US Politics

In August 2015, at Trump Tower in New York, Donald Trump met with Michael Cohen, then his lawyer and fixer, and David Pecker, then chief executive of American Media, owner of the National Enquirer. According to the indictment of the former president unsealed in New York this week, Pecker agreed to help with Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination, “looking out for negative stories” about Trump and then alerting Cohen.It was a “catch and kill” deal, a common tabloid practice in which Pecker would buy potentially damaging stories but not put them in print.Pecker “also agreed to publish negative stories” about Trump’s competitors. The media this week seized on that passage in the indictment, noting how the Enquirer baselessly linked the father of Ted Cruz, the Texas senator and Trump’s closest rival for the nomination, to Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed John F Kennedy.Last year, however, a New York Times reporter got to the heart of the matter. In her book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Maggie Haberman says that around the same time as the meeting with Pecker and Cohen, Sam Nunberg, a political adviser, asked Trump for his “biggest concern” about running.“Trump had a simple reply: ‘The women.’”Trump now faces 34 counts, all felonies, of falsifying business records with intent to conceal another crime: breaches of campaign finance laws. All the charges relate to the $130,000 Cohen paid Stormy Daniels, the adult film star and director who claims an affair Trump denies, and how Cohen was repaid $420,000 including $50,000 for “another expense” Cohen has said was for rigged polls, another $180,000 to cover taxes and a $60,000 bonus.But the New York indictment is not the only form of legal jeopardy Trump now faces. As well as state and federal investigations of his election subversion, a federal investigation of his retention of classified records and a civil lawsuit over his business practices, he faces a civil defamation suit arising from an allegation of rape.Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 26 women. One of them, the writer E Jean Carroll, says Trump raped her in a department store changing room in New York in the mid-1990s.Trump denies the allegation. Carroll has sued him twice: for defamation and for defamation and battery, the latter suit under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law which gave alleged victims of crimes beyond the statute of limitations a year to bring civil claims. In the defamation case, trial has been delayed. The case under the Adult Survivors Act is due to go to trial on 25 April.To the New York writer Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast, there is a some sense of poetic justice in Trump finally facing a legal reckoning in cases arising from his treatment of women.But, Jong-Fast says: “The thing I’m sort of struck by is, like, how much women continually are dismissed, even in this situation.“There’s so much talk about the Stormy Daniels case, there was so little talk about actually what happened, right? There was almost nothing about how he was married to his third wife [Melania Trump], and she had just had a child [Barron Trump], and he had this affair. He denies the affair but the affair is pretty much documented.“That’s as close to truth in Trumpworld as possible. But we’re discussing the nuances of who paid the hush money and whether or not that’s a campaign contribution, and whether that rises to a federal crime.“That can be argued, but I was surprised at how little focus women had in it. How nobody was talking about like, this is a serial philanderer who has the kind of problems that serial philanderers have.“The filing talked about how he had paid off this doorman, about the illegitimate child. I guess that may have been not true … but like, you don’t pay off somebody unless you have a sense that this could actually be true.”As Jong-Fast indicates, the New York indictment detailed two other “catch and kill” deals which prosecutors said also showed “illegal conduct” admitted by Pecker and Cohen but directed by Trump himself.In late 2015, American Media paid $30,000 to a former Trump World Tower doorman who was trying to sell a story about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock.In September 2016, Cohen taped Trump talking about a payment to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claims an affair Trump also denies.“So what do we got to pay for this?” Trump asked. “One fifty?”American Media paid McDougal $150,000 to stay silent.After Trump won the presidency, the indictment says, American Media “released both the doorman and [McDougal] from their non-disclosure agreements”.That speaks to the central contention made by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, in his charges over the Daniels payment: that Trump concealed it because he feared it could derail his campaign.According to Bragg’s indictment, in the McDougal case Trump “was concerned about the effect it could have on his candidacy”. In the case of the doorman, Cohen instructed Pecker “not to release [him] until after the presidential election”. Regarding Daniels, Trump is said to have directed Cohen “to delay making a payment … as long as possible … [because] if they could delay payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because at that point it would not matter if the story became public”.In short, prosecutors contend that Trump did not make and conceal hush-money deals because he wanted to avoid embarrassment or hurting his wife – the argument successfully pursued by John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate who made hush-money payments in 2008 but avoided conviction four years later. The case against Trump is built on the contention he broke state and federal campaign finance laws.Observers argue over whether Bragg has built a case he can win. Some expect Trump to wriggle off the hook. Others think the first prosecutor to indict a president has a good chance of securing a conviction. In either case, the indictment has brought Trump’s treatment of women back to the national spotlight.So has Trump himself. As Jong-Fast points out, as the former president this week attacked the judge in New York, who subsequently became subject to threats to his safety, so too Trump went after the judge’s wife and daughter.“If you see interviews with Stormy Daniels, she has had terrible experiences as a result of her brush with Trump. Even the judge in that case, the judge’s daughter, Trump went after them. You go after Trump, you get it. He’s like a mob boss. That’s just how he does it.” More

Joan Biskupic is senior supreme court analyst at CNN, a Pulitzer finalist and an established biographer. In her latest book, she seeks to make sense of the court during and after the presidency of Donald J Trump, culminating last June when five conservative justices overturned Roe v Wade, the ruling which guaranteed access to abortion. In one swoop, the court gutted the rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.It was more important for the favourites of the Federalist Society to be “right” than smart. As we saw this week, Wisconsin Democrats say thank you.On the US supreme court, the majority in Dobbs v Jackson, the abortion ruling, said personal autonomy lacked constitutional safeguards unless explicitly enumerated in the text of the document. Precedents protecting the right to contraception, interracial marriage, same-sex relations and marriage now stand on shaky ground.“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell,” Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, referring to the rulings on contraception, same-sex relations and marriage.Thomas did not mention Loving v Virginia, which guaranteed the right to interracial marriage. He is Black. His wife, the far-right activist Ginni Thomas, is white.Biskupic knows the history of the court. In earlier biographies, she studied the chief justice, John Roberts, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor, the retired Sandra Day O’Connor and the late Antonin Scalia.As expected, Nine Black Robes is well researched. Biskupic plumbs the papers of the late William Brennan, a liberal appointed by Dwight D Eisenhower in 1956. But her book also contains more than its fair share of chambers chatter.Biskupic captures the unease of some court members at being used as props by Trump. They felt “tricked”. Trump assured them a party for Brett Kavanaugh, his second nominee, would not turn overtly political. It did.“Some justices told me later that they were sorry they had gone,” Biskupic writes.Among the “stone faced” justices at the White House, Thomas was “conspicuously enthusiastic, alone applaud[ing] heartily after Kavanaugh spoke”. Later, Thomas’s wife would seek to help Trump overturn an election.Biskupic also recounts tensions between Roberts and Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first conservative pick for the court. Gorsuch did not attend his first scheduled justices-only meeting. Roberts’s entreaties meant little.According to Biskupic, Gorsuch penned dissents and chivvied other justices. For example, in Torres v Madrid, a police abuse case, he “suggested his colleagues were kowtowing to policing concerns and the Black Lives Matter movement”.In his dissent, Gorsuch asked: “If efficiency cannot explain today’s decision, what’s left? Maybe it is an impulse that individuals like Ms Torres should be able to sue for damages. Sometimes police shootings are justified, but other times they cry out for a remedy.”Gorsuch also accused the majority of a “schizophrenic reading of the word ‘seizure’”. The chief justice was not amused.“The dissent speculates that the real reason for today’s decision is an ‘impulse’ to provide relief to Torres,” Roberts noted. “There is no call for such surmise.”Comity and appearances do not weigh heavily on Gorsuch. As Biskupic notes, his mother, Ann Gorsuch Burford, was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan but was found in contempt of Congress, a first for an agency head. She resigned, feeling used.After less than a year on the court, Gorsuch spoke at the Trump International hotel in Washington, addressing a “Defending Freedom Luncheon” sponsored by the Fund for American Studies, a conservative group. As Biskupic notes, the hotel then stood “embroiled in litigation about unconstitutional financial benefit for the president who appointed him”.Gorsuch’s appearance may have been an act of contrition, designed to placate Trump’s wrath. Months earlier, Gorsuch reportedly conveyed criticism of the president to Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, during a courtesy call. Trump’s attacks on the judiciary were too much even for Gorsuch.But he is not the only justice with limited bandwidth for playing nice. Biskupic “learned” that Sotomayor circulated “a blistering draft dissent” which caused colleagues to back off from barring racially conscious preferences in college admissions. Now, Sotomayor’s luck may be running out. In challenges to affirmative action at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the court is expected to strike down race-based admissions.Two years ago, Sotomayor attacked Kavanaugh’s legal reasoning in a case that involved a juvenile life sentence without parole.“The court is fooling no one,” she thundered, in Jones v Mississippi. “The court’s misreading is egregious enough on its own … The court twists precedent even further.”Biskupic also considers Trump’s legal woes, reporting on deliberations surrounding a ruling in favor of Cy Vance Jr, then Manhattan district attorney, in June 2020. The court upheld a subpoena demanding eight years of Trump’s tax returns. Voting 7-2, the court rejected Trump’s contention that he was immune from investigation simply because he was president. A little more than two years later, Trump stands indicted in the same jurisdiction.“We cannot conclude that absolute immunity is necessary or appropriate under article II or the supremacy clause,” Roberts wrote in 2020. “No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding.”But the margin of the decision was not preordained.Biskupic writes: “In their private telephonic conference, the Trump v Vance case produced a 5-4 split, I later learned, to affirm the lower-court judgment against Trump.”Roberts’s cajoling made a difference.“Over the course of two months he coaxed and compromised,” Biskupic writes. “Only Thomas and Alito declined to sign on.”Nowadays, Biskupic laments, “the court has no middle, no center to hold.“… Donald Trump, who had demonstrated so little respect for the law, truth and democracy, changed the balance for at least a generation.”
Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences is published in the US by HarperCollins More

A Florida teacher who was fired from his school after asking his students to write their own obituaries in advance of an on-campus active shooter drill says he has no regrets about the assignment that cost him his job.“It wasn’t to scare them or make them feel like they were going to die, but just to help them understand what’s important in their lives and how they want to move forward with their lives and how they want to pursue things in their journey,” the dismissed psychology teacher, Jeffrey Keene, told NBC News.Keene’s dismissal once again has cast a spotlight on the persistently bizarre decisions within the public education system of Florida, which has banned discussions of gender and sexual identity in classrooms but whose Republican extremist governor, Ron DeSantis, staunchly supports keeping the guns which help fuel school shootings across the country as accessible as possible.According to NBC, Keene learned that his 11th- and 12th-grade students at Dr Phillips high school in the Orlando area would be rehearsing how to respond to a shooting attack at their campus during their first period on 4 April. That prompted him to ask his students to write their own biographical obituaries as classwork, reasoning that the assignment would cause them to reflect on their lives as they prepared to undergo the active shooter drill.“This isn’t a way to upset you or anything like that,” Keene recalled telling his class of 35 students. He added: “If you can’t talk real to them, then what’s happening in this environment?”Just one week earlier, an intruder shot and killed three nine-year-old students as well as three staffers at Covenant elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. Police shot and killed the intruder. The attack was one of more than 100 shootings at kindergarten through 12th-grade schools or during school-related activities in the US this year as of Saturday, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database resource.The murders at Covenant also occurred during what as of Saturday was one of more than 140 mass shootings in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four victims are wounded or killed.It later became apparent that someone was upset by Keene’s assignment. By second period that day, Keene said some of his students revealed to him that they had been interviewed by school officials about the obituaries. And in the middle of seventh period, he was told that he’d been fired from his job, which he had started in January.The public school district which oversees Dr Phillips high has largely declined to discuss the case. A spokesperson for the district only told NBC in a statement that an employee responsible for “an inappropriate assignment about school violence” had been fired.Keene said to NBC that he was too new of a hire to qualify for membership to the local teachers’ union, so he had no administrative method available to seek reinstatement to his job. The school district’s statement also noted that Keene was still completing his post-hiring probation, implying that his dismissal could be implemented more swiftly than for a teacher who had finished the trial period.Keene hopes to find another job in teaching and believes his assignment was appropriate, according to NBC.“I don’t think I did anything incorrectly,” Keene told the network. “I honestly didn’t think a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old would be offended or upset by talking about something we’re already talking about.”The steady presence of mass shootings and violence at schools in US news headlines has moved many to call for more meaningful gun control, but Congress has been unable to pass anything substantial, even as schools acknowledge their vulnerability by making students practice what to do if heavily armed intruders barge onto their campuses and try to shoot them to death.A bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Joe Biden last year expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers and funded some mental health and violence intervention programs. But the president is among many who say much stronger measures are needed, including an assault weapons ban that Congress has been unable to pass.Three days after the Nashville school murders and five days before Keene lost his job, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature voted to allow gun owners to carry around their firearms without a state permit.They did so at the behest of DeSantis, who has also successfully advocated for a legislative ban against classroom discussions of systemic racism, saying the concept joined learning about sexual and gender identity as one of the biggest threats to Florida’s schoolchildren.Florida’s 22 million or so residents make it the country’s third-most populous state. More

Democratic lawmakers are doubling down on outrage against Friday’s ruling that threatens access to a widely used abortion medication, saying the ruling sets a “dangerous new precedent” that could harm future medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration.“Make no mistake, the decision could throw our country into chaos,” said the Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on a call with reporters on Saturday. “Republicans have completely eviscerated the FDA as we know it and threatened the ability of any drug on the market to avoid being prohibited.“What could come next if some fringe radical group brings a lawsuit? Cancer drugs? Insulin? Mental health treatment?”Mifepristone was approved for use by the FDA in 2000 and, along with a second drug called misoprostol, is the most common method for terminating a pregnancy in the US. More than half of women in the country who get abortions use the two medications.On Friday, federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas suspended the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in a lawsuit that challenges the drug’s initial approval. Kacsmaryk gave the FDA a week to appeal his ruling.Meanwhile, a federal court in Washington state handed down a conflicting ruling that orders the FDA to not take any action that affects the drug’s availability.The president and chief executive officer of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northrup, told reporters the Texas judge’s decision could have a “devastating impact” if it goes into effect.“If allowed to stand, it would remove mifepristone from the market in states where it’s legal and exposes the lie” that states would get to decide their own abortion laws after the US supreme court eliminated federal abortion rights through their Dobbs decision last year, Northrup said. She added: “It threatens the FDA’s authority over its entire drug approval process, which could severely limit the development of new drugs overall and have far-reaching repercussions on patients’ access to FDA-approved medications.”Northrup emphasized that the medication is a safe and effective means of abortion and that the drug is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines. She also said the appeal could end up in the US supreme court within a week, if the litigation from the 2021 Texas abortion ban – which was quickly taken up by the court – is any indication.“That’s entirely possible, but abortion providers across the country are preparing and being advised on what to do if this actually goes into effect,” Northrup said.Democrats on Saturday said they support the appeal that the US justice department on Friday indicated it would file, seeking a halt to Kacsmaryk’s decision. And the party is still working to get the Women’s Health Protection Act passed. The legislation, introduced late last month, seeks to protect abortions on a federal measure but lacks the Republican support needed to pass.A Democratic senator from Washington, Patty Murray, said Democrats would “put Republicans on the record every way we can so the American people know exactly who is responsible for this chaos”.“We will have this debate out in the public for everyone to see,” she said.Schumer said that Republicans have likely mostly been silent on the ruling because “they’re afraid to speak out”.“That is outrageous. They are letting the … extreme wing of their party … run the whole show,” he said. “They have an obligation to speak out or they are complicit in taking away mifepristone for tens of millions of Americans.”Beyond the justice department appeal, it is unclear what other course of action Demcrats are planning to take to combat the ruling. Schumer and Murray were asked by a reporter if there is any possibility that the federal government could take similar action to Washington state, where governor Jay Inslee announced on Tuesday that his administration would stockpile thousands of abortion pills for his constituents in anticipation of it becoming difficult to access.“Our very first action is to make sure that this does not go into effect,” Murray said. “Our most important task is to have this appealed.”Also on Saturday, more than 40 House Democrats sent Joe Biden a letter calling on the president to “use all the tools at your disposal to protect access to abortion and reproductive healthcare”.The representatives said that in addition to legal action against the ruling, the White House should defend the authority of the FDA and meet with the pharmaceutical industry to “discuss possible ramifications of an unfavorable decision regarding market access to medication abortions and the implications it will have on the [FDA] drug review process at large”. More

The Republican megadonor whose gifts to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas have come under the spotlight has a private collection including a garden of statues of dictators, including Mussolini and Stalin; Nazi memorabilia; and paintings including two works by Adolf Hitler, the Washingtonian reported.“I still can’t get over the collection of Nazi memorabilia,” the Washingtonian quoted an anonymous source as saying, regarding a visit to Harlan Crow’s Texas home. “It would have been helpful to have someone explain the significance of all the items. Without that context, you sort of just gasp when you walk into the room.”Crow, the source said, also had paintings “done by George W Bush next to a Norman Rockwell next to one by Hitler”.A painting of Thomas and Crow smoking cigars in company including the rightwing activist Leonard Leo was included in an explosive report by ProPublica, detailing Crow’s lavish gifts to Thomas over more than 25 years.ProPublica also described trips on private planes and yachts and stays at lavish resorts.In a rare statement, Thomas said he had been advised such “personal hospitality” did not have to be declared under federal rules.He added: “I have endeavoured to follow that counsel throughout my tenure and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”Critics said Thomas had “clearly” broken the law regarding the declaration of gifts. The Washington Post noted Thomas has declared just two since 2004.Crow denied discussing or seeking to influence the court through his friendship with Thomas and his wife, the far-right activist Ginni Thomas.Critics questioned that, given Crow’s seat on the board of the American Enterprise Institute, a rightwing thinktank which regularly files amicus briefs with the court.Outraged Democrats promised investigations and, in the case of the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, threatened to introduce articles of impeachment.Thomas is the senior conservative on a conservative-dominated court that has issued controversial rulings including Dobbs v Jackson, which last year removed the federal right to abortion.But impeachment and removal is highly unlikely. Supreme court justices effectively govern themselves. Only one has ever been impeached, in 1804, before being acquitted. Republicans hold the House, where impeachment would start.Still, news of Crow’s far-right memorabilia seemed bound to add to Thomas’s embarrassment – perhaps in part because Thomas has written that arguments for abortion rights spring from theories of eugenics, as espoused by Hitler and the Nazis.When Thomas made that argument, in an opinion in 2019, Philippa Levine, a University of Texas history professor, told the Washington Post the justice was “guilty of a gross misuse of historical facts”.On Friday, the Washingtonian published pictures of Thomas’s friend’s collection of Nazi artefacts, which includes a signed copy of Hitler’s memoir, Mein Kampf.The magazine also noted how the Florida senator Marco Rubio ran into problems in 2015, over a Crow-hosted fundraiser on the eve of Yom Kippur.The year before that, the Dallas Morning News reported that Crow became “visibly uncomfortable” with questions about his dictator statues and collectibles of Hitler, whose regime murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.The paper described the statues of dictators as “a historical nod to the facts of man’s inhumanity to man”.Crow also reportedly owns statues of two British prime ministers he counts among his heroes: Winston Churchill – who defeated Hitler – and Margaret Thatcher.The megadonor and his wife were “such hospitable Texas hosts”, according to the Washingtonian’s source.But, the source added, it was “just strange – they had family photos in one room, then all this world war II stuff in another room, and dictators in the backyard”. More

Democrats angrily denounced as “dangerous” and “draconian” a decision by a Texas judge that threatens access to a widely used abortion medication, while demanding the Joe Biden White House do more to protect reproductive rights.Nearly a quarter-century after the Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion pill mifepristone, the federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Friday sought to invalidate the agency’s decision, handing down an unprecedented order that – if upheld – would severely restrict access to one of the most commonly used methods of terminating a pregnancy.In a dueling court ruling, handed down moments after, a judge in Washington state contradicted the Texas decision, ordering the FDA to maintain the “status quo” availability of mifepristone.With the future of access to medication abortion in potential jeopardy, even in states where the procedure remains legal, Democrats, reproductive rights advocates and providers vowed to keep fighting to protect the drug’s availability.In a statement, Biden called the ruling the “next big step toward the national ban on abortion that Republican elected officials have vowed to make law in America” and pledged to fight Kacsmaryk’s decision. On Friday night, the justice department gave notice that it would appeal the Texas ruling and said it was reviewing the Washington decision.The conflicting court orders left much uncertainty about the future of abortion access, probably elevating the issue to the US supreme court. With little faith in a majority conservative court that overturned Roe v Wade, Democrats are urging the administration to act more aggressively.“Ignore this ruling,” the US senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, said, arguing that the FDA has the authority to disregard the decision by Kacsmaryk, who was appointed to the federal bench by the Donald Trump White House.Wyden added: “The FDA, doctors, and pharmacies can and must go about their jobs like nothing has changed and keep mifepristone accessible to women across America.”Mifepristone is the first pill in a two-drug medication abortion regimen, which is approved for use through the 10th week of pregnancy. More than half of abortions in the US rely on the medication, and the Texas decision, if allowed to stand, would have severe ramifications for access.The president of the abortion rights group All* Above All, Morgan Hopkins, said Biden’s administration must “act immediately to ensure medication abortion care remains available, without interference from politicians or judges”.Since the supreme court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, administration officials have moved to expand access to abortion medication and protect patients seeking care who travel to states where the procedure is legal. But the White House has so far resisted calls from reproductive rights advocates to declare a public health emergency for abortion.Biden has insisted, as he did again on Friday, that the “only way to stop those who are committed to taking away women’s rights and freedoms” is to elect candidates who will codify abortion protections into federal law.The Texas ruling comes days after a liberal judge won a commanding victory to serve on the Wisconsin supreme court in a contest that underscored the enduring potency of abortion politics. The judge, Janet Protasiewicz, had effectively promised voters that if they elected her, flipping the ideological balance of the court from conservative to liberal, the new majority would overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban.Successive victories in favor of abortion rights from Kansas to Michigan have galvanized Democrats, who say the issue was key to their unexpectedly strong showing in last year’s midterms. The party plans to continue harnessing voter anger over the loss of federal abortion protections in upcoming elections.“The Republican party is playing with fire,” said Cecile Richards, a former president of Planned Parenthood who is now a co-chair at American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic organization. “They have put their rightwing politics ahead of the health and wellbeing of American women. They are trying to strip Americans of our basic rights to control our bodies and our futures.”Laphonza Butler, president of Emily’s List, said the group was “working overtime to replace Republicans up and down the ballot with Democratic pro-choice women who are committed to protecting our reproductive freedoms no matter what”.Democrats were quick to cast the decision by Kacsmaryk, who had written critically of the Roe precedent, as part of a broader effort by conservatives to erode women’s reproductive rights.“This judge’s ruling is bullshit,” tweeted Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat of Nevada who narrowly won re-election last year after making abortion rights a central issue of her campaign.The Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy added in a statement: “We cannot allow rightwing judges to ignore the science, and put the health, safety, and autonomy of millions of women at risk.”And Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the US House Democratic leader, said Republican efforts to restrict access to abortion care were “like a malignant tumor” spreading across the US.Yet despite their fury, congressional Democrats see few legislative options. With Republicans in control of the House, and Senate Democrats unable to eliminate the 60-vote legislative filibuster, efforts to protect abortion access are all but certain to fall short.Nevertheless, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, said his caucus was “relentlessly working to protect a woman’s right to choose from this extreme … Republican agenda” and recommitted to passing the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation that seeks to enshrine abortion protections in federal law. But the measure lacks enough support to overcome the filibuster.In response to the Texas judge’s ruling, a number of Democrats renewed calls to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate, though they do not have enough support among their caucus to do so.Some prominent conservatives celebrated Kacsmaryk’s decision. For instance, Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, said: “Life won again today”.But some top Republicans, including Trump, the leading contender for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, were silent late on Friday, reflecting a growing unease within the party about the political risks of overreaching on one of the most emotionally charged issues in American politics. More

Texas-based federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Friday issued a ruling aiming to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a common abortion drug approved for use 23 years ago that has been consistently found to be safe and effective.It is widely believed that the anti-abortion groups who brought the case challenging the FDA’s authorization of the drug did so in Amarillo, Texas, so that it would be certain to land on the desk of this particular judge. Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by Donald Trump, is known for disregarding precedent and for weighing in on the far-right side of culture war issues.Kacsmaryk’s 67-page decision – a preliminary ruling that will be appealed and is likely to wind its way up to the supreme court – makes plain that the strategy paid off. His decision employs the same rhetoric that has been deliberately seeded over decades by the anti-abortion movement. Some examples are below.‘Unborn child’In the very first footnote to the decision, Kacsmaryk sets the tone for the opinion, explaining he why he will use “unborn human” or “unborn child” throughout his ruling:Jurists often use the word “fetus” to inaccurately identify unborn humans in unscientific ways. The word “fetus” refers to a specific gestational stage of development, as opposed to the zygote, blastocyst, or embryo stages … Because other jurists use the terms “unborn human” or “unborn child” interchangeably, and because both terms are inclusive of the multiple gestational stages relevant to the FDA Approval, 2016 Changes, and 2021 Changes, this Court uses “unborn human” or “unborn child” terminology throughout this Order, as appropriate.‘To kill the unborn human’Mifepristone, the drug at the center of the case, works by blocking progesterone, a hormone required for a pregnancy to develop. It is approved by the FDA to be taken up until 10 weeks of pregnancy and is generally used in conjunction with misoprostol, which causes the uterus to contract. This is how Kacsmaryk describes this two-pill regimen, which together account for more than half the abortions in the US:Because mifepristone alone will not always complete the abortion, FDA mandates a two-step drug regimen: mifepristone to kill the unborn human, followed by misoprostol to induce cramping and contractions to expel the unborn human from the mother’s womb.‘Shame, regret, anxiety, depression’The anti-abortion movement is known to champion the idea that people who have abortions come to be plagued by regret – an idea promoted by former supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy in a 2007 decision, even as he admitted there’s “no reliable data to measure the phenomenon”. But reliable data finally came in 2020, with the landmark Turnaway Study, which spent five years following nearly 1,000 women who sought abortions. The study found that 95% of women who had abortions reported five years later that it had been the right decision for them.Kacsmaryk, however, writes:Women who have aborted a child – especially through chemical abortion drugs that necessitate the woman seeing her aborted child once it passes – often experience shame, regret, anxiety, depression, drug abuse and suicidal thoughts because of the abortion.‘Fetal personhood’Kacsmaryk also writes that any consideration of alleged damage caused by the abortion pill should extend to the fetus. This is a nod to the radical idea of “fetal personhood” – that embryos and fetuses are people entitled to the full protection of the US constitution. That argument presumes abortion to be murder, and were it to take hold in the legal system, could lead to a national ban on the procedure. Invoking the name of the US supreme court decision which eliminated federal abortion rights, he writes:Parenthetically, said “individual justice” and “irreparable injury” analysis also arguably applies to the unborn humans extinguished by mifepristone – especially in the post-Dobbs era.Comstock ActThe groups that brought the case ruled on by Kacsmaryk aim to revive a long dormant, 150-year-old anti-obscenity law called the Comstock Act, which prohibited sending abortifacients in the mail. Kacsmaryk’s decision indeed revives that law – and some experts fear his logic could extend to more abortion methods and even lead to a national ban.This purported “consensus view” is that the Comstock Act does not prohibit the mailing of items designed to produce abortions “where the sender does not intend them to be used unlawfully”. Id. This argument is unpersuasive for several reasons … In any case, the Comstock Act plainly forecloses mail-order abortion in the present … the law is plain.Abortion as eugenicsKacsmaryk also quotes conservative US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, who has linked abortion to eugenics, the belief in selective breeding to produce a superior society. In rejecting research pointing to worse psychosocial and financial outcomes for children of people denied abortions, he also seems to draw a line between abortion and the worst atrocities of the last century:(“[A]bortion has proved to be a disturbingly effective tool for implementing the discriminatory preferences that undergird eugenics.”) Though eugenics were once fashionable in the Commanding Heights and High Court, they hold less purchase after the conflict, carnage and casualties of the last century revealed the bloody consequences of Social Darwinism practiced by would-be Übermenschen. More

About 500 people packed the chapel at Fisk University, a historically Black college in Nashville, Tennessee, and sang the civil rights anthem This Little Light of Mine while they waited for US vice-president Kamala Harris to appear. When she did, the crowd erupted in cheers.Harris and her listeners were there to show support for her fellow Democrats and state lawmakers Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson – Jones and Pearson were ousted from the Republican-controlled Tennessee house of representatives after joining a protest in favor of gun control at the capitol in Nashville, and Johnson narrowly survived an expulsion vote.“We are here because [Jones, Pearson and Johnson] and their colleagues in the Democratic caucus chose to show courage in the face of extreme tragedy,” Harris said, alluding to how the targeted representatives stood with gun control advocates after the killings of three students and three staffers at the Covenant elementary school in Nashville on 27 March. “They chose to lead and show courage and say that a democracy allows for places where the people’s voice will be heard and honored and respected.”The vice-president said they also added another chapter to a vibrant local history of civil rights activism that previously saw sit-ins at segregated lunch counters led by the late US congressman John Lewis and his movement colleague Diane Nash, saying it was on their “broad shoulders upon which we all stand”.Harris’s visit punctuated a dramatic week for the so-called “Tennessee Three”, who faced expulsion proceedings after talking without being given the floor by the Republican house speaker Cameron Sexton. Johnson, Jones and Pearson said they spoke out in that manner because capitol staff had cut their microphones off when they attempted to bring up gun control and regulation efforts in response to the shooting deaths at Covenant.Jones and Pearson led chants from protesters in favor of their proposed measures with a bullhorn while Johnson stood by them silently in solidarity.Their colleagues then drew up papers to expel all three from the seats in the chamber to which they were democratically elected. Votes on Thursday left Jones and Pearson – two Black men and the house’s youngest members – ousted while Johnson, a 60-year-old white woman, managed to keep her seat by a single vote.“A democracy says you do not silence the people, you do not stifle the people, you do not turn off their microphones when they are speaking,” Harris said, outraged. “These leaders had to get a bullhorn to be heard.”Such expulsions are exceedingly rare even in today’s ultra-divided political climate, and they are generally used against lawmakers accused of misconduct more serious than a decorum breach. For instance, the body had previously expelled one lawmaker accused of spending federal nursing school grant money on a wedding and another who allegedly had improper sexual contact with more than 20 women in four years in office. Meanwhile, the state legislature opted against expelling a Republican representative accused of sexual misconduct in 2019.County commissions in Jones and Pearson’s districts are now set to pick someone to serve in the newly vacant seats until special elections can be held. Jones and Pearson remain eligible to run in those special elections and could also possibly be appointed by the county commissions to stay in their seats until those contests, though the commissions are reportedly facing pressure to choose interim replacements.To be sure, Jones and Pearson’s expulsions have given both men significant national platforms. In addition to Harris’s remarks, Joe Biden met with them and Johnson virtually. The president tweeted a photo of the meeting, saying: “Our country needs to take action on gun violence – to do that we need more voices like theirs speaking out.”The chapel was warmly receptive to the vice-president, responding to her statements with the sort of affirmations that are familiar in the halls of Black churches.“Some things are up for partisan debate,” she said. “Sure. But regarding the issue of gun safety laws, background checks, the policy is really pretty straightforward.”“Facts!” someone shouted from one of the pews.“Assault weapons … are weapons of war,” Harris continued. “These are weapons that are designed to kill a lot of people quickly. They have no place on the streets of a civil society.”Murmurs of “amen”, and “I know that’s right”, moved through the crowd.Young Black women – Fisk students – lined the aisles of the chapel wearing pearls and bright pink-and-green apparel signifying their association with the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority of which Harris is also a member. One of them, Kayla Willis, told the Guardian it was “an honor to see our legacy as a sorority and also as a Black-founded organization to be put at the forefront, especially in this political climate”.Willis is a senior studying political science and Spanish, and she said she was deeply disappointed with the expulsion of representatives Jones and Pearson. Still, the turnout, the speeches from local activists and officials, and Harris’s appearance lifted her spirits.State representative Torrey Harris – who, like Pearson, is a Black Democrat representing Memphis – was similarly affected. He noted how he was the legislature’s youngest member after the expulsions which targeted two men whom he referred to as “brothers” and people whom he had “grown to love”.Harris said he had no doubt race factored into Jones and Pearson’s expulsions as well as the more favorable outcome for Johnson.“We have to be honest and transparent that race plays a huge part in a lot of the decision-making that happens not only in this state, but in other states,” Harris said. “To cut off somebody else’s belief and ability to fight for their people is wrong. We live in a country that is built on democracy, and I would hope that we will one day get back to that place.” More