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      From abortion to January 6: where each Republican candidate in the debate stands on big issues

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      Republicans vying for the 2024 party nomination are set to take the stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Wednesday night for the first debate of the primary season.The candidates will certainly throw punches at each other and at Donald Trump, who has a significant lead in polls but is skipping the debate. But it’s also a chance for each candidate to present their policy agenda and voice their stance on key voter issues such as abortion and aid to Ukraine.Here’s where each candidate in Wednesday’s debate stands on issues such as abortion, immigration, the economy and continued aid to Ukraine.Ron DeSantisAbortion: DeSantis has supported bills restricting access to abortion – including a six-week ban in his own state of Florida – but has stopped short of saying he would support a federal ban.Economy: In a recently released economic plan, DeSantis said he would cut individual taxes and slash government spending. He also pushed for “American energy independence” and a rollback of electric vehicles.Immigration: As governor, DeSantis has enacted some of the country’s strictest laws against undocumented immigrants, including asking hospital patients to prove their legal status. He also made the controversial move to use public funds to send newly arrived migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in a political stunt. As president, he said he would eliminate the visa lottery and limit “unskilled immigration”.Foreign policy: He opposes additional US involvement in Ukraine and has pledged to reduce economic ties with “communist China” and said the US would no longer “kowtow to Wall Street”.January 6: DeSantis said it was “unfortunate” but “not an insurrection”.More: The current governor of Florida and a former congressman was widely expected to be Trump’s main primary challenger. But his favorability among Republicans has taken many hits, starting with a glitchy Twitter Spaces event hosted by Elon Musk. He has frequently touted his opposition to gender-affirming care for trans people and other public health measures such as mask mandates.Vivek RamaswamyAbortion: Ramaswamy told a crowd at the Iowa State Fair he is “unapologetically pro-life”. But his campaign earlier confirmed he would not back a national abortion ban.Economy: The biotech entrepreneur wants to “unshackle” the energy sector, saying the US should abandon its climate goals to drive down energy costs and boost its GDP. He is also in favor of some corporate and individual tax cuts.Immigration: Ramaswamy said he wants to deport “universally” and end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, who would then be required to apply to become a citizen.Foreign policy: Ramaswamy has criticized US aid to Ukraine, saying it is strengthening Russia’s alliance with China.January 6: Ramaswamy condemned Trump the week after the January 6 attack but has walked back his criticism since then. Responding to a question for an Atlantic profile about what truly happened that day, Ramaswamy said: “I don’t know.” He has defended ex-president Trump across his four indictments.More: Time magazine labeled Ramaswamy a “breakout candidate”. The political outsider has steadily climbed the polls since launching his long-shot bid as an “anti-woke” patriot.Tim ScottAbortion: Scott, an evangelical Christian, is staunchly anti-abortion and said he would support a national 15-week ban.Economy: Scott supports tax cuts and stronger economic competition with China. As a senator, Scott championed legislation establishing “opportunity zones”, which are meant to increase economic development in low-income areas by incentivizing private investment, though critics say residents may not benefit from gentrification.Immigration: He is in favor of a wall along the US southern border to curb illegal migration and drug trafficking.Foreign policy: He broadly supports continued US aid to Ukraine and said Biden has not done enough. But some conservatives think he’s soft on China.January 6: Scott said he doesn’t believe the 2020 election was stolen and does not blame Trump for the violence at the Capitol.More: The South Carolina senator, who is the only Black Republican in the Senate, is an outspoken critic when it comes to teaching kids about race and gender in schools and has said: “America is not a racist country.”Nikki HaleyAbortion: The only woman on the debate stage, Haley is anti-abortion but has also called a federal abortion ban “unrealistic”.Economy: Haley wrote in an op-ed that she opposes raising the national debt limit and would “veto spending bills that don’t put America on track to reach pre-pandemic spending levels”.Foreign policy: The former US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, Haley has labeled the Chinese Communist party an “enemy” and criticized Trump for trying to befriend the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.Immigration: Haley has vowed to tighten security at the US-Mexico border and add 25,000 patrol agents, as well as require companies to verify employees’ status online – which she signed into law in South Carolina as governor.January 6: Haley has called January 6 a “terrible day” and said Trump “went down a path that he shouldn’t have” in an interview with Politico.Chris ChristieAbortion: He has said he would not support a federal abortion ban.Economy: The former New Jersey governor has targeted “excessive government spending” as the reason for inflation and floated cuts to social security, including Medicare.Foreign policy: Christie, who has aligned himself with the hawkish, tough-on-China-and-Russia camp, visited the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a surprise trip earlier this month to affirm his support for continued US aid.Immigration: Christie said “immigrants are pouring over the border” in an attack against Trump’s campaign promise to build a border wall.January 6: Christie, who was in the running to be Trump’s VP after dropping out of the 2016 presidential race, is now Trump’s loudest critic. He broke with Trump over the January 6 Capitol attack, calling Trump a “coward” for not joining rioters.Mike PenceAbortion: The former vice-president, an evangelical Christian, is the loudest anti-abortion candidate and has condemned his opponents for refusing to back a six-week abortion ban.Economy: Pence has said his top priority is boosting the US economy and has called on the Fed to ditch its dual mandate – keeping employment high and inflation low – to focus solely on reducing inflation. He has also advocated for cutting social security benefits.Foreign policy: Pence has advocated for continued US aid to Ukraine and met with Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a surprise visit in June.Immigration: He has blasted the Biden administration’s immigration policy, describing a “stampede” from Central and South America, and has vowed to finish the border wall that began under Trump.January 6: Pence has campaigned heavily on his refusal to aid Trump in his effort to stop the certification of electoral results and has repeatedly condemned his ex-boss for his role in the Capitol attack.Doug BurgumAbortion: Burgum signed a law banning nearly all abortions in North Dakota but said he would not support a national ban.Economy: The governor of North Dakota, who is also a wealthy businessman, has touted North Dakota’s record as an energy-producing state and said he would prioritize growing the country’s tech and energy sectors.Foreign policy: Winning the “cold war with China” is a key pillar of Burgum’s message to voters.Immigration: Burgum said Biden hasn’t done enough to secure the US-southern border and supports stricter restrictions on migration.January 6: Burgum called for a stop to the violence at the Capitol on January 6 but said he thinks it’s time to “move on”.Asa HutchinsonAbortion: As governor of Arkansas, Hutchinson signed a near-total abortion ban and said he would support a national ban.Economy: He has floated extreme measures to balance the federal budget and reduce debt including cutting the federal non-military workforce by 10%.Immigration: Hutchinson supports harsh restrictions on immigration.Foreign policy: He said he would not cut economic ties with China but has advocated for more aggressive action to counter China’s threat against Taiwan. Politico describes Hutchinson’s foreign policy as a “compassionate internationalism” of the past.January 6: He said January 6 “disqualifies” Trump from running for president. More

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      Democrats Root for a Rowdy G.O.P. Debate

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      Top Democrats, suddenly feeling a bit better about 2024, would love to see Republicans talk about a national abortion ban. They’re less excited about the inevitable Hunter Biden tirades.After a year of fretting about President Biden’s political standing and their electoral chances in 2024, Democrats are at a moment of high confidence as Republicans prepare for their first presidential debate on Wednesday.They will be watching with bated breath in hopes that the Republican candidates embrace the likely-to-be-absent Donald J. Trump, defend him over his four criminal indictments, endorse national restrictions on abortion and — in the Democrats’ dream scenario — call for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.Even without Mr. Trump onstage, Democrats see the Republican White House hopefuls as avatars for what they describe as a party in thrall to its extreme elements. Nobody is rooting for the debate to go off the rails more than Democrats praying for Mr. Biden’s re-election.“All I want these people to do is say the same stuff they’ve been saying on the campaign trail on national TV,” said Jim Messina, the campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid. “Please continue to double down on a six-week abortion ban. That would be wonderful. Thank you for doing this.”Mr. Biden probably won’t watch the debate, a spokesman said, but odds are that his compatriots will. Here’s what Democrats are looking for from the Republicans on the debate stage in Milwaukee.Will they rally around a national abortion ban?Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, Democrats have used the abortion issue to turbocharge their voters — particularly in red and purple states like Kansas, Wisconsin and, this month, Ohio.Nothing would make Democrats happier than to see Republicans embrace a national ban on abortion during a nationally televised debate. When Mr. Trump held a CNN town hall event in May, the moment that had Democrats doing cartwheels afterward was not his continued denial of the 2020 election results, but when he took a victory lap for the Supreme Court’s decision.“I’d like to see a huge defense of President Trump and a full-on assault on reproductive freedom and abortion,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat. “To me, that would be a gift that would keep on giving.”In reality, many of the Republican candidates have tended to be more cagey about the issue.Mr. Trump, at the CNN event, declined to call for a national abortion ban, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has also treaded carefully despite signing a six-week prohibition into law in Florida this year. But avoiding the subject may be tricky given former Vice President Mike Pence’s enthusiastic support for limiting abortion rights.How much do Republicans cozy up to Trump?Mr. Trump probably won’t be at the debate, but Democrats expect nearly all of the candidates onstage to make explicit plays for his share of the Republican base — a move Democrats hope will focus attention on their own efforts to brand the entire G.O.P. as the party of MAGA.“It doesn’t matter who ‘wins’ the debate on Wednesday, the MAGA Republican presidential candidates have all chosen a losing strategy that is extreme and out of touch with the American people,” Michael Tyler, the communications director for Mr. Biden’s campaign, wrote in memo to supporters on Friday.Mr. Biden has for months been on a mission to paint all Republicans as marching in lock step with Mr. Trump’s most loyal, hard-right supporters. On Wednesday, Democrats are hoping to see Republicans engaged in stylistic efforts to attract Trump voters.“I’m a wrestling fan,” said Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “I’m imagining a royal rumble on the debate stage, sort of a rehash of the debates in 2016 where they’re talking about each other’s mamas and all kinds of craziness.”But one lesson that has been abundantly clear in the Trump era of politics is that no other Republican can get away with the type of outrage and public shamelessness that Mr. Trump regularly evinces.Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to be a drama-free, more competent version of Mr. Trump have flopped so far. Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech executive who has sought to portray himself as a millennial version of Trump, has risen in early polling but remains largely unknown.Will the Trump indictments be a focus?The biggest story about Mr. Trump is the one Mr. Biden won’t talk about — the four criminal indictments the former president is facing.The problem for the Republicans running against Mr. Trump is that many of their voters agree with his belief that the cases against him are politically motivated.Democrats on the sidelines have been left waiting, to little avail, for Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. rivals to make a case to their voters that the legal problems are politically disqualifying.“Normally candidates would be more than happy to point out if their opponent has been indicted four times!” Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota wrote in a text message. “They ARE running against him after all.”That plea is unlikely to get much airtime on Wednesday. Of the candidates onstage, only former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — who is running an anti-Trump campaign that has won him new respect from Democrats — has made an explicit case that Mr. Trump’s indictments have merit and are bad for the party.What about Hunter Biden?One thing the Republican candidates are all but certain to do is equate Mr. Trump’s legal problems with those of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who is facing his own special counsel investigation after a plea agreement on tax and gun charges fell apart last month.Democrats aren’t exactly popping popcorn for this scenario — it is an intensely painful episode for the president, and the prospect of a criminal trial isn’t appealing to them — but they are confident that any detour down a Hunter Biden rabbit hole will take emphasis away from issues that moderate and independent voters care about.“If Republicans want to make this election about attacks on the president’s family, it’s a losing strategy,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat. “It would be a mistake for them to make that an issue.”Democrats hope to dispel with the fiction that it won’t be Trump.Democrats widely view Mr. Trump as the easiest Republican candidate to defeat next year. Mr. Biden beat him once already, they reason, and Mr. Trump’s cascading legal problems and singular ability to repel moderate Republicans and swing voters make him the one they’d like to face.Mr. Trump’s dominance in polls of the Republican primary and the reluctance of most of his G.O.P. rivals to attack him have led most Democrats to conclude that Wednesday’s debate, along with much of the primary, are an academic exercise being held before next year’s Trump-Biden rematch.“I was just going to watch it for comic relief,” said Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat. “This is done. We are going to have Trump versus Biden 2.0. That’s what’s about to happen. Anyone who is kidding themselves into believing that they have a shot is just delusional.”And for the cast of candidates who barely qualified for the Republican stage, hoping that a standout debate performance would propel them to relevance — a TV show, a future cabinet post or maybe a campaign for some other office — a former presidential long shot had a piece of advice.“Learn how to count to 200,” said Representative Eric Swalwell of California, who, many people may have forgotten, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. “Because that’s about the amount of seconds that you’re going to have to speak.” More

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      Republicans Won’t Stop at Banning Abortion

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      There is no way to regulate and control pregnancy without regulating and controlling people. States that have enacted abortion bans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health have also considered the establishment of new regimes for the surveillance and criminalization of anyone who dares to circumvent the state’s dictates for the acceptable use of one’s body.This is why the war on abortion rights is properly seen as a war on bodily autonomy and why the attack on reproductive freedom has moved hand in hand with a renewed attack on the gay, queer and transgender community. It’s all part of the same tapestry of reaction. And this reactionary impulse extends to the means of the anti-abortion political project as well as its ends.The same lawmakers who want to rob their constituents of the right to bodily autonomy have also begun to treat democracy as an obstacle to avoid, not a process to respect. If the people stand in the way of ending abortion, then it’s the people who have to go.We just witnessed, in fact, an attempt by anti-abortion lawmakers to do exactly that — to try to remove the public from the equation.A majority of Ohio voters support the right to an abortion. The Ohio Legislature — gerrymandered into an seemingly perpetual Republican majority — does not. In many states, this would be the end of the story, but in Ohio voters have the power to act directly on the state constitution at the ballot box. With a simple majority, they can protect abortion rights from a Legislature that has no interest in honoring the views of most Ohioans on this particular issue.Eager to pursue their unpopular agenda — and uninterested in trying to persuade Ohio voters of the wisdom of their views — Republican lawmakers tried to change the rules. Last week, in what its Republican sponsors hoped would be a low-turnout election, Ohioans voted on a ballot initiative that would have raised the threshold for change to the state constitution from a simple majority to a supermajority. They defeated the measure, clearing the path for a November vote on the future of abortion rights in the state.In his opinion for the court in Dobbs, Justice Samuel Alito cast the decision to overturn Roe and Casey as a victory for democracy. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” he wrote. Reproductive rights, Alito continued, quoting Justice Antonin Scalia’s 1992 dissent in Casey, are “to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.”Citizens can persuade each other, and they can vote. But our political system is not designed to turn the aggregate preferences of a majority into direct political power. (If that were true, neither Alito nor his Republican colleagues, save for Clarence Thomas, would be on the Supreme Court.) More important, Alito’s vision of voting and representation only works if that legislative majority, whoever it represents, is interested in fair play.But as the Ohio example illustrates, the assault on bodily autonomy often includes, even rests on, an assault on other rights and privileges. In Idaho, to give another example, the No Public Funds for Abortion Act, which passed before Dobbs was decided, would punish state employees with the termination of employment, require restitution of public funds and possible prison time for counseling in favor of an abortion or referring someone to an abortion clinic. Other legislatures, such as those in Texas and South Carolina, have pushed similar restrictions on speech in pursuit of near total abortion bans in their states.There’s something that feels inevitable in this anti-abortion turn toward political restriction. The attack on bodily autonomy is not general. It is aimed, specifically, at women. It subjects their bodies to state control and in the process degrades their citizenship. “Without the ability to decide whether and when to have children, women could not — in the way men took for granted — determine how they would live their lives, and how they would contribute to the society around them,” the dissenters in Dobbs wrote. For women to take their place as “full and equal citizens,” they “must have control over their reproductive decisions.”In other words, the attack on bodily autonomy is an assault on both political equality and reproductive freedom. It creates a class of citizens whose status is lower than that of another group. And once you are in the business of degrading the citizenship of one group of people, it’s easy to extend that pattern of action to the citizenship of other groups of people. The authoritarian habits of mind that you cultivate diminishing one form of freedom may lead you to view other forms of freedom with equal contempt.For now, the anti-abortion project is an assault on one form of freedom. But don’t be surprised if, to secure whatever victories it wins, it becomes an attack on all the others.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Girl, 13, gives birth after she was raped and denied abortion in Mississippi

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      A 13-year-old girl in Mississippi gave birth to a boy after she was raped as well as impregnated by a stranger – and then was unable to get an abortion, according to a Time magazine report published on Monday.The mother of the girl, who uses the pseudonym Ashley in the report, was looking to get an abortion for her daughter but was told the closest abortion provider was in Chicago – a drive of more than nine hours from their home in Clarksdale, Mississippi.Ashley’s mother, referred to as Regina in the report, told Time that the cost of getting an abortion in Chicago was too expensive when considering the price of travel, taking time off work and getting the abortion for her daughter.“I don’t have the funds for all this,” Regina told Time.The report is the latest in a series of horrific personal accounts that have surfaced after the US supreme court overturned the nationwide abortion access rights which had been established by the Roe v Wade precedent. Since the decision, titled Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 14 state laws banning abortion have gone into effect, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.The women’s health clinic that was at the center of the case was the last abortion provider in Mississippi until it closed last summer after the Dobbs decision.Last summer, just a week after the ruling, a local newspaper in Ohio reported that a 10-year-old who was raped had to travel to Indiana for an abortion because of restrictions in her state. A man was found guilty last month of raping and impregnating the girl in that case, and he received a sentence of life imprisonment.Other stories detail how women nearly died because doctors had to wait until their life was at risk to perform an abortion – or that many women now have to travel long distances to get any kind of reproductive healthcare. An estimated 25 million women ages 15 to 33 live in states that have abortion restrictions.With respect to Monday’s Time report, Ashley discovered she was pregnant after her mother took her to the hospital for uncontrollable vomiting. Regina noticed that Ashley was behaving differently, staying in her room when she used to enjoy going outside to record TikTok dances. Upon receiving bloodwork showing Ashley was pregnant, the hospital contacted the police.“What have you been doing?” a nurse asked Ashley at that time, according to the report. The hospital ultimately directed Ashley to the Clarksdale Women’s Clinic, which provides OB-GYN services. The clinic did not respond to requests from the Guardian for comment.“It was surreal for her,” Dr Erica Balthrop, Ashley’s physician, told Time. “She just had no clue.”Before Dobbs, Balthrop could have directed Regina to a Memphis abortion clinic that was a 90-minute drive north, or to Jackson Women’s Health, which is a 2.5-hour drive south. But Mississippi – along with all the states surrounding it – has banned abortion.Mississippi, along with many other states that also ban abortions, technically make exceptions for when the pregnancy is from rape or is life-threatening. But abortions granted under these exceptions are extremely rare and poorly tracked.In January, the New York Times reported that Mississippi made two exceptions since the state’s abortion ban went into effect. The state requires that a rape be reported to law enforcement in order to qualify for a legal abortion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTwo out of three sexual assault cases in the US are not reported to the police, according to Rainn, or the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, an anti-sexual assault nonprofit. Even if an exception is made, a person must travel out of their state to get an abortion procedure if their state bans it.The laws exacerbate longstanding health inequalities in Mississippi, where Black women are four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications compared with white women, according to the state’s health department. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 60% of women who seek abortions are people of color and about half live below the federal poverty line.Regina said she filed a complaint with the Clarksdale police department after she learned Ashley was pregnant. She told Time that her daughter ultimately opened up about what happened: a man came into their front yard while she was making TikToks outside while her uncle and sibling were inside and assaulted her. Ashley said she did not know who the man was and that no one witnessed the attack.The police department confirmed to Time that a report had been filed. But the agency declined to comment publicly on the case since it involved a minor.After 39 weeks of pregnancy, Ashley gave birth to a boy, whom they nicknamed Peanut. Ashley told Time the birth was “painful”.“This situation hurts the most because it was an innocent child doing what children do, playing outside, and it was my child,” Regina told Time. “It still hurts, and is going to always hurt.”
      Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Backtracks on Support for Federal Abortion Ban

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      Mr. Kennedy, who is running for president as a Democrat, said that he would sign a ban after three months’ gestation, but his campaign quickly reversed his comments.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that he supported a federal ban on abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy, then quickly backtracked — underscoring both his ideologically uncomfortable position within the Democratic primary field and the deep salience of abortion in next year’s election.Mr. Kennedy, who is running against President Biden, made his comments at the Iowa State Fair after an NBC News reporter asked whether he would sign a bill codifying the right to abortion once protected by Roe v. Wade. Democrats have rallied around such legislation since the Supreme Court overturned Roe last year, though the party does not currently have the votes in Congress to pass it.“I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the woman during the first three months of life,” Mr. Kennedy said.In response to follow-up questions, Mr. Kennedy confirmed that he would sign federal restrictions after three months, which some Republicans have proposed and elected Democrats almost universally oppose. While the vast majority of abortions take place in that first-trimester window, Roe protected abortion rights until viability — the point when a fetus can survive outside the womb — which is around the end of the second trimester.Hours later, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign released a statement saying he had “misunderstood a question posed to him by an NBC reporter in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair.”“Mr. Kennedy’s position on abortion is that it is always the woman’s right to choose,” the statement said. “He does not support legislation banning abortion.”But the video of his comments and the back-and-forth that followed show Mr. Kennedy specifying the first three months of pregnancy in his own words, and the reporter asking several follow-up questions to confirm his position.“So you would cap it at 15 weeks?” the reporter asked.“Yes,” Mr. Kennedy said.“Or 21 weeks?”“Yes, three months,” he said.“So three months, you would sign a federal cap on that,” the reporter said.“Yes, I would,” Mr. Kennedy said.A spokeswoman for his campaign did not respond to questions on Monday.While there was no ambiguity in Mr. Kennedy’s declaration of support for a ban after three months, there were indications that he did not understand the timeline of pregnancy.By way of explaining his position, he said, “Once a child is viable outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting that child.” But viability, which can vary from pregnancy to pregnancy, is generally around 24 weeks, or six months.Mr. Kennedy, a scion of the storied American political family and an environmental lawyer, has become known for his anti-vaccine advocacy and his promotion of conspiracy theories. While he is running for president as a Democrat, some of his positions are more in line with Republicans. More

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      Texas questions rights of fetus in prison guard lawsuit despite arguing opposite on abortion

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      In defending themselves against a lawsuit, Texas officials have argued that an “unborn child” may not have rights under the US constitution, putting them in tension with arguments made by the state’s attorney’s general’s office as well as Republican lawmakers to support restrictions to abortion.A guard at the state prison in the community of Abilene filed the lawsuit in question after she asserted that her superiors barred her from going to the hospital while she experienced intense labor pains and what she suspected were contractions while seven months pregnant and on duty.The guard – who is named Salia Issa – was finally able to leave to go to the hospital two and a half hours after the pain started. She was rushed into emergency surgery after doctors were unable to find a fetal heartbeat, and she ultimately delivered the baby in a stillbirth. The lawsuit claims that if Issa had been able to get to the hospital sooner, the baby would have survived.Issa and her husband sued the Texas department of criminal justice and three supervisors, arguing the state caused the death of their child. They seek restitution in medical and funeral costs and for pain and suffering.The prison agency and the Texas attorney general’s office have argued in defense of the lawsuit that the agency should not be held responsible for the stillbirth and that it is not clear the fetus had rights as a person. Both entities advance those positions despite consistent arguments made in lockstep by the attorney general’s office and Texas legislators that “unborn children” should be recognized as people starting at fertilization.“Just because several statutes define an individual to include an unborn child does not mean that the 14th amendment does the same,” the Texas attorney general’s office wrote in a legal filing in response to the lawsuit, referring to the constitutional right to equal protections afforded to US citizens. The filing also notes that the stillbirth occurred before the US supreme court in June 2022 eliminated the Roe v Wade precedent which had established nationwide rights to abortion protection.The US magistrate judge Susan Hightower last week allowed the lawsuit to proceed in part, without addressing the arguments over the rights of the fetus.The overturning of Roe v Wade allowed several states to enact laws which prohibited the termination of many – if not most – pregnancies. Many states, however, have been met with lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the bans which remain unresolved. More

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      Republican senator will ‘burn the military down’ over abortion policy, says Democrat

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      The Alabama Republican senator Tommy Tuberville is “prepared to burn the military down” with his block on promotions in protest of Pentagon policy on abortion, the Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy said.“I think everybody’s been hoping that Senator Tuberville would back down,” Murphy told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.“And I think we have to come to the conclusion that that is not happening and that he is prepared to burn the military down.“Maybe Republicans were hopeful that leading up to the August break he would relent. He didn’t, and we now have to adjust our strategy.”Last year, the conservative-dominated US supreme court removed the federal right to abortion. Since February, Tuberville has been protesting Pentagon policy that allows service members to travel for abortion care if their state does not provide it.His method is to place a hold on all promotions to senior ranks that are subject to Senate confirmation, usually a pro forma process carried out with unanimous consent.Senior military leadership is increasingly severely affected, the US Marine Corps and US Army without permanent leaders and the joint chiefs of staff facing a similar predicament when the current chair, Gen Mark Milley, steps down next month.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina now running for the Republican presidential nomination, also said Tuberville should back down.“We do not have a chief of staff of the army for a first time in 200 years,” Haley told the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “More than 300 vacancies. It’s a mess.”Haley said Hewitt should call Tuberville “and ask him to stop screwing up the military, because we’re on the brink of a conflict with China and we cannot have this”.Joe Biden has called for Tuberville to step down. So have hundreds of military spouses. Tuberville has refused. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has said he does not support Tuberville’s protest but has not moved to stop it. Senate rules give individuals the ability to hold up proceedings. Furthermore, Tuberville retains support among his own party, in both chambers of Congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Tuesday, Murphy said Republicans should support a temporary change to Senate rules, in order to process promotions that are now held up.“I just think we have to start thinking creatively about breaking this logjam,” he said. “There is no world in which we can use floor time for these nominations. It’s logistically impossible.”Murphy also said Tuberville, a former football coach and now a prominent Trump supporter, “is not going to back down” because “he thinks he’s become a celebrity folk hero in the fringe right.“He’s having the time of his life. If you want the military to function, you’re going to have to find a creative way to get around this guy.” More

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      Republicans in Ohio are about to vote … to curtail the power of voting | Moira Donegan

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      Technically, August special elections are supposed to be illegal in Ohio. Late last year, a Republican-backed bill passed the state house prohibiting most special elections in August, reasoning that timing an election in the dog days of late summer depressed turnout, and cost too much money. But those same Republicans changed their tune in May, when it became clear that abortion rights supporters in Ohio would be able to put a ballot measure to voters securing abortion rights in the state in the November 2023 election. Ohio has a six-week ban on the books, but it is currently blocked by a court, and abortion remains legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy. The measure, if passed, would help keep it that way, amending the Ohio state constitution to grant individuals a right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions”.Ballot measures have been extremely successful tools of the pro-choice movement since the supreme court abolished the federal abortion right last year in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health: pro-choice ballot initiatives passed by surprisingly large margins even in Ohio’s heavily Republican neighbor state, Kentucky, as well as the similarly deep-red Kansas. Since Dobbs, every single time abortion rights have been put to the voters, they have prevailed. And so suddenly, the Ohio GOP felt that it was important that a vote be held in August: a vote, that is, to curtail the power of voting.Ohio voters head to the polls on Tuesday to vote on Issue 1, the Republicans’ response to the November constitutional amendment. The sole question posed to voters in the August special election is a direct attempt to stop the legalization of abortion through democratic means: if passed, Issue 1 would make it more difficult for a ballot initiative to be brought to Ohio voters, and more difficult to pass one that was. The rule change would require advocates to collect signatures in all Ohio counties before a proposal could be placed on the ballot – a procedure that would give disproportionate power to rural, conservative parts of the state – and raise the threshold for passage from 50% to 60%. Currently, the pro-choice ballot initiative slated to go before Ohio voters in November polls at about 58% approval.And so the fight over abortion rights and Issue 1 in Ohio has become a proxy for the broader fight many Republicans are waging across the states: when voters don’t like the party’s proposed policies – and overwhelmingly, voters do not like abortion bans – then instead of changing their platforms or setting out to persuade the electorate to change their minds, Republicans simply change the rules, so that the voters’ wishes don’t get in the way of their preferred policy outcomes. Don’t want to vote for the Republican party line? Then state Republicans will make sure that your vote doesn’t matter.The Issue 1 special election is just the latest in a string of efforts by state Republican parties to curtail access to ballot measures. In Missouri, a court ruled that a ballot initiative seeking to legalize abortion could be presented on the 2024 ballot, even though the Republican attorney general there, Andrew Bailey, had tried to stonewall the effort by falsely claiming that the vote would cost the state a gargantuan amount of money. But state Republicans there had already pushed another measure through the state house, requiring ballot initiatives to receive at least 57% of the vote to pass. Like in Ohio, Missouri was unable to keep the abortion rights measure off the ballot. But just as Ohio Republicans are doing, the Missouri GOP tried to rig the process, explicitly to lessen the pro-choice side’s chances. The measure failed in the Missouri state senate, but Republicans there have vowed to try again. Republicans in at least nine other states – Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah – have also tried to make it harder for ballot initiatives to pass, at least when those initiatives support abortion rights.Abortion is not the only issue where Republicans have sought to curtail access to direct democracy in order to protect their policy goals. In South Dakota, an effort last year to raise the ballot initiative passage threshold to 60% was aimed mostly at stopping Medicaid expansion in the state. (It failed.)But abortion has long been the issue around which America’s anti-democratic forces are most determined and inventive. In Texas, for instance, Republican politicians have responded to local prosecutors in large, Democratic-leaning cities like Houston who say they will not prosecute abortion cases by passing a bill allowing those prosecutors to be removed for “misconduct”. Similar bills aiming to curtail the authority of elected district attorneys over whether or not to enforce criminal abortion bans have also been brought forward by Republicans in Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina. Like the limits on ballot initiatives, the limits on the discretion of local DA’s also aim to end the ability of public opinion to influence policy outcome. If you don’t want to vote for the Republican policy, the Republicans will make sure your vote doesn’t matter; and if you vote in an official who will pursue a different policy, the Republicans will make sure that official loses the authority to do her job.Maybe it’s appropriate that Republicans have made the anti-abortion crusade the focus of so much of their anti-democracy efforts. Abortion bans, after all, are substantively anti-democratic. They are unpopular, yes, imposed by the unelected supreme court. But more importantly they are an insult to citizenship, depriving half of Americans the ability to live their lives with freedom, dignity, bodily integrity and self-determination – preconditions to any meaningful, equal status as citizens. It makes sense that Republicans would embark on sneaky, procedural efforts to undermine abortion in pursuit of this same project. They don’t want to allow women to live as full, equal citizens. But really, they don’t especially want that for anyone else, either. In justifying his decision to overturn Roe v Wade, Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, wrote that if women didn’t like what he was doing to them, they could just vote. “Women are not without political power,” he wrote. At least, the Republican ones aren’t. More