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      Unlike Joe Biden, Kamala Harris will be a genuine champion for abortion rights | Moira Donegan

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      When he was still the nominee, Joe Biden’s preferred euphemism for abortion was “Roe”. He would talk about “upholding” Roe v Wade even after June 2022, when the US supreme court struck it down. Reproductive rights advocates bristled at this, pointing out how many people had been denied abortions under Roe, and how flimsy the decision’s protection of reproductive rights had been on personal-autonomy or sex-equality grounds.Frankly, it was hard to get the president to talk about abortion at all. He seemed to avoid even the word “abortion”. When he did talk about the procedure – and the bans on it that Republicans have unleashed across the country – he preferred to focus on women who had been denied emergency abortions for wanted pregnancies in the midst of tragic health complications.Abortion, in his hands, became an issue in which sad, troubled and helpless women could be aided by the mercy of heroic men like himself – or like that of the imagined doctor he referenced in his disastrous June debate with Donald Trump, a man, Biden said, who would determine whether an abortion seeker “needed help or not”. Abortion, in his telling, was an unpleasant but necessary evil that men mediated for women. It was decidedly not a matter of adult women’s rights, dignity or right of autonomy over their own bodies and lives.Kamala Harris, Biden’s successor at the top of the Democratic ticket following his withdrawal last Sunday, has taken a different approach. The Biden administration had largely delegated abortion rights messaging to the vice-president, out of deference both for Biden’s obvious personal discomfort with the issue and his growing inability to campaign effectively at all. (The anti-choice group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America named Harris as Biden’s “abortion czar”, a name that perhaps sounds a little cooler than they intended.) She made a multistate tour focusing on the issue earlier this year, which included what is believed to be the first public visit to an abortion clinic by a president or vice-president: a stop at a Planned Parenthood in St Paul, Minnesota, where Harris appeared with the clinic’s medical director, and commended the clinic’s staff for their “true leadership”.“It is only right and fair that people have access to the healthcare they need,” she said.The result was a divergence of abortion messaging within the White House, with Harris making a much more robust case for abortion, and for reproductive justice more broadly, in much more affirmative and unapologetic terms. The preferred catchphrase that she repeated when speaking about the issue was not Biden’s tepid and euphemistic “restore Roe”. Instead, Harris has made apparent reference to Dr George Tiller, an abortion doctor who was murdered by anti-choice extremists in 2009, who summarized his own approach to abortion in two words: “Trust women.”Before Biden dropped out of the race, November’s presidential election was set to be little more than a referendum on his age. But now that he has stepped aside, Harris has an opportunity to make a much stronger case for a Democratic policy vision. And reproductive rights, an issue that has motivated women voters in large numbers even in deep-conservative states since the Dobbs decision, appears to be at the center of her agenda.The move is good politics. Abortion rights are extraordinarily popular, and have only become more so in the years since Dobbs, mobilizing voters who would stay home or vote for Republicans when other issues are more salient. A new poll from the Associated Press finds that six in 10 Americans support abortion for any reason; other polls show even higher levels of support for abortion, especially early in pregnancy.It’s not just that abortion, in the abstract, is popular: abortion bans, in particular, are profoundly unpopular. The reality of post-Dobbs bans has dramatically moved public opinion on the issue: since May 2019, the percent of Americans who say that abortion should be legal under all circumstances has increased by 10 points, to 35%. The percent who say it should be illegal under all circumstances – the position advocated by the Republican party platform, which supports recognition of fetuses and embryos as persons under the 14th amendment – has fallen dramatically during that same period, to just 12%.These shifts in public opinion have had a marked impact at the ballot box. Democrats’ better-than-expected showing in the November 2022 midterms is credited to outrage against the Dobbs decision that June. But a desire to protect or restore abortion rights has driven large turnout even in heavily Republican states: Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio have all voted overwhelmingly in favor of abortion rights since Dobbs. Harris has seized on this shift in a way that Biden has not been able to, speaking passionately – and credibly – about abortion as a matter of not only health, but also dignity.Harris has also cannily and repeatedly drawn connections between Trump’s last term, in which three anti-choice zealots were appointed to the US supreme court, and the suffering that abortion bans have caused in Republican-controlled states. She refers to the state laws prohibiting the procedure as “Trump abortion bans”. This focus could bear fruit in November: alongside Harris’s presidential bid, a total of five states – Nevada, Colorado, South Dakota, Maryland and Florida – will have abortion-rights measures on the ballot.The Republican ticket, meanwhile, has leaned further and further into an ideology of misogyny and gender reaction. Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, is a passionate and lurid misogynist; he recently referred to Harris and other Democratic women as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”, and that childless women “have no direct stake” in America’s future. He has also suggested that citizens without children should have their votes diluted.Childless women seem to be a particularly irksome demographic for the Trump camp’s army of prurient creeps: both the media personality Laura Loomer and the lawyer and thinktank gadfly Will Chamberlain quickly joined Vance in attacking Harris for not having biological children. It’s a fitting line of attack; after all, the very reason why Republicans are pursuing abortion bans in the first place is because they have an extremely narrow view of what women should be, one they want to enforce with the law.Abortion-rights advocates will certainly seek to push Harris for even more commitments for reproductive freedom and justice. But Harris, at least, is willing to argue that women can be things other than mothers. Like maybe the president.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘I was not voting before, now I am’: gen Z voters on what they think of Kamala Harris

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      American gen Z voters share how they feel about Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, why they like or dislike her as a candidate and whether they think she could beat Donald Trump, as the vice-president races towards winning the Democratic nomination for November’s election.‘I think she’s just what we need’“I think [Kamala Harris] is the only one that makes sense. She will get the votes Biden couldn’t. She could get the Black, Asian, Latino, women’s, LGBTQ+ and youth votes. She stands more for progress and equality than an old white dude and if she wins it will be historic. The Democrats need a bold move and I think she’s just what we need.“I hope the Democrats realize what an opportunity this is for them.” Will, 22, construction worker from Portland, Oregon‘We are fired up’“I have so much renewed passion and hope now that Kamala is the endorsed candidate. She made history when she was elected VP and I believe she can make history again. I get emotional just thinking about it. And despite having just purchased a new home and having hardly any extra cash lying around, my husband and I just donated $100 to a campaign for the first time this election cycle. We are fired up.“My concern is we are facing a self-fulfilling prophecy; that people think it’s an impossible task to elect a Black woman to the highest office and as a result it becomes one. I think it’s quite the opposite actually. I feel Kamala is just what we need to energize young voters and get them to the polls.” Lizzie, 28, engineer from Idaho‘I’m concerned that she is silly or not serious’“I feel mixed about it. I am a Democrat and at first I thought: ‘Oh well, we’re stuck with Joe we’ll get him elected if it means no Donald Trump.’ Then after the debate I thought: ‘Omg this guy is way too old!’ I guess Biden seemed so set on still running I thought he would never drop out. I liked Kamala when she ran back in 2020 but I’m not sure how I feel about her today.“My biggest concern with her is this perception that she is silly, or not serious. She laughs in every interview and the “You think you fell out of a coconut tree? You are the sum of everything … ” is a huge meme on TikTok. I guess I wouldn’t say it paints her in a horrible light, but I just think people don’t take her seriously.” Georgie, 25, research associate from Massachusetts‘Kamala is not perfect, but I’m more optimistic now than with Biden’“I and everyone I know are THRILLED that Kamala Harris is now leading the ticket. Joe Biden could not win. Kamala is not a perfect candidate, but she can campaign; she is running against the oldest major party nominee in history; she can make the case for a new Democratic administration. Joe Biden could do none of these things, so while I think Democrats still face an uphill battle, I am infinitely more optimistic now that we have a likely nominee who is physically and mentally capable of running an energetic campaign.“Kamala is not a perfect candidate, and I probably would have supported someone else if Biden had stepped down a year ago. I’m worried that she will struggle to differentiate herself from the administration’s policy on Gaza (as Hubert Humphrey struggled to differentiate himself from the Johnson administration’s policy on Vietnam), that she’ll be blamed for voters’ dissatisfaction with the status quo, and, of course, she will certainly face racist and sexist headwinds that Biden did not. BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, I thought Biden was a certain loser after the debate, so even if Harris’s chances to win are 30%, that’s still better than 0%. I don’t have any concerns about her ability to do the job if elected, and I think she is perfectly capable of running a winning campaign, at least in theory.” Peter, 27, museum educator from Indiana‘That Harris was picked by delegates, not voters, is a disaster for her campaign’“I watched the 2019 debates (eg Harris’s inability to perform under pressure from opponents like Tulsi Gabbard) and her recent interviews (eg her disastrous response to Lester Holt when asked if she’d been to the border) and don’t think she’s the strongest the Democratic party can offer. She doesn’t bring the fact-based, logical responses needed to counter a populist candidate like Trump nor does she present clear policy beyond typical stump-speech moralizing.“I’d rather have Pete Buttigieg to be honest and feel deeply, horribly cheated because the Democratic candidate isn’t going to be chosen by a primary vote, instead relying on a couple thousand delegates in Chicago.“I’d feel better if she were at least chosen by the American people instead of being sweethearted because Biden picked her for VP. It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I’ll have a hard time backing Harris until there’s a broad-scale democratic process to ballast her presidential bid.“The Trump campaign is going to villainize Harris and the Democratic party over the lack of primary voting to support Harris’s candidacy. This narrative feeds exactly into the anti-establishment, deep-state messaging central to the Trump campaign, and the sad thing is that the Trump campaign will have a point: Harris was not picked by voters, she was picked by delegates. It’s a disaster for any campaign she’d hope to launch, and based on Harris’s past performances under fire, she will have no effective argument against Trump’s accusations.” Michelle, 26, from Wisconsin‘I think she can do great things’“It will be refreshing for someone new to take the lead. [Harris] has got experience, she is young and passionate. Let’s see if she can make positive changes. This country needs a levelheaded individual, not a pushover or tyrant. I think she can do great things.“I just hope she is smart and strong enough to not continue to support war and the crackdown on immigrants.“This country was built on the foundation of immigrants and the pursuit of fairness and equity. I don’t mind the basis of what it means to be a Republican but their agenda has really changed over the years. We need to support each other as people; I just hope others get over their greed so we can do just that.” Lee Ocasio, 28, medical assistant from New York‘I hope she’ll restore Roe v Wade’“I am anxious for the results, but if she’s got a good chance at victory, I’m in full support. I had switched back and forth on supporting a Biden withdrawal, but what’s done is done now.“I’m a little worried about her policies. From what I’ve read this far, she doesn’t seem to have much of a stance or plan for things like Palestine, immigration or inflation, but if she can restore Roe v Wade, she will have 110% of my support.” Kaleb Stanton, 24, grocery store worker from New Mexico‘She’ll be a tougher candidate to beat than Biden’“I have been worried about the lack of enthusiasm about Biden’s candidacy, particularly among young voters, and the implications that could have on turnout. Virtually all indicators have pointed to a strong economy under Biden; however, I think many young people feel like there is less opportunity for them today than there was for prior generations.“For this reason, I think it is unsurprising that there would be a lack of enthusiasm to support Biden or Trump because of their age (regardless of their ability to do the job or not).“I think that VP Harris will be a harder opponent for Republicans to run against. Consider the matchup: a 78-year-old male Republican nominee recently found guilty on felony charges, and responsible for appointing three supreme court justices that helped overturn Roe v Wade versus a 59-year-old female (likely) Democratic nominee with a background as a former prosecutor. Harris will be able to hammer Republicans on abortion/reproductive health, contrast her own ‘law & order’ background with Trump’s felon status, and offer a younger option to voters that were concerned about Biden’s (and Trump’s!) age.“I think Harris also has strengths that bring previously competitive southern states back into play in a way that Biden couldn’t in 2024. Harris would be the first female president, first female African-American president, and first Asian-American president. She represents America’s cultural melting pot in a way that no previous presidential candidate has and I believe this could help boost African- and Asian-American turnout, two historically strong Democratic voter bases that some polls have shown to be slightly wavering in their support in recent years.” Anonymous policy researcher at a thinktank in their 20s‘She appeals way more to gen Z than Biden’“[Kamala Harris] is a much better candidate for the country, and appeals way more to gen Z voters than Biden did. I was not voting before, and now I am.” Javier, 25, a gay Latino voter from New York More

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      Biggest US abortion rights groups back Kamala Harris as effective messenger

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      The biggest abortion rights groups in US politics are lining up behind Kamala Harris’s bid for president, a show of faith in a politician who has already become the face of the White House’s fight over abortion rights – which is not only one of the election’s biggest issues but one of the few where Democrats have the advantage.Within hours of Joe Biden’s stunning announcement on Sunday that he would drop out of the presidential race and endorse the vice-president, Emilys List, which champions Democratic women who support abortion rights, and Reproductive Freedom for All, which advocates for abortion access and was previously known as Naral Pro-Choice America, officially endorsed Harris. Emilys List plans to pour at least $20m into the race in support of Harris.Planned Parenthood Action Fund, whose endorsement must be ratified by local chapters, has not officially weighed in. However, its CEO and president, Alexis McGill Johnson, warmly commended Harris for keeping “the needs and experiences of patients and providers front and center”.Harris has spent much of this year on a tour of the country in support of abortion rights, where she has proven to be a far more effective messenger on the issue than Biden. The president was infamously reluctant to even say the word “abortion” and fumbled answers to questions about it in the June debate that ultimately cost him his candidacy.“Just right off the bat, she’s primed to run with the message around abortion rights,” said Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. “Her messaging around abortion and being out there forcefully on the issue is going to be a net positive for her.”Harris, the first sitting vice-president or president to visit an abortion clinic, has described the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade and the abortion bans that now blanket the US south as “a healthcare crisis” and frames abortion rights as an issue of personal freedom.“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body,” she told a crowd in Savannah, Georgia, in February.Democrats hope that outrage over Roe’s downfall, which hobbled Republicans in the 2022 midterms and led GOP strongholds such as Ohio and Kansas to pass ballot measures protecting abortion rights, will boost turnout among their base – especially in battleground states like Nevada and Arizona. Both states are set to hold abortion–related ballot measures this year.Donald Trump, his running mate, JD Vance, and other Republicans have attempted to neutralize the importance of abortion rights in the 2024 election by downplaying the issue as well as their party’s role in Roe’s demise. During last week’s Republican national convention, the issue was conspicuously missing onstage. Neither Trump, who appointed three of the supreme court justices who overturned Roe, nor Vance, who has previously supported a national abortion ban, mentioned abortion.“Trump and Vance can downplay the abortion message all they want, but the political reality speaks for itself,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute.Deckman suspects that a Harris candidacy will invigorate young women, young women of color and suburban women.“We see in our polling that young women in particular are the most staunchly supportive of abortion rights,” Deckman said. “I think it’s gonna be an extremely close election. But I think the benefit for the Democrats is now they have a new narrative. There’s some enthusiasm happening, where there wasn’t with the Biden campaign.”Before Roe fell, anti-abortion Republicans were far more likely than pro-abortion rights Democrats to identify as single-issue abortion voters.That picture has changed somewhat. One in eight voters say abortion is the “most important issue” to their vote, while more than half say that it is “very important issue but not the most important”, according to polling from KFF conducted before Biden’s departure from the race. Two-thirds of the voters who describe abortion as their most important issue say it should be legal in all or most cases. The voters who think it should be legal in all cases tend to be Democratic, Black, female or between the ages of 18 and 29.But voters are also deeply concerned with the economy and immigration – issues where, polls indicate, Trump is seen as the stronger candidate. Although six in 10 Democrats think Harris would make a good president, only about three in 10 overall adults feel the same, according to polling released by the Associated Press on Friday.As vice-president, Harris has backed Biden’s promise to codify abortion rights into law.“Here’s what a second Trump term looks like: more bans, more suffering, less freedom,” Harris said in a May speech. “But we are not going to let that happen.”While abortion rights groups are backing Harris, anti-abortion activists are already mobilizing against her. SBA Pro-Life America, which plans to spend $92m across eight states this election cycle, has started calling Harris “the “abortion czar”. More

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      Key takeaways from day three of the Republican national convention

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      Republicans had a new chant on Wednesday night: not just “Trump! Trump!” but also “JD! JD! JD!” in honor of Trump’s new vice-presidential pick, Ohio senator JD Vance, who introduced himself to the country Wednesday night in a confident and personal primetime address.Also new: the professionally printed signs reading “Mass Deportations Now,” a reference to Trump’s campaign pledge to engage in the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history.Here are five key takeaways from the night:1. Republicans are simply not talking about abortionDuring his race for the US senate in Ohio, Vance said that he did not support rape and incest exceptions in abortion bans. In 2022, he said he “would like abortion to be illegal nationally”, expressing sympathy for the view that a national abortion ban was necessary to stop women from traveling to different states in order to get abortions.A section on Vance’s Senate website, accessible as late as Monday, read, simply, “End abortion,” calling him “100% pro-life, a Huffington Post reporter noted. By Wednesday, that message had vanished, as Vance’s old website simply redirected to Trump’s presidential campaign site.Vance similarly erased his anti-abortion views from his primetime speech to the RNC on Wednesday, and as my colleagues have noted, he’s far from alone. There’s been a conspicuous silence on abortion throughout the Republican convention, as well as on other issues that Republicans appear to see as weaknesses, like Project 2025 and the future of American democracy.2. Warm reaction to Vance’s bestselling life story, as ‘hillbilly’ aims for White House The Republican national convention crowd was already eating out of Vance’s hand, as the charismatic 39-year-old Ohio senator talked them through the life story that made him into the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, a 2016 memoir that became a 2020 feature film starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.Vance had described growing up “a working-class boy born far from the halls of power” in Middletown, Ohio, with a single mother who struggled with addiction, and a tough, loving grandmother who kept him from falling prey to a local drug dealer. He described his journey from the Marine Corps, to Yale, to working in venture capital, to being chosen as Trump’s vice-presidential pick.He neatly contrasted his youth to Biden’s age, noting policies Biden supported when he was in high school, and saying: “Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I’ve been alive.” Then, talking about other single mothers like his, who had struggled with addiction but never given up, he revealed that his mother, Beverly Aikins, was in the RNC audience with him, and that she is “10 years clean and sober”.“I love you, mom,” he said, suggesting that she might he able to celebrate her full 10 years of sobriety next year in the White House.As the cameras panned to Vance’s smiling mother, she mouthed, “That’s my boy! That’s my boy!” And the crowd started chanting, “JD’s mom! JD’s mom!”3. It’s clear that JD’s job is to woo the rust belt Vance shouted out to his home state of Ohio in his speech, but he quickly cut off the chants of “O-H-I-O,” quipping, “We gotta win Michigan too.”His speech was threaded with references to rust belt states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Kentucky, which he connected to the struggles of his Ohio hometown, and to the importance of restoring American factories and American manufacturing.Vance described a series of economic and foreign policy choices Biden made over his long career that, he argued, hurt American workers, particularly those in towns like he grew up in. Some observers saw the speech as a rewriting of Vance’s own life narrative, shifting from Hillbilly Elegy’s preoccupation with Appalachian poverty’s connection to cultural problems and personal responsibility, to instead blaming politician Joe Biden for creating the conditions that left the people he grew up with, impoverished.Strikingly, Vance came onstage to the country twang of Merle Haggard’s 2005 protest ballad, America First, which expressed the singer’s opposition to the Iraq war.4. Republicans highlighted grief and anger over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021Some of the family members of the 13 soldiers killed in an Islamic State terrorist attack at Kabul airport during the “disastrous” US withdrawal from Afghanistan spoke at the RNC to criticize Biden.Alicia Lopez, whose son, Corporal Hunter Lopez, was killed on 26 August 2021, said: “Despite our pleas for answers and accountability, they have pushed us away and tried to silence us. The Biden administration has not owned up to the bad decisions, they have not been transparent about their failures and their so-called leaders work to protect themselves, rather than our sons and daughters who took the oath to defend our country.”A mother-in-law of a marine killed at Abbey Gate said that Trump, in contrast, had spent dedicated time with family members, offering them what she felt was genuine support in their grief. The family members were also featured in a video in which they said that when they met with Biden as their loved ones’ bodies arrived at a military base in Delaware, the president appeared to check his watch during the ceremony.Other pro-Trump veterans also spoke to the lasting sense of anger and betrayal they felt in witnessing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the struggles and fears of the Afghans they had worked with who were left behind as the Taliban seized control of the country.“Throughout our careers, we never had regrets about our service, but this moral injury caused many of us to ask: ‘Why did we serve, if this was the outcome?’” Scott Neil, a retired green beret, said.A scathing state department review of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan concluded that both the Trump and Biden administrations were to blame as “during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow”.But the RNC’s focus on the withdrawal also took aim at one of Biden’s political strengths. As someone who has lost family members to a car accident and cancer, he has often been praised for his ability to grieve with people, and offer them support in moments of profound loss, even being referred to as “the designated mourner”. But on Wednesday, the RNC offered multiple speakers who portrayed Trump as the man who would comfort Americans in their grief and Biden as a self-involved politician.5. Chants of “Bring them home” as parents of 7 October hostage speak Orna and Ronen Neutra, whose son, Omer Neutra, was kidnapped during the 7 October attack in Israel, said Trump had supported them, asked the RNC for continued support in securing their son’s safe return. Omer is one of eight American hostages, Ronen Neutra said.“President Trump called us personally right after the attack, when Omer was taken captive,” Ronen Neutra said. “We know he stands with the American hostages. We need our beautiful son back and we need your support. We need your support to end this crisis and bring all the hostages back home.”Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent Harvard Divinity School student who was part of a group of students who filed a lawsuit alleging that Harvard failed to address antisemitism on campus, also spoke, as did members of a University of North Carolina fraternity who held up an American flag during a pro-Palestine campus protest.Chris Stein and Carter Sherman contributed reporting More

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      ‘A dystopian plot’: how will Trump’s Project 2025 affect California?

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      Donald Trump has not been shy about attacking California on the presidential campaign trail, telling fellow conservatives that “the place is failing” under Democratic party leadership. And all signs suggest that a second Trump administration would not hesitate to take a sledgehammer to principles and policy priorities that the Golden state and other progressive bastions hold dear.The Project 2025 policy document, a blueprint for a second Trump presidency drawn up by former Trump administration officials and sympathetic thinktank analysts, takes specific aim at California on abortion rights, fuel emissions standards and the transition to electric vehicles.The document also raises the possibility of a large-scale crackdown on immigration and an intense focus on border security – a cornerstone of the Trump campaign that could upend the lives of millions of immigrants living in California as well as parts of the state economy, especially agriculture, that depend heavily on immigrant labor.That is not to mention the other ways Project 2025 envisions overhauling the US government, with implications for California as much as the rest of the country: enhancing the power of the presidency and eroding the independence of the justice department, dismantling what it calls “the administrative state”, abandoning efforts to combat the climate crisis and curbing the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.“Project 2025 is more than an idea,” the California congressman Jared Huffman has warned, “it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will.”What remains to be seen, though, is how much of the wishlist laid out in Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” is actually achievable. Trump himself has sought to distance himself from the document, as Democrats like Huffman have started using it as a cudgel with which to attack his campaign. And a number of policy experts at one remove from the heat and hyperbole of the election campaign believe that any dystopian plot might quickly give way to a lot of lawsuits likely to slow or halt parts of the Trump agenda for months or years.“I don’t think they are capable of pulling off a lot of the things they want to pull off,” said Christopher Thornberg of the Los Angeles-based research and consulting firm Beacon Economics. While an immigration crackdown similar to the one in Trump’s first term seems inevitable, mass expulsions of millions of people as promised by the former president would be dizzyingly expensive and near-impossible to pull off, he argued.As for California’s more ambitious environmental targets that Project 2025 wants to disrupt, some – getting rid of gas-powered cars by 2035, for example – are probably unfeasible.On many other issues, California can draw on its experience of the first Trump presidency to throw up roadblocks or pass its own state legislation. The Project 2025 document may be a sign that Trump and his allies are more ready to govern this time, but – as the political consultant and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project Mike Madrid argues – California and other blue states are better prepared, too.“Whatever the federal government decides to do, California can compensate,” Madrid said. In the event of a second Trump presidency, he expected the state to start filing lawsuits almost immediately, as it did more than a hundred times during the 2017-21 presidency, and find administrative or legislative solutions to many of the problems a new Trump administration might try to create.“This state is good at finding ways around the policies,” he said. “The size of the economy makes it easier to do that.”In one instance – a proposal in the Project 2025 document to end a legal waiver that has enabled California to set its own fuel efficiency standards for the past half-century – the courts have already heard a suit brought by several Republican-run states and ruled in California’s favor.None of that diminishes the threats that Trump and his supporters have been directing at California’s political leadership, or the nastiness of some of their language. In speeches over the past year, Trump has mischaracterized California as a place with so little water that even rich people in Beverly Hills can’t take proper showers, a place where shoplifting and other crimes are so rampant the only solution is to shoot criminals on sight, a place where undocumented immigrants are, implausibly, offered pension funds and mansions on arrival and can vote illegally multiple times over. “The world is being dumped into California,” he told state Republicans last September. “Prisoners. Terrorists. Mental patients.”Project 2025’s approach has been less fanciful and much more focused on policy detail. It rails, for example, against what it calls “abortion tourism” in California and other states and proposes a number of administrative remedies to track women who travel there because of abortion bans in their states, and to withhold Medicaid and other federal funding if California continues to insist that insurance companies make abortion part of their health coverage.None of this, though, is as frightening to abortion rights activists in California as the part that is left unsaid: the desire of many on the political right to institute an outright national abortion ban. Asked whether she believed Trump when he said he would not support such a ban, Jodi Hicks of the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California responded with a flat “No.”To her, the fight in California is not about the fine print of the Hyde amendment or the Weldon amendement – tools invoked by Project 2025 that Republicans have used in the past to try to restrict abortion around the country – but rather about control of Congress to avert even the possibility of a national ban.Hicks has identified eight swing districts in California that she believes can determine control of the House of Representatives and her organization is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the Democratic candidates there. “The road to reproductive freedom runs through California,” she said. “We know what the intention is – they want to take away abortion rights all across the country, including California. What we need is a Congress that can push back and protect us.”The best way to thwart the Republicans’ plans, in other words, is to vote against them. California, as a solid-blue state, will do its part to keep Trump out of the White House. What the rest of the country does remains to be seen. More

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      Arkansas official rejected valid abortion ballot signatures, lawsuit claims

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      Organizers behind a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the Arkansas state constitution sued a senior state official on Tuesday, accusing him of illegally rejecting the signatures they submitted in support of putting the measure on the November ballot.The group, Arkansans for Limited Government, submitted more than 101,000 signatures backing its ballot measure on 5 July, according to its lawsuit. Five days later, the Arkansas secretary of state John Thurston rejected their signatures because, he said, they failed to turn in the required paperwork, including a statement that identified any paid canvassers used by the group.In its lawsuit, Arkansans for Limited Government fired back, claiming that the group had fully complied with Arkansas law and submitted canvassers’ names. They also argued that even if they had not complied with the law, they should be given the chance to correct the paperwork.“Our compliance with the law is clear and well-documented,” Lauren Cowles, executive director of Arkansans for Limited Government, said in a statement. “The secretary of state’s refusal to count valid signatures is an affront to democracy and an attempt to undermine the will of the people.”Arkansas currently bans all abortions except in medical emergencies. Arkansans for Limited Government’s ballot measure would permit people to get abortions up until 18 weeks of pregnancy, as well as in cases of rape or incest.“We are reviewing the lawsuit and would have no further comment at this time,” Chris Powell, press secretary for the Arkansas secretary of state, said in an email.In order to go before voters in November, the ballot measure must be certified by 22 August. Arkansans for Limited Government’s lawsuit asks the Arkansas supreme court to force Thurston to start counting and verifying signatures so that the measure can meet that deadline.In the two years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, voters in states like Michigan, Ohio and Kansas have all passed ballot measures to protect abortion rights. A number of states, including Nevada, Arizona and Florida are slated to put abortion-related ballot measures before voters this November. Democrats are hoping that these measures will boost turnout among their base, while anti-abortion activists and their Republican allies have tried to squash similar measures in states like Missouri and South Dakota. More

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      A Trump-Vance administration would be ‘the most dangerous’ for abortion rights, say advocates

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      Within minutes of Donald Trump’s announcement that he had tapped Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate in the 2024 elections, abortion rights groups vociferously condemned the pick.“A Trump-Vance administration will be the most dangerous administration for abortion and reproductive freedom in this country’s history,” Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in a statement.“By naming Vance to his ticket, Trump made clear that his administration will sign a national abortion ban and put birth control and IVF at risk,” said Jessica Mackler, president of Emily’s List, an organization that supports Democratic women who support abortion rights running for office.Vance, the venture capitalist turned Hillbilly Elegy author turned GOP standard-bearer, has long opposed abortion.In 2021, while running for Ohio senate, Vance told an Ohio news outlet that he did not support rape and incest exceptions in abortion bans. “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term,” he said. “It’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.”But voters’ outrage over the overturning of Roe v Wade has grown, leading abortion rights supporters to a string of victories at the ballot box, and harnessing that outrage is widely considered Democrats’ best hope for winning the November elections. As Trump and other Republicans have tried to project a moderated stance on the issue – despite the fact that Trump handpicked three of the supreme court justices who overturned Roe – Vance has also tempered his public position.“We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans. They just don’t,” Vance told CNN’s Jake Tapper last year. “I say this as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for the life of the mother and rape and so forth.”In 2022, Vance said he would support a national 15-week abortion ban with exceptions. He also told NBC News that he wants mifepristone, a common abortion pill that was at the heart of a major supreme court case this year, to remain accessible.Even while supporting a national ban, Vance has said he would like abortion to be “primarily a state issue”.“Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable,” he said. “I want Ohio to be able to make its own decisions, and I want Ohio’s elected legislators to make those decisions.”But, he added: “I think it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.”Much of Vance’s public persona, however, remains defined by his support of what he sees as the traditional nuclear family. He has backed policies that he says will increase birth rates, such as making childbirth free, and said that people who are childfree by choice “do not have any physical commitment to the future of this country”.“I think the rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and the most evil thing that the left has done in this country,” said Vance, a father of three. He then went on to suggest that several Democratic politicians, like Kamala Harris and New Jersey senator Cory Booker, should not have political power because they do not have children.“Why have we let the Democrat party become controlled by people who don’t have any children? And why is this just a normal fact of American life?” Vance asked. “That the leaders of our country should be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring, via their own children?” (The vice-president has two stepchildren.)“Many of the most unhappy and most miserable and most angry people in our media are childless adults,” he continued.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance has also called people who fear having kids “cat ladies” who “must be stopped” and said that universal daycare is “class war against normal people”.Two days after the US supreme court overturned Roe, Vance tweeted: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”Shortly after Trump announced he had chosen Vance as his running mate, Joe Biden’s campaign started to circulate a clip of comments Vance made in 2021 about violence in marriages.“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that, like: ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,’” Vance said in response to a question on fatherlessness.Vance has said that he was not defending men who commit domestic abuse and that he himself is a victim of domestic abuse.Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the powerful anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, praised Vance on Monday.“His ability to compellingly share these stories on a national stage will surely be an asset,” Dannenfelser said in a statement. “With approximately 750,000 babies in states like California and New York still lacking basic protections, we need champions whose boldness will not waver.” More