Ron Johnson just weeks before the midterms, accusing him of trying to take women “back to 1849” and gut Social Security and Medicare.

    Typically, lawmakers from the same state observe ceasefires, particularly so close to an election, so they can work together in the legislature. But Baldwin took the opportunity to attack Johnson after he voted against a continuing resolution to keep the government operating while legislators work out a long-term spending package. (The interim funding bill passed, and President Joe Biden signed it into law Friday with just 11 hours to spare, meaning funding is now secure until mid-December.)

    “My Senate colleague from Wisconsin last night voted against moving forward to fund the government, keep the government open and avoid a needless government shutdown,” Baldwin said at a Senate Democratic leadership press conference Wednesday as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stood nearby.

    “Senate Republicans like my counterpart from Wisconsin have proposed sunsetting, cutting and putting Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block with every budget every year,” she said.

    Baldwin also ripped into Johnson for working to obliterate women’s reproductive rights, saying that he and other Republicans have “enabled and continue to support taking women back to 1849 … and keeping them there without the right and freedom to make their own personal choices about their body, their health and their family.”

    After the U.S. Supreme Court jettisoned Roe v. Wade and its half-century legacy of guaranteeing the right to abortion in June, Wisconsin reverted to an 1849 statute that outlaws abortions even in cases of rape or incest.

    Baldwin concluded: “Let me just close by saying whether it’s Medicare, Social Security, health care, prescription drugs, reproductive health care, we are making it clear to the American people who is on their side and who isn’t.”

    Johnson said Thursday he wasn’t surprised Baldwin attacked him.

    He is widely considered the most vulnerable Republican senator in the midterms. A life-size sculpture of Johnson made of cow manure is currently touring Milwaukee as part of a protest against his claim that climate change is “bullshit.”

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  • Abbott and O’Rourke clash over gun restrictions in lone Texas gubernatorial debate | CNN Politics

    Abbott and O’Rourke clash over gun restrictions in lone Texas gubernatorial debate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke clashed over gun restrictions in a debate Friday night, with O’Rourke claiming that Abbott blames “everybody else” for mass shootings while “misleading this state.”

    “It’s been 18 weeks since their kids have been killed, and not a thing has changed in this state to make it any less likely that any other child will meet the same fate,” O’Rourke said in their debate at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. “All we need is action, and the only person standing in our way is the governor of the state of Texas.”

    Abbott was shown a video of a child in Uvalde asking why Texas will not raise the age minimum to buy assault-style rifles. He said he believes such a move would be “unconstitutional” under recent court rulings.

    “We want to end school shootings, but we cannot do that by making false promises,” Abbott said.

    Abbott also said he opposed “red flag” laws, saying that those laws “would deny lawful Texas gun owners their right to due process.”

    O’Rourke, meanwhile, did not back away from comments that he made as a 2020 presidential candidate, in the wake of the racially motivated mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, that he would seek to confiscate assault-style rifles such as AR-15s and AK-47s. But he said as governor, he would be “focused on what we can get done.”

    He said that would include raising the age minimum to purchase such firearms to 21, implementing universal background checks and enacting “red flag” laws.

    “This is the common ground,” he said, citing conversations with Republican and Democratic voters, as well as families of those slain in Uvalde.

    Friday night’s showdown was the only scheduled debate between Abbott, the Republican seeking a third term as governor, and O’Rourke, the Democratic former El Paso congressman whose near-miss in a 2018 race against Sen. Ted Cruz electrified Texas Democrats.

    Democrats have not won a gubernatorial race in Texas since Ann Richards was elected governor in 1990. The party also hasn’t won a statewide race in the Lone Star State since 1994 — Democrats’ longest statewide losing streak in the country.

    Abbott, who is viewed as a potential 2024 presidential contender, has consistently led in the polls. A Quinnipiac University survey conducted September 22-26 found the governor with a 7-point edge over O’Rourke among likely voters, 53% to 46%.

    The most recent campaign finance reports in mid-July showed O’Rourke keeping pace with Abbott’s fundraising, but the incumbent maintained a significant cash-on-hand edge with $46 million in the bank to his challenger’s $24 million.

    On the campaign trail, O’Rourke has criticized Abbott’s opposition to abortion rights – the governor signed a so-called trigger law last year that went into effect in August and bans nearly all abortions in the state following the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Democrat has also criticized the Abbott administration’s management of the power grid during last year’s winter freeze and the governor’s rejection of gun restrictions in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting.

    O’Rourke famously confronted Abbott and other officials at a news conference in Uvalde the day after the shooting, saying, “The time to stop the next shooting is right now and you are doing nothing.”

    Abbott, meanwhile, has campaigned on tough border security policies, including busing migrants out of state to Democratic-run cities up North to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies. He has also accused O’Rourke of seeking to undercut police funding, saying in an ad that O’Rourke wants to “defund and dismantle the police.” It was a reference to O’Rourke’s comments in 2020, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, praising protesters for targeting “line items that have over militarized our police.” O’Rourke has said he does not support cutting funding for police in Texas.

    “Look, I don’t think Greg Abbott wakes up wanting to see children shot in their schools or for the grid to fail, but it’s clear that he’s incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to prioritize the lives of our fellow Texans. That’s why it’s on all of us to make change at the ballot box,” O’Rourke said in his closing remarks.

    In his closing, Abbott said: “I’m running for reelection to keep Texas No. 1 — to cut your property taxes, to secure the border, to keep dangerous criminals behind bars, and to keep deadly fentanyl off our streets.”

    The two also sharply diverged on abortion rights, an issue that has moved to the center of the gubernatorial race after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Abbott signed into law a measure that restricts abortion except to save the life of the mother and in certain health emergencies.

    O’Rourke said he would seek to return Texas to the abortion protections that existed under Roe v. Wade.

    “This election is about reproductive freedom. If you care about this, you need to turn out and vote,” O’Rourke said. “I will fight to make sure that every woman in Texas can make her own decision about her own body, her own future, and her own health care.”

    Abbott said O’Rourke’s position on abortion is “the most extreme,” casting O’Rourke as supporting the right to abortions up until birth.

    “No one thinks that in the state of Texas,” O’Rourke shot back. “He’s saying this because he signed the most extreme abortion ban in America: No exception for rape, no exception for incest, it begins at conception, and it’s taking place in a state that is at the epicenter of a maternal mortality crisis, thanks to Greg Abbott — three times as deadly for Black women.”

    Abbott was asked whether emergency contraception is a viable alternative for victims of rape and incest.

    “It’s incumbent upon the state of Texas to make sure that it is readily available,” he said. “For those who are victims of sexual assault or survivors of sexual assault, the state of Texas pays for that, whether it be at a hospital, at a clinic, or someone that gets a prescription because of it.”

    He also touted the state’s “alternative to abortion program,” including living assistance and baby supplies, for those victims.

    Abbott touted reforms to the power grid after the deep freeze, pointing to record high temperatures this summer.

    “Time and again, the power grid was able to keep up, and it’s because of the reforms that we were able to make. The power grid remains more resilient … than ever before,” he said.

    But O’Rourke said the power failure was “part of a pattern” during Abbott’s almost eight years in office, and that the governor had been warned about the possibility.

    “The grid is still not fixed,” O’Rourke said, pointing to higher energy bills, Toyota stopping its third shift in San Antonio “because it was drawing too much power,” and Texas residents receiving conservation notices over the summer.

    “All Beto does is fear-monger on this issue, when in reality, the grid is more resilient and more reliable than it’s ever been,” Abbott responded.

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  • California bars tech companies from complying with other states’ abortion-related warrants | CNN Business

    California bars tech companies from complying with other states’ abortion-related warrants | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    California is attempting to stymie abortion prosecutions in other states by making it illegal for Silicon Valley giants and other businesses based in the Golden State to hand over the personal information of abortion-seekers to out-of-state authorities.

    A new law signed Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom forbids California-based businesses from giving up geolocation data, search histories and other personal information in response to out-of-state search warrants, unless those warrants are accompanied by a statement that the evidence sought isn’t connected to an abortion investigation.

    The prohibition also bars companies in the state from complying with out-of-state law enforcement requests related to abortion, including subpoenas and wiretaps.

    It’s the latest example of how California is using its status as a powerful state, with jurisdiction over the world’s most powerful tech companies, to influence policy at a national scale.

    “California is setting a national privacy standard,” said Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, an architect of the bill, in a statement Tuesday. According to a release by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the law went into effect immediately upon signing.

    Bauer-Kahan’s law, AB 1242, bars California-based companies, including Google, Meta, Uber and others, from producing records about a person if the companies know “or should know” that the warrant they’re responding to is related to an abortion probe. CNN has reached out to the companies for comment.

    The new law prohibits abortion-related search warrants in the first place, and requires all out-of-state search warrants to attest that they are not abortion-related.

    But in directly undercutting the anti-abortion laws of other states, California’s new law could put businesses in the difficult position of having to pick sides — and face potential legal penalties no matter what they choose.

    Companies that violate AB 1242 could face prosecution by the California attorney general. But if they comply with AB 1242, they could also face legal action in states that have restricted abortion for failing to comply with legal process.

    “Anti-choice sheriffs and bounty hunters are going to be highly motivated to do anything they can to get this data,” said Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group that supports the California law.

    In the event of a conflict between state laws, Schwartz said courts first look to whether a state has jurisdiction over a company and then, if it does, they fall back on a procedural tool known as “choice of law” to determine which law should apply.

    A state with only some employees of a company, or that is home to users of an electronic service, isn’t likely to satisfy the jurisdictional test, Schwartz said. Even if it did, he added, it would likely fail in the choice of law because the California law is tailored to govern businesses that are incorporated in California or that have their “principal executive offices” in California.

    Still, he acknowledged there will likely be many court battles ahead.

    “We are going to see more of this situation where a business is facing, at one time, legal process from an anti-choice state commanding it to disclose abortion-related data, and a blocking statute from a pro-choice state forbidding it from disclosing that same data,” Schwartz said. “This is an important new area, this contest between anti-choice legal process and pro-choice blocking statutes, and it is a matter that could work its way up the courts to the highest court.”

    In the meantime, tech companies could find themselves between a rock and a hard place, according to tech trade group Chamber of Progress.

    “Red states and blue states are at war over abortion, and online platforms are caught in the crossfire,” Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said in a statement to CNN. “California’s new law could potentially have a big impact on protecting reproductive privacy — but first it will create a challenging conflict between state laws.”

    –CNN’s Clare Duffy contributed to this report.

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  • ‘No matter the law, no matter the stigma, no matter the cost.’ This European network helps people access abortions | CNN

    ‘No matter the law, no matter the stigma, no matter the cost.’ This European network helps people access abortions | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This story is part of As Equals, CNN’s ongoing series on gender inequality. For information about how the series is funded and more, check out our FAQs.


    Amsterdam, the Netherlands
    CNN
     — 

    It’s early evening in an affluent neighborhood in the Dutch city of Haarlem and bed and breakfast owners Arnoud and Marika are waiting for their next guest to arrive. They’ve prepared their single room for her, a brightly colored space with massive windows overlooking a leafy drive.

    The traveller is a woman from France. She’s only staying one night, but her hosts want her to feel at home because she’s not here on vacation. She’s come to have a second-trimester abortion.

    The Netherlands is one of just a few countries in Europe where access to abortion is possible past 12 weeks of pregnancy, and Arnoud and Marika’s guest is one of around 3,000 people from abroad who have accessed one annually in recent years.

    Here, abortions for non-Dutch residents can be carried out until 22 weeks, according to Dutch abortion providers, and nationals can access terminations up to 24 weeks.

    In the United Kingdom (with the exception of Northern Ireland), it’s possible for anyone to get an abortion until 24 weeks, and for a very limited set of circumstances afterwards, however Brexit has made it increasingly more difficult for people to travel there. And in Spain, abortions past 14 weeks of pregnancy are only legal under extremely limited circumstances, although abortion rights groups say the law is often interpreted loosely.

    The restrictions mean that, for many in their second trimester, the Netherlands is their last chance to access a safe abortion. By opening up their home, Arnoud and Marika have become part of a grassroots network of people helping to facilitate that access.

    “This is a house without taboos,” Arnoud told CNN. Arnoud and Marika are pseudonyms that CNN agreed to use over concerns that the couple’s B&B – which is also where they live – will be targeted by anti-abortion protesters.

    Now in their 70s, the retired pair have made it their mission to be a welcoming point of entry for the people they host, many of whom they receive bleary eyed from a long day or more of travel, punctuated by weeks of anxiety and stress leading up to the journey.

    “They are so relieved, they have made this terrible journey, and they come in and they’re crying,” Marika said. “I love to be a light for them.”

    Arnoud and Marika look through messages written by their guests in their B&B in Haarlem. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN

    Arnoud and Marika’s guest book. “Thanks for the kind words that cheered me up,” a message from a Polish guest in September reads. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN

    Since they opened their B&B seven years ago, Arnoud and Marika say they have hosted around 350 people seeking abortion care from across Europe. They explain that some came alone, others were joined by partners or friends, while some brought their family.

    At first, the majority of their guests came from France and Germany, where abortion is available until 14 and 12 weeks of pregnancy, respectively. (France extended that time limit from 12 to 14 weeks earlier this year.) They say they have also hosted a number of women from other European countries including Belgium and Luxembourg, and Romania. One woman traveled from as far as the Caribbean island of Martinique, they said.

    But in recent years data shows the demographics have changed, with an influx of people now traveling to the Netherlands from Poland, after the country’s highest court further tightened its abortion laws – which were already among the strictest in Europe.

    The numbers coming to the Netherlands from Poland have swelled further as Ukrainians displaced there due to the war find they need to seek safe abortion access beyond Polish borders.

    In October 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal banned virtually all abortions, allowing them only in circumstances where the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest, or if the pregnant person’s life was at risk. The law came into effect the following January. Prior to this, abortions were also allowed in the case of fetal abnormalities – which accounted for approximately 97% of all known legal terminations carried out in Poland in 2019, according to data from the Polish Ministry of Health.

    The change in the law has left many people in Poland without legal access to safe terminations in their own country, and has created an even more hostile environment for abortion rights activists and those seeking abortions.

    When asked about the worsening climate for those seeking or providing abortions in Poland, a statement provided to CNN by the Polish government simply reiterated the law, saying: “In the event of a situation that threatens the life or health of a pregnant woman (e.g. suspected infection of the uterine cavity, hemorrhage, etc.) …it is lawful to terminate a pregnancy immediately.”

    “The decision whether there are circumstances in which the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the pregnant woman is and can only be made by a doctor in a specific case,” the statement added.

    But abortion rights activists say the law has created a chilling effect on healthcare providers, with some doctors appearing more fearful of potential repercussions that include prosecution than doing everything they can to save a pregnant person’s life. Three pregnant women have died in Polish hospitals after being denied an abortion since the court decision, according to Abortion Support Network, a UK-based organization that helps people in Poland obtain abortion care as part of the Abortion Without Borders (AWB) network.

    AWB was formed in response to the Polish government’s long standing proposals to ban abortion in 2019.

    The grassroots feminist network is made up of six organizations from Poland, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. They say the Polish state is failing women and have made it their mission to ensure safe access to abortion for any reason a person chooses to have one – including whether the pregnancy is wanted or not.

    “We don’t want to make you feel like you have to explain yourself, and that you have to earn your abortion with a sob story,” said Polish abortion rights activist Kasia Roszak.

    Kasia Roszak of Abortion Network Amsterdam says the work that she does is

    Roszak, who now lives in Amsterdam where she works with Abortion Network Amsterdam (part of AWB), says she knows exactly how it feels to not have agency over her reproductive rights, which is one of the reasons she works to ensure access for anyone globally who needs it.

    “We believe that abortions are part of life. It can be an empowering, positive experience. And if it’s not, if it’s something hard for you, then we’re going to give you space and validation of your feelings,” Roszak said. “I feel like it’s my responsibility to be able to share with people that there are options.”

    From December 2020 to December 2021, AWB says they helped 32,000 people from Poland access abortions across Europe – an almost six-fold increase from the previous year.

    In 2021, the network says they facilitated travel for 1,186 people in Poland – more than quadruple the number of people they supported with travel in 2020. More than half of those people travelled to the Netherlands, making up 52% of the total they helped to visit the country for abortions that year, according to AWB.

    Official 2021 data from the Dutch government shows 651 people from Poland had abortions in the Netherlands, more than double the number of people in 2020.

    “Effectively, we took over all [of Poland’s] fetal anomaly cases,” said Roszak. Numbers previously hovered around 1,000 cases a year in Poland, according to government data.

    The network gets connected with people who need their help through a process like this: A person with an unwanted pregnancy will first call a hotline in Poland, where they have two options, depending on how far along they are: take pills or travel for a procedure.

    If they are less than 12 weeks pregnant, they are sent the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol – approved by the World Health Organization – to take in the privacy of their own home. This is the case for the majority of the people who reach out to them, according to AWB data.

    Mariprist, a safe and effective abortion medication that contains mifepristone and misoprostol, seen at the Women Help Women offices in Amsterdam.

    However, for people whose pregnancies have already passed the 12-week mark, they will likely need to travel to a clinic abroad. This is also the case for those living in other European countries where laws prohibit abortions after the first trimester. For these people, the network taps into its web of volunteers and activists who will work around the clock to arrange appointments at clinics, translate documentation and provide financial assistance to help meet the cost of the procedure and related travel.

    Second trimester abortions may be available in the Netherlands but they are expensive for non-Dutch residents, costing up to 1,100 euros (roughly $1,100) for the surgical procedure which typically takes no longer than 20 minutes. Counselling, preparation for the procedure and recovery however require the better part of a day.

    Depending on each individual circumstance, assistance arrives in many ways and AWB may cover all or part of the costs, which can include flights, accommodation, and handling appointments with the treatment center directly.

    Money is raised mostly from private donations, according to activists within the AWB network, but some of the organizations within it are supported by big donors. Without financial assistance, abortion travel is especially prohibitive for working-class people, migrants and others living in poverty.

    Kinga Jelińska, Executive Director of the Amsterdam-based group Women Help Women – which is also part of AWB – told CNN: “We return abortion back to common people, no matter the law, no matter the stigma, no matter the cost.”

    Kinga Jelińska, Executive Director of Women Help Women, says the network is essentially running a

    Second-trimester abortions constitute a relatively small proportion of the total number of officially recorded abortions in high-income countries. The vast majority are carried out in the first trimester.

    Those seeking second-trimester abortions do so for a number of reasons, including not having previously realized they were pregnant; a change in personal circumstances such as financial difficulties or the breakdown of a relationship; unexpected medical problems in themselves or the fetus, and trauma surrounding rape and sexual abuse cases, which can also be a reason that one might not recognize the pregnancy until it is too late to access an abortion in their country.

    “People sometimes think that it’s a matter of fundamental principles and beliefs. [But]we see day after day, people coming to us and saying… ‘I used to be against abortion, but my situation is different,’ Jelińska explained.”The decision whether to continue the pregnancy or not, is highly contextual.”

    At the Bloemenhove clinic in Haarlem, one of two clinics in the country that offer abortions past 18 weeks, the parking lot looks “like the United Nations,” Roszak quipped, referencing the fact that car registration plates can be seen from all over Europe.

    The clinic, a bright and modern space with a peaceful garden area, treats approximately 15 people a day, 4 days a week, according to its director, Femke van Straaten. But the influx of Polish patients has, van Straaten said, led to a shift in the way that her team works.

    Prior to the Polish court ruling, more than half of the patients at Bloemenhove were Dutch and most came to terminate unwanted pregnancies, van Straaten explained. As such, staff were able to recommend in-country aftercare, including counseling resources.

    Now, with more patients coming to the clinic from Poland with wanted pregnancies (many of whom came for terminations due to fetal abnormalities), they have “different needs for care,” said van Straaten.

    One of the ways the clinic responded was to establish a memorial at a local cemetery for women to find some closure for their unviable pregnancies.

    “They couldn’t take their child back home, and they had no place for their grievance,” said van Straaten, who helped organize the memorial last year at the suggestion of the Polish abortion rights network. She added that memorial services are also available for people carrying viable fetuses who chose to terminate their pregnancies.

    As part of this aftercare, patients can opt for a cremation and are permitted to take the ashes home. For those who can’t wait for cremation, the cemetery offers to scatter the ashes on the site, where a steel tree has been erected and babies’ names are engraved onto a rainbow of leaves that hang on its branches.

    The “Little Stars Meadow,” a memorial space for people to grieve and find closure at the Haarlem cemetery. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN

    Engraved “leaves” on the memorial tree. Van Straaten says her team decided to use the word “stillborns” for the terminated pregnancies – the closest word in English that they could find – to help people who wanted their babies acknowledge their loss and move forward.. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN

    Dr. Elles Garcia, an abortion care provider at Bloemenhove since 2016, works to assuage concerns that some people – particularly those from Poland – have about returning home after their termination.

    “They often ask me the question: ‘What do I tell my gynaecologist? Can I tell them that I had a miscarriage?’ They’re so afraid of getting back to their doctor in their own country and to tell them the truth – they can’t,” she said from one of the clinic’s consultation rooms.

    Garcia said that while she assures patients that medically, their doctors back at home won’t be able to know whether they had a miscarriage or an abortion, she still encourages them to be honest about what they went through, not only for themselves, but in hopes it might start to break down societal taboos.

    “I tell them to say that you were here for an abortion, because here it’s legal – you can tell them the truth,” she said, before acknowledging, “but then they get afraid and anxious.”

    To help people prepare to return to a society where abortion is both restricted and taboo, the AWB Polish helpline has also expanded its remit to provide aftercare, including psychological counseling for those in need.

    Dr. Elles Garcia of the Bloemenhove clinic says she always advises patients from countries where abortion is taboo to talk with each other to reduce the stigma around the subject.

    Back at their B&B, Arnoud and Marika are reflecting on the past several years of providing hospitality to people at a difficult time in their lives.

    Only around a third of their guests stay for two nights, they say, the majority return to their countries of origin straight from the clinic. And so the relationships are fleeting, but the septuagenarians know their impact can be profound. They see their job as being to listen and reassure.

    “People come from the room and ask: ‘Can we talk to each other?’ said Arnoud, explaining that guests often gather around their dining room table or sit in their garden for a chat if they stay the second night.

    The couple say that while they were never planning on becoming a hub for abortion travel when they first decided to open their business, they can’t imagine their B&B in any other way.

    But unlike most business owners, they say they relish the day when their business might go bust.

    “When the law changes in France, like we have in Holland, when the law changes in Poland, like we have here, it will be better – I will sing a song,” Arnoud said.

    He looks to Marika and adds: “Our business is not important. It’s more important that women can decide for themselves … that’s the most important.”

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  • Kansas race tests which matters more: Economy or abortion?

    Kansas race tests which matters more: Economy or abortion?

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    KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Republicans redrew Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids ′ suburban Kansas City, Kansas-area district this year to make a third term harder for her to win, adding rural areas where former President Donald Trump did well and removing urban areas that Davids had carried handily.

    But the dynamic changed in June, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Kansas voters responded in August by overwhelmingly rejecting a ballot measure expected to lead to more restrictions or a ban on abortion.

    The magnitude of that vote has left Davids and other Democrats optimistic. That’s why she is spending the final stretch of the campaign focused on abortion, attempting to keep the same abortion-rights supporters who turned out to vote in August energized to do so again in November.

    It’s a delicate task, asking voters who may fault Democrats for rising housing and grocery prices to nonetheless support Davids for Congress.

    “I think this has more to do with control and limiting people’s rights,” said swing voter Tanner Klingzell, a 42-year-old from the suburb of Prairie Village who says he is fiscally conservative but socially progressive. He supports abortion rights and says, “I just don’t feel comfortable voting for Republicans.”

    The Supreme Court’s abortion ruling has rewritten the script in districts around the country, and both Davids and Republican challenger Amanda Adkins must win over independents and GOP moderates to win the one swing congressional district in an otherwise red state.

    Davids became the first lesbian Native American in Congress when she rode suburban anti-Trump sentiment to office in the 2018 election. Her background as a mixed martial arts fighter drew national interest, and Republicans initially tried to group her with “The Squad” of new liberal House members. Those efforts fell flat as she focused on such non-divisive issues as road projects, prescription drug prices and high-speed internet for rural areas.

    Adkins, a former corporate executive and Kansas GOP chair, is hitting Davids hard on pocketbook issues, a tactic Republicans nationally expect to carry them back to a House majority. She’s also started highlighting crime and border security. She held a news conference on those issues Monday, days after House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy released Republicans’ “Commitment to America” agenda, which promises to fight inflation but also to “protect the lives of unborn children.”

    The two have faced off before. Davids defeated Adkins in 2020 by 10 percentage points, but that was before redistricting after the 2020 census. While Democrat Joe Biden would have prevailed in the new district in 2020, his margin would have been roughly half the 10 percentage points he racked up in the old district — and that’s likely true for Davids as well. If Adkins’ percentage of the vote in the suburbs is a few points higher this year than in 2020, she can win.

    In suburban Overland Park, Andrea Calvo, a 33-year-old freight-company accounts manager, is hoping Republicans emerge a little stronger from the November election because, in her view, “they have proven to be able to handle the economy better.”

    While Calvo, a Republican, doesn’t see herself as a moderate, she voted in August against the proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution. She sees Adkins’ support for it as “definitely a problem.” But it’s not a deal-breaker.

    “It’s all about the economy at the end of the day for me,” she said.

    The two campaigns, the parties and political groups are now on track to spend about $8 million on television ads.

    Davids’ ads attack Adkins for her long association with former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, whose nationally notorious 2012-13 experiment in cutting taxes was followed by huge, persistent state budget shortfalls. Davids on Saturday launched an ad attacking Adkins on abortion that follows up on multiple Kansas Democratic Party mailings, including to Republicans.

    Davids and her backers are painting Adkins as an extremist for supporting the proposed amendment that voters rejected in August. It would have removed protections for abortion from the state Constitution, which would have allowed the state Legislature, dominated by abortion opponents, to greatly restrict or ban abortion.

    Davids’ strong, public opposition to the Kansas anti-abortion measure contrasts with three decades of Democratic candidates soft-pedaling their support for abortion rights in most areas of the state. Abortion has been a dominant issue in Kansas politics since the 1991 anti-abortion “Summer of Mercy” protests outside Dr. George Tiller’s clinic in Wichita. Tiller was among the few doctors known to perform abortions late in pregnancy and was shot to death in 2009 by an anti-abortion zealot. Anti-abortion groups have been powerful forces in state politics.

    Even with the 3rd District’s new, more Republican leanings, 67.5% of its voters opposed the Kansas anti-abortion measure in the August abortion referendum.

    “They were very engaged and sent a strong message about us not wanting to have politicians making our decisions for us,” Davids said.

    Adkins describes herself as a Catholic who has “always been pro-life” and “100% committed to protecting life at every stage.” But Adkins said she respects the August vote and opposes federal laws on abortion, saying the issue should be decided at the state level.

    “It should not be a federal issue, and Sharice Davids still is focusing on it as a federal issue,” Adkins said after a recent suburban meet-and-greet. Davids voted last year for a Democratic measure to guarantee abortion rights across the U.S. and override state restrictions.

    Adkins has not been specific about how far she thinks abortion law should go in Kansas, which bans most abortions at the 22nd week, but said Monday that she would favor any new, incremental state measures that would reduce the number of abortions.

    In the new, rural parts of the 3rd District, Democrats say the abortion ruling means volunteers are energized. But Republican state Rep. Samantha Poetter Parshall said that Davids is an “extremely hard sell,” especially with conservative farmers. Even Democrats tend to take more conservative positions on issues such as gun rights, she said.

    “Also, taxes — people are extremely upset with how high their taxes are right now,” she said.

    But about 85% of the district’s voters still live in the suburbs, where centrist and conservative Republicans have feuded for decades, and voters have been electing more Democrats in recent years.

    Former U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder, the four-term GOP incumbent ousted by Davids in 2018, praised Adkins as a candidate, but he pointed to the dominance of those suburbs in the district as the reason the race remains challenging for the GOP.

    “It’s still a Biden district,” he said.

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    Hollingsworth reported from multiple cities in Johnson County, Kansas.

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    Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

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  • Texas vow to ‘eliminate all rapists’ rings hollow at clinics

    Texas vow to ‘eliminate all rapists’ rings hollow at clinics

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    AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — When Texas’ new abortion law made no exceptions in cases of rape, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott defended it with an assurance: Texas would get to work eliminating rapes.

    One year later, Lindsey LeBlanc is busy as ever helping rape victims in a college town outside Houston.

    “The numbers have stayed consistently high,” said LeBlanc, executive director of the Sexual Assault Resource Center in Bryan, near Texas A&M University. Despite hiring two additional counselors in the past six months, she still has a waitlist for victims.

    “We are struggling to keep up with demand,” she said.

    The constant caseloads in Texas are another example of how Republicans have struggled to defend zero-exception abortion bans that are unpopular in public polling, have caused uproar in high-profile cases and are inviting political risk heading into November’s midterm elections. A year since Texas’ law went into effect in September 2021, at least a dozen states also have bans that make no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

    The absence of exceptions has caused divisions among Republicans, including in West Virginia, where a new law signed this month allows a brief window for rape and incest victims to obtain abortions only if they report to law enforcement first. Recently, South Carolina Republicans scuttled a proposed ban after failing to get enough GOP support.

    “It really disgusts me,” said Republican South Carolina state Sen. Katrina Shealy, ripping into her male colleagues on the floor of the state Senate.

    Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, also of South Carolina, allowed exceptions under the proposed national abortion ban he introduced last week. The proposal has virtually no chance of passing, with even GOP leaders not immediately backing it, reflecting how Republicans have broadly struggled to navigate the issue of abortion with voters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer.

    Overwhelming majorities of voters think their state should generally allow abortion in specific cases, including rape, incest or if the health of the pregnant person is endangered. Even Republicans are seeing it as a line with some voters.

    “It’s a very gray issue,” said Claudia Alcazar, the GOP chairwoman in Starr County along the Texas-Mexico border that has become a new political battleground after Republicans made big gains with more conservative Hispanic voters in 2020.

    She said she knows those who are “hardcore, never have abortion for any reason, period. And then I have the other ones that are like, ‘Well, you know, it depends.’”

    In Texas, the blowback was swift when Abbott said last September: “Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets.” Critics called it detached from reality. A sexual assault hotline in Houston has answered almost 4,800 calls through August this year — putting it on track to exceed last year’s volume of 4,843.

    As of this summer, all abortions were banned in Texas except if it would save a mother’s life.

    Asked what Abbott has done in the past year to eliminate rape, spokeswoman Renae Eze highlighted older measures to clear rape test kit backlogs, a law signed in June aimed at coordinating and expanding sexual assault resources and a task force his office launched in 2019 to address the issue.

    “To prevent such heinous crimes before they happen, and to prosecute any criminals to the full extent of the law, Governor Abbott has aggressively fought against defunding the police and led bail reform efforts to prevent the release of dangerous criminals,” Eze said in a statement.

    More than 14,000 rape crimes have been reported in Texas since the law took effect last year, according to data from the Texas Department of Public Safety. That was slightly down from the year before and consistent with a decline in other violent crime figures across the state.

    Crisis centers in Texas say the number of rape victims they’ve accompanied to hospitals for exams is rebounding since the pandemic restrictions kept advocates from entering. The Women’s Center in Fort Worth has made more than 650 visits to counsel victims undergoing exams in the past year compared to about 340 in the year prior, said Alisha Mathenia, the assistant director of crisis services at the center.

    The majority of sexual assaults are never reported to police, making any available data an incomplete picture. And about 8 out of 10 sexual assaults are committed by a person known to the victim, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

    “We’re not talking about a large of number of rapists walking around on the street. That’s a myth,” said Democrat Donna Howard, a state representative in Austin who co-authored the bill creating Abbott’s task force.

    At The SAFE Alliance in Austin, where sexual assault victims can get exams and medical care at its Eloise House, senior director Juliana Gonzales said it’s admirable for Texas to work on rape prevention. “But I also think it’s important for the state to live in the reality that we have to respond to sexual assault,” she said.

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    Stengle reported from Dallas.

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    Find more AP coverage of the abortion issue: https://apnews.com/hub/abortion

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    Congress didn’t exempt its members from IRS audits

    CLAIM: Members of the U.S. Congress recently voted to exempt themselves from IRS audits of their personal finances.

    THE FACTS: Congress has not voted on any such measure, according to spokespeople for the IRS, the Speaker of the House and the House Ways and Means Committee. The unsupported claim that U.S. lawmakers voted to exempt themselves from IRS audits spread online this week after a tweet from an account that has posted numerous bogus claims was interpreted as real. “BREAKING,” read the Aug. 17 tweet, which amassed more than 13,000 shares. “In order to safeguard democracy, Congress has voted to exempt itself and its members from upcoming IRS audits.” Hours later, the same account hinted that it had been a joke, writing that “a shocking number of American adults” can’t spell or recognize the word “satire.” Still, the tweet was not deleted or labeled and the false claim has since circulated as real on Twitter and Instagram. A review of recent legislation passed in Congress found no bills matching this claim. The Inflation Reduction Act, which became law last week and sparked an onslaught of misinformation about the IRS, did not include any such provision. Terry Lemons, communications and liaison chief at the IRS, confirmed to The Associated Press that the claim was false, and that “all tax filers are treated equally under the tax law.” Henry Connelly, spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the claim was “nonsense.” Dylan Peachey, a spokesperson for the House Ways and Means Committee, also confirmed the claim was false.

    — Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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    Posts exaggerate adult fentanyl deaths in the U.S.

    CLAIM: Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for adults in the U.S.

    THE FACTS: Fentanyl overdose deaths, while high, are not the leading cause of deaths among all adults in the U.S., experts say. Heart disease and cancer kill more people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Social media users, including some Republican elected officials, claimed that the synthetic opioid is the No. 1 killer of adults in the U.S. “Fentanyl is the leading cause of death among American adults,” Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, wrote on Twitter. “Until @POTUS secures our southern border, this crisis will only get worse.” The congresswoman’s tweet was also shared by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. This is not the case, according to experts and CDC data. “It absolutely is not the leading cause of death for all adults,” said Kenneth Leonard, director of the University at Buffalo Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions. “I wouldn’t minimize fentanyl as a problem, but it’s certainly hard to say it’s the leading cause of death,” said Lewis Nelson, a professor of pharmacology, physiology and neuroscience at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. That distinction goes to heart disease and cancer, said Dan Ciccarone, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. About 71,000 people died from overdosing on synthetic opioids like fentanyl in 2021, up from almost 58,000 in 2020, according to the CDC. In comparison, the CDC estimates that in 2020, almost 700,000 people died from heart disease, roughly 600,000 from cancer and around 350,000 due to COVID-19. Spokespeople for McCarthy did not respond to the AP’s request for comment. Andrea Coker, a spokesperson for Van Duyne, wrote in an email that while heart disease may be the leading killer of older American adults, the “cdc is stating fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans 18-45.” As part of her response, Coker provided a link to an analysis conducted by the Ohio-based nonprofit Families Against Fentanyl that determined fentanyl was the top killer of people ages 18-45 in 2019 and 2020. The group analyzed publicly available CDC data by comparing synthetic opioid deaths to other causes of death over the last few years, according to spokesperson Moira Muntz. The CDC has not verified that fentanyl is the top killer among people in that age group, said Jeff Lancashire, a spokesperson for the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The agency uses death certificates to determine the leading causes of death in the U.S. In its datasets, fentanyl deaths are included as part of a larger category of deaths attributed to synthetic opioids. Synthetic opioids, which include drugs like fentanyl and tramadol, are different from natural opioids, like morphine, and semi-synthetic opioids, such as oxycodone, according to the CDC. While fentanyl accounts for the majority of synthetic opioid deaths, the CDC lacks breakout data on deaths caused by fentanyl specifically, Lancashire said. Drug overdose deaths are spread over four different cause of death categories, though the majority of them land in the “accidental” category. The rest are classified as suicides, homicides or undetermined. According to preliminary 2021 data, accidents were the leading cause of death among 18-45 year-olds, with accidental synthetic opioid overdoses amounting to less than half of those deaths, Lancashire wrote. “It doesn’t appear that fentanyl alone is the leading cause of death among 18-45 year olds and definitely is NOT the leading cause of death among all adults,” he wrote. “However, we don’t break down the leading causes in such a way that we can rank fentanyl anywhere.”

    — Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

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    Florida didn’t ban ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ as fake list suggests

    CLAIM: The state of Florida banned “To Kill a Mockingbird” in schools, along with a number of other popular titles on a “Banned Book List.”

    THE FACTS: Florida hasn’t forced schools to stop teaching Harper Lee’s classic novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” despite misleading posts that amassed thousands of shares on social media. The false claim erupted after various social media users shared a list of book titles and said it showed books banned in Florida, including “To Kill a Mockingbird” and other well-known titles such as “A Wrinkle in Time,” “The Giver,” and “Of Mice and Men.” Bryan Griffin, press secretary for Florida’s Republican governor, confirmed in several tweets that the claim was false. “The State of Florida has not banned To Kill a Mockingbird,” Griffin tweeted. “In fact, Florida RECOMMENDS the book in 8th grade.” The tweet linked to Florida’s state Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, or BEST, standards, which include the book as a sample text for eighth grade students. Jeremy Redfern, deputy press secretary for the governor, told the AP in an email that there is no banned book list at the state level, and that the “Banned Book List” circulating online was fake. “The state sets guidelines regarding content, and the local school districts are responsible for enforcing them,” Redfern said. The Palm Beach County School District temporarily removed “To Kill a Mockingbird” from classrooms to review it earlier this year, but has since returned it, according to the Florida Freedom to Read Project. The Palm Beach County School District told the AP in an email that it had reviewed 2.5 million books over the summer and was in compliance with Florida’s parental rights legislation. The Florida Freedom to Read Project, which tracks book removals across Florida school districts, said its research did not find any other recent bans of the title in Florida schools, though it relies on documentation from the state’s school districts, which have not all responded in recent months. “There is no way for us to say for sure that the title is still available in every district, but it definitely isn’t banned across the state,” said Stephana Ferrell, cofounder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project. Tasslyn Magnusson, an independent researcher who tracks book banning attempts nationwide, also said she was not aware of any recent bans on “To Kill a Mockingbird” in Florida school districts. She said the widely shared “Banned Book List” also didn’t match up with her own data.

    — Ali Swenson

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    Flawed calculation fuels falsehood on Pfizer vaccine and pregnancies

    CLAIM: Pfizer documents show that 44% of pregnancies reported during its COVID-19 vaccine trial ended with miscarriages.

    THE FACTS: The claim is based on a flawed calculation that, among other issues, twice counted some of the same reported miscarriages — which also were not established to be caused by the vaccine. Thousands of social media users in recent days spread the erroneous claim that newly released documents showed that nearly half of all pregnancies in the Pfizer vaccine trial resulted in miscarriages. “Massacre: Nearly Half of Pregnant Women in Pfizer Trial Miscarried,” one widely shared headline claimed. The claim first appeared Aug. 12 in a blog run by Naomi Wolf, an author who has gained attention in recent years for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The blog post falsely claimed that documents from the Food and Drug Administration revealed “chilling data showing 44 percent of pregnant women participating in Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine trial suffered miscarriages.” Asked for comment, the Daily Clout noted in a statement to the AP that it had issued a correction. The post was updated to say in a footnote that the 44% figure is “incorrect.” As of Friday, the post was no longer accessible. The original blog post cited a more than 3,600-page document of Pfizer information dated March 2021 and submitted to the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. The blog post pointed to 22 references in the document to spontaneous abortions, or a pregnancy loss without outside intervention before the 20th week of pregnancy. The blog also noted that a table within the same document showed 50 pregnancies that occurred among trial participants after receiving their first dose. Using those numbers, the blog wrongly concluded that nearly half of pregnancies in the trial resulted in miscarriages. But Jeffrey Morris, director of the division of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told the AP in an email that the post’s methodology contained “numerous mistakes.” The blog’s 22 references to miscarriages actually count about half of the same events twice, Morris said. That’s evident by comparing the unique ID numbers of the clinical trial participants for each of the reports. For example, a single miscarriage reported by one participant in October 2020 was recorded in a “Listing of Adverse Events” as well as a subsequent “Listing of Serious Adverse Events,” though they refer to the same instance. Such reported adverse events are also not confirmed to be caused by the vaccine, but are simply events that occurred after a participant received a shot. Beyond that, Morris pointed out that, of the unique miscarriage events in the document, only three of the subjects appear in the table that lists 50 pregnancies that occurred after participants received their first dose. That means the table is not a listing of all participants who were pregnant during the clinical trial, and therefore can’t be used to calculate the miscarriage rate as the website did. Miscarriages are not uncommon: It’s estimated that about 10% to 20% of known pregnancies result in miscarriage. The AP has previously debunked similar claims that misrepresented Pfizer data to assert that the vaccine was dangerous to pregnancies. In reality, a 2021 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that COVID-19 vaccine exposure did not increase the odds of a spontaneous abortion. And a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine the same year found that the risk of spontaneous abortion after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination was consistent with the expected risk of spontaneous abortion. A Pfizer spokesperson declined to comment on the specific claim. The FDA did not return a request for comment.

    — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

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    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    ___

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

    ___

    This story was first published on August 26, 2022. It was updated on August 29, 2022, to make clear that the Palm Beach County School District responded on Aug. 25, 2022, that it had reviewed 2.5 million books over the summer and was in compliance with Florida’s parental rights legislation.

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  • Why This Election Is So Weird

    Why This Election Is So Weird

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    The two major factors shaping the 2022 midterm elections collided in tumultuous fashion on Tuesday morning.

    First came the government report that inflation last month had increased faster than economists had expected or President Joe Biden had hoped. The announcement triggered a sharp fall in the stock market, the worst day on Wall Street in two years.

    That same afternoon, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina introduced legislation that would impose a nationwide ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

    The inflation report captured this year’s most powerful tailwind for Republicans: widespread dissatisfaction with Biden’s management of the economy. Graham’s announcement captured this year’s strongest Democratic tailwind: widespread unease about abortion rights.

    Molly Jong-Fast: Of course voters care about abortion

    The shift in the campaign debate away from Biden’s management of the economy and toward the GOP’s priorities on abortion and other issues has been the principal factor improving Democratic prospects since earlier this summer. But the unexpectedly pessimistic inflation report—which showed soaring grocery and housing bills overshadowing a steady decline in gasoline prices—was a pointed reminder that the economy remains a formidable threat to Democrats in November.

    These two events also underscored how, to an extremely unusual degree, the parties are talking past each other. As the Democratic pollster Molly Murphy told me, 2022 is not an election year when most Americans “agree on what the top priorities [for the country] are” and debate “different solutions” from the two major parties.

    Instead, surveys show that Republican voters stress inflation, the overall condition of the economy, crime, and immigration. For Democratic voters, the top priorities are abortion rights, the threats to democracy created by former President Donald Trump and his movement, gun control, climate change, and health care.

    Few questions may shape the November results as much as whether the issues Democrats are stressing continue to motivate roughly as many voters as Republicans’ preferred issues. Gene Ulm, a Republican pollster, told me he believes that pocketbook strains will ultimately prove decisive for most voters, particularly those without a college degree. Those voters, he added, are basically saying, “‘I am worried about putting food on the table, and you are talking to me about all this other crap.’”

    Yet there is no question that Democratic candidates are performing far above the consistently bleak public assessments of the economy, and especially Biden’s management of it. In one sense, that’s not shocking: Over the past few decades, voters’ economic assessments have become less predictive of election results, in large part because those judgments are themselves so heavily shaped by partisanship. But even in light of that trend, the disconnect between voters’ views on Biden’s economic management and their willingness to support Democratic candidates for the House and Senate remains striking.

    Read: How the Democrats rallied

    Biden has positive trends in the economy to celebrate, particularly robust job growth. He’s been cutting ribbons at a steady procession of infrastructure projects and manufacturing-plant openings (like last week’s groundbreaking for an Intel semiconductor facility in Ohio) tied to the tax incentives and direct spending from the infrastructure, climate, and semiconductor bills that he’s signed. Those economic milestones—yesterday, for instance, the White House touted $85 billion in new private investments for electric-vehicle production since Biden took office—will likely be a political asset for him in 2024, especially in the pivotal states across the industrial Midwest. But those accomplishments won’t necessarily sway voters this November, and in any case, all of these favorable trends for now are being overshadowed in most households by the persistent pain of higher prices on consumer goods.

    Even before this week’s inflation report, voters gave Biden an extremely negative grade for his economic performance. In an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Institute poll released last week, just 34 percent of those surveyed said that his actions have helped the economy, while 57 percent said they have hurt it. Not surprisingly, that discontent was most intense among Republicans and also among white voters without a college degree (a stunning 76 percent of whom said Biden’s actions had hurt the economy.) But that belief was also shared by 63 percent of independents, 55 percent of Generation Z and Millennial voters, 47 percent of nonwhite voters, and even 16 percent of people who voted for him in 2020.

    However, the share in each of these groups that gave Biden an overall positive mark on his job performance was consistently five to nine percentage points higher than those who believed his actions had helped the economy. And the share in each group that said they intend to support House Democrats in the November election was higher still—enough to give Democrats a narrow lead on that crucial question. Independents, for example, were split evenly on which party they intend to support in November, even though they were negative on Biden’s economic performance by more than two to one.

    This stark pattern points to another consequential anomaly in the 2022 polling so far. One of the most powerful modern trends in congressional races is a correlation between voters’ attitudes toward the president and their willingness to vote for candidates from his party. Virtually all voters who “strongly disapprove” of a president have voted against his party’s candidates in recent House and Senate elections. In 2018, two-thirds of voters who even “somewhat disapproved” of Trump voted for Democratic House candidates, according to exit polls. In 2010, two-thirds of voters who “somewhat disapproved” of Barack Obama likewise voted for Republican candidates.

    By contrast, in the Marist survey, and another recent national poll by the Pew Research Center, Democrats led slightly among those who “somewhat disapproved” of Biden—a stunning result.

    Murphy told me this disconnect has been evident since the outset of Biden’s presidency: Even when his approval numbers were high during his first months, she said of her polling, that didn’t lift other Democratic candidates, so she’s not entirely surprised that his decline hasn’t tugged them down. But Murphy, like others in the party, believes that concerns about Republicans—centered on their abortion-restriction efforts, their nomination of extremist and election-denying candidates, and their unflagging defense of Trump—also explain why Democratic candidates are consistently running ahead of Biden’s approval rating.

    “It should have been pretty easy for [Republicans] to put these races away, given how concerned voters are about the economy and inflation,” Murphy told me. Now, she said, “I do think they are having to go back to the drawing board.”

    Graham’s abortion legislation is certain to benefit Democratic efforts to shift voter focus from what Biden has done to what Republicans might do if returned to power. In a press conference, Graham flatly declared, “If we take back the House and Senate, I’ll assure you we’ll have a vote on our bill.” Although many Republican senators and candidates quickly distanced themselves from his proposal, his pledge meant that every Democratic Senate candidate can plausibly argue that creating a GOP majority in the chamber will ensure a congressional vote on a national abortion ban.

    Dan Sena, the former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who now consults for many party House candidates, told me that the abortion fight’s biggest impact will be to inspire higher turnout from liberal-leaning and young voters. Abortion, he said, “has energized a group of people that we saw in 2018 and we saw in 2020 that traditionally don’t participate in midterm elections and are much more motivated by the cultural fight.”

    Read: Abortion could define California’s elections

    Yet few Democrats believe that the political threat from inflation and general unease about the economy is behind them in this election cycle. In focus groups, Ulm, the GOP pollster, told me, “We hear more gripes about groceries than anything.” Sena largely agrees: “Jobs and paychecks still matter, pal,” he said.

    One Democratic pollster, who asked not to be identified while discussing private campaign research, told me that inflation and crime—the principal issues Republicans are stressing on the campaign trail—remain tangible and immediate concerns in swing districts. In House district polling, the pollster said, the firm often asks voters whether they worry more that Democratic policies are fueling inflation and crime or that Republicans are too extreme on abortion and too soft on the January 6 insurrection. On balance, the pollster told me, most respondents in swing districts say they worry more about Democratic policies.

    Yes, the pollster said, the Supreme Court abortion decision, the revelations about Trump from the House January 6 committee hearings, and the Justice Department’s investigation into his stockpiling of classified documents have energized and awakened Democratic voters. But, the pollster added, it’s not as if everyone has decided that abortion and January 6 are more important than crime and inflation.

    Strategists and pollsters on both sides believe that these diverging agendas could intensify one of the most powerful trends in modern American politics: the class inversion in which Democrats are running stronger among white voters with college degrees and Republicans are gaining ground among white voters without them, as well as among blue-collar Latino voters.

    In white-collar America, inflation may be more of an inconvenience than an existential threat, which provides space for voters to prioritize their values on issues such as abortion or Trump’s threat to democracy. In blue-collar America, where inflation often presents more difficult daily choices and sacrifices, abortion and the fate of democracy may be less salient, even among those who agree with Democrats on those issues. In the Marist poll, twice as many white voters without a college degree picked inflation over abortion as their top concern in November, while slightly more college-educated white voters picked abortion than inflation.

    Even with inflation at its highest level in 40 years, Republicans appear unlikely to significantly cut into such key Democratic constituencies as college-educated white voters, young people, and residents of large metropolitan areas. And even such a seismic shock as the Supreme Court abortion decision may not significantly loosen the Republican hold on white women without a college education. Although there may be some movement around the edges (inflation, for instance, could help Republicans gain among Latino voters), the biggest story of 2022 may be how closely it follows the lines of geographic and demographic polarization that the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections have engraved.

    As in those contests, a handful of competitive swing states (Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) will tip the precarious national balance of power between red and blue areas that now behave more like separate nations than different sections. The November elections seem likely to demonstrate again that the U.S. remains locked in a struggle between two coalitions that hold utterly antithetical visions of America’s future—yet remain almost equal in size.

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    Ronald Brownstein

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  • Abortion Could Define California’s Elections

    Abortion Could Define California’s Elections

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    CERRITOS, Calif.—Abortion rights dominated the message when the Democratic congressional candidate Jay Chen sent off a small group who had gathered to canvass for him here early on Sunday morning.

    “A right that we had all assumed we would have, the right of a woman to have control of her own health-care decisions, was taken away after 50 years,” Chen told the volunteers. He reminded them that his opponent, Republican Representative Michelle Steel, had co-sponsored “a federal ban on abortion” that would prohibit the procedure even in deep-blue California.

    “You name it, she’s on the extreme end of all these issues,” Chen said. “She’d be a complete outlier even in deep-red Kansas because even in Kansas they protected the right to an abortion. So for her to try to represent [this district] does not make any sense.”

    Chen’s exhortation captured the outsize role abortion rights could play across this year’s unusually large field of competitive U.S. House races in California, after the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this summer. The Golden State offers Democrats the nation’s single largest concentration of opportunities to offset losses elsewhere by flipping House seats now held by Republicans. And the abortion-rights issue offers Democrats their best chance to do so—particularly with a state constitutional amendment protecting access to the procedure also on the November ballot as Proposition 1.

    “Because we have this on the ballot, Republicans cannot run away from this issue,” says Dave Jacobson, a Democratic consultant who is advising Christy Smith, the party’s nominee against Republican Representative Mike Garcia in another Los Angeles–area district. “Every Republican in a competitive district is vulnerable with this issue at the top of the ballot as a constitutional amendment. I think it is going to drive turnout.”

    Read: The Kansas abortion shocker

    California will provide a crucial measure of how broadly the abortion issue may benefit Democrats this year. On both sides, there’s agreement that abortion’s increased prominence will strengthen Democrats in districts with a large number of white-collar voters—including the coastal seats south of Los Angeles now held by Democratic Representatives Katie Porter and Mike Levin. Less clear is whether the issue will prove as powerful in districts, such as those held by Republican Representatives Garcia and David Valadao, with larger numbers of blue-collar and Latino voters who may be acutely feeling the effects of inflation. The district in which Chen is challenging Steel demographically falls somewhere in between.

    “Presumably you’ll see coastal Republicans split with the party on things like choice,” predicts Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist and the publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which analyzes state elections. “On the other hand, when you are looking at some inland and Central Valley districts, they are very different,” he told me. Although “there’s all this chatter that abortion is so important,” Sragow added, “I suggest most Americans do not wake up with abortion the thing they are most worried about,” particularly in working-class communities.

    Though solidly Democratic at the state level—Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is cruising to reelection this year without serious Republican opposition after defeating a GOP-backed recall effort—congressional contests in California have proved highly susceptible to swings in the national mood. As part of the “blue wave” in 2018, the party flipped seven Republican-held seats, reducing the GOP to its smallest share of California’s congressional delegation since the 1880s. But in 2020, Republicans recaptured four of those districts—a key part of their unusual success at gaining House seats nationwide while losing the White House.

    Earlier this year, when inflation was raging and the Democratic legislative agenda seemed stalled, Republicans were optimistic about advancing farther across California by potentially ousting Democratic Representatives Josh Harder in the Central Valley and Porter and Levin in Orange and San Diego Counties. Although Democrats acknowledge that those races (and another Democratic-held open seat) remain competitive, they now see the opportunity to go on the offensive against Steel, Valadao, and Garcia, as well as potentially Representatives Ken Calvert and Young Kim in Southern California; they also see an opportunity to contest a Republican open seat in the Sacramento area.

    Several other issues have also contributed to this reversal of fortune: increased attention to gun violence after the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting; renewed focus on Donald Trump amid the revelations from the House January 6 committee and the firestorm over his mishandling of classified documents; and climate change after the passage of the Democrats’ slimmed-down reconciliation bill. But analysts in both parties see the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe as the pivotal factor shifting the congressional landscape across California. “We are just seeing an unprecedented level of outrage,” Representative Levin told me in an interview.

    As in other states, Republicans continue to express cautious optimism that frustration over inflation and disenchantment with the performance of President Joe Biden will outweigh views on abortion. “Of course [abortion] is going to be an issue, way more than it was in May of this year,” Lance Trover, a Republican consultant advising Representative Steel, who ousted a Democratic incumbent in 2020, told me. “But at the end of the day, the fundamentals of the economy are going to be key.”

    California Republicans face an unusually powerful headwind in moving beyond the abortion issue. Almost all Republicans holding or seeking congressional seats have staked out hard-line anti-abortion positions that directly collide with polls showing deep and broad support for abortion rights across the state.

    Polling in July by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that more than two-thirds of state residents opposed the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe. That included about three-fourths of African Americans and Asian Americans, seven in 10 white voters, and just over three-fifths of Latino voters. About three-fourths of independents, whom Republicans need to compete in California, because they are so outnumbered by registered Democrats, opposed the ruling. Opposition to the decision was greatest in the big blue metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco, but even in areas where Republicans have traditionally performed somewhat better, such as Orange and San Diego Counties and the Central Valley, preponderant majorities opposed the decision.

    In another survey released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times, more than seven in 10 California voters said they intended to support the constitutional amendment inscribing abortion rights into the state constitution.

    “From a public-opinion perspective, it’s a settled issue in California,” Mark Baldassare, the PPIC president, told me. “We have seen what we would describe as overwhelming support for abortion rights in California consistently in our polls over many, many years … That’s pretty consistent across demographic groups and regions of the state.”

    The state’s Republican congressional delegation—as well as the party’s challengers in the key races—have placed themselves firmly on the opposite side of that consensus. Four of the House Republicans facing the potentially toughest contests—Steel, Garcia, Valadao, and Calvert—signed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. All of them but Calvert have co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, a Republican bill that would define the unborn as a person under the Constitution from “the moment of fertilization” and effectively ban abortion nationwide, legal scholars say. Representative Kim, another Republican facing a potentially competitive race in an Orange County district, did not co-sponsor that bill, but has described herself as a “proud pro-life woman” who believes “the rights of the child must be respected.” The GOP challengers to Harder, Levin, and Porter have also publicly declared their opposition to legal abortion.

    As signs have grown of the backlash to the Supreme Court decision—including the Democratic victory in a New York congressional special election and the resounding defeat of a Kansas ballot initiative that would have opened the door to state abortion restrictions—several of the California Republicans have tried to obscure their positions. For instance, although the Life at Conception Act offers no exceptions and Steel earlier this year said she supported legal abortion only when the mother’s health was endangered, she told me in a statement, “I am pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, and the health and life of the mother, and baby.” In a statement to the Los Angeles Times this week, Representative Garcia backed the same exceptions—which, again, are not included in the “life begins at conception” bill he is co-sponsoring.

    In her statement, Steel downplayed the possibility that a Republican-controlled Congress would seek to ban abortion nationwide, though notably without disavowing the idea: “Discussions surrounding a nationwide ban on abortion are purely hypothetical at this point,” she declared.

    But such vague dismissals may not dispel the vulnerability California Republicans face over the possibility of a national ban on abortion, particularly amid the parallel debate over amending the state constitution.

    Though neither supporters nor opponents of the constitutional amendment have yet raised much money, Newsom, who is emerging as a national leader for Democrats on cultural issues, is expected to campaign heavily for it and raise its visibility this fall. “I don’t want to give away our plans … but I would expect him to play a very prominent role,” Sean Clegg, a senior strategist for Newsom, told me. Abortion rights and the constitutional amendment to protect them, he added, are “going to have an effect in every single race in California.”

    Conor Friedersdorf: Gavin Newsom, the Ron DeSantis of the left

    The proposed amendment on the ballot in November represents the third level of protection for abortion rights in California. In earlier rulings, the state supreme court has already decided that the procedure is protected under the state constitution’s guarantees of liberty and privacy. This amendment, placed on the ballot by Newsom and the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature, adds an explicit guarantee that “the state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom … which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”

    Yet even all those reinforcing levels of protection for abortion rights in the California constitution would be preempted if Congress approved a national ban, legal analysts agree. The Life at Conception Act would surely face legal challenges if a future Republican-controlled Congress passes it, but should the law be upheld, it would override any California action to guarantee abortion rights, according to Cary Franklin, a constitutional-law professor at UCLA and the faculty director of its Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy. “If Congress were to pass a national ban on abortion, that would trump state law, even state constitutional law,” she told me.

    That’s a message Democrats are likely to pound across the state in the campaign’s final months. “If Steel has her way, she will pass a federal ban on abortion, which will override our protections here, and I think Californians are coming to realize that,” Chen, a Naval reservist and the owner of a business that manages commercial properties, told me. By contrast, Chen, like the other Democratic incumbents and challengers, supports legislation restoring a national right to abortion.

    Opponents of the state constitutional amendment, such as Steel, say it would authorize abortions at any point in pregnancy, ending current state restrictions after a fetus is viable outside the womb (unless the mother’s life is endangered). Its sponsors deny that interpretation, but it will likely become the centerpiece of the campaign against the amendment. “Pro-life people may have had enough,” Susan Swift Arnall, the vice president of legal affairs at California’s Right to Life League, told me. “They may say, ‘This is too far. This is too extreme … And we want to send a message back to the legislature that we don’t support abortion on demand for all nine months and even into the birth of the baby.’”

    But the greater likelihood is that the amendment mobilizes turnout among the decisive majority in the state who support abortion rights. “There’s no question the [Supreme Court] decision has really created a great deal of increased interest from women voters for sure, and not just Democrats,” Levin said. “We are talking about independents, even some Republicans. Those who historically haven’t voted in midterm elections, I think, are motivated.”

    By solidifying Democrats in suburbia, abortion rights’ growing visibility, like the increased focus on gun violence and renewed attention to Trump, may narrow the range of House districts the GOP can realistically contest both in California and nationwide, and lower the ceiling on their potential gains. But not enough voters may prioritize abortion to neutralize Republicans’ other advantages in economically strained areas. Like so much else in modern American politics, the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe seems likely to further widen the chasm between white-collar and culturally cosmopolitan metropolitan areas trending toward the Democrats and blue-collar, socially conservative smaller places hardening in their support for the GOP, even in staunchly Democratic California.

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  • Google earned $10 million by allowing misleading anti-abortion ads from ‘fake clinics,’ report says | CNN Business

    Google earned $10 million by allowing misleading anti-abortion ads from ‘fake clinics,’ report says | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Google has earned more than $10 million over the past two years by allowing misleading advertisements for “fake” abortion clinics that aim to stop women from having the procedure, according to an estimate from a report released Thursday from the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate.

    The estimated amount is microscopic compared to the more than $200 billion Google generates from ad sales annually. But the report’s data hints at the broad reach pro-life groups can have by placing these advertisements in Google results for common phrases searched for by abortion seekers.

    Using Semrush, an analytics tool, researchers at the CCDH identified “188 fake clinic websites” that placed ads on Google between March, 2021 and February of this year. CCDH estimates that ads for fake clinics were clicked on by users 13 million times during this period.

    Some searching for “abortion clinics near me” on Google instead found results directing them toward so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that may try to talk abortion-seekers out of treatment and offer medically unproven abortion pill reversal techniques, according to the report.

    Other Google searches populated by crisis clinic ads included “abortion pill,” “abortion clinic” and “planned parenthood,” the report said, with clinics in states where abortion is legal spending two times as much as those in states with bans.

    In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, Google faced calls from Congressional Democrats to do more to prevent searches for abortion clinics from returning results for misleading ads – as well as calls from Republican lawmakers to do the opposite. The dueling pressure from lawmakers highlighted how central Google can be for women searching for information on the procedure.

    In a statement Thursday, Google said its approach to abortion ads follows local laws and that any advertiser targeting certain keywords or phrases related to abortions must complete a certification to confirm if it does or does not provide abortion services.

    “We require any organization that wants to advertise to people seeking information about abortion services to be certified and clearly disclose whether they do or do not offer abortions,” a Google spokesperson told CNN. “We do not allow ads promoting abortion reversal treatments and we also prohibit advertisers from misleading people about the services they offer.”

    “We remove or block ads that violate these policies,” the company added.

    Google said it does not allow for abortion reversal pill advertisements because the treatment isn’t approved by the FDA. In response to Thursday’s CCDH report, the company told CNN it took “enforcement action” on content violating this policy.

    Google has continued to face scrutiny in recent months for the steps it takes to protect abortion seekers’ location data.

    Nearly a dozen Senate Democrats wrote to Google in May with questions about how it deletes users’ location history when they have visited sensitive locations such as abortion clinics. The letter came after tests performed by The Washington Post and other privacy advocates appeared to show that Google was not quickly or consistently deleting users’ recorded visits to fertility centers of Planned Parenthood clinics.

    Google previously declined to comment on the lawmakers’ letter. Instead, it referred CNN to a company blog post that includes abortion clinics on a list of sensitive locations, but did not explain what it means when it claims the data will be deleted “soon after” a visit.

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  • Biden marks anniversary of Dobbs decision by calling on Congress to ‘restore the protections of Roe v. Wade’ | CNN Politics

    Biden marks anniversary of Dobbs decision by calling on Congress to ‘restore the protections of Roe v. Wade’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris joined a trio of key reproductive rights activist groups to mark the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision Friday, highlighting what’s expected to be a major Biden campaign plank for the 2024 presidential election.

    “MAGA Republicans made clear that they don’t intend to stop with the Dobbs decision. No, they won’t, until they get a national ban on abortion,” Biden said, promising to issue a veto if a national ban is ever passed by Congress.

    The Biden administration and campaign have been making an all-hands-on-deck push for reproductive rights messaging this week ahead of Saturday’s anniversary of the ruling that overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade, harnessing the moment on an issue that animated voters in 2022 and they believe will do so again in 2024.

    “Since that dark June day last year, each of you has worked tirelessly to fight back. In the Dobbs decision, the court, particularly – practically, dared the women of America to be heard,” Biden said.

    Biden and Harris held the event with three reproductive rights groups – EMILYs List, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Planned Parenthood Action Fund – that announced they have endorsed the Biden-Harris campaign in the reelection push.

    “Your support was critical last time around. And we were so grateful for it,” Biden said, noting the organizing efforts of all three groups and how important that will be for his reelection push.

    Along with other recent endorsements from unions and climate activists, the backing of the reproductive rights groups Friday illustrates the central core of Biden’s reelection push.

    “Over the last week or so we’ve seen extraordinary support from three of the most important voices in the country coming together to get behind this campaign – organized labor, climate leaders, and all of you,” Biden said at the Mayflower hotel in Washington, DC.

    Friday’s event comes after Harris held a roundtable conversation on reproductive rights on MSNBC Tuesday and is also set to give a major speech on the Saturday anniversary in Charlotte, North Carolina.

    And first lady Dr. Jill Biden hosted an emotional conversation Tuesday with four women who shared their stories of how the Dobbs decision and subsequent state bans on abortion impacted their own medical care.

    “The Dobbs decision was devastating, and Joe is doing everything he can do to fight back,” the first lady said. “But the only way that we can ensure that every woman has the fundamental freedoms she deserves is for Congress to make the protections of Roe v. Wade the law of the land once again.”

    While there are limited steps Biden can take at the executive level, he has signed multiple executive orders aimed at shoring up access to abortion rights and called on Congress to codify Roe v. Wade.

    On Friday, the president will sign an executive order strengthening access to contraception, the Biden administration told CNN. The executive order directs the secretary of Treasury, secretary of Labor, and secretary of Health and Human Services to consider guidance guaranteeing private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act covers all FDA-approved methods of contraception, in contrast to current guidance, which only mandates coverage for one contraceptive product per FDA category.

    But there is no action he can take to restore the nationwide right to an abortion.

    Still, the Biden campaign believes that reproductive rights will be a key motivator for voters, with imagery of abortion rights protesters figuring prominently in the first seconds of Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign launch video.

    In the 2022 midterm elections, about 27% of voters cited abortion as the issue most important to them, according to the preliminary results of the national and state exit polls conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

    The event also comes as the campaign begins to build coalitions and momentum around key issues important to Democratic voters. Last week, Biden attended an event rolling out an endorsement from four major environmental groups. He also held an event with gun safety activists in Connecticut. And over the weekend, he touted support from leading unions with remarks focused on the economy.

    Nearly one year ago, in the moments after the Supreme Court’s historic ruling, Biden said he was stunned by the “extreme” decision.

    “With Roe gone, let’s be very clear: The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk,” he warned in remarks at the White House.

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  • Nebraska governor signs bill that bans most abortions at 12 weeks, gender-affirming care for those under 19 | CNN Politics

    Nebraska governor signs bill that bans most abortions at 12 weeks, gender-affirming care for those under 19 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Monday that bans most abortions after 12 weeks with exceptions for sexual assault, incest and medical emergencies.

    The bill does not define “medical emergency” and the legislation includes a clause that will put the rules into immediate effect the day after it is signed.

    LB 574, which passed the state’s Republican-controlled unicameral legislature in a 33-15 vote last week, also bans gender-affirming care for people under 19 years old. The abortion amendment was tacked onto the legislation after previous efforts to restrict abortions failed to overcome a filibuster.

    The bill only allows medical procedures for transitioning after a “waiting period” and “therapeutic hours” to determine if a person’s gender dysphoria is “long-lasting and intense.” The details of those provisions will be determined by the chief medical officer of Nebraska’s Division of Public Health.

    In a statement released after the bill’s passage, Pillen said, “All children deserve a chance to grow and live happy, fruitful lives. This includes pre-born boys and girls, and it includes children struggling with their gender identity. These kids deserve the opportunity to grow and explore who they are and want to be, and they can do so without making irreversible decisions that should be made when they are fully grown.”

    The new law reflects ongoing legislative efforts around the US to restrict access to abortion and gender-affirming care. More than a dozen states have moved to restrict gender-affirming care in 2023 and more than 130 bills that target LGBTQ rights, especially health care for transgender patients, have been introduced nationwide this legislative session, according to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union.

    “From North Carolina to Nebraska, extremists so-called leaders continue to restrict access to abortion across the nation,” Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted Monday. “Enough is enough. We need a federal law to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade for women in all 50 states.”

    Major medical associations say that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, the psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align, according to the American Psychiatric Association. But some Republicans have expressed concern over long-term outcomes of the treatments.

    Some Nebraskans have expressed displeasure with the bill and many protested and filled the halls of the state Capitol last week as lawmakers spoke, resulting in the arrest of several people on Friday on charges ranging from disturbing the peace to obstructing a government operation.

    ACLU of Nebraska executive director Mindy Rush Chipman said in a statement last week that the consequences of the law will be “devastating.”

    “To be clear, we refuse to accept this as our new normal. This vote will not be the final word. We are actively exploring our options to address the harm of this extreme legislation, and that work will have our team’s full focus. This is not over, not by a long shot,” Chipman said.

    This story has been updated with additional information Monday.

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  • New York State Legislature passes bill to protect doctors who prescribe abortion pills for out-of-state patients | CNN Politics

    New York State Legislature passes bill to protect doctors who prescribe abortion pills for out-of-state patients | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A bill that would legally protect doctors who prescribe and send abortion pills to patients in states where abortion services are outlawed or restricted is now headed to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk after the state legislature passed the legislation on Tuesday.

    The bill ensures that doctors, medical providers and facilitators in the state will be able to provide telehealth services to patients out of state, according to a news release from the New York State Assembly.

    The new legislation also protects New York health providers from out-of-state litigation, meaning the state will not cooperate with cases prosecuting doctors in New York who provide telehealth abortion or reproductive services to people in other states.

    “This bill expands protections for telehealth providers by providing them the same protections afforded to doctors in other states with strong reproductive healthcare shield laws,” according to the news release.

    The bill also ensures that New York medical providers, complying with their practice, who offer telehealth services are not subject to professional discipline, “solely for providing reproductive health services to patients residing in states where such services are illegal.”

    CNN has reached out to the governor’s office to see if she will sign the legislation.

    CNN previously reported Hochul has indicated support for a shield law protecting medical providers of out of state abortion and reproductive services.

    Assemblymember Karines Reyes, a registered nurse who sponsored the bill, said she was “proud to sponsor this critical piece of legislation to fully protect abortion providers using telemedicine.”

    According to the state assembly’s news release, the bill recognizes the common use of medication abortion drugs, stating that 54% of abortions across the country are now medication abortions.

    Speaker of the New York State Assembly Carl Heastie said, “It is our moral obligation to help women across the country with their bodily autonomy by protecting New York doctors from litigation efforts from anti-choice extremists. Telehealth is the future of healthcare, and this bill is simply the next step in making sure our doctors are protected.”

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  • Iowa House passes 6-week abortion ban in special session called by GOP governor | CNN Politics

    Iowa House passes 6-week abortion ban in special session called by GOP governor | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Iowa’s state House passed a bill Tuesday night that would ban most abortions in the state as early as six weeks into pregnancy, acting quickly in the special session ordered by GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds with the sole purpose of restricting the procedure in the state.

    The bill now heads to the Senate, where it must earn approval before it can move to Reynold’s desk for her signature.

    Senate File 579 prohibits physicians from providing most abortions after early cardiac activity can be detected in a fetus or embryo, commonly as early as six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

    The bill includes exceptions for miscarriages, when the life of the pregnant woman is threatened and fetal abnormalities that would result in the infant’s death. It also includes exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rapes reported within 45 days and incest reported within 140 days.

    The state House voted 56-34 largely along party lines to advance the measure following a roughly 12-hour day that saw the measure move through rounds of consideration and debate. Debate in the state Senate continued late into Tuesday night.

    The bill would immediately take effect with Reynolds’ expected signature.

    However, while the bill language makes clear it is “not to be construed to impose civil or criminal liability on a woman upon whom an abortion is performed in violation of the division,” guidelines on how physicians would be punished for violating the law are left up to Iowa’s board of medicine to decide – leaving the potential for some vagueness in how the law ought to be enforced in the interim.

    “There may or may not ever be rules promulgated,” said Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair, a Republican, amid several questions from Democrats on the floor. There were no legal penalties for physicians added in the bill, she said.

    “As far as clarity, this is about as clear as mud,” Democratic state Sen. Molly Donahue said on the floor.

    Reynolds last week called for Iowa’s legislature to convene for the special session “with the sole purpose of enacting legislation that addresses abortion and protects unborn lives,” weeks after Iowa’s Supreme Court declined to lift a block on the state’s 2018 six-week abortion ban, deadlocking in a 3-3 vote whether to overturn a lower court decision that deemed the law unconstitutional.

    The new bill and its 2018 predecessor are nearly identical, though the latter was not enacted immediately, granting the board of medicine time to flesh out how it planned to administer the law.

    Democratic backlash to the bill and Reynolds’ special session grew throughout the day, with state House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst saying in a statement, “Women are not free when they cannot make their own healthcare decisions. And after today, women won’t be free.”

    Iowa’s Senate Democratic Leader Pam Jochum said in a statement that her Republican colleagues were “ignoring Iowans in their rush to pass an extreme ban” and that “their actions today threaten the health and futures of all Iowa women.”

    “This extreme Republican power grab infringes on the personal freedom of every Iowa woman and girl. There are women alive today who will not be alive in six months because of this law,” Jochum added.

    Iowa’s position as the first-in-the-nation caucus state for the coming GOP presidential primary has thrust its state politics onto the national stage, with Republican candidates jockeying for the favor of its voters.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence posted his support of the bill on Twitter Tuesday night, writing, “Grateful to see Iowa Republicans and Governor @KimReynoldsIA Standing For Life! Pro-Life Americans are Cheering You On!”

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  • Judge who suspended abortion pill failed to disclose interviews that discussed social issues | CNN Politics

    Judge who suspended abortion pill failed to disclose interviews that discussed social issues | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The federal district judge who first suspended the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the so-called abortion pill mifepristone failed to disclose during his Senate confirmation process two interviews on Christian talk radio where he discussed social issues such as contraception and gay rights.

    In undisclosed radio interviews, Matthew Kacsmaryk referred to being gay as “a lifestyle” and expressed concerns that new norms for “people who experience same-sex attraction” would lead to clashes with religious institutions, calling it the latest in a change in sexual norms that began with “no-fault divorce” and “permissive policies on contraception.”

    Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal district judge, made the unreported comments in two appearances in 2014 on Chosen Generation, a radio show that offers “a biblical constitutional worldview.” At the time, Kacsmaryk was deputy general counsel at First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit religious liberty advocacy group known before 2016 as the Liberty Institute, and was brought on to the radio show to discuss “the homosexual agenda” to silence churches and religious liberty, according to the show’s host.

    Federal judicial nominees are required to submit detailed paperwork to the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of their confirmation process, including copies of nearly everything they have ever written or said in public, in order for the committee to evaluate a nominee’s qualifications and personal opinions. Neither interview is listed in the paperwork Kacsmaryk provided to the Senate during his judicial nomination process, which first began in 2017.

    The radio interviews were not included in the 22 media works Kacsmaryk disclosed, which included three radio appearances and 19 written pieces.

    A spokesperson for Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN the interviews weren’t in their archived files from Kacsmaryk’s confirmation, which included all paperwork submitted for his nomination.

    In a statement sent to CNN, Kacsmaryk said he did not locate the interview when searching for media to disclose and he did not recall the interview.

    “I used the DOJ-OLP manual to run searches for all media but did not locate this interview and did not recall this event, which involved a call-in to a local radio show,” he told CNN. “After listening to the audio file supplied by CNN, I agree that the content is equivalent to the legal analysis appearing throughout my SJQ and discussed extensively during my Senate confirmation hearing. Additionally, the transcript supplied by CNN appears to track with the audio and accurately recounts my responses during the phone call—when quoted in full.”

    The Washington Post reported last week that Kacsmaryk removed his name in 2017 from a pending law review article criticizing protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions during his judicial nomination process, a highly unusual move for a judicial nominee.

    Kacsmaryk did not respond to the Post’s request for comment, but a spokesperson for his old employer First Liberty claimed Kacsmaryk’s name had been a “placeholder” on the article and that Kacsmaryk had not provided a “substantive contribution,” despite the final version being almost identical to the one submitted under Kacsmaryk’s name according to the Post.

    Kacsmaryk later submitted supplemental material in 2019 to the committee to reflect interviews and events he participated since in 2017, but neither of the 2014 radio interviews were included.

    Democratic senators grilled Kacsmaryk on his positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights during both his nomination hearing and in written questions in 2017.

    While Kacsmaryk worked at First Liberty, one of his colleagues, general counsel Jeff Mateer, was also nominated for a federal judgeship. But Mateer came under scrutiny in 2017 for comments unearthed during his confirmation process in which he once compared the US to Nazi Germany on Chosen Generation – the same radio program Kacsmaryk appeared on and whose interviews he did not disclose.

    Mateer’s nomination was later rescinded; Kacsmaryk was later confirmed in 2019.

    The interviews were shared by Kacsmaryk’s employer, the Liberty Institute, at the time on social media. A guest from First Liberty appeared once a week, according to the show’s radio host in the broadcast and archives available online.

    In one interview from February 2014, in response to a question on the “homosexual agenda,” Kacsmaryk expressed concerns that new social norms surrounding “same-sex marriage” and “people who experience same-sex attraction” would lead to clashes with religious institutions.

    “I just want to make very clear, people who experience a same-sex attraction are not responsible individually or solely for the atmosphere of the sexual revolution,” Kacsmaryk said. “You know it. It’s a long time coming. It came after no-fault divorce. It came after we implemented very permissive policies on contraception. The sexual revolution has gone through several phases. We just happen to be at the phase now where same sex marriages is at the fore.”

    “But through that progression or regression, I think you can see five areas where there will be a clash of absolutes between the traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of marriage and the revisionist, redefined vision of marriage that you saw in last term’s Supreme Court opinions,” he said before outlining those areas as over tax exempt statuses, adoption services, federal government programs, and discrimination at universities.

    He appeared on the program to discuss the federal government’s view of same-sex marriage and opponents of it following the court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. The host suggested opponents of same-sex marriage could be viewed as “hostile” enemies of the government in line with al-Qaeda, which Kacsmaryk agreed with.

    “Yeah, and I can speak from immediate firsthand experience,” he said, citing his work formerly in the Justice Department. “That is very much in vogue now in the federal government to characterize opposition to same sex marriage and related issues as irrational prejudice at best and a potential hate crime at worse,” he continued.

    “It really has infused the entire federal service top to bottom as the administration has declared that they will join this culture war, that there’s one side that is destined to win and that you’re on the wrong side of history in the federal government if you are on an opposing side,” he added.

    Kacsmaryk also appeared on the program in July 2014 to discuss an executive order signed by then-President Barack Obama that banned federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity which did not exempt faith-based groups.

    Kacsmaryk linked changes in Democrats’ views on the issue of religious freedom to the “emergence of this very powerful constituency in the LGBT community,” which he said the Obama administration made campaign promises to fulfill. Kacsmaryk said religious organizations entering into contracts with the federal government would have risk under the executive order and face a “real burden” for dissenting from “the new sexual orthodoxy” on gay rights.

    The new rules, Kacsmaryk suggested, were poorly written and didn’t differentiate between gay people who lived “celibate” lives and those who made being gay “a lifestyle,” in a discussion of how religious groups would comply with the new rules.

    “If you look at the letter that was issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, they point out that the category sexual orientation is problematic because it’s not defined,” he said. “Most Abrahamic faith traditions will draw a distinction between someone who experiences the same sex attraction but is willing to live celibate and somebody who experiences the same sex attraction and makes it a lifestyle and seeks to sexualize that lifestyle. Those are two different categories that most Abrahamic faith traditions recognize.”

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  • Pence says he supports banning abortions for nonviable pregnancies | CNN Politics

    Pence says he supports banning abortions for nonviable pregnancies | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence said abortion should be banned when a pregnancy is not viable, according to the Associated Press.

    “I’m pro-life. I don’t apologize for it,” Pence told the AP in a recent interview. “I just have heard so many stories over the years of courageous women and families who were told that their unborn child would not go to term or would not survive. And then they had a healthy pregnancy and a healthy delivery.”

    CNN has reached out to the Pence campaign for comment.

    Pence strongly opposes abortion and has been perhaps the most outspoken Republican candidate about the issue as many of his GOP rivals have avoided staking out a clear position on abortion.

    During a CNN town hall in Iowa last month, Pence said he supports a federal abortion ban including exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. He also backs federal legislation limiting the procedure and has called on other 2024 GOP candidates to support a 15-week national abortion ban.

    Pence told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer back in March that he would support legislation restricting abortion to six weeks of pregnancy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law in his state that banned abortion at six weeks while President Donald Trump has suggested the legislation was “too harsh.”

    Clinicians use ultrasound results and measure pregnancy hormone levels in order to determine “whether a pregnancy is viable beyond the first trimester,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

    Pregnancies that are deemed unviable regardless of gestational age include tubal ectopic pregnancies and early pregnancy loss, according to the ACOG, which can be deadly for the pregnant person. There are cases, such as “genetic or isolated structural abnormalities in which essential structures do not develop properly,” in which survivability is poor and patients may choose to end their pregnancies or give birth with palliative care options, the ACOG notes.

    Since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, several women have shared their harrowing stories of trying to obtain medically necessary abortions in states that have greatly restricted the procedure. One Texas woman told CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen that she nearly died after her water broke four months into her pregnancy, putting her at high risk for a life-threatening infection. Doctors in Texas had to wait until the woman was sick enough so they felt legally safe to terminate her pregnancy and then bring her to the ICU after she started developing symptoms of sepsis.

    A Christian conservative, Pence views the “cause of life” as “the calling of our time.”

    “As your President, I will always stand for the sanctity of life and I will not rest and I will not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land,” he said in his presidential campaign announcement last month.

    Pence has called for more support and resources for women in crisis pregnancies and advocated for adoption as alternatives to abortion.

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  • HHS secretary says ‘everything is on the table’ amid calls to ignore medication abortion ruling | CNN Politics

    HHS secretary says ‘everything is on the table’ amid calls to ignore medication abortion ruling | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Sunday said “everything is on the table” following a Texas federal judge’s ruling to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication abortion drug mifepristone.

    In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” the secretary would not say whether he believes the FDA should ignore the ruling and keep the drug on the market, but he maintained that the Biden administration is considering all options.

    “We want the courts to overturn this reckless decision,” Becerra said, adding that there was a “good chance” of Supreme Court intervention but declining to say how, exactly, the administration will handle the ruling in the interim.

    “Everything is on the table. The president said that way back when the Dobbs decision came out. Every option is on the table,” the secretary told Bash, referring to last year’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a separate appearance on “State of the Union,” did not back away from her call Friday on CNN for the ruling to be ignored, saying that if it was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, “it would essentially institute a national abortion ban.”

    “I do not believe that the courts have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted, and I do believe that it creates a crisis,” she told Bash.

    Ocasio-Cortez called the ruling “an extreme abuse of power” and said there was precedent for the executive branch ignoring court rulings.

    “I do think that when it comes to gaming out what the very real possibilities are in the coming days, weeks and months, this is not just about speculation, but this is about preparation. And the reality of our courts right now is very disturbing,” she said.

    Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas warned in a separate interview with Bash on Sunday that House GOP appropriators could defund certain FDA programs if the ruling is ultimately ignored.

    “The House Republicans have the power of the purse, and if the administration wants to not lead this ruling, not live up to this ruling, then we’re going to have a problem,” the second-term lawmaker said. “And it may come a point where House Republicans on the appropriation side have to defund FDA programs that don’t make sense.”

    US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Friday issued a ruling to halt the decades-old approval of mifepristone, but he paused the ruling from taking effect for a week so it could be appealed, a process that is underway.

    “This is not America,” Becerra said Sunday. “What you saw is that one judge in that one court in that one state, that’s not America. America goes by the evidence. America does what’s fair. America does what is transparent, and we can show that what we do is for the right reasons. That’s not America.”

    Within an hour of the ruling Friday, a different federal judge ruled in favor of 17 Democratic-led states and Washington, DC, looking to expand access to the abortion pill, allowing them to keep the drug available.

    Becerra on Sunday touted the proven safety of the drug, a factor that Kacsmaryk questioned in his ruling. He confirmed that the Department of Justice had already filed its appeal and is waiting for its day in court.

    Still, Becerra had little to say about what tangible preparations the administration would take to secure access to abortion should the drug no longer be available after the weeklong pause.

    “Well, [women] certainly have access today, and we intend to do everything to make sure it’s available for them not just in a week but moving forward, period,” Becerra told Bash when asked if women would have access to the medication after this week.

    The Justice Department and Danco, a mifepristone manufacturer that intervened in the case to defend the approval, have both filed notices of appeal. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Danco said in statements that in addition to the appeals, they will seek “stays” of the ruling, meaning emergency requests that the decision remains frozen while the appeal moves forward.

    They’re appealing to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is sometimes said to be the country’s most conservative appellate court. Yet some legal scholars are skeptical that the 5th Circuit, as conservative as it is, would let Kacmsaryk’s order take effect.

    “I got to believe that, Dana, an appeals court, the Supreme Court, whatever court has to understand that this ruling by this one judge overturns not just access to mifepristone, but possibly any number of drugs,” Becerra said.

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  • Republican 2024 hopefuls converge on DC under the shadow of Trump | CNN Politics

    Republican 2024 hopefuls converge on DC under the shadow of Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidates took turns Friday pitching themselves to a ballroom full of religious conservatives in Washington as the most viable alternative to front-runner Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination.

    The specter of the former president loomed large over the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference, a summit that marks the first time the biggest names in the GOP race are appearing on the same stage as the summer campaign season kicks into gear. Trump is slated to speak Saturday, which will mark his first in-person appearance at a large GOP gathering of presidential hopefuls since announcing his White House bid.

    The topic of abortion was a through-line at the conference Friday, which coincided with the eve of the first anniversary of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Abortion has been a politically fraught issue for Republicans, and some GOP 2024 candidates are struggling to balance appealing to the hard-line GOP base without alienating more moderate voters needed to win a general election.

    Though several GOP candidates typically skate around the issue, including what kind of federal legislation they would support, one candidate has staked out a clear position on abortion and kicked off the conference with a call to action for his GOP 2024 rivals to do the same.

    “Every Republican candidate for president should support a ban on abortions before 15 weeks as a minimum nationwide standard,” former Vice President Mike Pence told the audience, largely made up of conservative evangelical voters.

    Pence appeared to take a shot at Trump, who, like other GOP hopefuls, has wrestled with how to navigate the politics of abortion.

    The former vice president told the audience that some speakers would say “that the Supreme Court returned to the issue of abortion only to the states and nothing should be done at the federal level.”

    “Others will say that continuing the fight to life could produce state legislation is too harsh. Some have even gone on to blame the overturning of Roe v. Wade for election losses,” Pence added.

    Trump’s campaign softened its stance that abortion should be decided at the state level after receiving backlash from the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. And after the GOP had a worse-than-expected showing in the 2022 midterm elections, Trump said the “abortion issue” had been poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those who insisted on no exceptions in the case or rape, incest or life of the mother, which, he said, “lost large numbers of voters.”

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, notably, did not make abortion a main focus of his remarks and only made a quick reference to his state’s six-week abortion ban he signed into law earlier this year. (The law has yet to go into effect.)

    He spent more time during his roughly 35-minute speech leaning into cultural fights and digging in on his ongoing fight with Disney, decrying transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, touting his opposition to the teaching of gender ideology in public schools and propping up Florida as what he described as a “citadel of freedom,” particularly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    With the GOP field somewhat solidified, Trump remains firmly the favorite for the nomination – a fact that is apparent not only in recent polls but in the conference’s programming itself. The former president will serve as the keynote speaker for the event’s closing gala on Saturday.

    Trump allies, too, are among the conference’s speakers. Last year’s losing Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and conservative commentators Nick Adams and Judge Jeanine Pirro are scheduled to speak Saturday. Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham spoke Friday. The Trump-heavy lineup underscores the challenges for other candidates to break out in a party still dominated by the former president.

    “Donald Trump is arguably the strongest front-runner and in the strongest position overall of anyone in my career,” said Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

    But Reed added that Trump’s competition has a strong case to make, too, and there are paths for many of them to secure the nomination. Reed singled out DeSantis as an especially well-funded candidate who appears to pose a serious threat to the former president.

    A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS in the wake of his indictment and arrest on federal charges showed Trump remained the front-runner – 47% of Republicans and Republican-leaning registered voters say Trump is their first choice for the party’s nomination. That’s down from 53% in May. His support appears to be softening amid his legal troubles, with a greater share of Republicans now saying they will not support him under any circumstances. DeSantis’ support has held steady at 26% and no other candidate in the growing field tops double digits.

    “For the candidates that are not as high in the polls, this is an opportunity and an important moment for them to make their case,” Reed said. “If you’re not Donald Trump, it’s a very short calendar where you have to win somewhere and you have to do it quickly. If someone can win one of those first three states, and especially Iowa or New Hampshire, this race will change overnight. I think that’s part of why they’re all here.”

    In addition to Pence and DeSantis, Friday’s speakers included entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Radio show host Larry Elder and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will address the conference on Saturday.

    Christie drew boos from the crowd when he criticized Trump on Friday.

    “I’m running because he’s let us down,” the former New Jersey governor said. “He has let us down because he’s unwilling, he’s unwilling to take responsibility for any of the mistakes that were made. Any of the faults that he has and any of the things that he’s done and that is not leadership everybody. That is a failure of leadership.”

    When several people in the crowd started loudly booing, Christie said, “You can boo all you want.”

    Christie told CNN’s Dana Bash after his speech that he would continue speaking out against Trump on the campaign trail, saying the former president was “not a man of character, and they know it.”

    “There were a lot of people in that audience who were standing and cheering when I left. And there were some that were booing. But no one left wondering what I think,” Christie said.

    Christie has been sharply critical of the former president, whom he endorsed in the 2016 primary after dropping out of the presidential race and continued to advise ahead of the 2020 election. As other GOP hopefuls shy away from attacking Trump directly, hoping to avoid potentially alienating his supporters, Christie has taken direct aim at the former president and kicked off his 2024 candidacy lambasting Trump.

    Instead of drawing direct contrasts with Trump, Scott spent much of his speech attacking the Biden administration, accusing it of “weaponizing” the Justice Department against the president’s political opponents. 

    “In this radical-left Biden administration, they weaponize the Department of Justice against their political enemies. That is wrong. We deserve better in the United States of America,” Scott said.

    Scott didn’t directly reference the federal charges against Trump, but the senator’s remarks came less than two weeks after Trump pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom to federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office. Trump continues to claim the DOJ has been “weaponized” against him. 

    Republican voters are increasingly getting opportunities to size up the GOP field and evaluate them in the same setting. Next weekend, Trump, DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Hutchinson will address a summit in Philadelphia hosted by Moms For Liberty, a relatively new but increasingly influential group of conservative women focused largely on K-12 education issues.

    The Road to Majority conference is taking place just two months before the first scheduled Republican presidential debate on August 23 in Milwaukee. Trump on Tuesday repeated his suggestion that he may not participate.

    “Why would I let these people take shots at me?” he told Fox News.

    However, Trump’s appearance on Saturday in DC marks a change in approach from similar Republican gatherings. To date, when Trump has participated, it has been via video message, just as he did at Faith and Freedom’s Iowa event earlier this year. Trump also skipped Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s annual “Roast and Ride” earlier this month, which drew the rest of the field that had entered at the time.

    Reed encouraged Trump to spend more time talking to voters and less time harping on his legal troubles and past elections.

    “He has a tremendous story to tell, and it’s the reason he’s doing so well among these voters now,” Reed said. “But I think it’s important for him to talk about what a second term agenda looks like.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Justice Department asks Supreme Court to intervene in abortion drug ruling | CNN Politics

    Justice Department asks Supreme Court to intervene in abortion drug ruling | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court Friday to intervene in an emergency dispute over a Texas judge’s medication abortion drug ruling, requesting that the court step in now rather than wait for an appeal to formally play out at the federal appellate level.

    The case is the most important abortion-related dispute to reach the high court since the justices overturned Roe v. Wade last term. It centers on the scope of the US Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate a drug that is used in the majority of abortions today in states that still allow the procedure.

    Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in the filing that it “concerns unprecedented lower court orders countermanding FDA’s scientific judgment and unleashing regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone.”

    She said that if the ruling were allowed to stand it would “inflict grave harm on women, the medical system, the agency, and the public.”

    Danco, a manufacturer of the drug, also asked the justices to step in on an emergency basis before Friday, with an attorney for the company saying in its filing that leaving the lower court opinion in play will “irreparably harm Danco, which will be unable to both conduct its business nationwide and comply with its legal obligations under the FDCA nationwide.”

    “The lack of emergency relief from this Court will also harm women, the healthcare system, the pharmaceutical industry, States’ sovereignty interests, and the separation-of-powers,” the attonrey, Jessica L. Ellsworth, told the justices.

    The clock is ticking. If the Supreme Court does not step in, the district court’s ruling, as amended by a subsequent appeals court opinion, will go into effect at midnight CT, and access to the drug, Mifepristone, will be restricted while the appeals process plays out.

    Both the government and Danco are asking the court to freeze the lower court opinion, or alternatively, agree to take up the case themselves and hear arguments before the summer recess, a very expedited time frame.

    The controversy began when US District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued a broad ruling that blocks the FDA’s 2000 approval of the drug, as well as changes the FDA made in subsequent years to make the drug more accessible.

    Late Wednesday, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals froze part of the ruling. The court said the drug, that was approved in 2000, could stay on the market, but agreed with Kacsmaryk that access could be limited.

    The appeals court ordered a return to the stricter, pre-2016 FDA regime around the drug, which prevents mailing the pill to patients who obtained it through telehealth, or virtual visits with their providers rather than traveling to a clinic or hospital to obtain the drug in person.

    The restrictions also affect the instructions on the label for the medication, shortening the window of obtaining the pill to seven weeks into pregnancy as opposed to 10. It’s possible however that even with the ruling in effect, some providers could go “off-label” and continue to prescribe mifepristone up until 10 weeks. Mifepristone is one of the drugs used for an abortion via medication as opposed to surgery.

    Prelogar, the solicitor general, argued in her filing to the Supreme Court that the FDA’s expert judgment should not be challenged.

    “FDA has maintained that scientific judgment across five presidential administrations, and it has modified the original conditions of mifepristone’s approval as decades of experience have conclusively demonstrated the drug’s safety,” she wrote, reminding the justices that currently, “more than half of women in this country who choose to terminate their pregnancies rely on mifrepristone to do so.”

    She highlighted a key threshold issue in the case, arguing that the doctors opposed to abortion who are behind the suit do not have the legal right to be in court. That is because, she said, they neither “take nor prescribe” the drug, and the FDA’s approval “does not require them to do or refrain from doing anything.”

    CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck, who is a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said the 5th Circuit’s ruling “froze the craziest, most harmful parts of Kacsmaryk’s ruling,” but that access to mifepristone is still significantly limited.

    “The panel ruled that the challenge to the 2000 approval of mifepristone itself is likely time-barred, so it froze that part of the ruling,” he wrote on Twitter. “But it *didn’t* freeze Kacsmaryk’s block of the 2016 and 2021 revisions that (1) make mifepristone available up to 10 weeks; and (2) by mail.”

    Medication abortion has emerged a particularly heated flashpoint in the abortion legal battle since the Supreme Court last year overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent that protected abortion rights nationally.

    In November, anti-abortion doctors and plaintiffs brought the lawsuit challenging the FDA’s 2000 approval of the drug and targeting how the agency has since changed the rules around its use in ways that have made the pill easier to obtain.

    A split 5th Circuit panel said in its order that it was reinstating the approval of the drug because of certain procedural obstacles the plaintiffs face in challenging it. But the appeals court said that the abortion pill’s defenders had not shown that they were likely to succeed in defeating the plaintiffs’ claims against the FDA’s more recent regulatory actions toward mifepristone.

    The appellate order was handed down by Circuit Judges Catharina Haynes, a George W. Bush nominee, and Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, both Donald Trump nominees. Haynes, however, did not sign on to some aspects of the order.

    The FDA approved mifepristone after a four-year review process. It has shown to be a safe and effective way to terminate a pregnancy in the two-plus decades it’s been on the market. But anti-abortion doctors and medical associations allege that the agency ran afoul of the law by not adequately taking into account the drug’s supposed risks.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Graham will support replacing Feinstein on Judiciary Committee if she resigns, following precedent | CNN Politics

    Graham will support replacing Feinstein on Judiciary Committee if she resigns, following precedent | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that he will follow precedent for replacing Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee if she resigns, signaling a willingness to vote to replace the California Democrat if she left the chamber altogether.

    “If she does resign, I would be in the camp of following the precedent of the Senate, replacing the person, consistent with what we have done in the past,” the South Carolina lawmaker told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    Feinstein was hospitalized in March for shingles and has yet to return to the Senate. She has asked to be “temporarily” replaced on the Senate Judiciary Committee while she is recovering but remains committed to returning to Washington.

    Democrats would need 60 votes to replace Feinstein on the panel, but senior Republicans in leadership and on the committee have made clear that they would not give them the votes to do that on a temporary basis.

    Senate Republicans blocked an effort last week by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to temporarily replace Feinstein on the Judiciary panel with Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.

    But Graham – who objected to Schumer’s request – signaled Sunday that the situation would be different if Feinstein resigned.

    “If she resigned, I would make sure that whatever we did in the past when members resigned would be followed,” he said.

    “As to Sen. Feinstein, she is a wonderful person. She’s been a very effective senator. I hope she comes back,” the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee added.

    Feinstein is facing calls to resign from at least two House Democrats, though most congressional Democrats have remained largely supportive of her decision to remain in office while absent from the Capitol.

    More than 60 progressive organizations across California signed a letter Friday calling for Feinstein’s resignation.

    “For three decades, 39 million Californians counted on you to be our hardworking voice in Washington, day in and day out. We still need a daily voice, now more than ever,” the letter stated. ” We respectfully ask you to give one more gift of service to our great state by fully stepping back to allow a new appointee to carry forth and extend your legacy.”

    On the issue of abortion, Graham would not say Sunday whether he believes the procedure should be regulated at the state or federal level.

    “It’s a human rights issue, does it really matter where you’re conceived?,” Graham said. He added later: “I welcome this debate. I think the Republican Party will be in good standing to oppose late-term abortion.”

    Graham’s comments highlight the difficulty that Republicans have had navigating the abortion issue. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year has energized Democrats, with voters across the country rejecting ballot efforts to restrict abortion at the state level.

    which was once a popular GOP premise. After Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, voters overwhelmingly rejected further efforts to restrict abortion.

    The South Carolina senator introduced a bill in September that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

    “Here’s what I believe, that anybody running for president who has a snowball’s chance in hell in the 2024 primary is going to be with me, the American people, and all of Europe, saying late-term abortions should be off the table,” Graham, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump’s reelection bid, said Sunday. “I am confident, over time, that’s where our nominee will be.”

    The issue of abortion has continued to reverberate across the political landscape. The Supreme Court on Friday protected access to a widely used abortion drug as appeals play out by freezing lower-court rulings that had placed restrictions on its usage.

    Meanwhile, Graham, who recently traveled to the Middle East, said Sunday that he saw dramatic change while on the ground in Saudi Arabia.

    “The biggest prize, for lack of a better word, would be to get Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel and vice versa. And the Biden administration is trying to do that. And I want to help them. I think the Biden administration is right to want a normalize relationship with Saudi Arabia, based on the changes I see,” he said.

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