US Politics

A Republican power grab in Ohio might be the GOP’s most brazen yetRepublicans in Ohio recently enacted new maps that would give them a supermajority in the state legislature – completely ignoring reforms that prevent this Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,Over the last few months, we’ve seen lawmakers in several states draw new, distorted political districts that entrench their political power for the next decade. Republicans are carving up Texas, North Carolina and Georgia to hold on to their majorities. Democrats have the power to draw maps in far fewer places, but they’ve also shown a willingness to use it where they have it, in places like Illinois and Maryland.But something uniquely disturbing is happening in Ohio.Republicans control the legislature there and recently enacted new maps that would give them a supermajority in the state legislature and allow them to hold on to at least 12 of the state’s 15 congressional seats. It’s an advantage that doesn’t reflect how politically competitive Ohio is: Donald Trump won the state in 2020 with 53% of the vote.What’s worse is that Ohio voters have specifically enacted reforms in recent years that were supposed to prevent this kind of manipulation. Republicans have completely ignored them. It underscores how challenging it is for reformers to wrest mapmaking power from politicians.“It’s incredibly difficult to get folks to say, ‘OK, we’re just gonna do this fairly after years and years and decades and decades of crafting districts that favor one political party,’” Catherine Turcer, the executive director of the Ohio chapter of Common Cause, a government watchdog group that backed the reforms, told me earlier this year. “I did not envision this being as shady.”In 2015 and 2018, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved two separate constitutional amendments that were meant to make mapmaking fairer. The 2015 amendment dealt with drawing state legislative districts and gave a seven-person panel, comprised of elected officials from both parties, power to draw districts. If the panel couldn’t agree on new maps, they would only be in effect for four years, as opposed to the usual 10.The 2018 amendment laid out a slightly different process for drawing congressional districts, but the overall idea was the same. Both reforms also said districts could not unfairly favor or disfavor a political party.Something started to seem amiss earlier this fall when the panel got to work trying to create the new state legislative districts. The two top Republicans in the legislature wound up drawing the maps in secret, shutting their fellow GOP members out of the process. After reaching an impasse with Democrats, Republicans on the panel approved a plan that gives the GOP a majority in the state legislature for the next four years.When it came time to draw congressional maps, things did not go much better. The panel barely even attempted to fulfill its mission, kicking mapmaking power back to the state legislature. Lawmakers there quickly enacted the congressional plan that benefits the GOP for the next four years.The new map benefits the GOP by cracking Democratic-heavy Hamilton county, home of Cincinnati, into three different congressional districts, noted the Cook Political Report. It also transforms a district in northern Ohio, currently represented by Democrat Marcy Kaptur, the longest serving woman in Congress, from one Joe Biden carried by 19 points in 2020 to one Trump would have carried by 5 points.The maps already face several lawsuits, and their fate will ultimately be decided by the Ohio supreme court. Republicans have a 4-3 advantage on the court, though one of the GOP justices is considered a swing vote. We’ll soon see if voter-approved reforms will be completely defanged.Reader questionsPlease continue to write to me each week with your questions about elections and voting at [email protected] or DM me on Twitter at @srl and I’ll try to answer as many as I can.Also worth watching …
Few places better encapsulate the new Republican effort to undermine American elections than Wisconsin. Some Republicans there are calling for the removal of the non-partisan head of the state’s election commission.
Georgia saw a jump in the percentage of rejected mail-in ballot requests in one of the first elections after Republicans imposed new requirements. Many of those who had their ballot requests rejected didn’t ultimately vote in person, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
The Justice Department on Tuesday filed a statement of interest in voting rights lawsuits in Arizona, Texas and Florida. All three filings significantly defend the power and scope of section two of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most powerful remaining provisions of the 1965 civil rights law.
TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteRepublicansOhioUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

The supreme court is signalling that it’s ready to end Roe v WadeMoira DoneganPredictions that the court would keep abortion as a constitutional right are starting to look incredibly optimistic It went worse than had been expected, and expectations were already low. As the supreme court prepared to hear oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a lawsuit over a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi that constitutes the most serious challenge to Roe v Wade in a generation, many court watchers predicted a massive rollback of abortion rights. But the line among reasonable pundits was that the court, fearing censure from a largely pro-choice American public, would attempt to have its cake and eat it too – allowing states to impose abortion bans earlier in pregnancy, but keeping abortion as a constitutional right intact.The most convincing version of this argument came from Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who predicted that the court, like it did in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v Casey, might weaken the abortion right without abandoning it entirely. In Casey, the supreme court lessened the standard of scrutiny applied to state abortion restrictions – from a robust “strict scrutiny” standard to a more malleable “undue burden” standard – and affirmed that states could ban abortions outright after fetal viability, the point of gestation at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, usually at about 24 weeks.Stern, like many others, predicted that the court might impose an even more deferential legal test on abortion restrictions – “rational basis review” – and eliminate the viability standard. The result would be that states could ban and restrict abortions more easily, even before viability, but they would still not be allowed to ban abortions entirely. “The court could move back the point at which states can prohibit abortion outright from 24 weeks to 15 or perhaps 12, the end of the first trimester,” Stern wrote. “A diminished right to abortion would survive, battered but extant.”And yet the end of the viability standard would still have been practically disastrous for abortion access on the ground, as well as for women’s freedom and dignity. This much was elegantly explained by New York’s Irin Carmon, who wrote that attacks from conservatives over the past 30 years have increased the abortion right’s legal reliance on the viability standard, even as developments in pre- and neo-natal care have pushed viability itself earlier in pregnancy. “If a ban on abortion at 15 weeks is allowed for whatever reason, why not draw the line at six?” Carmon asked.Getting rid of the viability standard, but still leaving the right to abortion technically intact, would in practice invite an anarchic scramble, as conservative states rushed to ban abortion as early as possible and push the limit back sooner and sooner in pregnancy. Julie Rickelman, a longtime abortion rights advocate and the lawyer representing Mississippi’s lone abortion clinic in the Dobbs case, put it bluntly: if viability goes, Roe is effectively no longer good law. “If the court upholds this law, it will be discarding the viability line and overruling Roe,” she told Carmon. “That is the key line in the law that has protected people’s access to abortion.”In other words, the best-case scenario was legal chaos, misogynist lawmaking, a diminished right to bodily autonomy for women, and millions more people subject to forced pregnancy.But even these predictions – which pass for “optimism” among legal observers now that the supreme court is held in the chokehold of a conservative supermajority – proved too rosy. At oral arguments in Dobbs on Wednesday, five of the court’s six conservatives showed little interest in maintaining Roe while getting rid of viability. Instead, they were focused on eliminating Roe, and the abortion right, entirely. By the end, it seemed likely that conservatives have a crucial five votes to rule that the constitution does not protect the right to end a pregnancy: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.The lone exception among the conservatives was Chief Justice John Roberts, who seemed almost desperate to direct attention to the viability line. Over the course of arguments, Roberts repeatedly returned to the viability question, emphasizing that it was rejected as a possible standard in the initial 1973 Roe decision and only adopted later, in Casey. But none of the other conservatives took the bait.The two “swing” votes – if such an extremely and committedly conservative court can be said to have such a thing – are Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. In a display of the impotence that has marked his career as chief justice, Roberts was unable to persuade either of them to take up his apparently preferred proposition of maintaining a shell of Roe while gutting the viability standard.Instead, Kavanaugh spent much of his speaking time assuring his colleagues that they need not be bound by Roe’s precedent, listing a long litany of cases in which the supreme court reversed its own prior decisions. Barrett, meanwhile, emphasized the availability of adoption as a supposedly adequate alternative to abortion, at one point asserting that so-called “safe haven” laws, which allow birth mothers to surrender their parental rights and leave their infants in the care of others without punishment immediately after they give birth, offer an adequate remedy for pregnant women who cannot or do not wish to become parents. The idea was that if a woman is pregnant and does not want to be, an acceptable outcome would be for her to gestate and birth a child, and then simply give it away.The hardest-line conservatives, meanwhile, offered even more grim and ominous assessments of abortion as a matter of law, and their sadistic and extremist views give some indication of where the court may be heading in future cases. Both Alito and Thomas referred repeatedly to abortion as “taking a life”, and indicated that they would be open to recognizing fetal personhood. Until now, post-viability abortion bans have rested on the legal idea that the state has an interest in protecting fetal life that overrides a woman’s interest in controlling her own body after that point. But Alito and Thomas suggested that they think that interest belongs not only to the state, but to the fetus itself, and that this interest begins very early. “The fetus has an interest in having a life,” Alito said at one point. “That doesn’t change from the point before viability and after viability.”The suggestion that a fetus might have interests in its own right – interests that can be seen as equal or greater than the interests of the woman carrying it – is a dramatic step in anti-choice jurisprudence, one with dramatic implications for women’s healthcare, freedoms, and access to public life. After Wednesday’s oral arguments, it seems certain that Roe v Wade will soon be overturned. For this court, that’s just the beginning.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS supreme courtAbortionLaw (US)WomencommentReuse this content More

Revealed: how Sidney Powell could be disbarred for lying in court for TrumpThe former lawyer filed cases across America for the former president, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 election Sidney Powell, the former lawyer for Donald Trump who filed lawsuits across America for the former president, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, has on several occasions represented to federal courts that people were co-counsel or plaintiffs in her cases without seeking their permission to do so, the Guardian has learned.Some of these individuals say that they only found out that Powell had named them once the cases were already filed.During this same period of time, Powell also named several other lawyers – with their permission in those instances – as co-counsel in her election-related cases, despite the fact that they played virtually no role whatsoever in bringing or litigating those cases.Both Powell’s naming of other people as plaintiffs or co-counsel without their consent and representing that other attorneys were central to her cases when, in fact, their roles were nominal or nonexistent, constitute serious potential violations of the American Bar Association model rules for professional conduct, top legal ethicists told the Guardian.Powell’s misrepresentations to the courts in those particular instances often aided fundraising for her nonprofit, Defending the Republic. Powell had told prospective donors that the attorneys were integral members of an “elite strike force” who had played outsized roles in her cases – when in fact they were barely involved if at all.Powell did not respond to multiple requests for comment via phone, email, and over social media.The State Bar of Texas is already investigating Powell for making other allegedly false and misleading statements to federal courts by propagating increasingly implausible conspiracy theories to federal courts that Joe Biden’s election as president of the United States was illegitimate.The Texas bar held its first closed-door hearing regarding the allegations about Powell on 4 November. Investigations by state bar associations are ordinarily conducted behind closed doors and thus largely opaque to the public.A federal grand jury has also been separately investigating Powell, Defending the Republic, as well as a political action committee that goes by the same name, for fundraising fraud, according to records reviewed by the Guardian.Among those who have alleged that Powell falsely named them as co-counsel is attorney Linn Wood, who brought and litigated with Powell many of her lawsuits attempting to overturn the results of the election with her, including in the hotly contested state of Michigan.The Michigan case was a futile attempt by Powell to erase Joe Biden’s victory in that state and name Trump as the winner. On 25 August, federal district court Judge Linda Parker, of Michigan, sanctioned Powell and nine other attorneys who worked with her for having engaged in “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” in bringing the case in the first place. Powell’s claims of election fraud, Parker asserted, had no basis in law and were solely based on “speculation, conjecture, and unwarranted suspicion”.Parker further concluded that the conduct of Powell, Wood, and the eight other attorneys who they worked with, warranted a “referral for investigation and possible suspension or disbarment to the appropriate disciplinary authority for each state … in which each attorney is admitted”.Wood told the court in the Michigan case that Powell had wrongly named him as one of her co-counsel in the Michigan case. During a hearing in the case to determine whether to sanction Wood, his defense largely rested on his claim that he had not been involved in the case at all. Powell, Wood told the court, had put his name on the lawsuit without her even telling him.Wood said: “I do not specifically recall being asked about the Michigan complaint … In this case obviously my name was included. My experience or my skills apparently were never needed, so I didn’t have any involvement with it.”Wood’s attorney, Paul Stablein, was also categorical in asserting that his client had nothing to do with the case, telling the Guardian in an interview: “He didn’t draft the complaint. He didn’t sign it. He did not authorize anyone to put his name on it.”Powell has denied she would have ever named Wood as a co-counsel without Wood’s permission.But other people have since come forward to say that Powell has said that they were named as plaintiffs or lawyers in her election-related cases without their permission.In a Wisconsin voting case, a former Republican candidate for Congress, Derrick Van Orden, said he only learned after the fact that he had been named as a plaintiff in one of Powell’s cases.“I learned through social media today that my name was included in a lawsuit without my permission,” Van Orden said in a statement he posted on Twitter, “To be clear, I am not involved in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the election in Wisconsin.”I learned through social media today that my name was included in a lawsuit without my permission. To be clear, I am not involved in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the election in Wisconsin.— Derrick Van Orden (@derrickvanorden) December 1, 2020
Jason Shepherd, the Republican chairman of Georgia’s Cobb county, was similarly listed as a plaintiff in a Georgia election case without his approval.In a 26 November 2020 statement, Shepherd said he had been talking to an associate of Powell’s prior to the case’s filing about the “Cobb GOP being a plaintiff” but said he first “needed more information to at least make sure the executive officers were in agreeing to us being a party in the suit”. The Cobb County Republican party later agreed to remain plaintiffs in the case instead of withdrawing.Leslie Levin, a professor at the University of Connecticut Law School, said in an interview: “Misrepresentations to the court are very serious because lawyers are officers of the court. Bringing a lawsuit in someone’s name when they haven’t consented to being a party is a very serious misrepresentation and one for which a lawyer should expect to face serious discipline.”Nora Freeman Engstrom, a law professor at Stanford University, says that Powell’s actions appear to violate Rule 3.3 of the ABA’s model rules of professional misconduct which hold that “a lawyer shall not knowingly … make a false statement of fact of law to a tribunal”.Since election day last year, federal and state courts have dismissed more than 60 lawsuits alleging electoral fraud and irregularities by Powell, and other Trump allies.Shortly after the election, Trump named Powell as a senior member of an “elite strike force” who would prove that Joe Biden only won the 2020 presidential race because the election was stolen from him. But Trump refused to pay her for her services. To remedy this, Powell set up a new nonprofit called Defending the Republic; its stated purpose is to “protect the integrity of elections in the United States”.As a nonprofit, the group is allowed to raise unlimited amounts of “dark money” and donors are legally protected from the ordinary requirements to disclose their identities to the public. Powell warned supporters that for her to succeed, “millions of dollars must be raised”.Echoing Trump’s rhetoric, Powell told prospective donors that Defending the Republic had a vast team of experienced litigators.Among the attorneys who Powell said made up this “taskforce” were Emily Newman, who had served Trump as the White House liaison to the Department of Health and Human Services and as a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security. Newman had been a founding board member of Defending the Republic.But facing sanctions in the Michigan case, some of the attorneys attempted to distance themselves from having played much of a meaningful role in her litigation.Newman’s attorney told Parker, the judge, that Newman had “not played a role in the drafting of the complaint … My client was a contract lawyer working from home who spent maybe five hours on this matter. She really wasn’t involved … Her role was de minimis.”To have standing to file her Michigan case, Powell was initially unable to find a local attorney to be co-counsel on her case but eventually attorney Gregory Rohl agreed to help out.But when Rohl was sanctioned by Parker and referred to the Michigan attorney disciplinary board for further investigation, his defense was that he, too, was barely involved in the case. He claimed that he only received a copy of “the already prepared” 830-page initial complaint at the last minute, reviewed it for “well over an hour”, while then “making no additions, decisions or corrections” to the original.As with Newman, Parker, found that Rohl violated ethics rules by making little, if any, effort to verify the facts of the claims in Powell’s filings.In sanctioning Rohl, the judge wrote that “the court finds it exceedingly difficult to believe that Rohl read an 830-page complaint in just ‘well over an hour’ on the day he filed it. So, Rohl’s argument in and of itself reveals sanctionable conduct.”TopicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

‘Handful of fanatics’ to blame for Capitol riot, Trump ally Meadows says in bookEx-chief of staff downplays Trump involvement in insurrection and says mob had ‘absolutely no urging’ from the president

Trump tested positive before first debate, says Meadows
In his new memoir, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows blames just “a handful of fanatics” for the 6 January attack on the Capitol – over which nearly 700 people have now been charged.Capitol attack panel recommends contempt prosecution for Jeffrey ClarkRead more“No one would [focus] on the actions of … those supporters of President Trump who came [to Washington on 6 January] without hate in their hearts or any bad intentions,” he writes. “Instead, they would laser in on the actions of a handful of fanatics across town.”Throughout his book, Meadows seeks to play down Donald Trump’s role in an insurrection regarding which Meadows himself will now co-operate with the investigating House committee.The former chief of staff writes extensively, supportively and selectively about Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, of which the Capitol attack was the deadly culmination.But while enthusiastically repeating Trump’s lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud, Meadows skates over attempts to stop the certification of electoral college results, the cause in which the mob attacked the Capitol.For example, Meadows does not mention Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice official whose attempt to persuade Trump he could legally overturn his defeat landed him in legal jeopardy.Reporting by Jon Karl of ABC News has placed Meadows in the Oval Office on 3 January, when Clark tried to persuade Trump to fire the acting attorney general, Jeffery Rosen, who rejected the scheme.In his book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl details how Trump was deterred by the threat of mass resignations at the DoJ.On Wednesday, the 6 January committee recommended a contempt charge for Clark. The issue now moves to the House.Karl also reports that aides to the then vice-president, Mike Pence, who would oversee certification of results at the Capitol on 6 January, “began to suspect” Meadows himself was pushing schemes to overturn the process.Meadows, Karl says, sent the vice-president’s staff a memo written by the campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis which argued that Pence could declare results in six key states to be under dispute.Reporting another memo written by Johnny McEntee, Trump’s director of the presidential personnel office, Karl writes: “This was all madness. There was no other way to put it.”Karl concurs with other reporters in saying Meadows was not in the Oval Office when on 4 January a constitutional scholar, John Eastman, presented his own memo on how Pence could supposedly stop certification.Two days later, in a few chaotic hours at the Capitol, offices were ransacked, rioters paraded Trump and Confederate flags through the halls of Congress and lawmakers were hustled to safety. Some rioters chanted that Pence should be captured and hanged. Five people died, including a Trump supporter shot by law enforcement and a Capitol police officer who collapsed the next day.Meadows, however, insists the mob had “absolutely no urging from President Trump”.The Guardian obtained a copy of the book, The Chief’s Chief, as Meadows reversed course under threat of a contempt charge and agreed to testify before the House select committee investigating 6 January.Also this week, lawyers for Trump argued in court that executive privilege means records from his White House should not be released to the panel. The former president contends the same doctrine should apply to former aides.Last weekend, the California Democrat Adam Schiff said the 6 January panel wanted to establish “the complete role of the former president” in the Capitol riot.“That is, what did he know in advance about propensity for violence that day? Was this essentially the back-up plan for the failed [election] litigation around the country? Was this something that was anticipated? How was it funded, whether the funders knew about what was likely to happen that day? And what was the president’s response as the attack was going on, as his own vice-president was being threatened?” Schiff stated.On Tuesday, citing sources close to Trump, the Guardian reported that hours before the Capitol attack, Trump made several calls from the White House to allies at a Washington hotel and talked about ways to stop certification.Meadows’ book, however, will provide few further answers.As he rode with Trump to a rally near the White House on 6 January, Meadows writes, Trump “was in mourning for the second term he had been unfairly denied”.Trump took the stage following an exhortation to “trial by combat” from his attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s own words featured his instruction to supporters to “fight like hell”.But Meadows claims the speech was “more subdued than usual”.He also claims that when Trump told the crowd “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on” Republicans objecting to electoral college results, it was all an “ad lib”.Trump called aides hours before Capitol riot to discuss how to stop Biden victoryRead moreMeadows said Trump told him immediately after the speech that when he said he would march on the Capitol himself, he had been “speaking metaphorically” – but only because he “knew as well as anyone that we couldn’t organise a trip like that on such short notice”.In their own Trump book, Peril, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post describe what happened next.“Following Trump’s hour-long speech, thousands of attendees took his advice. They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol, and when they arrived, they … surged closer and closer to the Capitol despite pleas from [law enforcement].“By 1.30pm, parts of the crowd had become a mob, pounding on the doors and demanding entry. At 1.50pm [police] declared a riot. Possible pipe bombs had been found nearby.“Shortly after 2pm, windows at the Capitol began to shatter. They were in. Many were looking for Mike Pence … outside, a makeshift gallows had been erected.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Republicans threaten government shutdown to undermine vaccine mandatesRightwingers in House urge Senate colleagues to stand in the way of funding bill unless it meets demands Republicans are preparing to shut down the American government on Friday, in the latest attempt by the party to thwart White House efforts to increase vaccine take-up, by undermining vaccine mandates across the country.Clamor is growing among some conservatives for Republican senators to oppose a stopgap funding bill, which would fund the government for the next few weeks, unless Democrats agree to not direct money towards enforcing a vaccine mandate for larger companies in the US.If the disgruntled Republicans, who reportedly include Senator Mike Lee, from Utah, are successful, the government would effectively run out of money on Friday and could be forced to furlough workers and shut down some federal services.The need for vaccine mandates, which have been introduced by Joe Biden, has taken on additional importance as the US braces for the impact of the Omicron coronavirus variant.The plot by the right comes after some Republican states have already sought to diminish mandates, by expanding unemployment benefits for employees who have been fired or quit over the requirement to get the vaccine.On Wednesday, the House Freedom Caucus, a group of rightwing Republicans in the House of Representatives, urged their Senate colleagues to block the funding bill, also known as a continuing resolution, “unless it prohibits funding – in all respects – for the vaccine mandates and enforcement thereof”.In a letter to Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, the Freedom Caucus said the Democratic-dominated House was set to vote in favor of the stopgap funding bill on Wednesday. The bill will then go to the Senate, where Democrats need Republican votes to pass the bill by Friday night.The House Freedom Caucus said that deadline gave their Senate colleagues “important leverage” to prevent funding for mandates.Biden introduced vaccine mandates, which require employees to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing, for federal workers and contractors in July. In September, Biden ordered healthcare workers to be vaccinated and companies with 100 workers or more to require Covid-19 vaccines or testing, which the government said would cover more than 100 million employees. Those measures have been put on hold by court rulings, after Republican state attorneys general, conservative groups and trade organizations have sued to stop the regulations.Republicans boost benefits for workers who quit over vaccine mandatesRead moreThe appeal by House Republicans came after Politico reported that some Republicans in the Senate were open to blocking the stopgap funding bill.“I’m sure we would all like to simplify the process for resolving the [continuing resolution], but I can’t facilitate that without addressing the vaccine mandates,” Lee told Politico.“Given that federal courts across the country have raised serious issues with these mandates, it’s not unreasonable for my Democratic colleagues to delay enforcement of the mandates for at least the length of the continuing resolution.”The Washington Post reported that Lee had planned to at least “block swift debate” on a funding bill.The growing threat of a funding scrap comes after McConnell said on Tuesday there would be no shutdown. While that came before Wednesday’s push from his colleagues, some Republicans had been clear for weeks that they would use the funding bill to oppose vaccine mandates.Republican senators threatened a shutdown at the beginning of November, when Roger Marshall, a senator from Kansas, led a group of 11 Republicans who sent a letter to Chuck Schumer, the Senate leader, threatening to stymie funding.In that letter, signed by 10 Republican senators including Lee and Ted Cruz, Marshall complained that Joe Biden’s plan to require larger businesses to mandate vaccines or weekly testing for workers was “nothing short of immoral”.“We will oppose all efforts to implement and enforce it with every tool at our disposal, including our votes on spending measures considered by the Senate,” Marshall wrote.“To be sure, we agree that countless Americans have benefited from the protection offered by the Covid-19 vaccines. Nevertheless, the decision whether to be vaccinated against Covid-19 is a highly personal one that should never be forced upon individuals by the federal government.”Marshall, a former member of the House who was sworn into the US Senate on 3 January 2021, has promoted a conspiracy theory about federal reports of coronavirus deaths on his Facebook account. Facebook said Marshall’s post violated policies against “spreading harmful misinformation”. Marshall said he was a victim of “corporate censorship”.Iowa, Tennessee, Florida, and Kansas, which all have Republican legislatures, have changed their rules in recent weeks to expand unemployment benefits for people who have been fired or quit after failing to comply with vaccine mandates. On Wednesday, the Guardian reported that Missouri was contemplating similar laws, with more states likely to follow.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsBiden administrationJoe BidenUS SenateUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

Abortion rights advocates vow to fight on after supreme court hearingLeaders say they will look to statehouses and lower courts if justices allow undermining of Roe v Wade In the wake of Wednesday’s supreme court hearing in which a majority of justices appeared willing to significantly curb abortion rights, reproductive rights advocates said they would continue to fight in statehouses and lower courts for the right to choose.The supreme court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, widely regarded as the most important abortion rights case in nearly five decades.The case before the court pits Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s last abortion clinic, also known as the “Pink House”, against the state health director, Dr Thomas Dobbs. A decision is expected in June 2022.Conservative US supreme court justices signal support for restricting abortion in pivotal caseRead moreMississippi intends to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a move blocked so far by lower courts.While a significant blow to abortion rights is far from a foregone conclusion, questions from the supreme court’s conservative justices on Wednesday appeared to show a willingness to allow restrictions on abortion at 15 weeks and perhaps earlier in a pregnancy.The case also requests the court overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 supreme court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion and is the only safeguard for such rights in dozens of conservative US states.Under present law, pregnant people have a right to terminate a pregnancy up to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb, widely regarded as 24 weeks gestation. A full-term pregnancy is considered 39 weeks gestation.In a consensus shared across the political spectrum, at least five justices appeared divided over whether to significantly curb or overturn Roe v Wade.Six of the nine justices lean to the right, with three of them nominated by Donald Trump during his one-term presidency. “Congress could fix the issue right now,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), the organization that represented abortion providers in the supreme court on Wednesday.Although abortion was legalized in 1973 and has been relied upon by women nationally since then, Congress has never affirmed the right to abortion in legislation. That left the Roe v Wade precedent as the principle protection of the option for termination, while anti-abortion campaigners have brought many legal challenges and also pushed laws undermining access to the procedure.“All these bans and undue burdens in abortion care would be addressed by the Women’s Health Protection Act,” Northup said, referring to a bill recently passed by the US House of Representatives. “That would make sure women can access abortion without unnecessary bans.”Thus far, the bill has been viewed as highly unlikely to pass into law because it would need to overcome the Senate filibuster rule, requiring a 60-vote majority in the evenly divided chamber, where the Republicans would oppose it.Joe Biden said on Wednesday: “I support Roe v Wade. I think it’s a rational position to take.”Julie Rikelman, CRR’s litigation director, who argued before the justices, said campaigners would continue to fight if the supreme court went against reproductive choice. “We will continue to make every argument we can in the federal courts, we will continue to litigate in the state courts … we will not stop fighting, because it is just too important,” Rikelman said.Shannon Brewer, the director of the Pink House, said the coming months would be tough, with her providers “sitting and waiting and twiddling our thumbs” in anticipation of a decision.“It was a difficult day for everybody [but] I listened to the arguments and I think they did a great job at representing women today,” Brewer said.Following what was widely viewed as a hearing favorable to anti-abortion forces, conservatives chimed in.“What we want to see is the court do the right thing and overturn Roe,” said Chip Roy, a Republican US representative from Texas. He decried fears over a threat to choice as a “wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left”.Sam Brownback, the former US ambassador at large for international religious freedom under Trump, said it was time to overturn Roe “and let states address the issue”.Overturning Roe v Wade would effectively return the issue to be decided at state level, where swaths of the south and midwest would be “certain or likely” to ban most abortion. Already, several states have banned abortion at six weeks, though all those laws have been blocked by courts, with the prominent exception of Texas.Some reproductive rights advocates remained optimistic.Schaunta James-Boyd, co-executive director of Trust Women, an organization dedicated to providing abortions in underserved states, said her group “look[s] forward to a positive outcome later in 2022”.The pressure to legislate an affirmative right to abortion in states not openly hostile is likely to increase as a supreme court decision nears. While 26 states are “certain or likely” to outlaw abortion if Roe v Wade were overturned, states such as New York and Illinois have worked to protect abortion rights. Polling shows about six in 10 Americans believe abortion should be legal in “all or most” circumstances.Meanwhile, the House speaker and California Democrat Nancy Pelosi said: “The House is committed to defending women’s health freedoms and to enshrining into law our House-passed Women’s Health Protection Act, led by Congresswoman Judy Chu, to protect reproductive health care for all women across America.”She added that the supreme court “has the opportunity and responsibility to honor the constitution, the law and this basic truth: every woman has the constitutional right to basic reproductive healthcare”.TopicsAbortionHealthGenderUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

Key events

Show

3.31pm EST

15:31

Stacey Abrams announces that she is running for governor of Georgia

1.52pm EST

13:52

First confirmed case of Omicron Covid variant in US

1.39pm EST

13:39

Biden reiterates support for the right to abortion in US

11.40am EST

11:40

Kavanaugh signals support for curbing abortion rights

10.01am EST

10:01

Republicans threaten government shutdown over vaccine mandate

9.10am EST

09:10

Good morning…

Live feed

Show

Show key events only

4.48pm EST

16:48

While House Republicans aren’t doing much when it comes to admonishing far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert for her Islamophobic comments about congresswoman Ilhan Omar, House progressives will be pushing Democrat leaders for action:

Manu Raju
(@mkraju)
House progressives plan to ratchet up calls to strip Lauren Boebert from her committee spots bc of her comments on Ilhan Omar — and will soon go public with a letter to that effect, per two sourcesDem leaders have not made a decision yet on how to proceed.

December 1, 2021

4.18pm EST

16:18

House Republicans went full high school drama yesterday on Twitter, with Majorie Taylor Greene calling Nancy Mace “trash” and Mace calling Greene “batshit crazy” via emojis.
This comes because far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert made Islamophobic remarks about Democrat congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has since received death threats related to these remarks. Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger called Boebert “trash”, and called out House minority leader Kevin McCarthy for his silence on her remarks.
It appears McCarthy has finally weighed in – but not directly about the bigoted bullying. Instead, he’s just telling everyone in his party to behave.

Andrew Solender
(@AndrewSolender)
GOP Rep. Don Bacon paraphrases McCarthy’s message on GOP infighting this AM: “Stop it. Quit acting like you’re in high school.”If McCarthy’s private talks w/ MTG don’t work, “at some point, the conference as a whole is gonna be frustrated, speak up… I know that’s bubbling.”

December 1, 2021

Andrew Solender
(@AndrewSolender)
“I’m not here to be a burden, but at some point you have to defend yourself too” – Bacon on attacks from MTG & co.“We’re not here to get the most clicks, to be TV celebrities. We’re here to govern, and you don’t do that by calling each other names, tearing each other apart.”

December 1, 2021

Updated
at 4.19pm EST

3.31pm EST

15:31

Stacey Abrams announces that she is running for governor of Georgia

Democrat Stacey Abrams, who many have credited for being among those who helped turn Georgia blue in 2020, has announced that she will be running for governor once again.
“If our Georgia is going to move to its next and greatest chapter, we are going to need leadership,” Abrams said in her announcement video. “Leadership that knows how to do the job. Leadership that doesn’t take credit without also taking responsibility. Leadership that works hard. Leadership that measures progress not by stats but by our ability for everyone to move up and thrive. Leadership that understands the true pain folks are feeling and has real plans. That’s the job of governor.”

Stacey Abrams
(@staceyabrams)
I’m running for Governor because opportunity in our state shouldn’t be determined by zip code, background or access to power. #gapolBe a founding donor to my campaign:https://t.co/gk2lmBINfW pic.twitter.com/z14wUlo8ls

December 1, 2021

Updated
at 3.33pm EST

3.24pm EST

15:24

More on government funding, the continuing resolution and a possible government shutdown: House majority leader Steny Hoyer, who told reporters yesterday that he planned to pass a CR in the House today, now doesn’t think it’s possible.

Chad Pergram
(@ChadPergram)
From colleague Jason Donner. Hoyer when asked if they could pass the CR to avoid a gov’t shutdown today: “I don’t think so.”

December 1, 2021

Chad Pergram
(@ChadPergram)
Hoyer on an interim spending bill to avert a shutdown. Says “Schumer and McConnell are negotiating.” He adds “It’s incomprehensible today that we can’t pass a simple CR.”

December 1, 2021

3.20pm EST

15:20

Whew, a lot happening today. Let’s hop back to Congress, where a handful of Republicans are threatening a government shutdown over the vaccine mandate for the private sector.
To recap: In September, Joe Biden announced a federal mandate that all companies in the US with 100 employees or more must ensure either that their workers are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or that they test negative for the coronavirus at least once a week. The deadline for this is 4 January.
Conservatives across the country have taken issue with this, ranging the gamut of being fully anti-vax to arguing that vaccinations are a deeply personal issue, one in which the government should not be involved. There have been several challenges in courts that have sided against the mandate – the White House has since been urging private companies to act on their own to set their own vaccine mandates, as many have already.
On top of all this, the federal government runs out of funding on 3 December – yep, two days from now. Congress must pass a stopgap funding bill, also known as a continuing resolution (CR), to prevent a government shutdown that would put hundreds of thousands out of work right before the holidays.
Since early November, some Republican senators have made it clear that they will not vote for any short-term funding of a federal government with a vaccine mandate. Other conservative members of Congress have since joined in.
Here’s a quick update on the situation:

Manu Raju
(@mkraju)
Here’s what Sen. Roger Marshall (one of a handful of conservatives who are threatening a brief government shutdown) want before agreeing to a quick vote on the continuing resolution. He told us he wants language in CR that would prohibit OSHA from enforcing vaccine mandate. BUT

December 1, 2021

Manu Raju
(@mkraju)
Marshall would be OK with a quick final passage vote if there’s an amendment to that effect with a 51-vote threshold. But Ds are likely to insist on a 60-vote threshold. So would he object to a quick vote to pass the funding bill if the amendment were set at a 60-vote threshold?

December 1, 2021

Manu Raju
(@mkraju)
“We’ll see,” he said. “There’s a long time between now and Friday. But at a minimum, I think at a minimum it deserves a 50-person vote.”At GOP lunch, a number of senators told Marshall and Lee that their goal won’t be achieved if there’s brief shutdown. So I asked him about that

December 1, 2021

Manu Raju
(@mkraju)
And he said: “Yeah, I think the folks back home want to know how hard we’re fighting for them, that the jobs back home are as important as keeping the federal government open. That’s the hypocrisy up here. It just seems like we have rules for back home that don’t apply here.”

December 1, 2021

Updated
at 3.31pm EST

2.59pm EST

14:59

The Guardian’s David Smith was out front of the supreme court during the oral arguments in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Anti-abortion supporters waved models of fetuses and held prayer circles, while pro-choice advocates waved signs reading, “abortion is healthcare” and “protect abortion access”.
Read more here:

Updated
at 3.04pm EST

2.34pm EST

14:34

Joanna Walters

Joe Biden smiled wryly earlier when asked by reporters whether he thought the former president, Donald Trump, put him at risk when Trump had received a positive coronavirus test just three days before the first presidential debate in the 2020 election campaign, according to a new book by former chief of staff Mark Meadows, which was reported exclusively by Guardian US this morning.
“I don’t think about the former president,” Biden said. That was his only word on the topic.
Top health official Anthony Fauci said a little later, at the White House briefing, that he had not been aware of that positive test for Trump at that time. Trump subsequently tested negative, according to the Meadows book, but shortly after revealed publicly that he had coronavirus, following which he was admitted to hospital.
Speaking generally, Fauci said: “If you test positive, you should quarantine yourself.”
Trump had not done that and had not only stood a few feet from Biden, in person and unmasked, for that first debate, but he continued to travel and hold events in close proximity to people.

2.16pm EST

14:16

Joanna Walters

Anthony Fauci is continuing to answer media questions at the White House. The top US public health official and chief medical adviser to Joe Biden, said that the molecular profile of the Omicron variant suggests it might be more transmissible than previous strains – and might have a higher risk of evading vaccine protection.
He emphasized, however, that it is still too early to say what will happen in the pandemic with the emergence of the Omicron variant.
Fauci urged those who have consistently adopted protection protocols, such as wearing a face mask in indoor settings with crowds, to continue to do so and said those who have stopped such practices should resume.
Fauci said: “Do the things we have been saying every single day, not just for ourselves but internationally.”
He said, however, that long term he believes there is “an end game” to the coronavirus pandemic.
“There is no doubt that this will end, I promise you that, this will end,” he said.
Fauci has now finished his section of the briefing and left the media room at the White House.

Updated
at 3.10pm EST

2.06pm EST

14:06

Joanna Walters

Anthony Fauci, the director of the national institute of allergies and infectious diseases and chief medical adviser to the US president, has taken the podium in the White House press briefing room.
He has confirmed what we all just found out – the first case of the omicron strain of coronavirus has been identified in the US.
“We knew it was just a matter of time,” Fauci said.
The case was confirmed moments ago by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal health agency, and was identified in California.
Fauci just said that the case was confirmed by the CDC and the California and the San Francisco health authorities.
“This is the first case of Covid-19 caused by the omicron variant detected in the US,” said Fauci.
He said the case involved an individual who returned to the US from South Africa on 22 November and tested positive for coronavirus on 29 November.
Fauci added that the individual was fully vaccinated but to his knowledge had not received a booster shot. He said the patient has experienced mild symptoms.“We feel good that this patient had only mild symptoms and seems to be improving,” he said.
He said the patient was isolating and those whom they had come into close contact with had been reached and tested and shown to be negative for coronavirus.
Fauci reiterated that as many people as possible should get vaccinated and, if they have been vaccinated, get boosted if eligible.
He told people not to wait to see if there will be a new vaccination designed to deal specifically with variants.
“Right now I would not be waiting. If you are eligible … get boosted now.”
It is not yet known for certain if the current vaccines combat omicron, Fauci said. Many experts are optimistic that they provide protection but confirmation of protection or the level of protection are awaited.

Updated
at 3.05pm EST

1.52pm EST

13:52

First confirmed case of Omicron Covid variant in US

Joanna Walters

The federal authorities have identified the first confirmed case of the Omicron coronavirus variant in the United States.
We are awaiting a live briefing from the White House from Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to Joe Biden and the top infectious diseases public health official in the US, and press sec Jen Psaki. We’ll bring you that.
But meanwhile, this news is breaking across various wires services and TV news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have the first confirmed US case of Omicron, identified in California.
The dominant variant in the US at this point is still the Delta strain, which emerged and spread across the country from the summer.

Updated
at 3.08pm EST

1.39pm EST

13:39

Biden reiterates support for the right to abortion in US

Joanna Walters

Joe Biden gave a simple endorsement of reproductive rights in America moments ago as he remarked after the high-stakes hearing at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, earlier today. More

Biden was questioned by a reporter over a claim in a book by Trump’s last chief of staff that the ex-president had tested positive for Covid-19 three days before the first 2020 presidential debate. When asked whether he thought Trump had put him at risk, Biden said: ‘I don’t think about the former president’

Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new book More