Evelyn Reynolds

The Colorado supreme court ruling on Tuesday that bars Donald Trump from the state’s presidential ballot has kicked off a firestorm among Republicans and legal scholars, and fury from Trump himself.Though the former president did not address the decision during a rally on Tuesday night in Iowa – where he went on abusive rants against immigration – he posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday. “What a shame for our country!!!” Trump wrote. “A sad day for America!!!”Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which brought the suit in Colorado on behalf of Republican and independent voters, praised the decision. It was, he said, “not only historic and justified, but is also necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country”.“Our constitution clearly states that those who violate their oath by attacking our democracy are barred from serving in government,” he said.Republicans have largely lined up behind Trump, railing against the ruling for allegedly infringing the right of Americans to choose their leaders.Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative from New York, said in a statement: “Democrats are so afraid that President Trump will win on Nov 5th 2024 that they are illegally attempting to take him off the ballot.”The Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pledged to drop out of the Republican primary in Colorado, piling pressure on his fellow candidates to do the same or be seen as “tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences from our country”.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who is also campaigning for the Republican nomination, voiced an unusual theory that the Colorado decision was in fact a move from Democrats to incite Trump’s base and deliberately help him win the primary.“They’re doing all this stuff to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general, and the whole general election’s going to be all this legal stuff,” DeSantis said on Wednesday, according to NBC News. “It will give [Joe] Biden or the Democrat, whoever, the ability to skate through this thing.”Over the last few months, Trump has been liberally using his 91 criminal charges and assorted civil trials to further the narrative that Washington is against him, calling on his base for financial support. Trump has already seized on the Colorado ruling for fundraising purposes, posting on Truth Social, “Breaking news: Colorado just removed me from the ballot! Chip in now.”The Colorado court postponed the implementation of its ruling until 4 January, giving room for Trump to make an appeal to the US supreme court. Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said on Tuesday night that the campaign has “full confidence that the US supreme court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits”.Despite confidence from Trump’s team that the supreme court would rule in their favor, legal reactions to the Colorado ruling have so far shown just how murky the debate will be.Trump’s Truth Social feed is already reflecting this. On Tuesday night, Trump quoted Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor at George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden over nebulous claims of corruption.“This country is a powder keg and this court is just throwing matches at it … for people that say they are trying to protect democracy, this is hands down the most anti-democratic opinion I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Trump quoted Turley as saying on Fox News.But Trump truncated a portion of Turley’s interview where he said that though he believed the Colorado court was wrong, “January 6 was many things, most of it not good”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“In my view, it was not an insurrection. It was a riot,” Turley said. “That doesn’t mean that the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.”The Colorado court ruled that section 3 of the 14th amendment disqualifies Trump from office because the section – referred to as the insurrection clause – bars anyone from holding political office if they took an oath to uphold the constitution but “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. The section was included in the constitution after the civil war to prevent Confederate leaders from holding office in the government they had rebelled against.Turley’s argument is that while Trump incited a riot, it technically does not amount to the insurrection specified in the 14th amendment.“If you dislike Trump, you believe he’s responsible for January 6 … this isn’t the way to do it,” he said.This is just one of the points that will be debated if Trump’s appeal is taken up by the supreme court, which has been facing an onslaught of accusations of politics in the court. As much as the Colorado ruling puts a spotlight on Trump, it will also set up the US supreme court – which has historically tried to maintain itself as a neutral arbiter of the law – to take on yet another case entrenched in politics.Trump appointed three out of the court’s nine current justices, cementing a six-to-three conservative majority in the court that has overturned abortion and affirmative action in the last three years. The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has also been facing criticism over the last year for taking gifts and vacations from billionaires, as well as for the conservative activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas.The court is also set to rule on another Trump appeal, which will decide whether he is immune from prosecution over any charges that come from his Washington DC criminal trial over the January 6 insurrection.Regardless of whether the Colorado ruling is upheld, the debate will probably force close scrutiny of Trump’s involvement in the January 6 attack. Trump maintains that the more than 1,000 people who were arrested after the attack, including 600 who were eventually sentenced, are political prisoners. He also continues to argue that the 2020 election was stolen, a belief that incited those who carried out the January 6 attack in the first place.“Election interference!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday night. More

Ten days out from the end of the year, and who could have foreseen the latest Trump plot twist? On Wednesday morning, Americans woke to absorb the fallout from the previous day’s news that Colorado – of all places – had ruled via its supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the ballot in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. There are many sober things to say about this, but in the first instance let’s give way to an unseemly squeal. How completely thrilling!Colorado leans Democrat – both its senators are blue – but it’s a western state with large conservative enclaves that is not exactly Massachusetts or Vermont. The decision by the state’s top justices is unprecedented in US electoral history. According to their ruling, Trump is in breach of section 3 of the 14th amendment, the so-called “insurrectionist ban”, in light of his behaviour during the 6 January storming of the Capitol.“President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection,” the judges said in a statement. “Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully under way, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding that Vice-President [Mike] Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes. These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection.”Well, it could hardly be less ambiguous. The 14th amendment, adopted in the wake of the civil war to obstruct Confederate lawmakers from returning to Congress, has never been implemented in a presidential race and, of course, Trump’s lawyers immediately challenged it. The ban will swiftly go up to the US supreme court for judgment, until which time Trump’s candidacy in Colorado will remain legitimate.Given the conservative super-majority of the US’s highest court, we have to assume that Colorado’s challenge will be unsuccessful. It might also be assumed that, catching on, other states will follow Colorado’s lead and vote similarly to exclude Trump from the primaries. Apart from childish delight, what, then, might this week’s events achieve?The wider backdrop isn’t encouraging, and glancing at the polls this week is a quick way to shunt the smirk from your face. In a survey commissioned by the New York Times on Tuesday, US voters were found to be largely unhappy with President Biden’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which he scored a 57% disapproval rating. Given how divided Democrats are over fighting in the Middle East, that figure isn’t surprising. What, to use the technical term, blows your mind is that in the same poll, 46% of voters expressed the opinion that Trump would be making a better job of it than Biden, with only 38% more inclined to trust the president. Overall, Trump leads Biden by two points in the election race, a slender margin but, given the 91 felony counts currently pending against Trump, a hugely depressing one.Trump doesn’t need Colorado to win. In the 2020 election, he lost the state by 13 percentage points. And there is a good chance that, following the Alice in Wonderland logic that seems to determine Trump’s fortunes, the ruling in Colorado might actually help him. The narrative Trump has crafted for himself of being a Zorro-type outsider pursued by deep state special interests is as absurd as it is apparently compelling to large numbers of his supporters. At a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday night, Trump avoided the subject of Colorado’s decision, which came in just before he stepped out on stage. That won’t hold. By the end of the evening, an email sent out by his campaign team had already referred to the ban as a “tyrannical ruling”.And so we find ourselves in the perfect catch-22. The greater Trump’s transgressions and the more severe the censure from his detractors, the more entrenched his popularity with Republican voters appears to grow. It may not win him the presidency next November – there are too many variables around undecided voters in the middle – but it seems increasingly likely that it will ensure he beats his Republican rivals to get on the ballot.A four-count indictment for election interference, brought by special counsel Jack Smith and covering Trump’s actions in the run-up to 6 January, is set to be heard in the District of Columbia in March. Countless other civil and criminal suits work their way through the system. And now his viability as a candidate will probably go before the supreme court. It’s like a grim parlour game, with the same question going round and round: what will it take to make any of this stick?
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

In a shock decision overnight, the Colorado supreme court ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to run for the White House again in that state.
The 4-3 decision cited a rarely used provision of the US constitution, arguing that Trump should be disqualified for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. So what does it all mean? Will this historic decision actually prevent Trump from running? Or, like most hurdles the Republican frontrunner faces, will it just bolster his appeal?
Jonathan Freedland speaks to Devika Bhat about how this might play out in 2024

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

The Colorado supreme court has ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to run for the White House again, citing his role in the January 6 attack, in a 4-3 ruling that will probably have major legal and political ramifications for the 2024 election.The decision removes Trump from the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot, and stems from a rarely used provision of the US constitution known as the insurrection clause.Trump’s campaign promised to immediately appeal to the US supreme court, which could well strike it down. Similar lawsuits are working their way through the courts in other states.Here’s what we know so far, and what it might mean for the former president and current Republican frontrunner.What is the insurrection clause and why was it used?The decision by the Colorado supreme court is the first time a candidate has been deemed ineligible for the White House under the US constitutional provision.Section 3 of the 14th amendment, also referred to as the insurrection clause, bars anyone from Congress, the military, and federal and state offices who once took an oath to uphold the constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it.Ratified in 1868, the 14th amendment helped ensure civil rights for formerly enslaved people, but also was intended to prevent former Confederate officials from regaining power as members of Congress and taking over the government they had just rebelled against.Some legal scholars say the post-civil war clause applies to Trump because of his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and obstruct the transfer of power to Joe Biden by encouraging his supporters to storm the US Capitol.“The dangers of Trump ever being allowed back into public office are exactly those foreseen by the framers of section 3,” Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, told the Guardian in a recent interview. “Which is that they knew that if an oath-taking insurrectionist were allowed back into power they would do the same if not worse.”How did this happen?The case was brought by a group of Colorado voters, aided by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), who argued Trump should be disqualified from the ballot for his role in the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol.Noah Bookbinder, the group’s president, celebrated the decision as “not only historic and justified, but … necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country”.Colorado’s highest court overturned an earlier ruling from a district court judge, who found Trump’s actions on January 6 did amount to inciting an insurrection, but said he could not be barred from the ballot, because it was unclear that the clause was intended to cover the role of the presidency.A majority of the state supreme court’s seven justices, all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors, disagreed.Has this happened before?The provision has rarely been used, and never in such a high-profile case. In 1919, Congress refused to seat a socialist, contending he gave aid and comfort to the country’s enemies during the first world war.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast year, in the clause’s first use since then, a New Mexico judge barred a rural county commissioner who had entered the Capitol on January 6 from office.What does this mean for the election?The Colorado ruling applies only to the state’s Republican primary, which will take place on 5 March, meaning Trump might not appear on the ballot for that vote.It temporarily stayed its ruling until 4 January, however, which would allow the US supreme court until then to decide whether to take the case. That’s the day before the qualifying deadline for candidates.Colorado is no longer a swing state – Biden won it by a double-digit margin in 2020, and the last time a Republican won it was 2004 – but the ruling could influence other cases across the US, where dozens of similar cases are percolating. Other state courts have ruled against the plaintiffs; in Michigan, a judge ruled that Congress, not the courts, should make the call.Advocates hoped the case would boost a wider disqualification effort and potentially put the issue before the US supreme court. It’s unclear whether the court might rule on narrow procedural and technical grounds, or answer the underlying constitutional question of whether Trump can be banished from the ballot under the 14th amendment.The case could have significant political fallout as well. Trump allies will paint it as an anti-democratic effort to thwart the will of the American people, lumping it in with the numerous legal cases he faces in state and federal court.“Democrats are so afraid that President Trump will win on Nov 5th 2024 that they are illegally attempting to take him off the ballot,” the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a close Trump ally, posted on social media.Trump didn’t mention the decision during a rally on Tuesday evening in Iowa but his campaign sent out a fundraising email calling it a “tyrannical ruling” and a statement saying:“Democrat Party leaders are in a state of paranoia over the growing, dominant lead President Trump has amassed in the polls. They have lost faith in the failed Biden presidency and are now doing everything they can to stop the American voters from throwing them out of office next November.”Trump’s attorneys, meanwhile, have argued that the 14th amendment’s language does not apply to the presidency. A lawyer for Trump has also argued that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was not serious enough to qualify for insurrection, and that any remarks that Trump made to his supporters that day in Washington were protected under free speech. More

Days before Josh Cole won his toss-up race, the Democratic candidate for Virginia’s house of delegates predicted that his party would perform well on election day, largely because the issue of abortion had motivated many voters to turn out at the polls.“There are people who are absolutely passionate about reproductive freedom and making sure that an abortion ban doesn’t come to Virginia,” Cole said.Four days later, Cole was proven right, defeating the Republican candidate Lee Peters to represent house district 65 in Richmond, the capital of Virginia. Cole’s victory reflected Virginia Democrats’ broader success on election day, as the party flipped control of the house of delegates and maintained their majority in the state senate.Democrats’ wins in Virginia may now offer some helpful lessons for the party heading into a crucial presidential election. A year and a half after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion continues to weigh heavily on voters’ minds, helping to lift Democrats’ prospects at the polls. Even as Biden remains unpopular and voters express pessimism about the state of the economy, Republicans have struggled to translate that dissatisfaction into electoral success.House district 65 in particular represents a fascinating example of how Republicans failed to win the support of swing voters who helped elect Glenn Youngkin, the Virginia governor, two years earlier. The district, which was newly redrawn following the 2020 census, lies roughly halfway between Washington and Richmond and encompasses the small city of Fredericksburg, as well as parts of Stafford and Spotsylvania counties.The battleground district supported Biden by 11.7 points in 2020, according to the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Just one year later, the district went for Youngkin by 2.8 points. Both parties had targeted the seat, with Youngkin himself appearing alongside Peters at a get out the vote rally in Fredericksburg the day before polls closed.Republicans had hoped Peters’ biography as a sheriff’s captain and a former marine would help him defeat Cole, a local pastor and former delegate who narrowly lost his re-election race in 2021. But Cole ultimately won the seat by 6 points.“This was in no way a predetermined result. It’s not a solid blue district at all. It was a winnable one [for Republicans],” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “And probably among the house of delegates districts, it best represents what went wrong for the Republicans when it should have been a better year for them in the legislative races.”Democrats credit their success in the district and elsewhere to one issue: abortion. Democrats consistently reminded voters of Virginia’s status as the last remaining state in the US south without severe restrictions on the procedure, warning that Republicans would enact an abortion ban if they took full control of the legislature.Those warnings appeared to resonate with Virginians; according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted in October, 60% of voters in the state said abortion was a “very important” factor in their election decisions. More than half of Virginia voters, 51%, said they trusted Democrats more when it came to handling abortion policies, while 34% said the same of Republicans.In this year’s race, Cole kept relentless attention on the issue, citing his support for abortion rights in nearly all of his ads and mailers while attacking Peters over his “anti-choice extremism”.“It was very interesting because it seemed as if people were showing up on one issue,” Cole said after election day. “Of course, we did talk about kitchen-table issues when we’re on the doors and different things like that, but our message was simple. We need to trust women and we need to protect a woman’s right to choose and we need to make sure that the government doesn’t interfere with that.”Virginia Republicans were clearly aware that their stance on abortion could become a liability in the legislative races, particularly after the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms. To address voters’ potential concerns over abortion, Youngkin chose to deploy a new and untested messaging tactic. He proposed a “reasonable 15-week limit” on the procedure, rejecting the label of an abortion “ban” and instead accusing Democrats of being out of step with voters on the issue.“Most people believe that abortion at the moment of birth is wrong, far beyond any reasonable limit. Not Virginia Democrats,” the narrator said in one Republican ad. “They fought to make late-term abortions the rule, not the exception.”Republicans also attempted to downplay the significance of abortion in the legislative races, insisting Virginia voters were more focused on other issues. Peters himself made this argument at a September debate, saying, “Everybody is not concerned or worried about women’s rights, even though there are many, many women who are. Some people worry about public safety. Some people worry about their schools.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut in the end, Virginia Republicans’ efforts to redefine and minimize the abortion debate were unsuccessful. Democrats maintained a majority of 21-19 in the Virginia senate while flipping control of the house of delegates with a majority of 51-49.“They tested some new messages around this issue – with the intention of getting to the same result, which was an abortion ban. And voters just outright rejected them,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “Republicans are still scratching their head on how to talk about an issue that voters don’t want.”Even fellow Republicans have acknowledged that abortion has become a persistent problem for the party’s electoral prospects. Bill Bolling, a Republican and the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, attributed the party’s losses to three factors: abortion, Donald Trump and a lack of a clear policy vision.“It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to quickly analyze why Republicans did not perform better at the polls,” Bolling wrote last month. “Democrats successfully argued that Republicans wanted to ‘ban abortion’ in Virginia. While this argument was certainly not truthful, it was effective, especially with suburban women who have grown increasingly Democratic in their voting patterns in recent years.”In Cole’s view, his message to voters spread beyond abortion access to encompass other rights, allowing his campaign to embrace a central theme of safeguarding fundamental freedoms.“This election was about protecting rights, whether it’s the right to education, women’s rights, the right to live safely in the streets, or whatever have you. This race was about rights,” Cole said. “[Voters] understood that we definitely have to have people fighting for us on every level, who are looking out for us and our rights.”That theme was similarly present in the messaging of other Democratic candidates in Virginia, Williams said. She suggested that their success could offer a framework for candidates running next year, when Democrats will be fighting to hold the White House and the Senate and flip control of the House of Representatives.“The way that that [message] shows up in an individual community or state may look different. One community may gravitate much more towards having good safe schools and a planet to live on,” Williams said. “But that arc is still true – that fundamental freedoms matter and voters want to see their freedoms protected and not rolled back.”For Republicans, the results in Virginia present the latest in a series of warning signs about how the party is suffering because of its stance on abortion. Youngkin’s failure to take control of the legislature may signal that Republicans must find a way to shift the conversation away from abortion, although that strategy risks angering their rightwing base.“It seems to me that Republicans have just constantly squandered whatever advantage that they have by focusing on divisive social issues where the voters are not aligning with their position,” Rozell said. “So they need to find a way out of that trap that they’ve made for themselves. Otherwise, they’re going to keep losing winnable districts.” More

Legislators are fleeing Washington, DC and heading home for the holidays. They leave behind a dysfunctional Congress with a rookie Speaker, brutal wars ongoing overseas, and a country with 11 million children living in poverty.Yes, after a brief reprieve, child poverty is once again on the rise in the United States. But Congress can put a stop to that. As members of both houses, and both parties, work together on an end-of-year tax deal, they can re-implement a simple, wildly popular measure that has already proven to dramatically reduce child poverty: the expanded Child Tax Credit.As Nelson Mandela said, “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings.” Child poverty is not an individual choice, it is a collective choice—and just as we choose to perpetuate it, we can choose to abolish it. After all, just a few years ago, Congress chose to do something about it, and it’s time to make that choice again—this time for good.In 2021, the American Rescue Plan significantly expanded the child tax credit, increasing payments by up to $1,600, paying out the credit monthly, and expanding eligibility to include more families in need.The result was nothing short of miraculous. The expanded credit lifted 2.9 million children out of poverty, provided a crucial lifeline to families during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, and brought the US child poverty rate to the lowest level ever recorded.It was one of the most successful policy decisions our government has made in decades.Enter Joe Manchin.Last December, the West Virginia senator, houseboat enthusiast, and Maserati collector reportedly refused to extend the credit because—per private comments—he believed low-income parents would spend it on drugs instead of feeding their children. This was despite a survey by the Census Bureau released just months earlier that proved over 90% of families were spending the money on food, shelter, and school supplies for their kids. And it was despite acute poverty in his home state, where the tax credit helped more than 300,000 children in 2021.But Manchin refused to extend the expansion, and Senate Republicans did nothing to help. It lapsed at the end of 2021, leading to an immediate, massive increase in child poverty in 2022, doubling from 5.2% to 12.4%.Now 11 million children live in poverty, and 19 million receive less than the full tax credit because their parents don’t make enough money. Senator Manchin has seemingly yet to be visited by three spirits to persuade him that this is unacceptable. But after two years of sustained pressure by activists and advocates, there are finally signs that this profoundly impactful benefit could be restored.A bipartisan coalition is growing on Capitol Hill to bring back the expanded credit in some form, with a tax deal that could be reached as soon as January. It would cost an estimated $50 billion over two years—the price of less than four aircraft carriers.If they succeed, it would represent an unambiguous win for all parties. 75% of voters are in favor of restoring the credit—including 64% of Republicans. Even the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition have called for the credit to be expanded, in a letter signed by evangelical right-wing heavyweights like Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum.Of course, there is posturing at play—the letter emphasizes low marriage rates and “strengthening the overall family unit”—but if indulging a bit of regressive nostalgia is what it takes to lift kids out of poverty, it’s a small price to pay.Meanwhile, across the country—and beyond the child tax credit—there are proposals that reflect a growing consensus that ending poverty is within our power. Last year, I wrote about the End Poverty in California movement—originated by Upton Sinclair in the 1930s, now revitalized by former Stockton, California mayor Michael Tubbs. Since its inception as a nonprofit last February, EPIC has embarked on a statewide listening tour and helped secure $100m in funding in the California state budget for tens of thousands of lower-income California children.Other anti-poverty programs gaining steam include baby bonds, which would provide every American child with start-up money and level the economic playing field from birth. This would reduce the racial wealth gap from 91% to 25%—and a majority of voters support the idea. Baby bond legislation has been passed in California, Connecticut, and Washington, DC and introduced in eight other states this year. A national version has been introduced by Cory Booker and Ayanna Pressley.Anti-poverty activism is nothing new. The Poor People’s Campaign was launched by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 and is continued today by Bishop William Barber and Reverend Liz Theoharis. This year, Barber called poverty a “death sentence” and said, “There’s not a scarcity of resources, but a scarcity of political will” to end poverty.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and serves on the Council on Foreign Relations More

Joe Biden hailed Sandra Day O’Connor as an “American pioneer” who embodied principle over politics in his eulogy at the Washington funeral of the US supreme court’s first female justice.The president praised O’Connor for breaking down barriers in the legal and political worlds, transcending political divisions and weighing ordinary people in her decision-making in pointed remarks that contrasted sharply with his words about the current supreme court.“She was especially conscious of the law’s real impact on people’s lives,” he said. “One need not agree with all her decisions in order to recognize that her principles were deeply held and of the highest order and that her desire for civility was genuine.“O’Connor knew that “no person is an island” and that Americans – “rugged individualists, adventurers and entrepreneurs” – were inextricably linked, he said at the service in Washington National Cathedral.“And for America to thrive, Americans must see themselves not as enemies, but as partners in the great work of deciding our collective destiny,” Biden said.Tributes to O’Connor, who died on 1 December aged 93, were also delivered by chief justice John Roberts and O’Connor’s son Jay O’Connor.Sandra Day O’Connor died in Phoenix, Arizona, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.A centrist on the court who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, O’Connor served until her retirement in 2006.She created a critical alliance in 1992 to affirm the central holding in Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide. She also was a crucial vote in 2003 to uphold campus affirmative action policies that were used to increase the number of underrepresented minority students at American colleges.The supreme court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, overturned the Roe ruling in 2022 and in June struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education, effectively prohibiting affirmative action.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden has said the current supreme court has done more to “unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history” but has rejected calls to expand it.Chief justice Roberts called her a “strong, influential and iconic jurist”.Jay O’Connor spoke of his mother as an indefatigable woman with “unearthly energy” who kept working long after she hung up her judicial robes.“We thank you, we love you, we will never, ever forget you.” More

As a group of Texas and Hispanic Democrats demanded the US attorney general block what they called “the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States”, signed by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on Monday, the president of Mexico and the American Civil Liberties Union also vowed to fight the law.“Texas, we’ll see you in court,” the ACLU said.In a court filing in Austin, Texas, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU – El Paso county, Texas, and two immigrant rights groups, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and American Gateways – sued Steven McCraw, director of the state department of public safety, and Bill Hicks, district attorney for the 34th district.On social media, the ACLU said it aimed “to block Texas from enforcing the most extreme anti-immigrant law in the nation”, which it also said was unconstitutional.The law will allow Texas law enforcement agencies to arrest migrants deemed to have entered the US illegally and empower judges to order deportations. It is set to go into effect next year.On Monday, congressional Democrats led by Joaquin Castro, from San Antonio, and including 11 other Texas representatives, Nanette Diaz Barragán of California (chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus) and eight other Hispanic representatives, published a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland.“This legislation authorises state law enforcement officers to arrest and detain people and state judges to order mass deportations,” the letter read.“This bill is set to be the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States,” the letter said. “It is clearly pre-empted by federal law and when it goes into effect will likely result in racial profiling, significant due process violations, and unlawful arrests of citizens, lawful permanent residents, and others.”The next day, the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel López Obrador, said his government was preparing to challenge the law, which he called “inhumane”.“The foreign ministry is already working on the process to challenge this law,” he said, adding that Abbott “wants to win popularity with these measures, but he’s not going to win anything, but he’ll lose favor, because in Texas there are so many Mexicans and migrants”.On social media, Castro linked passage of the law to extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric deployed on the campaign trail by Donald Trump, the 91-times criminally charged former president who dominates Republican primary polling.Castro said: “Forty-eight hours after Trump accused immigrants of ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, Governor Abbott is signing a dangerous new law targeting immigrants and everyone who looks like them.”Trump made the comments at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, then complained of an “invasion” in Nevada on Sunday. Observers, opponents and historians were quick to point out the authoritarian roots of such rhetoric, which Trump has used before. Many made direct comparisons to Adolf Hitler, who used similar language about Jews in his autobiography and manifesto, Mein Kampf.On Monday night, a New York Republican congresswoman, Nicole Malliotakis, attempted to defend Trump on television.“When he said ‘they are poisoning’, I think he was talking about the Democratic policies,” Malliotakis claimed. “I think he was talking about the open border policy.“You know what’s actually poisoning America is the amount of fentanyl that’s coming over the open border. And so this is a serious issue, and I think that’s what he’s talking about.”Her host, Abby Phillip of CNN, said Trump “was saying that the immigrants who are coming in … they’re poisoning the blood of the nation”.Malliotakis insisted: “He never said ‘immigrants are poisoning,’ though … He didn’t say the word ‘immigrants’.”In Congress, immigration has once again become a political football, Senate Republicans holding up aid to Ukraine in search of concessions from Democrats.Abbott is among Republican governors who have forcibly transferred migrants to Democratic-run states. In Brownsville, Texas, on Monday, he signed the new bill and said: “[Joe] Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself.”In their letter to Garland, the Democrats led by Castro urged the attorney general to “assert your authority over federal immigration and foreign policy and pursue legal action, as appropriate, to stop this unconstitutional and dangerous legislation from going into effect”. More