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      Biden Has Something He’d Like to Tell You

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      Gail Collins: Well, Bret it looks like Joe Biden will be announcing his re-election bid this week.Bret Stephens: Proving my prediction from last week dead wrong.Gail: I know you disagree with him on many issues, particularly relating to the economy.But given the likely Republican presidential candidates, any chance you’ll actually be able to avoid voting for him?Bret: Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Probably not.It says something about the state of the Republican Party that the two current front-runners — let’s call them Don Caligula and Ron Torquemada — are nonstarters for a voter like me. And I’m a guy who believes in low taxes, a strong military, broken-windows policing, entitlement reform, a border wall and school choice. That’s the Nikki Haley side of the party — now reduced to single digits of the G.O.P. base.Gail: Sorry about Haley’s failure to take flight. I know you were rooting for her.Bret: Well, I’m still holding out hopes — increasingly faint though they are.On the other hand, I really, really wish Biden weren’t running, for all the reasons we’ve discussed. He’s just not a convincing candidate. And for all the talk of Donald Trump being unelectable in the general election, we’ve heard those predictions before. All it might take is a recession — which is probably coming — for swing voters to care a lot less about abortion rights in Florida or the Jan. 6 attempted coup than they will about jobs and the economy.Aren’t you a wee bit nervous?Gail: Nervous? Just because we’re talking about a presidential election in which one of the two major parties nominates either a loony ex-president drowning in legal problems or a deeply unappealing, extremely right-wing enemy of Disney World?Bret: It’s a game of Russian roulette, played with three bullets in the six-shooter.Gail: As for the Democrats, I’ve already told you I think 80 is too old to be planning another presidential campaign. And Biden has been around so long, it’s hard to make anything he talks about doing sound exciting.But what you’re worried about — a popular reaction against a bad economy — would be a problem for anybody in the party.Bret: True, but Amy Klobuchar or Gretchen Whitmer or some other plausible nominee can’t be accused of owning the economy the way Biden can.Gail: Biden certainly has negatives. But Trump has a lot more — all way more dire. And even if Ron DeSantis weren’t a terrible campaigner, I can’t see him winning over the electorate with his past plans to torpedo Medicare.Bret: You’re probably right about DeSantis, who seems too obsessed trying to slay Mickey and Minnie to appeal to regular voters outside Florida. As for Trump, this is a strange thing to say, but: The guy has demon energy. You know the movie “Cocaine Bear”? Trump is “Diet Coke Cujo,” if you get my Stephen King reference.Gail: Yeah, he’s never boring. Sigh. But we’ll see how energetic he looks when he’s defending himself for falsifying business records, and all the other investigations that await him.Alas, we’ll be conversing about this for a very long time, Bret. On the more immediate horizon, there’s the Fox-Dominion settlement. Tell me your thoughts.Bret: I am sorry we didn’t get to watch Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and the rest of the gang of cynical, lying, repulsive and wretched propagandists squirm under oath in courtroom testimony. Would have paid money just to see that.But, realistically speaking, it’s probably the best possible result. $787.5 million is rich vindication for Dominion. It’s the closest Fox will ever come to admitting guilt. And it spares us the possibility of an appeals process that might have ended with the Supreme Court revisiting the strict libel standards of Times v. Sullivan and potentially limiting the freedom of the press.Gail: Yeah, for all my daydreams about Fox celebrities having to get up in court and apologize to the nation, in the real world this is probably the best you can get while protecting all the rights of a free press.Bret: The good news, Gail, is that Dominion still has suits pending against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Newsmax and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow Guy, along with a few others. And there’s also the pending Smartmatic suit against Fox, too.Having fun, making bank and doing good at the expense of creeps has got to be the greatest joy adults can have in a boardroom.But we mentioned the Supreme Court. Any thoughts on the mifepristone ruling, staying the lower court’s ban on the abortion pill? I’m relieved, of course, that the court will allow the pill to remain on the market.Gail: Well, this is the nice thing about a democracy. You have the powers that be suddenly realizing the public is totally not on their side. So they fudge a little, dodge a little and quietly backtrack.Bret: It’ll be some irony if Republicans come to rue last year’s Dobbs decision for making them unelectable in all but the reddest parts of the country — and Democrats come to celebrate it for helping them cement a long-term majority that eventually changes the composition of the court so that abortion rights are restored.Gail: But we’re still a long way from living in a country where every woman has the right to control her own body when it comes to reproduction issues.Bret: As the dissents from Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in the mifepristone ruling make clear ….Gail: I’ve always wanted to see state lawmakers from both sides get together on a package of reforms that would couple abortion rights with easily available, easily affordable health and counseling services for poor pregnant women.Along, of course, with high quality child care for low-income working mothers. Ahem.Bret: Gail, would it shock you to know that I don’t disagree with anything you just said? Of course, child care won’t solve the root of so many of our problems, which is the near-destruction of stable two-parent families in too many poor households. But that’s a disaster whose cure lies beyond a government’s ability to solve.Gail: Wow — government support for high-quality early education? I think I’m hearing a major change of heart. If so, gonna buy a very nice bottle of wine for dinner tonight and drink a toast to you.Bret: I tend to soften in your presence.Gail: Awww. Well, go on — back to the issues of the day.Bret: Speaking of disasters, your thoughts on Biden’s E.P.A. rule controlling emissions from power plants?Gail: A worthy effort to protect future generations from environmental disaster, and of course the Republicans hate it.Bret: There should be a better way of saving the planet than by using administrative means to impose high costs on industry that will inevitably be passed along to consumers in the form of higher energy prices — which also hit poorer people harder — while setting wildly unrealistic target dates for an energy transition.Notice that I’m saying this and I still will probably have no choice but to vote for Biden. Unbelievable.Gail: Our colleague Jim Tankersley wrote a great analysis about the ongoing crisis over raising the debt limit, which has got to get done this spring. And how more than half of the Republicans’ 320-page version of a debt limit bill is actually about removing clean energy restrictions.Bret: I’d need to see the fine print before making a judgment, but a lot of what passes for “clean energy,” like biofuels, is really a dirty-energy, big government, big business boondoggle. As for the debt limit, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Biden showed any willingness to meet Republicans halfway on spending cuts and work requirements for able-bodied adults taking federal subsidies.Gail: Bret, the debt limit is — something responsible people take care of without creating a political crisis with demands they’ll never achieve.But hey, that’s a mean way to end our talk. You’re always great about telling me about something new you’ve just read. Go ahead.Bret: Gail, I have to recommend Katie Hafner’s smart and humane obituary on Richard Riordan, the last Republican mayor of Los Angeles and a man who brought calm good sense to a city reeling from riots and racial strife. Riordan was a warts-and-all kind of guy, who cracked some dumb jokes that would have probably been politically fatal in our cancel-culture age. But he also brought common sense and a strong work ethic to his job and embodied a Republican pragmatism that we could sorely use today. He was the last of nine children born to an Irish Catholic family — California is better because his parents were persistent.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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      Republican Graham loses cool over abortion after supreme court pill ruling

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      Republican frustration with the supreme court decision which on Friday blocked restrictions on a widely used abortion pill spilled into public on Sunday, as the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham lost his cool in a television interview when challenged on his flip-flopping position.Graham, who last September proposed a national 15-week abortion ban only a month after insisting it was an issue for states to decide, became angry on CNN’s State of the Union, deflecting questions with false claims Democrats wanted a law allowing abortions until birth on demand.The flustered senator accused his interviewer, Dana Bash, of covering for opponents he said wanted to see “barbaric” late-term abortions “out of line with the rest of the civilised world” and commonplace, he said, only in China and North Korea.“No, no, no, you [in the] media keep covering for these guys,” Graham shouted. “They introduced legislation that allowed abortion on demand with taxpayer funds to the moment of birth, that’s the law they want to pass and nobody in your business will talk about it.”Bash replied she was covering for nobody and had frequently challenged Democrats on the issue.The official position of the Democratic party is to codify federal protections for abortion, guaranteed by the Roe v Wade decision of 1973 until overturned by the supreme court last year, that permitted the procedure until “fetal viability”, generally accepted to be at about 24 weeks’ gestation.The spectacle of Graham’s anger underscored how Republicans are struggling to find a cohesive response to Friday’s ruling over the abortion pill mifepristone and on abortion in general.Many analysts and party members believe the issue cost votes in last year’s midterms, following the supreme court Dobbs v Jackson ruling that overturned Roe v Wade.Moves by several Republican-led states to tighten abortion restrictions, including the signing by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, of the nation’s most extreme ban, at six weeks, have prompted voter backlash. Polling shows three in five Americans approve of abortion access in most or all cases.On ABC’s This Week, the South Carolina Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace said the court was right to block restrictions last month placed on mifepristone by a Texas judge appointed by Donald Trump.“This was a hand-picked case with a hand-picked judge to get this outcome,” she said. “And when you look at the ruling in Texas, in part at least, it used a law that the supreme court in 1983 said was unconstitutional.“So the basis for his ruling, I argue, was debunked and it should not have been.”Mace, who has spoken of being raped as a teenager, said the approach of her party to the wider issue was too rigid, and colleagues needed to show more sympathy and compassion for victims of rape who found it difficult or impossible to obtain an abortion.“I want us to find some middle ground,” she said. “As a Republican and conservative, a constitutional conservative who’s pro-life, I saw what happened after Roe v Wade [fell] … I saw the sentiment change dramatically.“As Republicans, we need to read the room because the vast majority of folks are not in the extremes. We just saw a fetal heartbeat bill signed in the dead of night in Florida. In my home state a very small group of state legislators filed a bill that would execute women who have abortions and gave more rights to rapists than women who have been raped.“That is the wrong message heading into 2024. We’re going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities. It hurt us in the midterms. We actually lost seats. We’ve buried our heads in the sand. We want to go to the extreme corners of this issue, but that’s not where the vast majority of Americans are right now.”Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator for Minnesota and a leading voice for abortion rights, also hailed the mifepristone decision.“Senator Graham knows where the American people are on this,” she told CNN. “They are with Democratic leaders, and the people of this country believe that the women of this country should be able to make their own decisions about their healthcare and not politicians.”Klobuchar also attacked the legal arguments advanced by those seeking to ban mifepristone, which in part relied on the 150-year-old Comstock Act prohibiting the mailing of contraceptives, “lewd” writings and any “instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing” that could be used in an abortion.The law has not been enforced since the 1930s, according to NPR.“It was literally passed in 1873,” Klobuchar said. “That is 10 years before the Yellowstone prequel, at a time when we were treated for pneumonia through bloodletting, back in the age of the Pony Express.“The American people do not want to go backwards. And what I heard today is that Republican leaders in Washington aren’t backing down on their opposition to reproductive freedom. They are doubling down.” More

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      Democratic states stockpile abortion pills as legal fight for access looms

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      Despite a reprieve by the US supreme court, a growing number of Democratic states are stockpiling abortion pills as the legal fight for access to the abortion drug mifepristone is set to continue.On Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication.Nevertheless, as the case continues to wind through America’s court system and remains challenged by anti-abortion groups, more Democratic states are now stockpiling abortion pills amid an unpredictable legal battle.Earlier this month, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction that suspended the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, calling it a drug that is used to “kill the unborn human”.Swiftly after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Democratic states have been stockpiling abortion pills including mifepristone as well as misoprostol, the second drug in the abortion regimen which can also be used on its own, although less effectively.At the Massachusetts governor Maura Healey’s request, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has purchased approximately 15,000 doses of mifepristone. The stockpile is expected to offer “sufficient coverage” in the state for over a year.“Mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years and is the gold standard. Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” Healey said last week.Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of New York and California both announced plans to stockpile misoprostol in attempts to safeguard their states’ abortion access.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that New York will be purchasing misoprostol in order to stockpile 150,000 doses, a five-year supply.Hochul also pledged that if mifepristone is removed from the market, New York will commit up to an additional $20m to providers to support other abortion methods.In a similar move, governor Gavin Newsom of California announced last week that the state has secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2m misoprostol pills“We will not cave to extremists who are trying to outlaw these critical abortion services. Medication abortion remains legal in California,” Newsom said, adding that California has shared the negotiated terms of its misoprostol purchase agreement to assist other states in securing the pill at low cost.Since then, additional Democratic states have followed suit.The governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, recently announced a partnership with the University of Maryland’s medical system to purchase a “substantial amount of mifepristone”.“This purchase is another example of our administration’s commitment to ensure Maryland remains a safe haven for abortion access and quality reproductive health care,” said Moore, who also released $3.5m in previously withheld funding for the state’s abortion care clinical training program.On Thursday, Oregon made a similar announcement, with its governor Tina Kotek revealing the state has secured a three-year supply of mifepristone, regardless of the supreme court’s ruling on the pill.“Here in Oregon, I will make sure that patients are able to access the medication they need and providers are able to provide that medication without unnecessary, politically motivated interference and intimidation,” Kotek said.With Democratic states rushing to stock up on abortion pills, the tumultuous legal fight for abortion access is far from over. In the last nine months, 13 states have banned abortion. With anti-abortion groups fighting for increased pill restrictions nationwide, even states that have legalized the procedure may become affected.Following the supreme court’s decision to temporarily block mifepristone restrictions, the next stage of the litigious battle over the drug will take place in the fifth circuit, with oral arguments scheduled for 17 May. The case will then likely return back to the supreme court.In a statement to the New York Times, Erik Baptist, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization representing a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors, pledged to continue fighting against abortion care.“The FDA must answer for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is and unlawfully removing every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions,” he said about the 23-year-old FDA-approved drug.Meanwhile, the Joe Biden administration and civil rights organizations promised to continue fighting for reproductive rights.“I’ll continue to fight attacks on women’s health. The American people must also continue to use their vote as their voice and elect a Congress that will restore the protections of Roe v Wade,” Biden tweeted shortly after the supreme court issued its decision.The American Civil Liberties Union echoed similar sentiments, with Jennifer Dalven, ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project director saying: “Make no mistake, we aren’t out of the woods by any means … And as this baseless lawsuit shows, extremists will use every trick in the book to try to ban abortion nationwide.”Dalven added: “But if our opponents think we will allow them to continue to pursue their extreme goals without fierce backlash, they are sorely mistaken.” More

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      Abortion Surges to the Center of the 2024 Campaign

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      Nearly a year after the Supreme Court turned abortion into a dominant issue of the 2022 midterms, the battle over abortion rights has catapulted to the center of the emerging 2024 election season, igniting Democrats, dividing Republicans and turbocharging sensitive debates over health care.From North Carolina to Nevada, Democrats running at every level of government are vowing to make support for abortion rights a pillar of their campaigns, and to paint their opponents as extremists on the issue.And as races intensify, Republicans are caught between the demands of their socially conservative base and a broader American public that generally supports abortion rights, exposing one of the party’s biggest political liabilities as it tries to win back the White House, recapture the Senate and expand its narrow House majority.This month, a Wisconsin judge won a crucial State Supreme Court race after running on her support for abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAll of those dynamics have crystallized over the last month. First, a liberal Wisconsin judge won a crucial State Supreme Court race by a commanding margin after running assertively on her support for abortion rights. A few days later, a conservative judge in Texas took the extraordinary step of moving to invalidate the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. The Supreme Court on Friday said the pill would remain widely available for now, halting two separate rulings, including the Texas ruling, while an appeal moves forward.Democrats cast the Supreme Court’s order as a close call, and warned that many Republicans still want as many abortion restrictions as possible, including a national ban. At the same time, Republican presidential hopefuls — whose teams generally did not respond to requests for comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday night — are straining to find their footing on the issue.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently signed a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women do not know they are pregnant, staking out a position that conservatives applauded, but one that could hurt him in a general election with moderate voters. Others, like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have struggled to articulate firm positions. And former President Donald J. Trump, whose choices for the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade, recently angered anti-abortion leaders by emphasizing state power over the issue rather than a national ban.“I’m worried that we let the Democrats use the issue to define us, because we aren’t very good at our own messaging,” said the Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, who signed a measure that banned abortions after 24 weeks, with some exceptions. Mr. Sununu, who calls himself “pro-choice,” was the rare possible Republican presidential candidate to offer a comment on the court’s ruling on Friday: “Good call by the Supreme Court.”Representative Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who leads the House Democratic campaign arm, said Republicans had moved in an increasingly “extreme” direction on abortion. She pointed, for instance, to an Idaho law criminalizing those who help a minor get an out-of-state abortion without parental permission, and to threats more broadly to abortion medication.“It’s dangerous, and people are angry,” she said. “We’re going to see that in 2024 in elections across the country.”Anti-abortion demonstrators gathered in front of the Supreme Court as part of the 50th March for Life in Washington in January. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAs President Biden moves toward announcing a re-election bid as soon as Tuesday, one of his advisers predicted that the issue of abortion rights would be more significant in 2024 than it was last year, as Americans experience the far-reaching results of overturning Roe.Democrats are carefully monitoring — and eagerly broadcasting — the positions on abortion taken by Republicans in the nascent stages of primary season. And they are pressing their own succinct message.“We support women making decisions regarding their health care,” said Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Democratic Senate campaign arm. “Not politicians, not judges.”Republicans are far more divided on what their pitch should be — and party officials acknowledge this poses a steep challenge.“We support women making decisions regarding their health care,” said Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat. “Not politicians, not judges.”Julia Nikhinson for The New York TimesConflict always emerges between the demands of primary voters and the preferences of general-election swing voters. But the overturning of Roe has drastically complicated this calculus for Republican candidates. They now face detailed questions about whether to support national bans; how soon into a pregnancy abortion bans should apply; what exceptions, if any, to permit; and how they view medication used in instances of abortions and miscarriages.“We wrap ourselves around the axle trying to nuance our position as a candidate or a party through the primary, knowing that we’re going to have to reexplain ourselves in the general,” Mr. Sununu said. “It comes off as disingenuous, convoluted, and at the end of the day, it really chases away voters.”The fault lines in the party were illuminated again this past week. After a spokesman for Mr. Trump indicated to The Washington Post that the former president believed abortion should be decided at the state level, the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America issued a stern rebuke.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signing a 15-week abortion ban into law in April 2022. This month, he signed a more restrictive six-week ban.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images, via Sipa USA“We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the organization, said in a statement.In a separate statement, Mr. Trump’s campaign said he “believes it is in the states where the greatest advances can now take place to protect the unborn,” while declaring him the “most pro-life president in American history.”There will be no shortage of opportunities for Republican candidates to highlight their anti-abortion credentials and to navigate the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision, starting as soon as Saturday, at a gathering of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is also expected to give a speech on abortion.Bob Vander Plaats, a socially conservative leader in Iowa whose organization is expected to host a gathering with presidential candidates this summer, said, “There’s a lot of ways to determine a person’s bona fides when it comes to the sanctity of human life, but I guarantee you the Texas ruling will be discussed.”The issue of abortion, he said, “will be a cornerstone issue in the Iowa caucuses. It will be a cornerstone issue in the Republican primary.”On Thursday, Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, tried to help her candidates navigate the subject, suggesting that opposing abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy was a strong position politically, somewhat mirroring polling she has been showing to members of her party.“In 2022, a lot of Republican candidates took their D.C. consultants’ bad advice to ignore the subject,” she said in a speech. Noting the onslaught of Democratic ads on the subject, she said, “most Republicans had no response.”She urged Republicans to cast Democrats as “extreme” on the issue, a message echoed by some working on House and Senate races who say Democrats should be pressed on what limitations they support.Nicole McCleskey, a Republican pollster who worked for the successful re-election campaign of Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa last year, pointed to Ms. Reynolds, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia as examples of leaders who embraced tight abortion restrictions but were not defined by that issue alone. All three swept to comfortable victories in states that often lean right, but are not the nation’s most conservative states.“This last election saw some candidates who were unclear or changed their position, lacked conviction and were unprepared to talk about this issue,” she said. “If you have those things — if you have conviction, if you have empathy, if you are prepared and you know how to define yourself and your opposition,” she added, “we can successfully navigate this issue.”But some candidates have shown little interest in managing a rhetorical balancing act.The issue is likely to come to a head in North Carolina, home to what may be the most consequential governor’s race of 2024, with Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, term-limited.“I’m worried that we let the Democrats use the issue to define us, because we aren’t very good at our own messaging,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican. Sophie Park for The New York TimesMark Robinson, the state’s often incendiary lieutenant governor and a Republican, is expected to announce a run for governor as soon as Saturday. Mr. Robinson, who has said that he and his now-wife aborted a pregnancy decades ago, has since made clear that he wants greater restrictions on abortion rights in North Carolina, where Republicans now have supermajorities in the state legislature. The procedure is currently legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in the state.Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic attorney general who is running for governor, said in an interview that there was “no question” that he saw abortion rights as being directly on the ballot. That message was effective for Democrats in governor’s races in several critical states last year.“The only reason North Carolina doesn’t have a ban on abortion now is because we have a Democratic governor,” Mr. Stein said.A spokesman for Mr. Robinson declined to comment for this article.For Democrats elsewhere, it can be more challenging to argue that their races will decide the fate of abortion rights in their state, especially in places where abortion protections are codified. And it is far too soon to know what mix of issues will ultimately determine 2024 campaigns.Still, Democrats noted that if the Supreme Court had let the Texas ruling stand, that would have had major nationwide implications — and many stress the possibility of national abortion bans, depending on the makeup of the White House and Congress.“Even though we may have current protections for this in Nevada, if a nationwide abortion ban is imposed, Nevadans will suffer, and women will die,” Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, a Democrat who recently announced her re-election bid, said in an interview.In a statement, Ms. Rosen called the Supreme Court order “a temporary relief.” But in the interview, she said the Texas ruling underscored how one conservative judge could threaten the power of a major government agency.“It’s pretty frightening,” she said. More

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      Rough week, Ron? DeSantis flounders with Disney feud and abortion stance

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      One of the most entertaining Ron DeSantis stories of the week was only a parody, although he might wish it was not so. The satirical website The Onion had Florida’s rightwing governor settling his ongoing feud with Disney by taking a guest role in its hit Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian.Behind the mocking comedy was hard truth for a vain politician embroiled in the energy-sapping scrap with Florida’s biggest private employer over LBGTQ+ rights.There’s clear evidence the Disney fight, and his numerous other cultural battles, including his signing of an extreme six-week abortion ban, are costing DeSantis significant political capital on the national stage as he prepares a likely presidential run. And while the road to the 2024 Republican nomination is likely to have many ups and downs ahead, there is little doubt DeSantis has hit a rough spot.He has fallen well behind Donald Trump in the polls, can’t seem to find a Florida congressman to endorse him, and is hemorrhaging support from influential Republican donors.But there’s no easy way out, even if he wanted to find one.“It’s a combination of vanity and vengeance for him. He suffers from what a lot of politicians do, which is vanity, and this is about retribution,” said David Jolly, a Republican former Florida congressman who served with DeSantis in the House, and was briefly a rival in the 2016 race for Marco Rubio’s Senate seat until the incumbent reversed his decision to stand down.“On Disney, his ego’s gotten the best of him and he’s been called out for it. He has to win this [but] the momentum is going in the wrong direction, and it’s getting serious.“To use a hockey analogy, he’s always known how to skate to where the puck is going. But the puck’s going to the wrong goal right now.”By any measure, DeSantis has had a rough week. It began with a torrent of criticism when he suggested building a state prison on land next to Disney’s theme parks as payback for being outfoxed over control of the company; and continued with a humiliating odyssey to Washington DC in search of congressional endorsements, only to find a succession of former allies defecting to Trump.At home in Florida, there has also been irritation with DeSantis and his extremist agenda, according to Politico.“People are deeply frustrated,” Republican former state senator Jeff Brandes told the outlet, adding that party colleagues he had spoken to felt “they are not spending any time on the right problems”.It’s a view echoed by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor mulling his own challenge for the party’s nomination. DeSantis’s obsession with vengeance on Disney, a private company, for opposing him is not conservative, in Christie’s view.“If you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you?” he told Semafor.“That’s what I always thought liberals did. And now all of a sudden here we are participating in this with a Republican governor.”According to Jolly, however, it’s not attacks by such as Christie that should set alarms ringing for DeSantis’s advisers.“The most damning criticism of him on Disney is from Justin Amash, the founder of the House freedom caucus, who was a colleague of his, and who condemned DeSantis for his take on Disney. That stings for DeSantis that the freedom caucus leader came out against him on it,” he said.“He also goes to Washington and four of his Florida colleagues turn around and endorse his competitor.“A lot of politicians are affable, some are cerebral [but] from the time he stepped on the stage, DeSantis has been a loner. He considers himself the smartest person in the room, but has not built relationships or loyalty and in return there are no loyal members of the delegation to him now.“The credit to him is it works. He’s the governor of the third largest state and could be the next president. So it’s an observation of his personality more than a criticism, but it’s no surprise that now when he needs people they’re not there for him.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUltimately, Jolly believes, DeSantis might not be ready for the demands of the national stage.“His confidence for the past few years has been because everything has been scripted, with friendly crowds. He doesn’t speak to the press, and when he does it often becomes adversarial,” he said.“The question is, how long can he run out that model in a presidential race before he really has to suffer the spotlight? His greatest strength nationally is not polling, it’s that he’s a fundraising juggernaut who for five years has captured the attention of the nation’s largest Republican donors.“If they’re worried about either his culture war overreach, or that he’s unprepared for the national stage, that’s real. They want a winner.”Some analysts believe the feuding with Disney, which began last year with the company promising to help overturn DeSantis’s flagship “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender preference, could be a campaign killer.“He declared thermonuclear war on a cartoon mouse,” the Orlando Sentinel political columnist Scott Maxwell wrote.“The governor’s scriptwriters seemed to envision this as the ultimate power play. They’d teach Disney a lesson, rev up the base and show every other employer in Florida what happens if they don’t bow down before DeSantis.“Instead, he became a punchline. This may be remembered as the moment the wheels came off.”Others are more cautious. Susan MacManus, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida, warned that “one bad week is not enough” to discount a candidate’s viability.“If you decide to run for president, and everyone assumes [he will], you know going into it you’ll have bad weeks and good weeks, and DeSantis has never been a traditional campaigner,” she said.“There are different portions of the electorate for whom things resonate more, so some Republicans were disappointed that he was going after Disney and making a joke about the jail. Others were disappointed by his statement about Ukraine way back, others about the endorsements.“But in the big picture, it’s way too soon to tell the damage done by one week, nine months ahead of the primary season, and the first Republican debate scheduled for August.“As an analyst, I can see people’s assessment of this as a bad week. But as someone who studies historical presidential campaigns, I don’t see it as an end-all week.” More

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      US supreme court blocks ruling limiting access to abortion pill

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      The supreme court decided on Friday to temporarily block a lower court ruling that had placed significant restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone.The justices granted emergency requests by the justice department and the pill’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, to halt a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in Texas. The judge’s order would significantly limit the availability of the medication as litigation proceeds in a challenge by anti-abortion groups.The decision offered a victory to the Biden administration as it defends access to the drug in the latest fierce legal battle over reproductive rights in the US. The president praised the decision and said he continues to stand by the FDA’s approval of the pill.“As a result of the supreme court’s stay, mifepristone remains available and approved for safe and effective use while we continue this fight in the courts,” Biden said in a statement. “The stakes could not be higher for women across America. I will continue to fight politically driven attacks on women’s health.”The court’s ruling means that access to mifepristone will remain unchanged at least into next year as appeals play out and patients can still get medication abortions with the drug in states where it was previously available.Reproductive rights groups celebrated the ruling, while cautioning it does not necessarily herald the final outcome of the case. “This is very welcome news, but it’s frightening to think that Americans came within hours of losing access to a medication that is used in most abortions in this country and has been used for decades by millions of people to safely end a pregnancy or treat a miscarriage,” said Jennifer Dalven, director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Make no mistake, we aren’t out of the woods by any means. This case, which should have been laughed out of court from the very start, will continue on.”The decision came in the most pivotal abortion rights case to make its way through the courts since Roe v Wade was overturned last year. More than half of abortions in the US are completed using pills.The case was brought by a conservative Christian legal group arguing the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone more than 23 years ago.The Biden administration vigorously defended the FDA against the charge, emphasizing its rigorous safety reviews of the drug and the potential for regulatory chaos if plaintiffs and judges not versed in scientific and medical arguments begin to undermine the agency’s decision-making.Conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, with Alito writing that the Biden administration and Danco “are not entitled to a stay because they have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the interim”.The order granting the stay was unsigned, so it is not known how each of the other seven justices voted.The case has moved quickly through the courts in recent weeks, as contradicting rulings have thrown the future of the drug into question.In early April, a federal judge in Texas, Matthew Kacsmaryk, first ruled in the lawsuit brought by a coalition of anti-abortion groups to suspend the FDA’s 23-year-old authorization of mifepristone entirely, writing that the agency wrongly approved the drug. After a challenge by the Biden administration in the fifth circuit court of appeals, a divided three-judge panel said the drug’s approval could stand, but imposed restrictions on it, limiting its use to seven weeks of pregnancy instead of the current 10-week limit, and banning delivery of the pill by mail.The Biden administration then asked the supreme court to intervene before the restrictions went into effect. Alito twice stayed the lower court ruling, keeping access to mifepristone unaltered while the court deliberated.Complicating matters, another federal judge issued a ruling directly contradicting Kacsmaryk’s, ordering the FDA to refrain from making any changes to the availability of mifepristone in 18 jurisdictions.That judge – Judge Thomas O Rice, in Washington – reaffirmed that order after the fifth circuit’s ruling.Both the Biden administration and pharmaceutical companies have warned of regulatory chaos around drug approvals, should the supreme court allow the restrictions on mifepristone to go into effect.“If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks,” president Biden said in a written statement after the Kacsmaryk’s decision in early April.The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, echoed the point in a statement responding to the appellate decision: “If this decision stands, no medication – from chemotherapy drugs, to asthma medicine, to blood pressure pills, to insulin – would be safe from attacks.” More

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      US supreme court to decide on abortion pill access after extending deadline

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      The supreme court is poised to decide whether to preserve access to a widely used abortion medication, after extending its deadline to act until at least Friday.Less than a year after the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade and eliminated a constitutional right to an abortion, the justices are now weighing new legal questions in an escalating case in Texas with potentially sweeping implications for women’s reproductive health and the federal drug approval process.For now, the court is not weighing the merits of a legal challenge brought by abortion opponents seeking to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone. At issue before the court is whether to allow restrictions on the drug imposed by a lower court that would sharply limit access to the drug, including in states where abortion remains legal.The justices had initially set a deadline of 11.59pm on Wednesday, but that afternoon, Justice Samuel Alito issued a brief order extending the court’s deadline by 48 hours. The one-sentence order provided no explanation for the delay but indicated the court expects to act before midnight on Friday.The legal clash began in Texas, with US district judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a drug first approved more than two decades ago and used by more than 5 million women to end their pregnancies.The Biden administration immediately appealed the decision, which it assailed as an unprecedented attack on the the FDA’s decision-making. The US court of appeals for the 5th circuit then temporarily blocked the Texas decision, preserving access to mifepristone while the legal case plays out, but reversed regulatory actions taken by the FDA since 2016 that expanded access to the pill. Those changes include allowing patients to receive the drug by mail, and extending its use from seven to 10 weeks of pregnancy.The Biden administration and drugmakers next asked the supreme court to pause the lower court’s ruling, arguing that reimposing the barriers would create chaos in the marketplace and cause confusion for providers and patients.Alliance Defending Freedom, a coalition of anti-abortion doctors and organizations, has argued that the FDA failed to follow proper protocols when it approved mifepristone and has since ignored safety risks of the medication. Medical experts have said the claims are dubious and not based on scientific evidence.Complicating the legal landscape around this case, a federal judge in Washington state, Thomas Rice, issued a contradictory ruling in a separate lawsuit brought by Democratic attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The order, which Rice reaffirmed after the appeals ruling in the Texas case, blocked the FDA from limiting the availability of mifepristone in those states.Since the fall of Roe, more than a dozen US states have banned or severely restricted abortion. But many other states have moved in the opposite direction, approving legislation and ballot measures that protect abortion rights. Amid the patchwork legal landscape, attention has turned to medication abortion, which can be obtained by mail and administered at home.Mifepristone is the first pill in a two-drug regimen that is the most common method of ending a pregnancy, accounting for more than half of all abortions in the US. Decades of research and data from hundreds of medical studies have shown that it is both a safe and effective way to end a pregnancy.The drug first won FDA approval in 2000, and over the years the agency has loosened restrictions on its use. Those changes include allowing the drug’s use from seven to 10 weeks of pregnancy, lowering the dosage of mifepristone needed to safely end a pregnancy, allowing the pills to be delivered by mail, eliminating the in-person doctors visit requirement and approving a generic version.Depending on how the justices rule, those changes could be reversed, at least while the case proceeds through the courts. On Wednesday, GenBioPro, the manufacturer of the generic form of mifepristone, sued the FDA to keep the drug on the market, setting up a new front in the legal battle over access to abortion medication. More