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      Democrats condemn ‘cruel’ abortion bans ahead of 51st anniversary of Roe

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      Senate Democrats underscored their commitment to abortion rights in a press conference on Wednesday, ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade. The now-overturned supreme court case provided American women with a constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years.Experts at the briefing described Republican-backed abortion bans across the country as “cruel”, “extreme” and causing untold “suffering” for American women, thousands of whom are forced to travel across state lines for abortions or be forced to remain pregnant.“Senate Democrats will not let anyone turn away from the devastation Republicans have caused,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat. “And we will not stop pushing to restore the federal right to abortion.”The briefing comes at the start of the 2024 presidential election cycle, in which abortion rights are expected to be a defining issue. Former president Donald Trump, called the “most pro-life president” by anti-abortion activists and national organizations alike, has already won the Iowa Republican caucuses handily, and is widely expected to become the Republican party’s nominee.Trump nominated and the Senate confirmed three right-leaning supreme court justices, all of whom voted to overturn Roe v Wade in the case that now governs federal abortion rights – Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Even so, anti-abortion laws have become a politically poisonous issue for Republicans. Abortion rights have won at the ballot box again and again, as in Michigan and Kansas. Polls show more Americans than ever support abortion rights. Even Republicans in the House, where caucus members have repeatedly signed on to federal legislation that would amount to a total abortion ban, are now backing away from anti-abortion messaging bills.“The anniversary of Roe v Wade should be a joyous day for our country, a day when the supreme court decided to value a woman’s right to privacy and autonomy,” said the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer. “In 2022, tragically, alarmingly and outrageously they succeeded when a hard-right majority voted to overturn Roe v Wade,” he said.In addition to the anniversary of Roe, the briefing also comes ahead of the March for Life, the largest gathering of anti-abortion activists of the year. Before the Dobbs decision, anti-abortion activists marched in protest of Roe v Wade. Today, activists strategize about further abortion bans – including a federal 15-week ban on abortion.Dr Austin Dennard is an obstetrician and gynecologist who said she was forced to “flee” her state for an abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with anencephaly, a severe and fatal condition where a fetus develops without parts of the brain or skull.“We have to flee the state,” she said. “My state” – she is a sixth-generation Texan – “where I practice medicine, where I’m raising my family,” said Dennard. “Then my doctor gave me a hug. ‘I’m so sorry,’ was all she was able to say.”Dennard was forced to travel east, but said she was afraid to use credit cards or tell people where she was going for fear she would be criminally prosecuted under Texas’s anti-abortion laws.“It was absolutely humiliating and I felt physically and emotionally broken,” said Dennard.Dr Serina Floyd, an OB-GYN in Washington DC and the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood, said only last week she provided an abortion for a woman, who she referred to under the pseudonym “Nina”.Nina traveled by bus from North Carolina, where a 12-week abortion ban recently went into effect. She missed her first bus, was able to board a second but arrived too late for her scheduled appointment. Nina was rescheduled for the next day. When Floyd asked Nina where she would stay the night, Nina said she had found a homeless shelter 15 minutes from the clinic.“Nina had no money – not for a hotel, not for food, not for nothing. All she had was a bus ticket home,” said Floyd.Another expert, feminist and columnist Jessica Valenti, said she regularly documented “suffering”, and received more messages from women than she could ever respond to.“When Republicans feign surprise or compassion over post-Roe horror stories – they are lying,” said Valenti. She said she has documented a “quiet campaign” by national abortion groups to undermine prenatal testing that reveals fetal abnormalities and to sow doubt about the accuracy of maternal mortality numbers (the US has among the worst in the developed world).“The question I get asked most often is, ‘Why?’” said Valenti. Republicans, she said, are trying to enforce, “a world view that it is women’s job to be pregnant and stay pregnant – no matter the cost or consequence”. More

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      Many Republicans support abortion. Are they switching parties because of it?

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      The first time Carol Whitmore ever had sex, she got pregnant.It was 1973, and Whitmore was a teenager. Whitmore’s parents were in and out of trouble with the police, Whitmore said. When they told Whitmore they would help her raise the child, she thought, nope.Instead, Whitmore got an abortion. That same year, the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in Roe v Wade.“I made that choice myself, and to this day, I don’t regret it,” Whitmore told the Guardian. A half-century later, Whitmore is still staunchly supportive of abortion rights. She’s recently taken to collecting petitions in support of a Florida ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.Whitmore is also a deeply committed Republican, who has held multiple positions in Florida local government. For her, abortion rights are part and parcel of her Republican worldview.“Do you want more government overreach to tell us how to take care of ourselves?” Whitmore said. She’s not the only conservative who feels this way, she said: “Everybody I talked to says: ‘Well, we aren’t coming out publicly, but we are definitely going to sign that petition, we are definitely going to vote for that amendment to be passed.’”In the year and a half since the US supreme court overturned Roe in June 2022, Republicans have floundered over how to handle abortion. The issue is widely thought to have cost them the promised “red wave” in the 2022 midterms, as well as control of the Virginia state legislature in 2023. Abortion rights supporters have triumphed on every abortion-related ballot measure since Roe’s demise, including in states that are traditionally believed to be conservative strongholds like Kansas, Kentucky and, most recently, Ohio.Experts still have questions about the driving forces behind these victories. Was it a surge in Democratic turnout? Or Republicans breaking with their party platform on abortion? And will abortion convince Republicans to leave the GOP behind entirely?The outcome of the 2024 elections, when roughly a dozen states may vote on abortion referendums, could hinge on the answers.“It may be in the narrowest sense possible to win with only Democrats, but that’s not even on our radar,” Jodi Liggett, the senior adviser for Reproductive Freedom for All Arizona, said late last year. Liggett’s organization is championing a proposal for a 2024 abortion-related ballot measure in Arizona. “I think if anything, you’re for sure gonna need independents,” she said. “And we think people actually agree across parties, on the pure issue of who should be deciding: physicians, medical professionals and families, not politicians.”Democrats, who once avoided the issue of abortion in election campaigns, are now banking on the issue to amplify anger and turnout overall. Yet in interviews with eight Republican or formerly Republican women who support abortion rights, hailing from six states across the country, a complex portrait emerged, suggesting Republicans might not be the silver bullet that Democrats are hoping for in November.When the US supreme court first legalized abortion nationwide in Roe v Wade, neither party was unified in its position on the issue. Over the next five decades, Republicans grew increasingly opposed to the procedure. Although abortion rights are broadly popular in the United States today, support is sharply split by party: while 80% of Democrats say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, just 38% of Republicans say the same, according to polling from the Pew Research Center.Still, that is a significant fraction of Republicans. Men and women make up equal shares of these abortion rights-supporting Republicans – but women consistently vote at higher rates than men, making them a critical voting bloc for abortion-rights supporters to win.For Stephanie Tyler, a longtime Republican in Nevada, Roe’s overturning “was the proverbial last straw”.“I believe so fundamentally in a woman’s right to choose,” Tyler said, adding: “Any party that would make that a key piece of its platform, and then support a supreme court that obviously pushed that as a primary agenda, is not my party.”Weeks after Roe fell, Tyler dropped her affiliation with the Republican party and registered as an independent.‘There will be no Republicans left’Some prominent Republican women have started to urge the GOP to stop focusing on banning abortion so much – including Ann Coulter, the conservative firebrand not generally known for moderation. “The demand for anti-abortion legislation just cost Republicans another crucial race,” Coulter tweeted in April. “Pro-lifers: WE WON. Abortion is not a ‘constitutional right’ anymore! Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left.”This week, Donald Trump similarly warned that Republicans have been “decimated” over extreme abortion stances, even as he took credit for what he called the “miracle” of overturning Roe.Many of the interviewed women shared Coulter’s concern about what the GOP’s hardline stance on abortion would mean for the party’s future.Sandy Senn, a Republican state senator from South Carolina, , believes abortion should be outlawed after the first trimester of pregnancy (with exceptions). But last year, she banded together with the four other female senators in South Carolina’s state legislature – two Republicans, a Democrat and an independent – to stop a total abortion ban from passing in South Carolina. They called themselves the “sister senators”.At one point, the sister senators filibustered for three days. Their efforts worked, for a while. By the end of the year, though, South Carolina had banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy.“You cannot have laws that are going to thumb a group of people down, because they’re ultimately not going to listen, and they’re going to find a workaround,” Senn said. “If we continue down this path – we hate gays, we hate women, we hate transsexuals – if we become the party of hate, we lose independents. We’re gonna lose young voters.”She continued: “You’re gonna see moderate Republicans walk away from the party on certain issues, or maybe not even vote top-ballot or in some elections, just because they feel like they can’t.”Gauging how many Republicans will break away from the party to support abortion rights, though, is complicated by much of the GOP’s recent tack to the far right. Kelly Dittmar, the director of research and a scholar at the center for American women and politics at Rutgers University–Camden, said that it’s become increasingly difficult to even locate moderate Republican women, either as voters or as elected officials. So many have simply left the party.“Women in general have been more likely to be liberal, and that includes among Republicans,” Dittmar said. “In surveys, it’s hard to compare Republicans over time, because you’re actually talking about a really different group of people. Instead of seeing Republican women say, ‘Oh, we don’t agree with the party’, they just don’t even come up in the count, because they don’t identify at the beginning of a survey as Republican.”Mirabel Batjer is one of those women. She left the GOP around 2010, after supporting Barack Obama for president in 2008.“I just decided that it was silly for me to pretend any longer that it was a party for me, because it certainly was not,” said Batjer, who now calls herself a “rabid liberal Democrat”. “I was almost a single-issue voter when it came to being concerned about Roe v Wade and what the supreme court could do. And I guess my fears were right.”Some Republicans, such as Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump adviser, have suggested the GOP should pivot to emphasizing contraception or risk losing in 2024. At a GOP presidential debate, candidate Nikki Haley, who has urged “consensus” on abortion, asked the audience: “Can’t we all agree contraception should be available?”But that plan might not get far in the modern Republican party. Anti-abortion activists, who have long been wedded to the GOP and have helped propel it to electoral victories across the country, have mixed views on hormonal birth control. The powerful Students for Life of America, for example, has labeled oral contraceptives and IUDs “abortifacients”, meaning that they cause abortions, which is false.This year, Senn was enraged by the introduction of a South Carolina bill to require that parents give consent before doctors can fulfill minors’ requests for medication, including birth control – in apparent defiance of a federal program, Title X, that allows minors to receive confidential family-planning help.“Here they are, making an attempt to basically keep women barefoot and pregnant, because now they don’t even want them to have birth control,” Senn said. “The bill is asinine, and women aren’t going to put up with that.”But multiple Republican women who support abortion rights said they prefer to stick with the GOP come November, even if they vote for access to the procedure in states that are holding referendums. Even those who were undecided on or opposed to Trump said that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Joe Biden.Yuripzy Morgan, a Republican who ran to represent Maryland’s third congressional district in 2022, supports some access to abortion. But, she said, abortion is not a “primary issue of mine” when she enters the voting booth.“When I say it is a complicated topic, I don’t say that because it’s the speaking point. I’ve felt the baby kick in my tummy. I’ve given birth. I know what that feels like,” Morgan said. “One of my biggest pet peeves is when people make this a black-and-white issue.”Melissa Deckman, the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, doesn’t believe women are ditching the Republican party in significant numbers because of abortion. According to her organization’s research, Republican women remain much more likely to think that abortion should be illegal in all cases.Instead, it’s Democrats who now feel more strongly than ever about supporting abortion access. Before Roe fell, most Democrats did not consider abortion their top issue; post-Roe, it’s become a litmus test for half of Democrats, according to research from the Public Religion Research Institute. If anything, Deckman says, Democrats are likely to benefit from boosted turnout among independents or relatively weak Democrats.“Generally speaking, most Republicans are opposed to abortion. That’s become the party line and party voters really feel that way,” Deckman said. “I don’t think there’s any indication that there’s mass exodus from the GOP because of the decision that happened.”Even Whitmore, the Florida woman who had an abortion in 1973, said that access to the procedure will not be a factor in her vote for president.“The president or whoever is not going to decide this issue,” she said. “It’s going to be the citizens of Florida.” More

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      US supreme court allows Idaho’s strict abortion ban to stand pending hearing

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      The US supreme court on Friday allowed Idaho to enforce its strict abortion ban, even in medical emergencies, while a legal fight continues.The justices said they would hear arguments in April and put on hold a lower court ruling that had blocked the Idaho law in hospital emergencies, based on a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration.Hospitals that receive Medicare funds are required by a federal law to provide emergency care, potentially including abortion, no matter if there’s a state law banning abortion, the administration argued.The legal fight followed the court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and allow states to severely restrict or ban abortion. The Joe Biden White House issued guidance about the law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act – or Emtala – two weeks after the high court ruling in 2022. The Democratic administration sued Idaho a month later.US district judge B Lynn Winmill in Idaho agreed with the administration. But in a separate case in Texas, a judge sided with the state.Idaho makes it a crime with a prison term of up to five years for anyone who performs or assists in an abortion.But the administration argues Emtala requires healthcare providers to perform abortions for emergency room patients when needed to treat an emergency medical condition, even if doing so might conflict with a state’s abortion restrictions.Those conditions include severe bleeding, pre-eclampsia and certain pregnancy-related infections.“For certain medical emergencies, abortion care is the necessary stabilizing treatment,” the solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, wrote in an administration filing at the supreme court.The state argued that the administration was misusing a law intended to prevent hospitals from dumping patients and imposing “a federal abortion mandate” on states. “[Emtala] says nothing about abortion,” Idaho’s attorney general, Raul Labrador, told the court in a brief.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJust on Tuesday, the federal appeals court in New Orleans came to the same conclusion as Labrador. A three-judge panel ruled that the administration cannot use Emtala to require hospitals in Texas to provide abortions for women whose lives are at risk due to pregnancy. Two of the three judges are appointees of Donald Trump, and the other was appointed by another Republican president, George W Bush.The appeals court affirmed a ruling by US district judge James Wesley Hendrix, also a Trump appointee. Hendrix wrote that adopting the Biden administration’s view would force physicians to place the health of the pregnant person over that of the fetus or embryo even though Emtala “is silent as to abortion”.After Winmill, an appointee of Democratic president Bill Clinton, issued his ruling, Idaho lawmakers won an order allowing the law to be fully enforced from an all-Republican, Trump-appointed panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals. But a larger contingent of ninth circuit judges threw out the panel’s ruling and set arguments in the case for late January. More

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      More Americans are stockpiling abortion pills without pregnancy – study

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      More Americans are now stockpiling abortion pills in case they get pregnant, according to new research published Tuesday.Before Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022, Aid Access, an organization that mails abortion pills to people across the US, received an average of 25 requests a day from people seeking the pills despite not being pregnant. After the leak of the supreme court decision to overturn Roe, that average shot up to 247 requests each day, the research published on Tuesday found.That number fell after the actual decision, but rose again to 172 a day in April 2023, as US courts signaled a willingness to restrict the availability of a major abortion pill.People have been turning to Aid Access for “advance provision” pills since September 2021, after Texas enacted a six-week abortion ban but long before the US supreme court overturned Roe and abolished the national right to abortion. Now, with wide swathes of the US south and midwest under abortion bans, an online market to request and obtain abortion pills is thriving.The study tracks requests between the beginning of September 2021 and the end of April 2023. In December 2023, the US supreme court announced that it would hear arguments in a case regarding the future of mifepristone, a major abortion pill. That case is expected to be decided by this summer.In total, over the study’s time frame, Aid Access tracked roughly 48,400 advance provision requests. It received more requests for advance provision pills from states that were anticipated to enact bans – even more than the requests from states that did enact bans.“It seems to suggest that what people are reacting to is the threat of reduced access, the threat of curtailment of reproductive rights,” said Dr Abigail Aiken, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the study. “When you think about what advanced provision is, that makes sense, right? Advanced provision is getting out ahead of things. Advanced provision is advanced planning. Advanced provision is a way to protect a potential need you might have in the future if you think access to the service that would fulfill that need is going away.”Over the study period, Aid Access also received more than 147,00 requests from people seeking to end their existing pregnancies. Medical experts widely agree that it is safe to “self-manage” your own abortion, or perform an abortion outside of the formal US healthcare system, using pills within the first trimester of pregnancy.Compared with the people who wanted to terminate their existing pregnancies, people who sought advance provision pills were more likely to be white, child-free and living in urban areas. Choosing from a list of reasons, they most frequently told Aid Access that they wanted the pills to “ensure personal health and choice” and to “prepare for possible abortion restrictions”.Aid Access was launched in 2018 by Dr Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician and one of the most visible abortion providers in the world. Gomperts, who co-authored the study published Tuesday, previously founded Women on Web, an organization that, like Aid Access, shipped abortion pills. However, Women on Web didn’t provide pills to the United States. Ultimately, Gomperts decided that the state of abortion access in the country was too dire to ignore.Advance provision pills cost $150 and should arrive within a few days of ordering, according to Aid Access’s website. During the time frame of the study, most of the pills were being shipped by overseas pharmacies, Aiken said.Now, to send abortion pills, US-based physicians associated with Aid Access have begun to rely on what are known as “shield laws”: protections in Democratic states for abortion providers who prescribe pills for patients in abortion-hostile states. This transition to focusing on using US providers was part of the reason for the study’s conclusion in April, Aiken said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It made sense to look at a time period where the service was entirely outside of the formal US healthcare setting,” Aiken said. “Now, I think a lot of people would argue that it’s happening within the formal healthcare setting, because it’s US provider-led and -based.”But while the US providers in blue states may be operating with the formal healthcare system, their patients in red states are not necessarily afforded the system’s protections and guidance. Someone who wants to get a check-up after an abortion, or even just talk to their doctor about their experience, may not feel able to.“In terms of the experience of the person actually using the pills, it may still look a lot more like a self-managed abortion,” Aiken said. “What that means for the nature of the service is an ongoing, interesting question that we’re thinking about now in the research field.”There was not much data available on what people ended up doing with the advance provision pills, Aiken said, since only a fraction followed up with Aid Access. However, of that fraction, most people still had the pills on standby months later.Last year, Gompertstold the Guardian that she wanted people to stock up on pills to protect themselves.“Don’t wait for the decision. Just get the medication now, get it in your house, get it in your hands,” she said. “If you’re in a war zone and the war is coming, you also make sure you have enough food in your house. This is how it feels. It really is a war. It’s a war on women.” More

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      It’s the democracy, stupid … and other issues set to shape the 2024 US election

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      Whether or not the 2024 US presidential election presents the expected Joe Biden v Donald Trump rematch, much will be at stake.From the future of reproductive rights to the chances of meaningful action on climate change, from the strength of US support for Ukraine in its war with Russia to the fate of democracy in America itself, existential issues are set to come to the fore.Economy“It’s the economy, stupid.” So said the Democratic strategist James Carville, in 1992, as an adviser to Bill Clinton. Most Americans thought stewardship of the economy should change: Clinton beat an incumbent president, George HW Bush.More than 30 years later, under Joe Biden, the post-Covid recovery seems on track. Unemployment is low, the Dow at all-time highs. That should bode well for Biden but the key question is whether enough Americans think the economy is strong, or think it is working for them in particular. It seems many do not. Cost-of-living concerns dominate public polling, inflation remains high. Republican threats to social security and Medicare might offset such worries – hence Biden (and indeed Donald Trump) seizing on any hint that a Republican candidate (see, Nikki Haley) might pose a threat to such programmes.EqualityRon DeSantis made attacks on LGBTQ+ rights a hallmark of his attempt to “Make America Florida”. The hardline governor’s tanking campaign suggests how well that has gone down but Republican efforts to demonise all forms of so-called “woke” ideology should not be discounted. There have been tangible results: anti-trans legislation, book bans and restrictions on LGBTQ+ issues in education, the end of race-based affirmative action in university admissions thanks to the conservative-packed supreme court.Continuing struggles on Capitol Hill over immigration, and Republicans’ usual focus on crime in major cities, show traditional race-inflected battles will play their customary role on the campaign trail, particularly as Trump uses extremist “blood and soil” rhetoric in front of eager crowds. On the Democratic side, meanwhile, a distinctly worrying sign: Black and Hispanic support for Biden is no longer such a sure thing.AbortionHigh-ranking Democrats are clear: the party will focus on Republican attacks on abortion rights, from the Dobbs v Jackson supreme court ruling that struck down Roe v Wade last year to the forthcoming mifepristone case, draconian bans in Republican states and candidates’ support for such bans.For Democrats, it makes tactical sense: the threat to women’s reproductive rights is a rare issue on which the party polls very strongly and has clearly fuelled a series of electoral wins, even in conservative states, since Dobbs was handed down.Trump, however, clearly also recognises the potency of the issue – while trying to dodge responsibility for appointing three justices who voted to strike down Roe. Haley and DeSantis have tried to duck questions about their records and plans on abortion. Whoever the Republican candidate is, they can expect relentless attacks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionForeign policyThe Israel-Gaza war presents a fiendish proposition for Biden: how to satisfy or merely mollify both the Israel lobby and large sections of his own party, particularly the left and the young more sympathetic to the Palestinians.Proliferating protests against Israel’s pounding of Gaza and the West Bank show the danger of coming unglued from the base. A recent Capitol Hill hearing, meanwhile, saw Republicans claim a political victory with the resignation of the president of the University of Pennsylvania over alleged antisemitism amid student protests for Palestinian rights.Elsewhere, Biden continues to lead a global coalition in support of Ukraine in its fight against Russia but further US funding is held up by Republicans seeking draconian immigration reform, some keen to abandon Kyiv altogether. Throw in the lasting effects of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan (teed up by Trump but fumbled by Biden), questions about what the US should do should China attack Taiwan, and the threat Trump poses to US membership of Nato, and heavy fire on foreign policy is guaranteed throughout election year.DemocracyIf Biden is happy to be seen as a protector of democracy abroad, he is increasingly keen to stress the threat to democracy at home. After all, his most likely opponent refused to accept the result of the 2020 election, incited the deadly attack on Congress of 6 January 2021, has been linked to plans to slash the federal government in a second term, and has even said he wants to be a “dictator” on day one.Trump will no doubt maintain the lie that his 2020 defeat was the result of electoral fraud as various criminal cases proceed towards trial, 17 of 91 state and federal charges concerning election subversion. For Biden, the issue has been profitable at the polls. DeSantis and Haley, though, must dance around the subject, seeking not to alienate Trump supporters. The New York Times sums up their responses, dispiritingly, thus: DeSantis “has signed restrictions on voting rights in Florida, and long avoided questions about 2020”; Haley “said Biden’s victory was legitimate, but has played up the risk of voter fraud more broadly”.ClimateIf Trump threatens US democracy, the climate crisis threatens the US itself. From forest fires to hurricanes and catastrophic floods, it is clear climate change is real. Public polling reflects this: 70% of Americans – strikingly, including 50% of Republicans – want meaningful action. But that isn’t reflected in Republican campaigning. Trump says he doesn’t believe human activity contributes to climate change, nor that climate change is making extreme weather worse, and is opposed to efforts to boost clean energy. Haley does believe humans are causing climate change and making weather worse, but worked for Trump as UN ambassador when the US pulled out of the Paris climate deal and opposes clean energy incentives. DeSantis is closer to Trump – and wants to end regulation of emissions.Biden’s record on climate may be criticised by campaigners but his record in office places him firmly against such Republican views. More

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      Biden’s Christian ‘Persecution’? We Assess Trump’s Recent Claims.

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      Former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of criminalizing Christians, and Catholics in particular, for their faith. Here are the facts.Former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly tried to appeal to Christian voters in recent weeks by accusing the Biden administration of criminalizing Americans for their faith.On multiple occasions this month, Mr. Trump has claimed that President Biden has “persecuted” Catholics in particular. Mr. Biden himself is Catholic.“I don’t know what it is with Catholics,” Mr. Trump said during a rally in Coralville, Iowa. “They are going violently and viciously after Catholics.”Mr. Trump repeated similar comments days later at another rally, in Waterloo, and in a video posted before Christmas he said that “Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before.”The message fits into a larger theme for Mr. Trump, who — facing criminal charges in relation to his bid to say in office after losing the 2020 election and criticism for praising strongmen — has tried to paint Mr. Biden and Democrats as being the real threat to democracy.Here’s a closer look at his claims.WHAT WAS SAID“Under Crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before. Catholics in particular are being targeted and evangelicals are surely on the watchlist as well.”— in a video on Truth Social this monthFalse. Experts say they are unaware of any data to support the idea that Catholics in the United States are being persecuted by the government for their faith — let alone at record levels.“In terms of the evidence, I find it to be pretty hard to kind of support the idea that there’s a concerted, marked increase in a particular kind of Christian targeting,” said Jason Bruner, a religious studies professor at Arizona State University and historian who studies Christian persecution.Instead, Mr. Bruner said, it’s most likely that Mr. Trump is extrapolating from cases — say, churches that faced penalties for congregating during the Covid pandemic or anti-abortion activists who have been charged with crimes — to suggest a systemic issue.“There’s a long history of discrimination against Catholics in the United States, from the framing way through the 1970s,” said Frank Ravitch, a professor of law and religion at Michigan State University. “And if anything, it’s probably better now in terms of nondiscrimination than it ever, probably, ever has been.”Mr. Trump’s claims, Mr. Ravitch said, show “such an incredible blindness to the history of anti-Catholicism in the U.S.”Advocates who track Christians fleeing persecution around the world note that the Biden administration has been gradually increasing the number of refugees admitted into the United States after the number dropped precipitously during the Trump era. At the end of fiscal year 2023, the country recorded about 31,000 Christian refugee arrivals — about half of all refugees and the highest number recorded since fiscal year 2016. (Not all were necessarily fleeing persecution on religious grounds.)“We’re encouraged by that trajectory,” said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that has pushed the Biden administration to establish policies welcoming those facing faith-based discrimination.The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for the sources behind his claims.WHAT WAS SAID“Over the past three years, the Biden administration has sent SWAT teams to arrest pro-life activists.”— in a video on Truth Social this monthThis is misleading. The Justice Department has initiated an increasing number of criminal prosecutions under a law that makes it a violation to interfere with reproductive health care by blocking entrances, using threats or damaging property. In at least one case, a defendant’s family claimed he was arrested by a “SWAT” team, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that was not the case.The law is called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act and was enacted in 1994. Federal prosecutors have used it to initiate 24 criminal cases, involving 55 defendants, since January 2021, according to the Justice Department.While a majority of those cases have involved acts at facilities that provided abortion services, prosecutors have also used it to charge several individuals who supported abortion access and targeted Florida centers that offered pregnancy counseling and abortion alternatives.Moreover, Mr. Trump omits that such arrests are not for “pro-life” activism but for specific actions, including violence, that prosecutors argue were attempts at blocking access to or interfering with reproductive health care services.In one case, federal attorneys charged a man for allegedly using a slingshot to fire metal ball bearings at a Chicago-area Planned Parenthood clinic. In another, prosecutors said that a New York man used locks and glue to prevent the opening of a clinic’s gate. And three men were accused of firebombing a clinic in California; one recently pleaded guilty.Mr. Trump’s claims about the use of “SWAT teams” may be a reference to the 2022 arrest of a Catholic activist in Pennsylvania. The defendant, Mark Houck, was charged with shoving a volunteer at a Planned Parenthood center in Philadelphia in 2021. Mr. Houck’s defense maintained that he was responding to abusive comments made toward his 12-year-old son by the volunteer. He was acquitted earlier this year.Republican lawmakers have criticized Mr. Houck’s arrest by armed agents, but the F.B.I. has rejected the claim that it used a SWAT team and said its tactics were consistent with standard practices.“There are inaccurate claims being made regarding the arrest of Mark Houck,” the F.B.I. said in a statement. “No SWAT team or SWAT operators were involved. F.B.I. agents knocked on Mr. Houck’s front door, identified themselves as F.B.I. agents and asked him to exit the residence. He did so and was taken into custody without incident pursuant to an indictment.”Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, when asked about the circumstances of Mr. Houck’s arrest, has said such decisions are made at the local level, “by the career agents on the ground, who have the closest visibility to the circumstances.”WHAT WAS SAID“The F.B.I. has been caught profiling devout Catholics as possible domestic terrorists and planning to send undercover spies into Catholic churches, just like in the old days of the Soviet Union.”— in a video on Truth Social this monthThis needs context. Mr. Trump was likely referring to a leaked January memo prepared by the F.B.I.’s field office in Richmond, Va., that warned of the potential for extremism for adherents of a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology. Republicans have criticized the memo for months.But the memo was withdrawn and the nation’s top law enforcement officials have repeatedly denounced it.The memo warned of potential threats ahead of the 2024 election and suggested gathering information and developing sources within churches to help identify suspicious activity. It also distinguished between those radicalized and not radicalized, saying “radical-traditionalist Catholics” were a small minority.Some researchers believe there is some merit to those concerns, even if the memo was flawed. Mr. Ravitch, the Michigan State University professor, said he believed agents erred in focusing on Catholicism. “What they’re really talking about is an extremely radical brand of Christian nationals,” he said, emphasizing that they are a small subset and not representative of the Roman Catholic Church or evangelicals.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said during a September congressional hearing that he was “appalled” by the memo and that “Catholics are not extremists.” He called suggestions that the government was targeting Americans based on their faith “outrageous,” referencing the fact that his own family fled Europe to escape antisemitism before the Holocaust.And earlier this month during a Senate hearing, Mr. Wray said of the document: “That particular intelligence product is something that, as soon I saw it, I was aghast. I had it withdrawn.”In a statement this week, the F.B.I. reiterated, “Any characterization that the F.B.I. is targeting Catholics is false.”Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com. More

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      Republicans seek winning strategy on abortion for 2024 – with Democrats also in a tricky spot

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      As the 2024 election season ramps up, Republicans continue to struggle to find a winning national strategy on the flashpoint issue of abortion – where restricting the procedure has animated the conservative movement for half a century but tormented the party since the fall of Roe.The supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade delivered Republicans one of their most significant policy victories in a generation. But in the year and a half since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling has also become one of their biggest political vulnerabilities.Over the last 18 months, voters have favored abortion rights in seven consecutive ballot measures, including in conservative states. Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections while Democrats scored off-year election wins in Wisconsin, Kentucky and Virginia – results that again emphasized the enduring power of abortion rights.Now the presidential election year brings a further huge test.“With abortion, there’s really a kind of catch-22 for Republicans,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis and a leading expert on the history of abortion in the US. “On the one hand, you have a lot of base Republican voters who really care about opposing abortion and on the other you have a huge group of something like 70% of Americans who don’t like abortion bans.”The US supreme court meanwhile set the stage for another major showdown over abortion rights, this time just months before the 2024 presidential election. The court has agreed to decide a case that could determine the accessibility of a widely used abortion pill, including in states where the procedure remains legal.But whether abortion will continue to fuel Democratic victories in a presidential election year is also unclear.Despite delivering a long list of anti-abortion victories, voters tend to view the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, a thrice-married former Democrat from New York, as less socially conservative than his rivals, says Gunner Ramer, political director for the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Pac.“Donald Trump likes to stoke culture wars and own the libs but on social issues he’s seen as more moderate,” Ramer said, adding: “If Trump is the nominee, Democrats are in a much trickier position on abortion.”For decades, the Republican party championed the mission of the anti-abortion movement – to overturn Roe – without clearly articulating what would follow. Now they are contending with the real-world consequences: pregnancy resulting from rape and incest, life-threatening complications, fatal fetal conditions and miscarriages that require the procedure.Sixteen states now ban abortion at conception or after six weeks, before many women know they’re pregnant. Among them is Texas, where Kate Cox, a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition, was forced to leave the state this month to receive an abortion after Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, threatened legal action – “including first-degree felony prosecutions” – against doctors or anyone else who assisted in performing the procedure. The Texas supreme court ultimately ruled against Cox’s request to have an emergency abortion in the state.Seizing on the turn of events, top officials on Joe Biden’s re-election campaign assailed the “unspeakable reality” now facing women in states with limited or no access to abortion.They drew a direct line to Donald Trump, the former president and likely Republican presidential nominee, blaming his appointment of three supreme court justices who cast decisive votes to overturn Roe.“Kate had to leave her home state to seek the healthcare she urgently needs,” said Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “This is happening right here in the United States of America and it’s happening because of Donald Trump.”In the increasingly noncompetitive race for the Republican presidential nomination, disagreements among the White House hopefuls over how to approach or even talk about abortion reflect a wide lack of unity within the GOP on the issue.Trump, in conspicuous fashion, is trying to have it both ways. He has blamed conservative activists’ uncompromising positions on “the abortion issue” for costing Republicans at the ballot box while touting his anti-abortion legacy to the party’s socially conservative base.In Iowa, which launches the Republican presidential primary contest next month, Trump is running ads declaring himself “the most pro-life president ever”. But on the major litmus test for anti-abortion activists – support for a national ban – he has been noncommittal.At a CNN town hall this month, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is challenging Trump for the nomination, accused the former president of “flip-flopping on the pro-life issue”. Trump has said DeSantis made a “terrible mistake” when the governor signed into law earlier this year a six-week abortion ban. Pressed to commit to a national standard, DeSantis has said he would support a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.Nikky Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and the only woman in the race, has sought a different tack, calling for “consensus” and “compassion”. Haley, who as governor of South Carolina in 2016 signed a 20-week ban, has suggested that as president she would enact any abortion restrictions that reached her desk, but said such measures were unlikely in the narrowly divided and deeply polarized Congress.Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who is running for president, is incredulous that Republicans are calling for federal action on abortion after waging a 50-year legal battle to return the issue to the states.“I trust the people of this country, state by state, to make the call for themselves,” he said during a recent debate.It’s a view shared by the entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy, who opposes a federal ban but says he supports state laws outlawing abortion after six weeks.Among the Republican presidential candidates, the two most avowed abortion opponents Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, have already exited the race.Furthering the divide, leading anti-abortion groups are pressuring Republican candidates to back a national ban starting at least at 15 weeks of pregnancy if not earlier, while some party strategists are advising them to clearly state their opposition to any such federal limit.In a post-election memo Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the powerful anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, said the losses were “major disappointments for the pro-life movement” and “warning signs for the GOP”.“It is long past due for the GOP to define where it stands on the issue nationally,” she wrote. “Having a clear position and contrasting it isn’t enough – campaigns and the party must put real advertising dollars behind it, going toe-to-toe with the Democrats.”Her group has urged candidates to support a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of gestation at a minimum or risk losing its endorsement.Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, has criticized Republicans for not confronting the issue more aggressively. “You can’t hide in a corner and think abortion’s not going to be an issue,” she said on NBC News in November, adding: “We can’t just say it’s a state’s issue and be done.”Others have urged candidates to emphasize its support for exceptions, while expressing more compassion and empathy when discussing what can be a deeply personal – and in some cases medically advisable – decision. Still, some say its a matter of semantics, suggesting Republicans avoid terms like “pro-life” and “ban”.According to Politico, a group of prominent Republican pollsters suggested candidates change the subject, presenting polling to members of Congress that showed they could sharpen their appeal with women and independent voters by focusing on protecting contraception rather than banning abortion.“Abortion is, as the courts decided, an issue for states to decide, not the federal government,” states the campaign website for Kari Lake, who is expected to be the Republican Senate nominee in the race for Kyrsten Sinema’s seat. It’s a retreat from her position as a candidate for governor in 2022, when the far-right Republican cast herself as an outspoken ally of the anti-abortion movement and embraced Arizona’s territorial-era law that would ban nearly all abortions in the state.Lake is one of several Republican candidates running in battleground Senate races who have adjusted their stance – and their rhetoric – on the issue.Meanwhile in the House, now led by Mike Johnson, the Louisiana congressman, one of the chamber’s staunchest anti-abortion crusaders, vulnerable Republicans have sought to distance themselves from absolutists in the party.“The supreme court needs to stand down,” said Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who represents a district Biden won in 2020, in response to the high court’s decision to take up the abortion pill case. In a statement, he emphasized his opposition to a national ban.**As Republicans struggle, Democrats say the problem is taking positions that are deeply unpopular with the American public.When Democrats won full control of the Virginia state legislature in November, the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, declared support for what he called a “reasonable” 15-week abortion ban.That same night Andy Beshear, the Democratic Kentucky governor, won re-election after his campaign ran a powerful ad featuring a woman who was raped by her stepfather as a child. In the video, she criticized Daniel Cameron, Beshear’s Republican opponent, for supporting Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban, which does not include exceptions in cases involving rape or incest.And in beet-red Ohio, 56.6% of voters chose to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.“In every election since the overturning of Roe, voters have sent a resounding message: they want more freedom, not less – and come 2024, Republicans will once again face the repercussions of their unrelenting crusade to strip away our rights,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.At the state-level, abortion-related ballot initiatives could help Democrats mobilize Republican women and independent voters who have helped make up their winning coalition in the years since Trump was elected.Building on the success of abortion-related ballot initiatives, abortion rights advocates are working to put the issue before voters in battleground states, including Arizona and Florida. An effort is also underway in Montana, where Democrats hope a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion protections could boost turnout and help one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbent senators, Jon Tester, win re-election.As long as abortion is severely restricted in large swaths of the country where Republicans hold power, candidates at the national level will likely struggle to convince voters that they have moderated on the issue, even if they now champion later-stage “consensus” limits and exceptions, Ziegler said.“If the pro-life movement has a different agenda that they continue to pursue in a large swath of the country, national Republicans either have to say, ‘that’s not what we’re doing. We’re not for that’; or they’re going to be associated with that,” she said.Even so, the road ahead for Democrats is not straightforward.A string of recent surveys found a mixed picture: Biden is trailing Trump nationally and in several swing states. In a Wall Street Journal poll, voters said Trump was better equipped to handle most major policy issues with the exception of abortion, which Biden led by a double-digit margin.The Biden campaign has vowed to put abortion front and center this election cycle. They have argued that Trump – or any of his Republican rivals – would seek to ban abortion as president, possibly through policy changes that would not require congressional approval as some conservatives have proposed.There are risks to the strategy, especially if Trump is the nominee, says Ramer, from the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Pac.Ramer says there was a key dynamic in play in 2022. While Democrats harnessed voter fury over the loss of constitutional abortion rights, he said they were helped by Republicans, who nominated candidates with “extreme” absolutist positions on the issue, such as Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan.That may not continue in 2024.“Abortion is a very nuanced issue for voters,” he said. “And the economy, at the end of the day, is more top of mind for Republicans and swing-state voters.” More

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      in Elections

      Plagiarism Allegations Against Claudine Gay

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      More from our inbox:The Bronx Defenders and the Fallout From WarUndoing Roe: ‘A Shameful Saga’Buying Cashmere Without an Environmental CostKen Cedeno/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Why Claudine Gay Should Go,” by John McWhorter (column, nytimes.com, Dec. 21):Mr. McWhorter argues that Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, should be held to the same academic standards as the institution’s undergraduates. If only that were true!When I was a graduate student there in the late 1990s, I was warned by a senior professor not to pursue a case of plagiarism because it might lead to a lawsuit. The university, he confided, had recently lost a costly court case brought by the parents of a student accused of plagiarism.Plagiarists are rarely brought to account, especially in academe, where it is often treated as a minor delict. How do I know? I’ve been plagiarized by at least two other academics, including a visiting professor at Harvard during my first year of graduate school. Neither she nor the other offender ever faced any consequences.Andrew I. PortDetroitThe writer is a professor of history at Wayne State University.To the EditorRe “Harvard Finds More ‘Duplicative Language’ of President” (news article, Dec. 22):I find it quite odd for The Times to consistently lead the coverage of Claudine Gay’s academic work with an overemphasis that “conservative” voices have driven the claims of plagiarism.The issue is not the political background of the whistle-blowers, but the actual charges. I (hardly a conservative if it matters) wrote articles, a master’s thesis, a Ph.D. dissertation and a book, and I can guarantee that in each case I knew my writing and what I got from other sources (primary and secondary).Nothing bothered my mentor and friend, the late historian Stan Kutler, more than plagiarists who claimed, after getting caught, that their stealing was an oversight, a little mistake, a slight error, a problem in checking content. No, they simply got caught.Dr. Gay would surely support a grad student’s expulsion for plagiarizing. Her turn.Joseph L. DavisMadison, Wis.To the Editor:The New York Times has devoted a startling amount of coverage to sorting out the question of Claudine Gay’s plagiarism. May I suggest that before devoting more, the newspaper’s reporters might want to examine publications by all the Harvard presidents who came before her? And perhaps some of those by its most famous professors, too.The computer technology that exists today may allow critics to scrutinize her writings far more than any past scholar’s work was scrutinized when such technological capabilities did not exist.Let’s see how much she is an outlier in her community — or not — before condemning her so roundly.Janna Malamud SmithMilton, Mass.The writer graduated from Harvard in 1973.The Bronx Defenders and the Fallout From WarSome lawyers in housing and family courts have said they want nothing to do with members of the Bronx Defenders.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Feud Over War Imperils Future of Legal Group; Claims of Antisemitism at Bronx Defenders” (front page, Dec. 15):I am an attorney and a former priest at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in the South Bronx.The Bronx Defenders are among the best lawyers in the city. A lawyer’s duty is to represent a client “zealously,” and the Bronx Defenders represent their clients passionately. I always felt confident when they represented a parishioner or someone I knew from the community.Apparently they bring the same passion to advocating for Palestinians, seeing the hardships they face as similar to those of their South Bronx clients.I urgently hope that they can see that, throughout history, the Jewish people have suffered from prejudice that is also similar to the prejudice their clients have experienced, and, for the sake of their clients, save the Bronx Defenders.(Rev.) Martha OverallNew YorkTo the Editor:Your article about the Bronx Defenders epitomizes my deepest fears about the effects of the Israel-Hamas war on the United States.Longstanding progressive American allies in the campaigns for free speech, civil rights, marriage equality, reproductive freedom, L.G.B.T.Q. protections, educational and legal reform, health care for all, affordable housing, academic freedom, animal and environmental protection — and more — are fighting each other over support for Israel versus support for Palestine as if no compromise were possible and this one point of conflict outweighed years of cooperative work, personal friendships and even family ties.Marches, flag-waving and ill-informed slogan-shouting, especially on college campuses, will have little effect on the war, but they might alienate enough normally Democratic voters to let Donald Trump win a close election. That would harm the country beyond our wildest imagining far into the future.Judy OlinickMiddlebury, Vt.Undoing Roe: ‘A Shameful Saga’Erin Schaff/The New York Times; Illustration by Matt DorfmanTo the Editor:Re “Behind the Scenes at the Dismantling of Roe” (front page, Dec. 17):This brilliant account of the undoing of Roe v. Wade exposes a shameful saga of partisan judging by justices who were committed to ending a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion even as they misled the Senate about their respect for long-settled precedent.Appointed by then-President Donald Trump with the mandate of reversing Roe, the three newest justices joined the reactionary core of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to fashion a decision that will live in infamy, rivaled in disgrace only by the cases of Citizens United and Dred Scott.The story of how the conservative majority manipulated the calendaring and hearing of the case, and their activism in going beyond the limited relief initially sought by Mississippi, will further erode public confidence in the integrity of the court and undermine its legitimacy as a once revered institution.Gerald HarrisNew YorkThe writer is a retired New York City Criminal Court judge.Buying Cashmere Without an Environmental CostGoats grazing on the Mongolian Plateau in Central Asia.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Demand for Cashmere Is Harming the Environment,” by Ginger Allington (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 17):While, of course, we must do all we can to preserve the incredibly fragile world we walk on, we can own cashmere — buy it used!Dr. Allington’s vivid essay teaches us to eschew the fabric that comes from the destructive practices used in herding Mongolian goats. But, as she says, “consider vintage cashmere.” We can head to our nearest consignment shop or other retailer of preworn clothing and find cashmere treasures for our loved ones during these alarming times.Here’s to such warmth!Deborah FriedNew Haven, Conn.To the Editor:Thank you so much for Ginger Allington’s guest essay on cheap cashmere fibers. It is up to every one of us to make a difference by choosing sustainable options.I had the luxury of buying several real cashmere sweaters in the 1970s. I am still wearing them! And I have just inherited a batch from my mother’s closet that are all still perfectly wearable because of the quality. The cheap cashmere that is being produced is doubly egregious because it won’t last one season.At what cost fast fashion? Is it the chicken or the egg? Buyers should stop buying, or manufacturers should stop producing?Susan StockToronto More