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  • Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

    Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    With a sense of relief that the conservative Supreme Court did not use a major Alabama redistricting case to further gut the Voting Rights Act, civil rights advocates and election attorneys are preparing for a new flood of redistricting litigation lawsuits challenging political maps – especially in the South – they say discriminate against minorities.

    In the 5-4 case decided Thursday, Alabama must now draw a second majority-Black US congressional district after Republicans were sued by African American voters over a redistricting plan for the 27% percent Black state that made White voters the majority in six of the seven districts.

    The six White majority districts are represented by Republicans; the Black majority district is represented by a Democrat.

    “I don’t think it’s going to stop Republicans from drawing racist maps,” Aunna Dennis, executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause, told CNN. “But I think that this empowers those of us pushing back and fighting that.”

    The majority opinion – written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by the court’s three liberals and, in most parts, by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – effectively maintained the status quo around how courts should approach Voting Rights Act lawsuits that allege a legislative map discriminates by race.

    By letting old precedent around the Voting Rights Act to stand in the case, called Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court has likely emboldened voting rights advocates to bring cases they previously thought would have been doomed.

    Several election law attorneys and voting rights advocates have suggested to CNN they believe the decision could have a ripple effect across the South, in states like Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas where cases claiming Section 2 violations are already working through the courts.

    According to the Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights media platform that tracks election litigation, there are 31 active federal cases involving Voting Rights Act redistricting claims similar to those in the Alabama case.

    “I suspect that there are a number of states with lawyers who were considering filing a lawsuit similar to the Milligan lawsuit, but they held off because the prospects of how everyone thought Milligan would go were so dim. But now, you’re going to have a whole range of suits filed,” said Alabama voting rights attorney J.S. “Chris” Christie, who filed one of the two lawsuits that were before the justices in the Milligan case.

    “Some of those will win, and some of them won’t. All redistricting suits are not the same,” Christie said, noting that Kavanaugh did not join an important part of Roberts’ opinion, depriving that section of a majority.

    Still, he said, “Lawyers who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged and are going to pursue those cases aggressively, knowing that the Voting Rights Act precedents are there.”

    The ruling was a shock. The right-leaning high court, sometimes in decisions penned by Roberts himself, had been on a spree of landmark rulings over the last several years that had whittled down the scope of the Voting Rights Act. And in the flurry of emergency litigation last year ahead of the 2022 midterms, the Supreme Court repeatedly put on hold lower court rulings – including in the Alabama case – that would have ordered the redrawing of political maps ahead of last year’s elections, helping Republicans to narrowly reclaim the US House.

    That meant that, at least in Alabama, the election was carried out under a redistricting plan that the Supreme Court has now affirmed to be likely unlawful.

    “The fact remains that the Supreme Court previously allowed the same map that they just determined unconstitutionally, and systemically diluted Black votes be used in the 2022 election,” the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement.

    In Alabama, lower courts said early last year that the state’s congressional map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting power. The courts ordered it redrawn in a way that was expected to produce a second majority-Black district, which would have shifted the partisan makeup of the state’s congressional delegation from 6-1 to 5-2.

    But, in February 2022, the Supreme Court put those decisions on hold until the justices could hear and decide the case themselves.

    At the heart of the dispute in the Alabama case was the way that, under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, race was used to determine if a map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting procedures “not equally open to participation by members” of a protected class, like racial minorities. Alabama was putting forward an argument for a supposedly “race-blind” approach to VRA redistricting compliance, that if endorsed, would have defanged the provision.

    Already, the Supreme Court led by Roberts had gutted a separate provision of the VRA that required certain jurisdictions (including Alabama and other states in the South) with a history of racially discriminatory voting policies to get federal approval for the maps that they drew.

    The Supreme Court’s emergency move last year to allow the Republican-drawn Alabama map to stay in place had cascading effects in lawsuits across the country.

    Some cases, like a challenge brought to Alabama’s state legislative redistricting plan, were put on hold.

    In a Georgia case that concerned both the congressional and state legislative redistricting plans, a federal judge said that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in at least some of the districts they were challenging, but he declined to grant the preliminary injunction, in part citing the Supreme Court’s emergency order.

    The Supreme Court, meanwhile, also froze a lower court order in a legal challenge brought against Louisiana’s congressional map that made similar arguments as the Milligan case, as Louisiana legislators had drawn just one majority-Black district of the six districts in the 33% percent Black state.

    The justices paused the case, where a federal judge was preparing to redraw the Louisiana map if the Republican lawmakers refused to do so, and said they were taking up the lawsuit but putting it on hold until the Milligan case was decided.

    Now the challengers’ lawyers in that case are anticipating that the Supreme Court will send it back to lower courts, where they were poised to prevail under the approach to VRA redistricting cases that the justices have now left undisturbed.

    Cases in Texas, Mississippi and elsewhere that inched ahead while the Milligan case was pending will go to trial without the threat that the challengers would need to prove their case under a drastically different Section 2 standard.

    “If anything, we no longer need to make adjustments that we had potentially been preparing for because the state of the law remains unchanged,” said Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Sarah Chen, whose group is involved in several challenges to Texas maps, including a lawsuit over Galveston County’s redistricting plan.

    “The Supreme Court did not endorse the radical changes proposed by Alabama in their arguments, the same changes that are also endorsed by opposing counsel in this Galveston redistricting matter,” Chen added.

    While challenges to statewide maps are what get the most national attention, the ruling’s effect on how the VRA is applied to local races like county commission elections and school board seats “is really going to impact voters’ everyday lives,” according to Christie, the Alabama voting rights attorney, who said that Thursday’s opinion will be “huge” in a newly filed challenge to a county commission map in the state.

    “Attorneys who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged to pursue these cases knowing that the VRA precedent is there,” he said.

    Even before they get into a courtroom, voting rights advocates see the Milligan ruling as valuable for discouraging state and local map drawers from diminishing the political power of communities of color, as it squelched expectations that the Supreme Court was about to make VRA challenges more difficult to bring.

    “I am disappointed in today’s Supreme Court opinion but it remains the commitment of the Secretary of State’s Office to comply with all applicable election laws,” Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, the defendant in the Alabama case, said in a statement after the ruling.

    In North Carolina, voting rights advocates had been reeling from a major defeat with the state Supreme Court recently ruling that North Carolina courts couldn’t police partisan gerrymandering. (Litigation over the state’s congressional plan is also before the Supreme Court in a legal dispute that does not concern the Voting Rights Act). They are finding a silver lining in that, thanks to Thursday’s ruling, the GOP legislators will be redrawing North Carolina’s political maps knowing Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters remain in force.

    “We would hope that they would really take this decision to heart that they would make a genuine good faith effort to comply with Section 2,” said Hilary Harris Klein, the senior counsel for voting rights with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

    Thursday’s ruling, said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “puts state legislatures and local redistricting bodies on notice that the Voting Rights Act is here to stay and if they deny communities of color the representation they deserve, that they will face lawsuits.”

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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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  • Meta cut election teams months before Threads launch, raising concerns for 2024 | CNN Business

    Meta cut election teams months before Threads launch, raising concerns for 2024 | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Meta has made cuts to its teams that tackle disinformation and coordinated troll and harassment campaigns on its platforms, people with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN, raising concerns ahead of the pivotal 2024 elections in the US and around the world.

    Several members of the team that countered mis- and disinformation in the 2022 US midterms were laid off last fall and this spring, a person familiar with the matter said. The staffers are part of a global team that works on Meta’s efforts to counter disinformation campaigns seeking to undermine confidence in or sow confusion around elections.

    The news comes as Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is celebrating the unparalleled success of its new Threads platform, surpassing 100 million users just five days after launch and opening a potential new avenue for bad actors.

    A Meta spokesperson did not specify, when asked, how many staffers had been cut from its teams working on elections. In a statement to CNN on Monday night, the spokesperson said, “Protecting the US 2024 elections is one of our top priorities, and our integrity efforts continue to lead the industry.”

    The spokesperson did not answer CNN questions about what additional resources had been deployed to monitor and moderate its new platform. Instead, Meta said the social media giant had invested $16 billion in technology and teams since 2016 to protect its users.

    But the decision to lay off staffers ahead of 2024, when elections will not only take place in the United States but also in Taiwan, Ukraine, India and elsewhere, has raised concerns among those with direct knowledge of Meta’s election integrity work.

    The disparate nature of Meta’s work on elections makes it difficult for even people inside the company to say specifically how many people are part of the effort. One group of relevant employees hit harder by the layoffs were “content review” specialists who manually review election-related posts that may violate Meta’s terms of service, a person familiar with the cuts told CNN.

    Meta is trying to offset those cuts by more proactively detecting accounts that spread false election-related information, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

    For years, the social media giant has invested heavily in teams of personnel to root out sophisticated and coordinated networks of fake accounts. That “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” as Meta calls it, began in the lead up to the 2016 election when an infamous Russian government-linked troll operation ran amuck on Facebook.

    The team tasked with combating the influence campaigns – which includes former US government and intelligence officials – has been generally seen as the most robust in the social media industry. The company has published quarterly reports in recent years that expose governments and other entities found to have been operating covert campaigns pushing disinformation on Meta’s platforms.

    Those teams investigating disinformation campaigns now must further prioritize which campaigns and countries to focus on, another person familiar with the situation said, a trade-off that could result in some deceptive efforts going unnoticed.

    The person emphasized that Meta still has a dedicated team of professionals working on these issues, many of whom are widely respected in the cyber and information security communities.

    But while artificial intelligence and other automated systems can help detect some of these efforts, unearthing sophisticated disinformation networks is still a “very manual process” that involves intense scrutiny from expert staff, another person with direct knowledge of Meta’s counter disinformation efforts told CNN.

    The person said they feared Meta was regressing from progress it had made from learning from past mistakes. “Lessons that were learned at great costs,” they said, citing the company’s 2018 admission that its platforms were used to incite violence in Myanmar.

    In addition to its in-house team, Meta and other social media companies rely on tips from academics and other researchers who specialize in monitoring covert disinformation networks.

    Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said he has sent the company valuable tips in recent months, but Meta’s response time has slowed significantly.

    Linvill, who has a long track record of successfully identifying covert online accounts, including helping to unearth a Russian election meddling effort in Africa in 2020, said that Meta recently removed a network of Russian language accounts that were posting both pro and anti-Ukraine content on Facebook and Instagram.

    “They were trying to stoke anger on both sides of the debates,” he said.

    Launched last Thursday, Threads has become an instant success with celebrities, politicians, and journalists flocking to the platform.

    The new Twitter-style app is tied to users’ existing Instagram accounts, rather than being linked directly to Facebook. Currently, Threads shares the same community standards as Instagram, but the platforms differ on issues relating to Meta’s methods to combat disinformation.

    Meta also applies labels to state-controlled accounts on Facebook and Instagram, such as Russia’s Sputnik news agency and China’s CCTV. However, these labels do not appear on state-controlled accounts on Threads.

    The launch of Threads even as Meta trims its disinformation-focused personnel comes at a turbulent and transformative time for those tasked with writing and implementing rules on social media platforms.

    Elon Musk, the billionaire who bought Twitter last year, has all but torn up that platform’s rule book and gutted the team that worked on implementing policies designed to combat disinformation efforts.

    Last month, YouTube, which has also made job cuts, announced it would allow videos that feature the false claim the 2020 US presidential election was stolen, a reversal of its previous policy.

    The rule reversals come as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives investigates interactions between technology companies and the federal government.

    Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, handing a win to GOP states in a lawsuit accusing the government of going too far in its effort to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

    The restrictions and the scrutiny could give cover to social media companies that may want to pull back on some of their platforms’ rules around election integrity, said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook official who helped lead the company’s global election efforts until 2021.

    “I can [almost] hear [Meta Global Affairs President] Nick Clegg saying that ‘we’re going to be cautious of what we do, because we wouldn’t want to run afoul of the law,’” Harbath said.

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  • Pence says he’s ‘not yet convinced’ Trump’s actions on January 6 were criminal | CNN Politics

    Pence says he’s ‘not yet convinced’ Trump’s actions on January 6 were criminal | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence said he’s “not yet convinced” that Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, were criminal, as the former president faces a potential indictment over his actions that day.

    “I really do hope it doesn’t come to that,” Pence told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that aired Sunday on “State of the Union.”

    “In one town hall after another, across New Hampshire, I heard a deep concern … about the unequal treatment of the law, and I think one more indictment against the former president will only contribute to that sense among the American people,” Pence said. “I would rather that these issues and the judgment about his conduct on January 6 be left to the American people in the upcoming primaries, and I’ll leave it at that.”

    Pence, who bucked pressure from Trump when he certified the results of the 2020 election, said Trump’s actions on January 6 were reckless but added he believed history would hold Trump accountable.

    Bash asked Pence about a recent radio interview in which Trump spoke of his “passionate” supporters and how they could react to his potential imprisonment, saying, “I think it’s a very dangerous thing to even talk about.”

    He told Bash that the rhetoric from Trump “doesn’t worry me, because I have more confidence in the American people.”

    “I would say not just the majority, but virtually everyone in our movement are the kind of Americans who love this country, who are patriotic, who are law-and-order people, who would never have done anything like that there or anywhere else,” he said.

    Reminded by Bash that Pence was the subject of calls for his hanging during the Capitol riot, the former vice president maintained his stance.

    “The people who rallied behind our cause in 2016 and 2020 are the most God-fearing, law-abiding, patriotic people in this country,” he said.

    Pivoting from Trump and to argue that people are concerned about “unequal treatment under the law,” Pence pointed to whistleblowers who claimed the IRS recommended charging President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden with far more serious crimes than what he agreed to plead guilty to and alleged political interference in the investigation. Pence vowed to “clean house” among the Department of Justice’s top ranks if he’s elected president.

    Pressed on whether he thinks his former boss should be indicted if the DOJ has evidence that he committed a crime, Pence said, “Let me be very clear: President Trump was wrong on that day. And he’s still wrong in asserting that I had the right to overturn the election.”

    “But … criminal charges have everything to do with intent, what the president’s state of mind was. And I don’t honestly know what his intention was that day,” the former vice president said.

    This story has been updated with additional reaction.

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  • Lawmakers reluctant to pursue gun control measures following Nashville school shooting | CNN Politics

    Lawmakers reluctant to pursue gun control measures following Nashville school shooting | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Monday’s deadly school shooting in Nashville has sparked a familiar cycle of condolences and calls to action among lawmakers in Washington, but both sides of the aisle have been quick to concede that the recent violence is probably not enough to sway a divided Congress to move substantive gun control efforts forward.

    After three children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday, President Joe Biden asserted that he’s done all he can do to address gun control and urged members on Capitol Hill to act. But the shooting, so far, has not compelled lawmakers in Washington – particularly Republican leadership and some members representing Tennessee – to push forward gun control, signaling no end to the impasse within the GOP-controlled House and nearly deadlocked Senate.

    The Nashville incident was just among the latest in 130 mass shooting incidents so far this year, according to data from the national Gun Violence Archive.

    White House officials are not currently planning a major push around gun safety reform in the wake of the deadly Nashville school shooting, three senior administration officials said. But Biden and White House officials will continue to urge Congress to act.

    Biden on Tuesday told CNN’s MJ Lee, “I can’t do anything except plead with the Congress to act reasonably.”

    “I have done the full extent of my executive authority – to do on my own, anything about guns …The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it’s a crazy idea. They’re against that. And so I think the Congress could be passing an assault weapon ban,” he added.

    Biden has taken more than 20 executive actions on guns since taking office, including regulating the use of “ghost guns” and sales of stabilizing braces that effectively turn pistols into rifles. He also signed a bipartisan bill in 2022 which expands background checks and provides federal funding for so-called “red flag laws” – although it failed to ban any weapons and fell far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for.

    White House officials have been sober about the political realities Democrats face with the current makeup of Congress, where Republicans in control of the House have rejected Biden’s calls for an assault weapons ban. Even when both chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats during the first two years of Biden’s term, an assault weapon ban gained little traction, in part because of a 60-vote threshold necessary for passage.

    Many Republicans in Congress, including those in positions of leadership and in the Tennessee delegation, have either been reluctant to use the deadly violence in Nashville as a potential springboard for reform or they’ve outright rejected calls for additional action on further regulating guns, arguing that there isn’t an appetite for tougher restrictions.

    On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would not answer questions on whether any congressional action should be taken on guns after the shooting in Nashville. And House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana who survived being shot in 2017, demurred when asked if the most recent school shooting in Nashville would move Congress to address any sort of reforms.

    “I really get angry when I see people try to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts,” he said when asked if his conference was prepared to do anything to address the spate of mass shootings, mentioning only improving mental health and securing schools.

    “Let’s get the facts. And let’s work to see if there’s something that we can do to help secure schools,” he added. “We’ve talked about things that we can do and it just seems like on the other side, all they want to do is take guns away from law abiding citizens. … And that’s not the answer, by the way.”

    Sen. Thom Tillis, a key GOP negotiator in last year’s bipartisan gun legislation, said on Tuesday that he doesn’t see a path forward on new gun legislation. Instead, he believes that lawmakers need to focus on implementing what has already been signed into law.

    “The full implementation is going to take months and years,” Tillis said of the gun bill that passed last summer. “There is a lot of unimplemented or to be implemented provisions in there. Let’s talk about that first.”

    House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican whose committee has jurisdiction over gun policy, said Tuesday that he doesn’t think Congress should take action to limit assault weapons, though he declined to say why it’s okay to ban fully automatic rifles but not semi-automatic weapons.

    “The Second Amendment is the Second Amendment,” he continued. “I believe in the Second Amendment and we shouldn’t penalize law-abiding American citizens.”

    Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been involved in past negotiations on gun legislation, said: “I don’t know if there’s much space to do more, but I’ll certainly look and see.”

    Graham said he is opposed to a ban on AR-15s – which was one of the weapons the Nashville suspect used during Monday’s shooting – noting that he owns one himself and arguing that it would “be hard to implement a national red flag law.”

    Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju why he wouldn’t support a ban of AR-15s, Andy Ogles, who represents the district where Monday’s shooting took place, replied, “Why not talk about the real issue facing the country – and that’s mental health.” And Sen. Bill Hagerty, the Tennessee Republican, refused to discuss calls to ban AR-15s after the Nashville shooting.

    “The tragedy that happened in my state was the result of a depraved person and somebody very very sick. And the result has been absolutely devastating for the people in my community. Right now with the victims, the family and the people in my community – we are all mourning right now,” Hagerty told CNN.

    Asked about banning those weapons, he added: “I’m certain politics will wave into everything. But right now I’m not focused on the politics of the situation. I’m focused on the victims.

    Tennessee GOP Rep. Tim Burchett told reporters that “laws don’t work” to curb gun violence.

    “We want to legislate evil – it’s just not gonna happen,” he said. “If you think Washington is going to fix this problem, you’re wrong. They’re not going to fix this problem. They are the problem.”

    Asked by CNN why private citizens need AR-15s, Burchett pointed to self-defense. He also argued that even though other countries don’t observe the United States’ high frequency of shootings, “other countries don’t have our freedom either … And when people abuse that freedom, that’s what happens.”

    Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress are slamming House Republicans for their disinterest.

    “As a country and as a Congress, we can do better and we know that, so shame on Speaker McCarthy for not bringing something up, for not announcing that we can and do more. All we’re going to get are thoughts and prayers out of their Twitter accounts, and that’s not enough” Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California said during a press conference.

    On the other side of the Capitol, however, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told reporters that he is “not very hopeful” that the Senate can pass gun legislation this Congress.

    “I’m not very hopeful, yet we have to try,” he said.

    Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to force a vote on a semi-automatic weapons ban to put Republicans on the record.

    “We need a fight in Congress, and I’m prepared to conduct that fight, others are as well,” he told CNN. “And ultimately the American people deserve to know where each of us stands on common sense gun violence prevention.”

    Schumer would not say whether he intends to put legislation banning assault weapons on the Senate floor for a vote this Congress. There is nowhere close to enough support to overcome a legislative filibuster.

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  • Chris Sununu will decide on 2024 presidential bid ‘in the next week or two’ | CNN Politics

    Chris Sununu will decide on 2024 presidential bid ‘in the next week or two’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said Sunday he will decide “in the next week or two” if he wants to mount a bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and enter an already crowded field of candidates.

    “When I start doing something, I’m 120% in,” the governor said on CNN’s “State of the Union” in an interview with Jake Tapper. “Pretty soon, we’ll make a decision, probably in the next week or two. And we’ll either be go or no-go,” he added.

    Sununu’s remarks come as the list of 2024 GOP hopefuls continues to expand, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott entering the race last week.

    Currently in his fourth term, the New Hampshire governor said figuring out where he could be most effective would factor into his 2024 decision.

    “I still have a 24/7 job,” he said. “The money has been lined up. The support’s been lined up. There’s a pathway to win. All that – those boxes are checked. The family’s on board, which is always a big one. I just got to make sure it’s right for the party and right for me,” he said.

    Sununu also said he wanted to ensure he wasn’t more useful outside the presidential race as he looks to steer the Republican Party away from the chaos of its current primary front-runner, former President Donald Trump.

    “Making sure that when it comes to where I want to see the party go … that maybe I talk a little differently, I talk with a different approach. I want more candidates to be empowered. Can I do that more effectively as a candidate? Can I do that more effectively as someone who’s kind of traveling the country, maybe speaking a little more freely?” Sununu said.

    “I just want what’s best for the party,” he continued. “It doesn’t have to be the Chris Sununu show all the time.”

    With Trump leading in current GOP primary polling, Sununu said the former president was playing the “victim card.”

    “Former President Trump is doing better than anybody thought. He is playing this victim card. The media, the DA in New York, all these things have kind of worked in his favor very much,” the governor said. “Just the fact that we are talking about Donald Trump as a victim, I mean, that is unique in itself. But that is not lasting, necessarily. That does not mean the support he has today turns into a vote nine months from now.”

    Sununu avoided harsh criticism of his other potential rivals, calling DeSantis a “very good governor” and praising him for embarking upon a retail politics tour of New Hampshire. The two met for an hour earlier this month when the Florida governor visited the Granite State to meet with state legislators.

    But Sununu suggested Sunday that DeSantis’ focus on cultural fights back in Florida avoided more important issues, such as government efficiency.

    “I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about the culture war stuff, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I just don’t believe government is going to solve a culture war.”

    DeSantis’ recent pledge to consider pardoning some participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was not “disqualifying” for a presidential candidate, Sununu said, even if it’s not something he would do himself.

    Meanwhile, Sununu said the agreement in principle struck by the White House and Republican negotiators on raising the debt ceiling was likely a win since some members of both parties are now balking at the deal.

    “It is a miracle, I mean release the doves,” the governor said. “Washington is actually moving forward. Both sides seem pretty frustrated, which means it’s probably a pretty good deal, actually.”

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  • Fact check: Biden makes 5 false claims about guns, plus some about other subjects | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Biden makes 5 false claims about guns, plus some about other subjects | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden made false claims about a variety of topics, notably including gun policy, during a series of official speeches and campaign remarks over the last two weeks.

    He made at least five false claims related to guns, a subject on which he has repeatedly been inaccurate during his presidency. He also made a false claim about the extent of his support from environmental groups. And he used incorrect figures about the population of Africa, his own travel history and how much renewable energy Texas uses.

    Here is a fact check of these claims, plus a fact check on a Biden exaggeration about guns. The White House declined to comment on Tuesday.

    Beau Biden and red flag laws

    In a Friday speech at the National Safer Communities Summit in Connecticut, Biden spoke of how a gun control law he signed in 2022 has provided federal funding for states to expand the use of gun control tools like “red flag” laws, which allow the courts to temporarily seize the guns of people who are deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. After mentioning red flag laws, Biden invoked his late son Beau Biden, who served as attorney general of Delaware, and said: “As my son was the first to enforce when he was attorney general.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. Delaware did not have a red flag law when Beau Biden was state attorney general from 2007 to 2015. The legislation that created Delaware’s red flag program was named the Beau Biden Gun Violence Prevention Act, but it was passed in 2018, three years after Beau Biden died of brain cancer. (In 2013, Beau Biden had pushed for a similar bill, but it was rejected by the state Senate.) The president has previously said, correctly, that a Delaware red flag law was named after his son.

    Delaware was far from the first state to enact a red flag law. Connecticut passed the first such state law in the country in 1999.

    Stabilizing braces

    In the same speech, the president spoke confusingly of his administration’s effort to make it more difficult for Americans to purchase stabilizing braces, devices that are attached to the rear of pistols, most commonly AR-15-style pistols, and make it easier to fire them one-handed.

    “Put a pistol on a brace, and it…turns into a gun,” Biden said. “Makes them where you can have a higher-caliber weapon – a higher-caliber bullet – coming out of that gun. It’s essentially turning it into a short-barreled rifle, which has been a weapon of choice by a number of mass shooters.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims that a stabilizing brace turns a pistol into a gun and increases the caliber of a gun or bullet are false. A pistol is, obviously, already a gun, and “a pistol brace does not have any effect on the caliber of ammunition that a gun fires or anything about the basic functioning of the gun itself,” said Stephen Gutowski, a CNN contributor who is the founder of the gun policy and politics website The Reload.

    Biden’s assertion that the addition of a stabilizing brace can “essentially” turn a pistol into a short-barreled rifle is subjective; it’s the same argument his administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has made in support of its attempt to subject the braces to new controls. The administration’s regulatory effort is being challenged in the courts by gun rights advocates.

    Gun manufacturers and lawsuits

    Repeating a claim he made in his 2022 State of the Union address and on other occasions, Biden said at a campaign fundraiser in California on Monday: “The only industry in America you can’t sue is the – is the gun manufacturers.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is false, as CNN and other fact-checkers have previously noted. Gun manufacturers are not entirely exempt from being sued, nor are they the only industry with some liability protections. Notably, there are significant liability protections for vaccine manufacturers and, at present, for people and entities involved in making, distributing or administering Covid-19 countermeasures such as vaccines, tests and treatments.

    Under the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, gun manufacturers cannot be held liable for the use of their products in crimes. However, gun manufacturers can still be held liable for (and thus sued for) a range of things, including negligence, breach of contract regarding the purchase of a gun or certain damages from defects in the design of a gun.

    In 2019, the Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit against gun manufacturer Remington Arms Co. to continue. The plaintiffs, a survivor and the families of nine other victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, wanted to hold the company – which manufactured the semi-automatic rifle that was used in the 2012 killing – partly responsible by targeting the company’s marketing practices, another area where gun manufacturers can be held liable. In 2022, those families reached a $73 million settlement with the company and its four insurers.

    There are also more recent lawsuits against gun manufacturers. For example, the parents of some of the victims and survivors of the 2022 massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, have sued over the marketing practices of the company that made the gun used by the killer. Another suit, filed by the government of Buffalo, New York, in December over gun violence in the city, alleges that the actions of several gun manufacturers and distributors have endangered public health and safety. It is unclear how those lawsuits will fare in the courts.

    – Holmes Lybrand contributed to this item.

    The NRA and lawsuits

    At a campaign fundraiser in California on Tuesday, Biden said the National Rifle Association, the prominent gun rights advocacy organization, itself cannot be sued.

    “And the fact that the NRA has such overwhelming power – you know, the NRA is the only outfit in the nation that we cannot sue as an institution,” Biden said. “They got – they – before this – I became president, they passed legislation saying you can’t sue them. Imagine had that been the case with tobacco companies.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. While gun manufacturers have liability protections, no law was ever passed to forbid lawsuits against the NRA. The NRA has faced a variety of lawsuits in recent years.

    Machine guns

    At the same Tuesday fundraiser in California, Biden said that he taught the Second Amendment in law school, “And guess what? It doesn’t say that you can own any weapon you want. It says there are certain weapons that you just can’t own.” One example Biden cited was this: “You can’t own a machine gun.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. The Second Amendment does not explicitly say people cannot own certain weapons – and the courts have not interpreted it to forbid machine guns. In fact, with some exceptions, people in more than two-thirds of states are allowed to own and buy fully automatic machine guns as long as those guns were legally registered and possessed prior to May 19, 1986, the day President Ronald Reagan signed a major gun law. There were more than 700,000 legally registered machine guns in the US as of May 2021, according to official federal data.

    Federal law imposes significant national restrictions on machine gun purchases, and the fact that there is a limited pool of pre-May 19, 1986 machine guns means that buying these guns tends to be expensive – regularly into the tens of thousands of dollars. But for Americans in most of the country, Biden’s claim that you simply “can’t” own a machine gun, period, is not true.

    “It’s not easy to obtain a fully automatic machine gun today, I don’t want to give that impression – but it is certainly legal. And it’s always been legal,” Gutowski said in March, when Biden previously made this claim about machine guns.

    California, where Biden made this remark on Tuesday, has strict laws restricting machine guns, but there is a legal process even there to apply for a state permit to possess one.

    The ‘boyfriend loophole’

    In the Friday speech to the National Safer Communities Summit, Biden said “we fought like hell to close the so-called boyfriend loophole” that had allowed people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to buy and possess guns if the victim was not someone they were married to, living with or had a child with. Biden then said that now “we finally can say that those convicted of domestic violence abuse against their girlfriend or boyfriend cannot buy a firearm, period.”

    Facts First: Biden’s categorical claim that such offenders now “cannot buy a firearm, period” is an exaggeration, though Biden did sign a law in 2022 that made significant progress in closing the “boyfriend loophole.” That 2022 law added “dating” partners to the list of misdemeanor domestic violence offenders who are generally prohibited from gun purchases – but in a concession demanded by Republicans, the law says these offenders can buy a gun five years after their first conviction or completion of their sentence, whichever comes later, if they do not reoffend in the interim.

    It’s also worth noting that the law’s new restriction on dating partners applies only to people who committed the domestic violence against a someone with whom they were in or “recently” had been in a “continuing” and “serious” romantic or intimate relationship. In other words, it omits people whose offense was against partners from their past or someone they dated casually.

    Marium Durrani, vice president of policy at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said there are “definitely some gaps” in the law, “so it’s not a blanket end-all be-all,” but she said it is “really a step in the right direction.”

    Biden said at a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Saturday: “Let me just say one thing very seriously. You know, I think this is the first time – and I’ve been around, as I said, a while – in history where, last week, every single environmental organization endorsed me.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that every single environmental organization had endorsed Biden. Four major environmental organizations did endorse him the week prior, the first time they had issued a joint endorsement, but other well-known environmental organizations have not yet endorsed in the presidential election.

    The four groups that endorsed Biden together in mid-June were the Sierra Club, NextGen PAC, and the campaign arms of the League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council. That is not a complete list of every single environmental group in the country. For example, Environmental Defense Fund, The Nature Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, Earthjustice and Greenpeace, in addition to some lesser-known groups, have not issued presidential endorsements to date.

    Biden’s claim of an endorsement from every environmental group comes amid frustration from some activists over his recent approvals of fossil fuel projects.

    In official speeches last Tuesday and last Wednesday and at a press conference the week prior, Biden claimed that Africa’s population would soon reach 1 billion. “You know, soon – soon, Africa will have 1 billion people,” he said last Wednesday.

    Facts First: This is false. Africa’s population exceeded 1 billion in 2009, according to United Nations figures; it is now more than 1.4 billion. Sub-Saharan Africa alone has a population of more than 1.1 billion.

    At a campaign fundraiser in Connecticut on Friday, Biden spoke about reading recent news articles about the use of renewable energy sources in Texas. He said, “I think it’s 70% of all their energy produced by solar and wind because it is significantly cheaper. Cheaper. Cheaper.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “70%” figure is not close to correct. The federal Energy Information Administration projected late last year that Texas would meet 37% of its electricity demand in 2023 with wind and solar power, up from 30% in 2022.

    Texas has indeed been a leader in renewable energy, particularly wind power, but the state is far from getting more than two-thirds of its energy from wind and solar alone. The organization that provides electricity to 90% of the state has a web page where you can see its current energy mix in real time; when we looked on Wednesday afternoon, during a heat wave, the mix included 15.8% solar, 10.2% wind and 6.6% nuclear, while 67.1% was natural gas or coal and lignite.

    In his Friday speech at the National Safer Communities Summit, Biden made a muddled claim about his past visits to Afghanistan and Iraq – saying that “you know, I spent a lot of time as president, and I spent 30-some times – visits – many more days in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim that he has visited Afghanistan and Iraq “30-some times” is false – the latest in a long-running series of exaggerations about his visits to the two countries. His presidential campaign said in 2019 that he made 21 visits to these countries, but he has since continued to put the figure in the 30s. And he has not visited either country “as president.”

    At another campaign fundraiser in California on Monday, Biden reprised a familiar claim about his travels with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who is, like him, a former vice president.

    “It wasn’t appropriate for Barack to be able to spend a lot of time getting to know him, so it was an assignment I was given. And I traveled 17,000 miles with him, usually one on one,” Biden said.

    Facts First: Biden’s “17,000 miles” claim remains false. Biden has not traveled anywhere close to 17,000 miles with Xi, though they have indeed spent lots of time together. This is one of Biden’s most common false claims as president, a figure he has repeated over and over in speeches despite numerous fact checks.

    Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noted in 2021 that Biden and Xi often did not even travel parallel routes to their gatherings, let alone physically travel together. The only apparent way to get Biden’s mileage past 17,000, Kessler found, is to add the length of Biden’s flight journeys between Washington and Beijing, during which Xi was not with him.

    A White House official told CNN in early 2021 that Biden was adding up his “total travel back and forth” for meetings with Xi. But that is very different than traveling “with him” as Biden keeps saying, especially in the context of his boasts about how well he knows Xi. Biden has had more than enough time to make his language more precise.

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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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  • Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe testifies to grand jury in January 6 probe | CNN Politics

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe testifies to grand jury in January 6 probe | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe testified before a federal grand jury Thursday in Washington, DC, as part of the special counsel’s criminal probe into the aftermath of the 2020 election.

    Former President Donald Trump had sought to block testimony from Ratcliffe and other top officials from his administration, but courts have rejected his executive privilege claims.

    The investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith has focused on January 6, 2021, and other efforts to overturn the presidential election.

    Ratcliffe is likely of interest to investigators because he personally told Trump and his allies that there was no evidence of foreign election interference or widespread fraud.

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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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  • E. Jean Carroll battery and defamation trial against Donald Trump begins: What to know | CNN Politics

    E. Jean Carroll battery and defamation trial against Donald Trump begins: What to know | CNN Politics

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The civil battery and defamation trial for columnist E. Jean Carroll against former President Donald Trump is set to begin Tuesday.

    Carroll alleges Trump forcibly raped and groped her in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the mid 1990’s. Trump denies the charges and has said Carroll is “not my type.”

    Unlike his dramatic courtroom appearance in New York state court earlier this month, Trump is unlikely to appear in the Manhattan federal courtroom, his lawyers have said, unless he is called to testify in Carroll’s case or opts to take the stand in his own defense. Because it is a civil case, he is not required to appear.

    Jury selection begins Tuesday and the trial is expected to last up to two weeks.

    Trump is not being criminally prosecuted on Carroll’s rape allegations. Carroll did not specify an amount in her civil lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court but is seeking monetary damages and a retraction of an October 2022 social media statement Trump made about Carroll.

    Here’s what to know:

    Nearly four years after Carroll first went public with the allegations in 2019, a jury is expected to be empaneled. Federal District Judge Lewis Kaplan is expected to winnow down a pool of about 100 prospective jurors.

    The attorneys have asked the judge to quiz the jury pool on issues like their potential biases and their knowledge of Carroll, Trump and the pending legal matters Trump is facing in unrelated cases like his recent indictment in New York County criminal court.

    The jury will remain anonymous to the public and the attorneys, the judge ruled. The decision was in part influenced by Trump’s threats to the state Supreme Court judge overseeing his criminal case in New York.

    Attorneys for Carroll and Trump could give opening statements late in the day Tuesday.

    Carroll filed the suit last November under New York’s 2022 Adult Survivors Act that opened a look-back window for sexual assault allegations like Carroll’s with long-expired statutes of limitations.

    The former Elle columnist first came forward with her story in June of 2019 publishing an excerpt from her book “What Do We Need Men For” in New York Magazine ahead of the book release.

    “And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

    “In the meantime, and for the record, E. Jean Carroll is not telling the truth, is a woman who I had nothing to do with, didn’t know, and would have no interest in knowing her if I ever had the chance. Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phony attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”

    The lawsuit argues the denial of Carroll’s allegations is defamatory and caused her emotional, reputational and professional harm.

    Trump’s lawyer corrects him after error during deposition

    Carroll’s account of the alleged rape after encountering Trump at Bergdorf Goodman in the fall of 1995 or spring of 1996 is detailed in the lawsuit.

    She recalled telling Trump she was 52 at time. Both are now in their 70’s.

    She helped Trump shop for “a girl” when he recognized her leaving the store, Carroll says.

    “Hey, you’re that advice lady!” he said to her, according to the lawsuit. “Hey, you’re that real estate tycoon!” she replied.

    Trump steered what started out as light-hearted shopping to the lingerie department where he suggested Carroll try on a bodysuit, the suit alleges. Carroll says Trump then guided her toward a dressing room, where she jokingly suggested he try on the lingerie.

    Once in the dressing room Trump “lunged at Carroll, pushing her against the wall, bumping her head quite badly, and putting his mouth on her lips,” according to the lawsuit. With Carroll fighting back, Trump pushed her against the wall again, “jammed his hand under her coatdress and pulled down her tights,” the lawsuit says.

    “Trump opened his overcoat and unzipped his pants. Trump then pushed his fingers around Carroll’s genitals and forced his penis inside of her,” the suit alleges.

    Carroll eventually pushed him off with her knee and ran out of the dressing room to exit the store, according to the lawsuit.

    The former president categorically denies that the interaction and assault ever happened.

    After Carroll went public, Trump said he “never met this person.”

    Trump’s counsel has made several legal attempts to dismiss the litigation with Carroll and once tried to countersue her, alleging Carroll violated New York’s anti-SLAPP law prohibiting frivolous defamation lawsuits – a claim rejected by Judge Kaplan.

    Carroll first sued Trump for defamation in 2019 for statements he made denying the allegations at the time. That case has been paused pending further litigation about how to handle the case because Trump was president when he made the statements at issue in the lawsuit.

    Attorneys for the career advice columnist have indicated that Carroll will likely take the stand to tell her account to the jury.

    Trump, however, is unlikely to appear in the Manhattan federal courtroom, his lawyers have said, unless he is called to testify in Carroll’s case or opts to take the stand in his own defense.

    Trump’s attorney told the court that Trump wanted to attend the trial but claimed it would be a burden on the city and court staff to accommodate him given the security protection he receives.

    Judge Kaplan has not decided whether he’ll instruct the jury about Trump’s absence from the defense table.

    Jurors are expected to see at least some parts of Trump’s video deposition taken last October for this case. Excerpts of the deposition were previously unsealed in court filings ahead of the trial.

    Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, a civil attorney who’s represented women in high-profile sexual assault litigation like victims of Jeffrey Epstein, indicated that her team can put on Carroll’s case without Trump making an appearance. (Carroll’s attorney and the judge are not related.)

    Two longtime friends of Carroll, who’ve confirmed that she confided in them soon after the alleged incident more than two decades ago, can testify to corroborate Carroll’s story, Judge Kaplan ruled over objections from Trump’s legal team.

    Carroll has said when she confided in journalist Lisa Birnbach, her friend told her she’d been raped and should report the incident to the police at the time.

    When she told former local TV anchor Carol Martin a day or so later, Martin warned Carroll that she was no match for Trump’s army of lawyers and said it was best to keep it to herself – which is ultimately what Carroll did until 2019, she says.

    Two other women who allege Trump physically forced himself on them can also testify about their allegations, the judge ruled.

    Jessica Leeds has alleged that Trump, seated next to her on a plane, groped her on a flight from Texas to New York in 1979. Leeds, who first came forward during the 2016 presidential election, said in a deposition for this case that Trump acknowledged remembering her from the plane when she saw him at an event sometime after the alleged incident.

    People Magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff similarly alleges that Trump groped her and tried to forcibly kiss her in 2005 when Stoynoff was at Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump and a then-pregnant Melania Trump on their first wedding anniversary.

    Trump denies both incidents ever happened.

    Attorneys for Carroll are expected to show the jury a black and white photo of Trump where he is interacting with several people, including with his then-wife Ivana, Carroll and her then-husband.

    A transcript of his October 2022 deposition revealed that Trump mistook Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples when he reviewed the photo during the deposition.

    “I don’t know who – it’s Marla,” Trump said when shown the photo. “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” he says when asked to clarify.

    e. jean carroll new day 071619

    E. Jean Carroll: ‘I’m not sorry’ (2019)

    Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, then interjected and said “no, that’s Carroll,” according to the transcript.

    Carroll’s lawyers have said the photo proves Trump had in fact met Carroll and she could be his “type.”

    Trump’s comments on the 2016 campaign trail denying allegations from Leeds and Stoynoff can also be admitted as evidence, the judge ruled.

    Like Carroll, Trump has asserted that the allegations are false and implausible in part because the women aren’t attractive or his ‘type.’

    Jurors may also hear the controversial “Access Hollywood” tape on which Trump can be heard telling show host Billy Bush how he would use his stardom to aggressively come on to women.

    Trump has chalked up his graphic language on the tape, which first surfaced during his 2016 Presidential election campaign, as “locker room talk” that wasn’t actually true.

    Judge Kaplan ruled that a jury could reasonably find that Trump admitted in the Access Hollywood Tape “that he in fact has had contact with women’s genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so,” and the jury may view accounts from Leeds and Stoynoff as support for that argument.

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  • Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

    Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The governor of Oklahoma is calling on four McCurtain County officials to resign after they allegedly participated in a secretly recorded conversation that included racist remarks about lynching Black people and talking about killing journalists.

    The McCurtain Gazette-News over the weekend published the audio it said was recorded following a Board of Commissioners meeting on March 6.

    The paper said the audio of the meeting was legally obtained, but the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it was illegally recorded and is investigating. The sheriff’s office also said it believes the recording had been altered.

    “I am both appalled and disheartened to hear of the horrid comments made by officials in McCurtain County,” Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement Sunday. “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office. I will not stand idly by while this takes place,” the statement said.

    The governor called for the immediate resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning and jail administrator Larry Hendrix. He also said he would ask the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into the case.

    McCurtain County is in southeastern Oklahoma, about 200 miles from Oklahoma City.

    The recording was made hours after Gazette-News reporter Chris Willingham filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners, alleging they had defamed him and violated his civil rights, the newspaper reported.

    In the recording, Manning spoke of needing to go near the newspaper’s office and expressed concern about what would happen if she ran into Willingham, the Oklahoman reported, citing additional reporting from the Gazette-News.

    According to the Oklahoman report, Jennings said, “Oh, you’re talking about you can’t control yourself?” and Manning replied: “Yeah, I ain’t worried about what he’s gonna do to me. I’m worried about what I might do to him. My papaw would have whipped his a**, would have wiped him and used him for toilet paper … if my daddy hadn’t been run over by a vehicle, he would have been down there.”

    Jennings replied that his father was once upset by something the newspaper published and “started to go down there and just kill him,” according to the Gazette-News.

    “I know where two big, deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings allegedly said. Clardy, the sheriff, allegedly said he had the equipment.

    “I’ve got an excavator,” Clardy is accused of saying during the discussion. “Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings allegedly said.

    In other parts of the recording, officials expressed disappointment that Black people could no longer be lynched, according to the paper.

    CNN has not been able to verify the authenticity of the recording or confirm who said what. CNN has reached out to all four county officials for comment.

    The Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association voted Tuesday to suspend the membership of Clardy, Manning and Hendrix, the group’s executive director told CNN.

    Willingham and his father, Bruce Willingham, the paper’s publisher, have been advised to temporarily leave town, CNN affiliate KJRH reported.

    “For nearly a year, they have suffered intimidation, ridicule and harassment based solely on their efforts to report the news for McCurtain County,” Kilpatrick Townsend, the law firm representing the Willingham family, told CNN in a statement.

    The McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that there is an “ongoing investigation into multiple significant violations” of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act, which makes it “illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties.” It also said the recording has yet to be “duly authenticated or validated.”

    “Our preliminary information indicates that the media released audio recording has, in fact, been altered. The motivation for doing so remains unclear at this point. That matter is actively being investigated,” the statement said.

    The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has received an audio recording and is investigating, Communications Director Phil Bacharach said.

    The FBI wouldn’t confirm or deny whether it was involved in the investigation, with spokesperson Kayla McCleery saying it is agency policy not to comment.

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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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  • North Dakota governor signs law banning nearly all abortions in the state | CNN Politics

    North Dakota governor signs law banning nearly all abortions in the state | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Republican Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota signed a near-total abortion ban bill into law Monday.

    Senate Bill 2150, which passed in the state’s legislature last week, defines abortion as “the act of using, selling, or prescribing any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to terminate the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman.”

    The law is one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the US and only allows exceptions for rape or incest within the first six weeks of pregnancy.

    Exceptions are permitted in the case that the procedure is “deemed necessary based on reasonable medical judgment which was intended to prevent the death or a serious health risk to the pregnant female.”

    Efforts to treat an ectopic or molar pregnancy would also be permissible at any stage of pregnancy under the law.

    Abortion rights activists have furiously objected to similar bans, saying most women do not know they are pregnant at six weeks.

    The bill joins other GOP-led legislation aimed at restricting abortion access that has become law in a post-Roe v. Wade world. Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio and Texas have also passed six-week abortion bans, sparking legal challenges.

    North Dakota’s new law follows a legal battle over a 2007 trigger law that was blocked by a district judge last year.

    The state’s Supreme Court upheld that ruling in March.

    The trigger abortion ban was set to take effect last August and would have made it a felony to perform an abortion in the state but it did allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

    With the trigger ban on pause, North Dakota law had allowed abortion up until 20 weeks or more post-fertilization.

    In a statement to CNN, Burgum said SB 2150 “clarifies and refines existing state law which was triggered into effect by the Dobbs decision and reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state.”

    Physicians who violate the new law could be charged with a felony. In addition, an abortion can’t be performed until a woman is offered the opportunity to see an “active ultrasound” at least 24 hours before the scheduled procedure.

    Any physician who fails to comply could face a misdemeanor charge.

    Last week, Burgum signed a bill banning gender-affirming care for most minors with the possibility of a felony for health care professionals who provide it.

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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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  • The Supreme Court just handed Joe Biden a series of setbacks. It may have also given Democrats new motivation to reelect him | CNN Politics

    The Supreme Court just handed Joe Biden a series of setbacks. It may have also given Democrats new motivation to reelect him | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden wasn’t planning to take questions on Thursday. His helicopter was waiting outside on the White House’s South Lawn.

    But after a 10-minute statement on the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, a CNN reporter called out, “Is this a rogue court?” The president stopped in his tracks.

    Pausing to think a moment, he looked over his shoulder. “This is not a normal court,” he said before leaving.

    This week’s monumental rulings – striking down affirmative action in college admissions and unraveling Biden’s student debt relief plan among them – amount to serious setbacks for a president who promised as a candidate to advance racial equity and erase student debt.

    They are also an urgent reminder to Democrats of the enduring consequences of elections at a moment Biden’s advisers are searching for ways to inject enthusiasm into his bid for another term.

    What impact that will have on the coming election remains unknown. But Biden and his team have already begun assigning blame on Republicans for dismantling programs that have benefited young, college-educated and minority voters – all critical components of the Democratic coalition Biden will need to mobilize if he hopes to win reelection.

    That three justices within the court’s conservative majority were appointed by President Donald Trump – both Biden’s predecessor and, according to polls, his most likely opponent next year – creates even more of an impetus for Biden to use the rulings as a political cudgel as his campaign heats up.

    “The excesses of the Supreme Court are going to backfire,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat. “You know, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe versus Wade reduced what was supposed to be a red wave in the 2022 election cycle to nothing more than a red trickle. So not only is the Supreme Court’s decision bad law, it’s also bad politics and it’s going to come back to haunt the Republican Party.”

    Speaking to a group of Democratic donors in New York City on Thursday evening, Biden sought to underscore the stakes of the court’s new supermajority, a preview of how he’ll frame the issue over the coming year.

    “The Supreme Court is becoming not just conservative, but almost – it’s like a throwback. It’s like a throwback, some of the decisions they’re making,” Biden told donors in a private dining room inside the Seagram Building. “Did you ever think we’d be in a position, after 50 years of acknowledging the right of privacy in the Constitution, suggesting that there’s no such thing as the right to privacy?”

    Despite his criticism of the court, Biden has rejected some liberal suggestions on reforming the panel. He opposes expanding the number of justices that sit on the court and hasn’t embraced term limits.

    “If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it, maybe forever, in a way that is not healthy,” Biden said during a friendly interview on MSNBC shortly after Thursday’s decision on affirmative action.

    Biden’s student loan plan, which came about last year after months of agonizing internal debate over its costs and eligibility criteria, was intended to free low- and middle-income Americans from crippling debt.

    Throughout the process, Biden expressed concern at being seen as offering a handout to the wealthy. Eventually, pressure to fulfill one of his top campaign promises led to the plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for certain borrowers.

    For months the White House publicly said there was no alternative plan if the Supreme Court struck down the student debt relief program. But behind the scenes, top White House officials were working for several weeks to fulfill a simple directive from the president to “be ready in the event the Supreme Court did not do the right thing,” White House officials said.

    The president’s charge to his team was described as this: “If the court ruled against the program, find other ways to deliver relief for as many working and middle-class borrowers as possible, accounting for all the legal issues.”

    For the past few weeks, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients gathered his team for weekly meetings to map out all scenarios for the Supreme Court’s ruling and explore all legal avenues available to them after the president told his team to build a “fully developed response” to all possible rulings, officials said.

    Zient’s office – led by deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian, the Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council and White House Counsel’s Office – worked with the Department of Education and the Department of Justice to come up with options the administration could take if the ruling was not in their favor.

    “All of these meetings were structured around one question – how would we be able to deliver relief to as many borrowers as we could, as quickly as possible under any possible outcome of the Supreme Court,” official said.

    The White House also stayed in touch with and fielded suggestions for next steps from debt relief advocate groups and congressional allies throughout the process. Lawyers from the White House, Justice Department and Education Department examined all of the recommendations, including administration action and the legal authorities available to the administration, and ultimately crafted responses for multiple scenarios.

    Inside the White House, some officials had held out hope the court would uphold Biden’s student debt program, pointing to some surprising decisions over the past weeks that saw some conservative justices joining liberals on issues of voting rights and congressional redistricting.

    But even Biden acknowledged after the court’s oral arguments in February he wasn’t certain the ruling would go his way.

    “I’m confident we’re on the right side of the law,” Biden told CNN in March when asked if he was confident the administration would prevail in the case. “I’m not confident of the outcome of the decision yet.”

    His instinct was correct. The president was in the Oval Office on Friday morning when he was informed of the Supreme Court’s decision by his senior aides and then engaged in meetings stretching into the afternoon to fine-tune their response after the ruling was not in their favor.

    Ultimately, the president directed his team to move forward with a new plan, which includes pursuing a new path for debt relief through the authorities in the Higher Education Act of 1965, which was promoted by some debt relief advocate groups and progressive lawmakers, as well as creating a temporary 12-month “on-ramp repayment” program for federal student loan borrowers when payments resume in October.

    A day earlier, Biden was watching the news on television when the affirmative action decision was handed down by the court, according to an official. A team from the White House counsel’s office came to brief him on the ruling.

    “In our conversations with the White House about why student debt cancelation was needed, it’s about reducing the racial wealth gap,” said Wisdom Cole, national director of the Youth & College division at the NAACP. “If the administration is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, they must use every tool in their toolkit. Every legal authority to ensure that we see relief happen.”

    Demonstrating urgency in responding to the court’s actions was a key objective as the White House prepared for both rulings, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Looming over the preparations was the impression left after last year’s Supreme Court term that the Biden administration was unprepared for the decision striking down the nationwide right to abortion, despite a leaked court opinion months ahead of time indicating the justices were prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade.

    The White House has strongly denied it was caught flat-footed on abortion and has pointed to actions taken in the months after the decision to expand access, including to medication abortion.

    The issue proved galvanizing to Democratic voters in November’s midterm elections and has propelled Democratic victories even in traditionally Republican districts.

    Whether the court’s ruling on student debt relief and affirmative action can have a similar effect will prove critical over the coming year, as Biden works to convince voters he is still fighting to fulfill his promises. Initial reaction from progressive Democrats was positive.

    “It was not a foregone conclusion that the President would act so swiftly today. But he announced an alternative path to student debt cancellation by using his Higher Education Act authority given by Congress – and that deserves praise,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute.

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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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  • Accused January 6 rioter fired shots at police during standoff ahead of arrest, court documents say | CNN Politics

    Accused January 6 rioter fired shots at police during standoff ahead of arrest, court documents say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Texas man facing charges in connection to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol opened fire on law enforcement officers last week when they arrived at his house in the Dallas area for a welfare check, according to an affidavit.

    Nathan Donald Pelham, who is charged with misdemeanors for entering the restricted Capitol building and disorderly conduct, now faces a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm after opening fire on authorities from Hunt County Sheriff’s Office, according to court documents.

    Politico first reported the standoff with Pelham. CNN has reached out to Pelham’s attorney for comment.

    Pelham’s father called law enforcement on April 12, warning that his son had a gun and was threatening suicide, the affidavit said. That same day, an FBI agent had called Pelham to notify him of a warrant for his arrest related to charges from the insurrection and Pelham had agreed to turn himself in the following week.

    After arriving at Pelham’s home and speaking to a neighbor, officers saw a young girl, Pelham’s daughter, walk out of the house and she was put in a patrol car for safety, according to the affidavit.

    Then authorities from the sheriff’s department heard gunshots coming from inside the house, the affidavit said.

    “Deputy J.W. reported that the gunshots were spread out in time and that they were not towards the HCSO personnel,” the agent wrote. “At approximately 9:38 p.m., Pelham’s father arrived on scene. Deputy J.W. heard another gunshot and reported that ‘the bullet from this gunshot came in so close proximity to myself that I could hear the distinct whistling sound as the bullet traveled by me and then strike a metal object to my right side.’”

    The standoff lasted until shortly after midnight when law enforcement left without arresting Pelham, according to the affidavit. Pelham was arrested on Tuesday, according to online court records.

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  • Forget about the AI apocalypse. The real dangers are already here | CNN Business

    Forget about the AI apocalypse. The real dangers are already here | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Two weeks after members of Congress questioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the potential for artificial intelligence tools to spread misinformation, disrupt elections and displace jobs, he and others in the industry went public with a much more frightening possibility: an AI apocalypse.

    Altman, whose company is behind the viral chatbot tool ChatGPT, joined Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott and dozens of other AI researchers and business leaders in signing a one-sentence letter last month stating: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

    The stark warning was widely covered in the press, with some suggesting it showed the need to take such apocalyptic scenarios more seriously. But it also highlights an important dynamic in Silicon Valley right now: Top executives at some of the biggest tech companies are simultaneously telling the public that AI has the potential to bring about human extinction while also racing to invest in and deploy this technology into products that reach billions of people.

    The dynamic has played out elsewhere recently, too. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, for example, said in a TV interview in April that AI could lead to “civilization destruction.” But he still remains deeply involved in the technology through investments across his sprawling business empire and has said he wants to create a rival to the AI offerings by Microsoft and Google.

    Some AI industry experts say that focusing attention on far-off scenarios may distract from the more immediate harms that a new generation of powerful AI tools can cause to people and communities, including spreading misinformation, perpetuating biases and enabling discrimination in various services.

    “Motives seemed to be mixed,” Gary Marcus, an AI researcher and New York University professor emeritus who testified before lawmakers alongside Altman last month, told CNN. Some of the execs are likely “genuinely worried about what they have unleashed,” he said, but others may be trying to focus attention on “abstract possibilities to detract from the more immediate possibilities.”

    Representatives for Google and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “We are optimistic about the future of AI, and we think AI advances will solve many more challenges than they present, but we have also been consistent in our belief that when you create technologies that can change the world, you must also ensure that the technology is used responsibly.”

    For Marcus, a self-described critic of AI hype, “the biggest immediate threat from AI is the threat to democracy from the wholesale production of compelling misinformation.”

    Generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E are trained on vast troves of data online to create compelling written work and images in response to user prompts. With these tools, for example, one could quickly mimic the style or likeness of public figures in an attempt to create disinformation campaigns.

    In his testimony before Congress, Altman also said the potential for AI to be used to manipulate voters and target disinformation were among “my areas of greatest concern.”

    Even in more ordinary use cases, however, there are concerns. The same tools have been called out for offering wrong answers to user prompts, outright “hallucinating” responses and potentially perpetuating racial and gender biases.

    Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University, right, listens to Sam Altman, chief executive officer and co-founder of OpenAI, speak during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, May 16, 2023. Congress is debating the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence as products like ChatGPT raise questions about the future of creative industries and the ability to tell fact from fiction.

    Emily Bender, a professor at the University of Washington and director of its Computational Linguistics Laboratory, told CNN said some companies may want to divert attention from the bias baked into their data and also from concerning claims about how their systems are trained.

    Bender cited intellectual property concerns with some of the data these systems are trained on as well as allegations of companies outsourcing the work of going through some of the worst parts of the training data to low-paid workers abroad.

    “If the public and the regulators can be focused on these imaginary science fiction scenarios, then maybe these companies can get away with the data theft and exploitative practices for longer,” Bender told CNN.

    Regulators may be the real intended audience for the tech industry’s doomsday messaging.

    As Bender puts it, execs are essentially saying: “‘This stuff is very, very dangerous, and we’re the only ones who understand how to rein it in.’”

    Judging from Altman’s appearance before Congress, this strategy might work. Altman appeared to win over Washington by echoing lawmakers’ concerns about AI — a technology that many in Congress are still trying to understand — and offering suggestions for how to address it.

    This approach to regulation would be “hugely problematic,” Bender said. It could give the industry influence over the regulators tasked with holding it accountable and also leave out the voices and input of other people and communities experiencing negative impacts of this technology.

    “If the regulators kind of orient towards the people who are building and selling the technology as the only ones who could possibly understand this, and therefore can possibly inform how regulation should work, we’re really going to miss out,” Bender said.

    Bender said she tries, at every opportunity, to tell people “these things seem much smarter than they are.” As she put it, this is because “we are as smart as we are” and the way that we make sense of language, including responses from AI, “is actually by imagining a mind behind it.”

    Ultimately, Bender put forward a simple question for the tech industry on AI: “If they honestly believe that this could be bringing about human extinction, then why not just stop?”

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  • Twitter threatens to sue hate-speech watchdog group | CNN Business

    Twitter threatens to sue hate-speech watchdog group | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk has called himself a free-speech absolutist and has praised “even my worst critics.” But now Twitter has threatened to sue a nonprofit known for sharply criticizing the platform for its handling of hate speech and misinformation.

    In a July 20 letter shared publicly Monday, Twitter threatened to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate, accusing the group of a campaign to hurt Twitter by driving away its advertisers. The CCDH has published numerous reports about various social media companies’ approach to everything from vaccine misinformation to online racism and antisemitism.

    The letter by Alex Spiro, an outside attorney representing Twitter owner Musk, alleges that CCDH has made “inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter and its operations” through its reports, which he argued lack scientific rigor.

    To back up his claim, Spiro cited one report in which CCDH staff flagged tweets from 100 Twitter Blue subscribers to the platform as being harmful and found that after several days, the company had not taken action on the vast majority of it. The resulting CCDH report said Twitter had failed to act on “99% of Twitter Blue accounts tweeting hate.”

    “This article leaves no doubt that CCDH intends to harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform with incendiary claims,” Spiro wrote to CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed, adding that Twitter is investigating whether it can sue the nonprofit for making false descriptions of the company.

    CCDH tweeted Spiro’s July 20 letter along with the organization’s reply to Twitter — which Musk has since rebranded as X — that called the legal threat “ridiculous.”

    “These allegations not only have no basis in fact (your letter states none), but they represent a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online, to conduct research and analysis regarding the drivers of such disinformation, and to publicly release the findings of that research, even when the findings may be critical of certain platforms,” wrote CCDH’s attorneys in a response dated Monday.

    Spiro didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Since taking over Twitter, Musk has slashed roughly 80% of the company’s staff, including many working on the platform’s content moderation teams.

    In December, Twitter shuttered its Trust and Safety Council comprised of outside experts on online safety, human rights, mental health, suicide prevention and child sexual exploitation.

    Reports from multiple groups, including CCDH but also the Anti-Defamation League as well as researchers from Tufts University and the University of Southern California, have pointed to observed increases in hate speech.

    Musk claimed that impressions of hate speech — which he described as based on a list of “bad words” — declined in the month following his takeover.

    But concerns about the platform’s handling of hateful content under Musk last year have persisted, prompting many brands to pause their advertising on Twitter and contributing to sharp financial losses at the company.

    Despite claiming in April that most of Twitter’s advertisers had returned, Musk acknowledged this month that Twitter’s ad revenue remains down by 50% and that the company is still cash-flow negative.

    In addition, Twitter has made changes to its platform restricting how third parties can access its data, a move that has drawn widespread criticism from academic researchers who study extremism and other online harms. The changes, which require researchers to pay hefty fees, could inhibit studies on how misinformation, harassment and spam spread on Twitter, experts have said.

    Threatening lawsuits has become a favored tactic for Musk as Twitter faces continued pressure. Earlier this month, Twitter threatened to sue Facebook-parent Meta over the launch of its competing app, Threads, accusing the company of copying Twitter’s product through trade secret theft. In May, Spiro sent a letter to Microsoft accusing it of over-using its ability to download tweets from the platform as Musk stepped up his criticism of the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant as a perceived rival in artificial intelligence technology.

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