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      Appeal court judge denies Trump’s third attempt this week to delay hush money trial – live

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      The appeals court judge, just moments after the hearing wrapped up in New York this afternoon, has ruled against Donald Trump’s third attempt this week to delay his hush-money criminal trialTrump was denied his attempt to push back his 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, Reuters reports.During an earlier hearing, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the trial should be delayed because justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has not yet ruled on their request for him to recuse himself.Bove also said Merchan was wrong to deny their request to bar prosecutors from presenting Trump’s tweets during his 2017-2021 presidential term as evidence. Bove said presidential immunity should prevent the prosecutors from presenting those posts as evidence. At the hearing before associate justice Ellen Gesmer at a mid-level state appeals court called the appellate division, Bove said:
      We are scheduled to begin trial under circumstances that will violate President Trump’s rights.
      Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, said Trump’s lawyers had brought the requests too late, saying:
      There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward.

      An appeals court judge in New York denied Donald Trump’s third attempt in three days to delay his hush-money criminal trial. Trump was denied his attempt to push back the 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president.
      Donald Trump said he believes the Arizona supreme court went too far with its ruling upholding a near-total abortion ban. Asked if he would sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024, Trump said: “No.”
      In response, the Biden campaign said Trump “owns the suffering and chaos happening right now” and warned that he has banned abortion “every chance he gets”.
      Asked what he would say to the people of Arizona, Joe Biden said: “Elect me. I’m in the … 21st century, not back then.” Biden also said he is “considering” a request from Australia to end the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
      Kamala Harris will visit Arizona on Friday as part of her nationwide reproductive freedoms tour. The White House said Harris would highlight “extremists” in the state who are pushing for abortion bans during her visit.
      Democrats in Florida are teaming up withoperatives from Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and Senate races in November.
      The House voted to block the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a high-profile warrantless surveillance program that is now in limbo before a 19 April expiration date.
      House speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on “election integrity” at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, a Trump campaign official said. Johnson met with Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday, marking the first time the two have spoken since Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership late last month. Greene described the meeting as “passionate”.
      The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.
      The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, told donors and supporters last weekend that he would help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to multiple reports.
      Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, is accused of covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006, Reuters neatly recaps.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and denies any such encounter with Daniels.Judge Juan Merchan has not yet ruled on Trump’s motion for him to recuse himself. The defense has argued that the judge’s daughter’s work for a political consulting firm with Democratic clients poses a conflict of interest.On Monday, a judge at the appellate division denied Trump’s request to delay the case while he pursues a challenge to the trial being held in heavily Democratic Manhattan.On Tuesday, another judge rejected his bid to pause the trial while he appeals Merchan’s decision to impose a gag order restricting his public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, lawyers and family members of the judge and district attorney Alvin Bragg. Those appeals will still be heard by a full panel.The appeals court judge, just moments after the hearing wrapped up in New York this afternoon, has ruled against Donald Trump’s third attempt this week to delay his hush-money criminal trialTrump was denied his attempt to push back his 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, Reuters reports.During an earlier hearing, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the trial should be delayed because justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has not yet ruled on their request for him to recuse himself.Bove also said Merchan was wrong to deny their request to bar prosecutors from presenting Trump’s tweets during his 2017-2021 presidential term as evidence. Bove said presidential immunity should prevent the prosecutors from presenting those posts as evidence. At the hearing before associate justice Ellen Gesmer at a mid-level state appeals court called the appellate division, Bove said:
      We are scheduled to begin trial under circumstances that will violate President Trump’s rights.
      Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, said Trump’s lawyers had brought the requests too late, saying:
      There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward.
      The hearing is over at the appeals court in New York where lawyers for Donald Trump are making the argument for the third time in three days that his hush-money criminal trial should be delayed.Jury selection will begin on Monday, so time is running out for Trump. We await the court’s decision.As colleague Cameron Joseph wrote earlier today, this follows a longstanding pattern of Trump freaking out as major threats approach, and his team responding with frenetic energy.Trump’s team throws everything it can at the wall, while Trump continues his tirade against presiding judge Juan Merchan – while pushing the bounds of the judge’s gag order.To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, in the Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter put together by Cameron, sign up here.And you can read today’s here.Lawyers for Donald Trump have been back in court for almost the last hour trying to stave off the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, which begins on Monday.In a more technical legal take from NBC, the TV network explains the following:
      The court docket for the state Appellate Division shows Trump’s attorneys filed the challenge as a lawsuit invoking a provision of New York law known as Article 78. Article 78 challenges allow litigants, whether in ongoing litigation or otherwise, to seek relief from allegedly unlawful state or local government action.
      The documents were filed under seal. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, said it involved Judge Juan Merchan’s refusal to step aside from presiding over the case.
      Trump is a defendant in four criminal cases, two federal and two state. The hush-money case in New York is first up. The Georgia election interference case, the federal election interference case and the federal classified documents case do not have trial dates yet. The presidential election is on 5 November and Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, prior to his expected anointment at the Republican National Convention this summer.Donald Trump’s lawyers told a New York appeals court judge on Wednesday that the former US president’s 15 April trial should be delayed because the judge has not yet ruled on their motion for him to recuse himself, in his third last-ditch attempt so far this week to delay the case, Reuters reports.The Republican presidential candidate is accused of covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence ahead of the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and denies any such encounter with Daniels.On Monday, a judge at a mid-level state appeals court known as the appellate division denied Trump’s request to delay the case while he pursues a challenge to the trial being held in heavily Democratic Manhattan.And on Tuesday, another judge rejected his bid to pause the trial while he appeals Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to impose a gag order restricting his public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, lawyers, and family members of the judge and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Those appeals will still be heard by a full panel. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in the trial on Monday.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, told donors and supporters last weekend that he would help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to multiple reports.DeSantis, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in January, told his allies about his plans to help his former rival during a private gathering at the Hard Rock Hotel in south Florida, a DeSantis adviser told NBC News.DeSantis is “committed to helping Trump in any and every way”, said Texas businessman Roy Bailey, who attended the retreat. He said:
      I will follow the governor’s lead and I will do anything that he or President Trump ask me to do to help him win this election.
      A Trump campaign adviser said they were not aware that the Florida governor was going to start raising money for them but added that “everyone should be working towards defeating Joe Biden and electing President Trump”, NBC reported.Joe Biden, during a joint press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, at the White House, said Japan’s attempts to set up a leader-to-leader summit with North Korea is “a good thing” as he reiterated his administration’s willingness for its own talks without preconditions.Biden said:
      We welcome the opportunity of our allies to initiate dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As I’ve said many times, we’re open to dialogue ourselves without preconditions with the DPRK.
      The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed openness to talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but has never received a response.House speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on “election integrity”, a Trump campaign official said.The press conference is scheduled to take place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, AP reported, citing a source as saying that Johnson and Trump will have a “joint announcement” on Friday.When the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, Republicans across the country cheered. Freed from Roe’s regulations, GOP lawmakers promptly blanketed the US south and midwest in near-total abortion bans.But today, after a string of electoral losses, stories of women being denied abortions and polls that confirm abortion bans remain wildly unpopular, the political calculus has changed. Republicans are now trying to slow down the car whose brakes they cut – and to convince voters that, if the car crashes, they had nothing to do with it anyway.Nowhere encapsulates the GOP’s backpedal on abortion better than Arizona, whose state supreme court on Tuesday ruled to let an 1864 near-total abortion ban go into effect. That ban, which outlaws abortion in all cases except to save the life of a woman, was passed before Arizona became a state, before the end of the civil war and before women gained the right to vote.Read the full analysis by the Guardian’s reproductive health and justice reporter: Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 electionThe House has voted to block the reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a high-profile warrantless surveillance program that is now in limbo ahead of a 19 April expiration date.House Republicans have been fiercely divided over how to handle the issue, and Wednesday’s vote comes months after a similar process to reform and reauthorize the program fell apart before it even reached the House floor.The law allows the US government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners abroad by compelling service providers to produce copies of messages and internet data, or networks to intercept and turn over phone call and message data.It is controversial because it allows the government to incidentally collect messages and phone data of Americans without a court order if they interacted with the foreign target, even though the law prohibits section 702 from being used by the National Security Agency to specifically target US citizens.Joe Biden was asked what he would say to the people of Arizona following the state supreme court’s ruling to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect.The president, referring to the 1864 abortion ban which passed when Arizona was still a territory, replied:
      Elect me. I’m in the 20th century … 21st century … not back then. They weren’t even a state.
      From the Washington Post’s JM Rieger:Cornel West’s announcement that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate comes as West, an author and leftwing activist, continues his efforts to get on the ballot in every US state.West’s campaign said he had already secured ballot access in Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, but some states require a running mate for independent candidates to get on the ballot. As part of his 50-state campaign, West announced in January that he would launch a new political party, called the Justice for All party, to help ease his path to ballot access in some states.West has no path to victory, as national polls show his support languishing in the low single digits. A survey conducted last month by the Marquette Law School found that just 4% of likely US voters named West as their preferred candidate.But West’s presence on the ballot in key battleground states could draw support away from Joe Biden, raising concerns among Democrats that the independent candidate might serve as a spoiler for the incumbent president.According to a Quinnipiac University poll of US voters conducted last month, Biden leads Donald Trump by three points, 48% to 45%, in a head-to-head match-up, but the president’s support dipped down to 38% (compared with Trump’s 39%) when third-party candidates such as West, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Jill Stein of the Green party were listed as options.The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced on Wednesday that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, helped to form the LA chapter of the group Black Lives Matter, and West praised her as “one of the great freedom fighters of her generation”. West told the talkshow host Tavis Smiley on Wednesday”:
      I wanted somebody whose heart, mind and soul is committed to the empowerment of poor and working peoples of all colors. And Melina has a history of longevity, of putting her heart, mind, soul and body in the struggle.
      Abdullah told Smiley that West’s offer took her by surprise, but she quickly accepted because of her belief in his “platform of truth, love and justice”. “How can you not get behind that platform?” Abdullah said.
      So I’ve been following him and had been really enthusiastic about his candidacy and just was excited to be able to share space with him.
      Democrats in Florida are teaming up with operatives from Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and Senate races in November.They fired an opening salvo on Tuesday, tearing into Donald Trump’s “boasting” about overturning federal abortion protections a day earlier, and assailing the incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott for supporting Florida’s six-week ban that takes effect next month.Ron DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor and former candidate for the party’s presidential nomination who signed the ban into law, also found himself under fire.The Florida supreme court ruled last week that the six-week ban will take effect on 1 May, as well as allowing a ballot measure for November that could see voters enshrine the right to the procedure into law.The moves instantly propelled the state to the forefront of the national abortion debate, and allowed Democrats, all but wiped out in Florida in successive national elections, to seize on the issue as vote-winner.Biden’s campaign has released a statement following Trump’s criticism of the Arizona abortion ban, warning that he has previously “[banned] abortion every chance he gets”.A spokesperson for the Biden campaign said that Trump will enact a national abortion ban given his track record, adding that the former president “proudly overturned Roe”.
      Donald Trump owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe – something he called ‘“an incredible thing’” and ‘“pretty amazing’” just today.
      Trump lies constantly – about everything – but has one track record: banning abortion every chance he gets. The guy who wants to be a dictator on day one will use every tool at his disposal to ban abortion nationwide, with or without Congress, and running away from reporters to his private jet like a coward doesn’t change that reality.
      Greene added that Johnson asked if she was “interested” in being apart of a group of advisers for him.Green said:
      I said, ‘I’ll wait and see what his proposal is on that.’ Right now. he does not have my support, and I’m watching what happens with FISA and Ukraine.
      Greene added that she told Johnson he “failed” on the latest government spending dealing and received “a lot of excuses” in return.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have concluded their meeting, with varying descriptions on how it went.The meeting, which lasted over an hour, came after Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership.Greene described the meeting as “passionate”, NBC News reported. When asked if the meeting was “productive”, Greene said:
      He’d have to completely change everything he’s done to be productive.
      Meanwhile, Johnson gave a more diplomatic answer, calling Greene a “friend” even as the two Republicans have differed on “strategy”.
      She’s a colleague. I’ve always considered her a friend … Marjorie and I don’t disagree on philosophy. We’re both conservatives. Sometimes we disagree on strategy.
      From Punchbowl News’ Mica Soellner:Trump also said that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024, ABC News reported.Trump further clarified his position while speaking with reporters on Wednesday.In response to the question of if he would sign an abortion ban, Trump said “no” and shook his head.The latest remarks from Trump come as Democrats have warned that he would authorize an extreme ban if elected, noting how federal abortion rights were overturned due to supreme court judges secured during Trump’s administration. More

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      Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 election

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      When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, Republicans across the country cheered. Freed from Roe’s regulations, GOP lawmakers promptly blanketed the US south and midwest in near-total abortion bans.But today, after a string of electoral losses, stories of women being denied abortions and polls that confirm abortion bans remain wildly unpopular, the political calculus has changed. Republicans are now trying to slow down the car whose brakes they cut – and to convince voters that, if the car crashes, they had nothing to do with it anyway.Nowhere encapsulates the GOP’s backpedal on abortion better than Arizona, whose state supreme court on Tuesday ruled to let an 1864 near-total abortion ban go into effect. That ban, which outlaws abortion in all cases except to save the life of a woman, was passed before Arizona became a state, before the end of the civil war and before women gained the right to vote.Kari Lake, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the US Senate and a diehard ally of Donald Trump, once called that ban “a great law”. But on Tuesday, the inflammatory politician became one of several GOP officials to denounce the ruling, urging the state legislature to “come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support”. On Wednesday, Trump also indicated that he thought Arizona’s near-total ban – whose revival was enabled by a US supreme court ruling he has repeatedly taken credit for – had gone too far. “It’ll be straightened out and as you know, it’s all about states’ rights,” he said.Abortion remains banned past 15 weeks in Arizona, since the 1864 ban is being held up by legal delays. But Arizona is expected to be a key battleground state in the 2024 elections, and abortion rights supporters have gathered more than half a million signatures in support of a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Democrats are hoping that measure will boost turnout and their candidates – including Joe Biden – to victory.In other words, this ban threatens to become a political nightmare for Republicans come November.Lake and Trump are caught in the quandary that is now facing Republicans in Arizona and beyond its borders. For 50 years, the GOP became increasingly wedded to the anti-abortion movement, passing restrictions that cut off access to the procedure and littering the courts with lawsuits to overturn Roe. These restrictions won them votes from anti-abortion advocates, as well as cash from influential advocacy groups. But because Roe stopped many of these restrictions from taking effect, it shielded Republicans from reckoning with the real-world consequences of anti-abortion policies – or with the outrage of voters. Since Roe was overturned, and those real-world consequences have come into focus, abortion rights-related ballot measures have succeeded in several Republican strongholds, including Kansas and Kentucky.Lake didn’t say what that “commonsense solution” might be, but other Republicans have tried to take a stab at it. Juan Ciscomani, who represents Arizona in the US House, called the decision no less than “a disaster” and claimed he was a “strong supporter of empowering women to make their own healthcare choices”. He also, in the same statement, said the 15-week ban “protected the rights of women and new life”.This seems to be the party line that many Arizona Republicans are now congealing around: they will support a 15-week ban, which the state legislature first passed in 2022, but not a near-total ban. This, too, is a gamble. Last year, when Virginia Republicans tried to take control of the state legislature by proposing to “compromise” and ban abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy, they fell short.Yet the post-Roe electoral firepower of abortion has never been tested in a presidential election. Biden has spent months trying to blame abortion bans on Trump, since he appointed three of the justices who overturned Roe. Trump, meanwhile, alternates between congratulating himself for overturning Roe, both rebuking and flirting with the idea of a national ban, and claiming, as he did earlier this week, that abortion access should now be left up to the states.For Republicans, the only option may be to take a cue from their party’s leader and rewrite their own history. When asked about Lake’s previous support for the 1864 ban, her campaign suggested to the New York Times that Lake was referring to a different law.But in the comments praising it, Lake even referred to the 1864 ban by its statute number, 13-3603. “I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books”, she said. More

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      in Elections

      The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban

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      The state’s Supreme Court ruled that the 1864 law is enforceable today. Here is what led to its enactment.The 160-year-old Arizona abortion ban that was upheld on Tuesday by the state’s highest court was among a wave of anti-abortion laws propelled by some historical twists and turns that might seem surprising.For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.Before that point, “women could try to obtain an abortion without having to fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor of history at Rutgers University. After quickening, abortion providers could be charged with a misdemeanor.“I don’t think it was particularly stigmatized,” Dr. Schoen said. “I think what was stigmatized was maybe this idea that you were having sex outside of marriage, but of course, married women also ended their pregnancies.”Women would terminate pregnancies in several different ways, such as ingesting herbs or medicinal potions that were thought to induce a miscarriage, Dr. Schoen said. The herbs commonly used included pennyroyal and tansy. Another method involved inserting an object in the cervix to try to interrupt a pregnancy or terminate it by causing an infection, Dr. Schoen said.Since tools to determine early pregnancy did not yet exist, many women could honestly say that they were not sure if they were pregnant and were simply taking herbs to restore their menstrual period.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘A dark day’: Arizona governor condemns ruling on near-total abortion ban – video

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      The Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, called for an Arizona supreme court ruling to be repealed that permits enforcement of an 1864 law banning almost all abortions. Speaking at a press conference the governor said: ‘The near total civil war-era ban that continues to hang over our heads only serves to create more chaos for women and doctors in our state.’ First passed when Arizona was still a territory, the ban only permits abortions to save a patient’s life and does not make exceptions for rape or incest More

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      Arizona Republicans denounce revived 1864 abortion ban in sudden reversal

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      Hours after Arizona’s supreme court declared on Tuesday that a 160-year-old abortion ban is now enforceable, Republicans in the state took a surprising stance for a party that has historically championed abortion restrictions – they denounced the decision.“This decision cannot stand,” said Matt Gress, a Republican state representative. “I categorically reject rolling back the clock to a time when slavery was still legal and we could lock up women and doctors because of an abortion.”First passed when Arizona was still a territory, the ban only permits abortions to save a patient’s life and does not have exceptions for rape or incest.“Today’s Arizona supreme court decision reinstating an Arizona territorial-era ban on all abortions from more than 150 years ago is disappointing to say the least,” said TJ Shope, a Republican state senator.“I oppose today’s ruling,” added Kari Lake, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the US Senate and a loyalist of Donald Trump. Lake called on the state legislature to “come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support”.Since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, leading the GOP to stumble in the 2022 midterms and abortion rights supporters to win a string of ballot measures, including in purple and red states, Republicans have struggled to find a way to talk about abortion without turning off voters. But their response to the ruling on the 1864 ban may mark their fastest and strongest rebuke of abortion bans since Roe fell.“This is an earthquake that has never been seen in Arizona politics,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant in Arizona, of the decision. “This will shake the ground under every Republican candidate, even those in safe legislative or congressional seats.”The 1864 ban is not currently in effect, and may not go into effect for weeks due to legal delays. Abortion is currently allowed in Arizona up until 15 weeks of pregnancy.Some of the criticisms of the Tuesday ruling came from politicians who had previously supported the 1864 ban or cheered the end of Roe v Wade. Lake previously called the ban a “great law”, according to PolitiFact. David Schweikert, an Arizona congressman who is facing one of the most competitive House races in the country this November, said on Tuesday that he does not support the ruling and wants the state legislature to “address this issue immediately”, but in 2022 said the fall of Roe “pleased” him.The speaker of the Arizona state house and the president of the state senate, who are both Republicans, also released a joint statement saying that they would be “listening to our constituents to determine the best course of action for the legislature”. In contrast, on the day Roe fell, the Republican-controlled state senate released a statement declaring that the 1864 ban was in effect immediately. That statement unleashed confusion and chaos among abortion providers in Arizona, prompting them to stop offering the procedure out of an abundance of caution.“They are trying to play it both ways. They’re trying to have this illusion that they’re moderate to get votes, because they know that Arizonans do not want a total ban,” said Dr Gabrielle Goodrick, one of the providers who temporarily stopped performing abortions when Roe fell. “This is just ridiculous. Now they’re saying that they oppose it? Yeah, yeah – a little too late.”Arizona is one of roughly a dozen states where voters may be able to directly decide abortion rights come November. Activists in the state have now collected more than half a million signatures in favor of giving Arizona residents a chance to vote on a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.Democrats hope that turnout for this proposal, which has yet to be officially added to the ballot, will also lead to surge in support for their candidates, including Joe Biden. A similar dynamic is at play in Florida, whose state supreme court recently paved the way for a six-week abortion ban, and where voters will be able to vote in November to constitutionally protect abortion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe decision also exposed the deepening rift between Republicans and their longtime allies in the anti-abortion movement. As Arizona Republicans raced to distance themselves from the long-dormant law, abortion opponents cheered the decision.“We celebrate the Arizona supreme court’s decision that allows the state’s pro-life law to again protect the lives of countless, innocent unborn children,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Jake Warner, who argued the case before the court in favor of the ban.Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who disappointed religious conservatives on Monday when he said states should decide their own abortion laws, did not immediately weigh in on the Arizona ruling.Abortion rights are popular in Arizona: nearly one-third of Arizona voters in the 2022 midterm elections said abortion was the issue that mattered most in helping them decide who to vote for, according to exit polling. By a 2 to 1 margin, voters in the state said abortion should be legal, and 40% said they felt “angry” about the supreme court decision ending the federal right to an abortion.A poll conducted in late February by the Phoenix-based firm, Noble Predictive Insights, found that 40% of Arizona voters expected Trump, if elected, to attempt to ban abortion altogether, while 45% expected Biden, if re-elected, to increase access.Vice-president Kamala Harris will go to Arizona later this week, in a visit that was planned ahead of the Tuesday decision. She blamed the impending state ban on Trump, whose three supreme court appointees voted to eliminate the federally guaranteed right to an abortion.“Arizona just rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote – and, by his own admission, there’s one person responsible: Donald Trump,” Harris said in a campaign statement. “The alarm is sounding for every woman in America: if he has the opportunity, Donald Trump would sign off on a national abortion ban.” More

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      Arizona Abortion Ban: What We Know

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      The state’s highest court reinstated an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions. Here’s what to know about the ruling.Arizona’s highest court reinstated an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, a decision that could have far-reaching consequences for women’s health care and election-year politics in a critical battleground state.Here’s what to know about the ruling, the law and its possible impact.What is the 1864 law?The law, which was on the books long before Arizona achieved statehood in 1912, outlaws abortion from the moment of conception, except when necessary to save the life of the mother, and it makes no exceptions for rape or incest. It bans all types of abortions, including medication abortions.Until now, abortion had been legal in Arizona through 15 weeks of pregnancy. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago, supporters and opponents of abortion rights in Arizona had been fighting in court over whether the 1864 law, which had sat dormant for decades, could be enforced, or whether it had been effectively neutered by decades of other state laws that regulate and restrict abortion.Doctors prosecuted under the law could face fines and prison terms of two to five years for providing, supplying or administering care to a pregnant woman.What does the ruling say?On April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in a 4-to-2 decision that the pre-statehood law was “now enforceable.”The court said that because the federal right to abortion had been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, there was no federal or state law preventing Arizona from enforcing the near-total ban. It noted that the State Legislature had not created a right to abortion when it passed the 15-week ban in 2022.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On Abortion, Trump Chose Politics Over Principles. Will It Matter?

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      With his video statement on Monday, Donald Trump laid bare how faulty a messenger he had always been for the anti-abortion cause.When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016, the leaders of the anti-abortion movement extracted a series of promises from him in exchange for backing his nomination.They demanded Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. They insisted that he defund Planned Parenthood. They pushed for a vice president who was a champion of their cause. And each time, he said yes.But that was then.With Roe v. Wade left on the “ash heap of history,” as anti-abortion leaders are fond of saying, they find themselves no longer calling the shots. Their movement remains mighty in Republican-controlled statehouses and with conservative courts, but it is weaker nationally than it has been in years. Many Republican strategists and candidates see their cause, even the decades-old term “pro-life,” as politically toxic. And on Monday, their biggest champion, the man whom they call the “most pro-life president in history,” chose politics over their principles — and launched a series of vitriolic attacks on some of their top leaders.With his clearest statement yet on the future of abortion rights since the fall of Roe in 2022, Mr. Trump laid bare how faulty a messenger he had always been for the anti-abortion cause. When he first flirted with a presidential run in 1999, Mr. Trump was clear about his position on abortion: “I’m very pro-choice,” he said. He reversed that stance a dozen years later: “Just very briefly, I’m pro-life,” he told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011.His support shifted again after the Supreme Court’s decision. While he bragged about appointing three of the justices who overturned Roe, he blamed the movement for Republican losses in the midterm elections. He mused aloud about the idea of a federal ban, but refused to give it the kind of ringing endorsement anti-abortion leaders wanted.In his four-minute video statement on Monday, Mr. Trump said that states and their voters should decide abortion policies for themselves, in language that sounded like a free-for-all to the staunchest abortion opponents. He backed access to fertility treatments such as I.V.F., and supported exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Says Abortion Will Be Left to the States. Don’t Believe Him.

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      When Donald Trump was asked about the recent Florida Supreme Court decision upholding his adopted state’s abortion ban, he promised that he would announce where he stands this week, a sign of how tricky the politics of reproductive rights have become for the man who did more than any other to roll them back. Sure enough, on Monday, he unveiled his latest position in a video statement that attempted to thread the needle between his anti-abortion base and the majority of Americans who want abortion to be legal.Trump’s address was, naturally, full of lies, including the absurd claim that “all legal scholars, both sides,” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, and the obscene calumny that Democrats support “execution after birth.” But the most misleading part of his spiel was the way he implied that in a second Trump administration, abortion law will be left entirely up to the states. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case the law of the state,” said Trump.Trump probably won’t be able to dodge the substance of abortion policy for the entirety of a presidential campaign; eventually, he’s going to have to say whether he’d sign a federal abortion ban if it crossed his desk and what he thinks of the sweeping abortion prohibitions in many Republican states. But let’s leave that aside for the moment, because when it comes to a second Trump administration, the most salient questions are about personnel, not legislation.Before Monday, Trump had reportedly considered endorsing a 16-week national abortion ban, but the fact that he didn’t should be of little comfort to voters who want to protect what’s left of abortion rights in America. Should Trump return to power, he plans to surround himself with die-hard MAGA activists, not the establishment types he blames for undermining him during his first term. And many of these activists have plans to restrict abortion nationally without passing any new laws at all.Key to these plans is the Comstock Act, the 19th-century anti-vice law named for the crusading bluenose Anthony Comstock, who persecuted Margaret Sanger, arrested thousands, and boasted of driving 15 of his targets to suicide. Passed in 1873, the Comstock Act banned the mailing of every “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article,” including “every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing” intended for “producing abortion.” Until quite recently, the Comstock Act was thought to be moot, made irrelevant by a series of Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment, contraception and abortion. But it was never actually repealed, and now that Trump’s justices have scrapped Roe, his allies believe they can use Comstock to go after abortion nationwide.“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” Jonathan F. Mitchell, Texas’ former solicitor general and the legal mind behind the state’s abortion bounty law, told The New York Times in February. Mitchell is very much a MAGA insider; he represented Trump in the Supreme Court case arising from Colorado’s attempt to boot the ex-president off the ballot as an insurrectionist. As The Times has reported, Mitchell is on a list of lawyers vetted by America First Legal, a nonprofit led by the Trump consigliere Stephen Miller, as having the “spine” to serve in a second Trump administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More