Abortion

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Liberal Judge Is First to Advance in Major Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

      by

      Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge from Milwaukee County, will face one of two conservatives in a race that could tilt the balance of the court, with abortion rights, gerrymandered maps and more in the balance.MILWAUKEE — Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, won her race on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, and advanced to the general election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the most consequential American election on the 2023 calendar.On April 4, Judge Protasiewicz will face one of two conservatives for a 10-year term on the court: Daniel Kelly, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, or Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge known for presiding over the trial last fall of a man who killed six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade. Late Tuesday, The A.P. had not yet projected which candidate would advance along with Judge Protasiewicz.The winner of the officially nonpartisan race will tip the balance of the state’s seven-member Supreme Court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008. If Judge Protasiewicz prevails, the court will have a four-member liberal majority that would be likely to overturn the state’s 1849 law forbidding abortion in nearly all cases, redraw Wisconsin’s heavily gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps, and influence how the state’s 10 electoral votes are awarded after the 2024 presidential election.“Everything we care about is going to be determined by who wins this election,” Judge Protasiewicz told supporters in a victory speech on Tuesday night. Influential Democrats in Wisconsin coalesced long ago behind Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz), who has endorsements from a range of top party officials and de facto support from many others. The other liberal candidate in the race, Everett Mitchell, a judge in Dane County, which includes Madison, lagged far behind the other three major candidates in fund-raising.More on Abortion Issues in AmericaAbortion Bills: More than 300 abortion-related bills — a majority of which seek restrictions — have been proposed around the United States. Doctors are the most vulnerable to punishment.A Missed Opportunity: Abortion rights activists say President Biden’s State of the Union speech could have done more to address what they view as a national health crisis.State Constitutions: Divergent decisions by state supreme courts in South Carolina and Idaho displayed how volatile the fight over abortion rights will be, as advocates and opponents push and pull over state constitutions.A New Lawsuit: A company that makes an abortion pill filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of West Virginia’s ban on the medication. A wave of similar cases are expected to be filed in coming months.Republicans split between Justice Kelly, who lost a 2020 election for a full term after being appointed in 2016 by Gov. Scott Walker, and Judge Dorow, whom Mr. Walker appointed to the Waukesha court.The fight for conservative votes grew increasingly bitter in the closing days before Tuesday’s primary election. Justice Kelly said in interviews on conservative talk radio and at campaign stops that he would not commit to endorsing Judge Dorow if she advanced to the general election, while Judge Dorow’s supporters argued that Justice Kelly was unelectable based on his performance in 2020, when he lost by 10 percentage points.The race is all but certain to become the most expensive judicial election in American history, topping the $15 million spent on a 2004 race for the Illinois Supreme Court. Already, more than $8.7 million has been spent on television and digital advertising in the Supreme Court race, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Officials in both parties expect tens of millions more to be spent by each side during the six-week general election.Justice Kelly has used his deep-pocketed supporters as a reason to vote for him in the primary. He told conservatives gathered at a Republican Party dinner this month in Sawyer County that they should back him because he had the support of the billionaire Uihlein family, which has pledged to spend millions of dollars on his behalf. Justice Kelly said the Uihleins would not back Judge Dorow in the general election.“If it’s not me in the general election, I don’t think that money just moves over to Jennifer,” Justice Kelly said. “It just won’t be spent. So if I’m not the candidate in the general election, Jennifer will jump in completely unarmed when the left is going to spend up to $25 million.”The state’s Democrats and Judge Protasiewicz’s campaign believe Judge Dorow would be a stronger general election opponent. A Better Wisconsin Together, a Democratic super PAC, spent more than $2 million on television ads before the primary attacking Judge Dorow. The Uihleins’ super PAC, Fair Courts America, spent $2.7 million backing Mr. Kelly and attacking Judge Protasiewicz. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      What to Watch For in a Consequential Court Election in Wisconsin

      by

      Voters are going to the polls today in the primary election for a swing seat on the state’s Supreme Court, with abortion rights, gerrymandered maps and more at stake.BELOIT, Wis. — It is a funny thing about American politics that for one night, the nation’s most important campaign of 2023 descended on Cheezhead Brewing, a tavern where about 50 Republicans gathered to discuss the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.Standing in front of a Green Bay Packers logo made from green, gold and white bottle caps, Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge who is one of two conservatives running in Tuesday’s four-way primary, told the crowd on Sunday night that “fairness and impartiality are squarely on the ballot this election.”What fairness and impartiality mean, however, depends entirely on one’s political stripes.Democrats say Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, controlled by conservatives since 2008, has enacted unfair legislative maps that have allowed Republicans to take near-supermajority control of the State Assembly and Senate in an evenly divided state — making nearly everything the State Legislature does unfair. The leading liberal candidate in the race, Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, calls the maps “rigged” and has said she would vote to throw them out.For conservatives like Judge Dorow, publicly telegraphing one’s intentions on the court and prejudging cases are violations of the judicial oath.But few in Wisconsin are fooled about the stakes of this officially nonpartisan race for an open seat on the seven-member court. If a liberal candidate wins a 10-year term, the court will tip in liberals’ favor, and the state would be likely to throw out its 1849 law banning abortion in nearly all cases and to redraw its legislative maps. If a conservative wins, abortion will remain illegal and Republicans will retain a lock on the Legislature for at least another decade.A protest for abortion rights last month in the rotunda at Wisconsin’s Capitol. The Supreme Court race could decide the fate of Wisconsin’s abortion ban.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe top two candidates from Tuesday’s primary will advance to the general election on April 4. As voters cast their ballots, here is what’s happening in the race.The G.O.P. establishment is fighting outsiders.Last fall, Wisconsin’s Republican establishment rallied behind Daniel Kelly, a former Supreme Court justice who, in 2020, lost a bid for re-election — just the second sitting justice to do so since 1958.But whispers soon emerged on the right about Justice Kelly’s ability to win. He lost that 2020 race by 10 percentage points, an enormous margin in battleground Wisconsin, where a three-point victory in a statewide race constitutes a blowout.Around the same time, Judge Dorow was presiding over the most prominent local court case in years — the murder trial of a man eventually convicted of killing six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade. She was on the news every night for weeks.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Michigan G.O.P.: Michigan Republicans picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for secretary of state.Dianne Feinstein: The Democratic senator of California will not run for re-election in 2024, clearing the way for what is expected to be a costly and competitive race to succeed the iconic political figure.Lori Lightfoot: As the mayor of Chicago seeks a second term at City Hall, her administration is overseeing the largest experiment in guaranteed basic income in the nation.Union Support: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. Democrats hope it will lead to increased union strength.There hasn’t been a Wisconsin Supreme Court race with multiple conservative candidates since the turn of the millennium, and Justice Kelly’s allies were determined to avoid one.“I personally called Jennifer before she entered the race and pleaded with her not to jump in,” Shelley Grogan, an appellate court judge who serves as a Kelly surrogate, told the Cheezhead Brewing audience. “It’s really hard for a conservative to win. So if there’s more than one person interested, they sit down and talk about it and decide who we can all get behind.”(In a subsequent interview, Judge Grogan said she was interested in running for the State Supreme Court in the future. A liberal justice’s term is up in 2025, and a conservative justice’s will expire in 2026.)Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge, is one of two conservatives running in Tuesday’s four-way primary.Caleb Alvarado for The New York TimesJudge Dorow told the audience she would not wait her turn.“I don’t believe in deciding candidates in a back room,” she said. “I believe it’s important that the voters in the state of Wisconsin do that.”The 2020 election still looms large — for both parties.When the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, in a series of 4-to-3 votes, to uphold Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 victory in Wisconsin, it was a conservative justice, Brian Hagedorn, who provided the key vote to reject President Donald J. Trump’s argument to invalidate 200,000 votes.Those decisions have energized Democrats, who are poised to pour tens of millions of dollars behind Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz). But they have also animated Justice Kelly, who has repeatedly accused Judge Dorow of being the second coming of Justice Hagedorn — a sort of untrustworthy Trojan horse who would betray Republicans when it counts.Justice Kelly, who The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week revealed has for two years been paid by the Republican National Committee to work on “election integrity issues,” has repeatedly tied Judge Dorow to Justice Hagedorn. Along with voting against Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, Justice Hagedorn sided with several pandemic mitigation efforts by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, in 2020. Justice Hagedorn has been a reliable conservative vote on most matters, including redistricting, but many on the right have not forgiven him for defying Mr. Trump.“I’m kind of in the same place that I was with Brian Hagedorn, all I have is what she says about herself,” Justice Kelly said at a meeting of Republicans on Monday night in Sheboygan. “Jennifer may very well be a judicial conservative, she might be, I just don’t know because there’s nothing there to tell me that she is.”Justice Hagedorn, in an email, said he was “not interested in commenting at this time.”Republicans are arguing about what it means to be electable.Justice Kelly’s 2020 defeat is the animating feature of Judge Dorow’s campaign.“I’m the only conservative who can win in April,” she wrote on Twitter, linking to a radio advertisement in which one of Milwaukee’s leading conservative talk radio hosts delivered a monologue supporting her candidacy.But besides offering the basic bromides about being a conservative judge who will abide by the Constitution, Judge Dorow has said little else about her candidacy. She has declined nearly all interview requests, and in Beloit a campaign aide said she would respond only to preapproved questions. She did not linger at the bar to speak with voters after her remarks.Judge Janet Protasiewicz is the leading liberal in the officially nonpartisan race.Caleb Alvarado for The New York TimesJustice Kelly has been much more explicit about his political advantages. He has support from the billionaire Uihlein family, whose super PAC, Fair Courts America, has spent $2.7 million on ads backing him and attacking Judge Protasiewicz. Justice Kelly has said major conservative donors will abandon the race if he does not advance to the general election. A spokesman for Fair Courts America did not respond to questions.“You need to be the kind of candidate that will attract the independent expenditures to get the message out across Wisconsin,” Justice Kelly told Republicans gathered at a Lincoln Day dinner in Sawyer County this month. “If it’s not me in the general election, it’s not like that money just moves over to Jennifer. It just won’t be spent. So if I’m not the candidate in the general election, Jennifer will jump in completely unarmed when the left is going to spend upwards of $25 million.”Democrats seem to prefer to face Justice Kelly and the Uihlein money rather than Judge Dorow’s shallower record.A Better Wisconsin Together, a Democratic super PAC, has spent $2 million in TV ads attacking Judge Dorow in the primary but nothing against Justice Kelly. Democratic opposition research has been focused on damaging Judge Dorow, who is less well known but perceived as more likable and reasonable than Justice Kelly by voters in Democratic focus groups.Democrats are vowing not to replay their 2022 Senate race.Last year, Wisconsin Democrats watched as Mandela Barnes, a popular, progressive, young Black candidate coalesced support before losing the general election to Senator Ron Johnson, a better-funded, older white Republican.Determined not to repeat that recent history, the party’s top leaders and fund-raisers coalesced behind Judge Protasiewicz, a white, female career prosecutor and jurist from the suburbs who is not as vulnerable to the types of barely coded attacks that helped doom Mr. Barnes last fall.Judge Protasiewicz built a commanding fund-raising advantage and has opened a wide lead in both parties’ private polling ahead of the primary. She is widely expected to place first on Tuesday, with the other liberal candidate in the race, Everett Mitchell, a more progressive Black judge from Dane County, projected to finish fourth.The near unanimity among Democrats combined with a fractured G.O.P. has Democrats planning and Republicans fearing a mountain of attack ads beginning as soon as Wednesday against whichever conservative candidate advances to a likely matchup with Judge Protasiewicz. A reverse dynamic in August damaged Mr. Barnes, while Mr. Johnson and his allies poured tens of millions into attack ads before the Democrat could recover.“There is no world in which Janet is defined by the right in the first weeks of the race,” said Sachin Chheda, a top strategist on the Protasiewicz campaign. “We are prepared for whatever the results are on Tuesday and will be hitting the pedal to the floor on Wednesday.” More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Abortion Rights Supporters See Biden Address as Missed Opportunity

      by

      While praising the administration’s actions so far, activists say the State of the Union speech could have done more to address what they view as a national health crisis.During the midterm campaigns, Democrats spent months focused on the demise of federal abortion rights and the danger they said it posed to all Americans.In his State of the Union speech, President Biden spent roughly 42 seconds.The White House says that it used the moment to call on Congress to reinstate the protections provided under Roe v. Wade, and that it has taken the most aggressive approach to abortion rights of any administration in history. But some abortion rights supporters said they saw the brief mention as a missed opportunity to leverage the power of the bully pulpit in what they often describe as a national health crisis. They were also mystified that the president passed up a chance to play up his own record, which nearly all praised.“President Biden’s remarks on the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade were disappointing and a lost opportunity,” said Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which argued the case over Roe at the Supreme Court. “As demonstrated resoundingly in the midterms, abortion rights are a kitchen-table issue that Americans care deeply about, and highlighting that reality would have fit into the president’s theme of fundamental fairness.”The White House believes President Biden has most likely reached the legal limits of his powers through executive actions on abortion issues.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe criticism reflects Democrats’ limited options on the federal level, as the fight has shifted to state legislatures. The issue became a potent tool for the party in the midterms, energizing voters and staving off some expected defeats. But after Democrats lost control of the House, it became all but impossible for them to fulfill promises to reinstate a federal right to abortion.Since the court ruling in June, Mr. Biden has signed a series of executive orders protecting access to medication abortion and contraception, ensuring emergency medical care for pregnant women and protecting patient privacy. But at times his administration has fallen short in activists’ eyes, including in declining to declare a national emergency over the summer. The administration says such a measure wouldn’t offer any new tools to combat the restrictions.The White House believes Mr. Biden has most likely reached the legal limits of his powers through executive actions, leaving few options other than rallying voters and providing assistance to Democratic state legislators working to stop or undo restrictions.Biden’s State of the Union AddressChallenging the G.O.P.: In the first State of the Union address of a new era of divided government, President Biden delivered a plea to Republicans for unity but vowed not to back off his economic agenda.State of Uncertainty: Mr. Biden used his speech to portray the United States as a country in recovery. But what he did not emphasize was that America also faces a lot of uncertainty in 2023.Foreign Policy: Mr. Biden spends his days confronting Russia and China. So it was especially striking that in his address, he chose to spend relatively little time on America’s global role.A Tense Exchange: Before the speech, Senator Mitt Romney admonished Representative George Santos, a fellow Republican, telling him he “shouldn’t have been there.”Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, praised Vice President Kamala Harris’s efforts and called Mr. Biden the “most pro-choice reproductive freedom president” in history, saying abortion rights got more attention than in any previous State of the Union.“The tension is that he represents a lot of progress, but it’s never going to feel like enough because we’re in a crisis,” she said. “Everybody in our community wishes we had more of the president’s time, more of the president’s attention, more presence in that State of the Union, but that being said, I keep going back to judging this administration on what they’re getting done.”On Tuesday night, Mr. Biden mentioned the battle over abortion rights an hour into his 80-minute speech, typically a moment for presidents to outline their priorities..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.He did not propose any new policy initiatives on the issue. Nor did he describe the struggles of the guests invited by a number of Democratic lawmakers and the first lady, Jill Biden, who represented the issue. Dr. Biden brought a Texas woman who almost died from sepsis after the state’s abortion restrictions caused a delay in treatment for her pregnancy.“Congress must restore the right that was taken away in Roe v. Wade and protect Roe v. Wade,” he said. “The vice president and I are doing everything to protect access to reproductive health care and safeguard patient safety. But already, more than a dozen states are enforcing extreme abortion bans.”He added, “Make no mistake about it: If Congress passes a national ban, I will veto it.”Any sweeping abortion action remains unlikely given the divided control of Congress. Democrats lack the votes in the Senate, and Mr. Biden is unable to grant Roe’s protections through executive action.His brief remarks cut a striking contrast with the deluge of words about the issue from Democrats during the midterm elections, when the candidates and their allies spent nearly half a billion dollars on ads mentioning abortion — more than twice what they spent on the next top issue, crime, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.Mr. Biden, a practicing Catholic, has spent years wrestling with his faith and Democratic politics over the issue, generally supporting abortion rights but personally opposed to the procedure. But since the ruling, he has been more vocal about his disagreement with the court and his support for Congress’s legislating a federal right to an abortion.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, at the Capitol last month. The end of Roe energized Democratic voters in last year’s midterms.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesSince the midterms, Mr. Biden has largely delegated the issue to Ms. Harris, who has hosted dozens of events with state leaders to discuss abortion access. Last month, on what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe, she warned that “no one is immune” from efforts to curb access to reproductive health care.In a statement released after the speech, Planned Parenthood Action Fund highlighted the nine abortion patients, providers and advocates invited by Dr. Biden and Democratic lawmakers as guests to the speech. The group “is grateful to have a trusted partner in the Biden administration,” it wrote, and declined to offer additional remarks.While they’ve been pleased with this administration’s actions, some leaders of the abortion rights movement would like to see Mr. Biden talk more specifically about plans to expand access to the procedure.“We really wanted to hear what the administration is prepared to do for the current reality of abortion access and the continued threats that exist across the country,” said Morgan Hopkins, president of All* Above All, a reproductive justice coalition. “We didn’t hear that.”The moment is particularly fraught, as activists and the administration await a ruling as soon as this week in a Texas case brought by conservative groups seeking to revoke a more than two-decade-old federal approval of mifepristone, a common medication abortion pill. The decision will be made by a single judge, Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee known for his conservative views on social issues.Given that medication accounts for more than half of abortions and that the pills have become a way for some women to circumvent state bans, a ruling against the drug could have sweeping impacts. Any appeal of the decision would go to the right-leaning Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and, eventually, to the Supreme Court with its conservative majority.Last week, Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, met with abortion providers at a clinic in Alexandria, Va. And a number of agencies, coordinated by the White House, are planning for a variety of outcomes, though they are limited in terms of executive actions. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Sweep in 3 Special Elections Gives Democrats Control of Pennsylvania House

      by

      Three Democratic victories flipped the House for the first time in a dozen years by a single seat in the battleground state.Democrats swept three special elections in solidly blue House districts in western Pennsylvania on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, putting the party in the majority by a single seat and breaking a Republican legislative monopoly that has recently focused on election restrictions and anti-abortion bills.All three races were in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh and is the state’s No. 2 county by population, after Philadelphia.Control of the Pennsylvania House had been shrouded by uncertainty since the midterms in November, grinding legislative business to a halt while the parties clashed over ground rules and the timing of the special elections.Democrats had appeared to flip the chamber in the fall for the first time in a dozen years, but one lawmaker’s death and the election of two others to higher offices delayed the final outcome.The party’s majority — 102 seats to 101 seats — brings clarity to the last unresolved legislative races in a fiercely contested state.The Spread of Misinformation and FalsehoodsDeepfake Rules: In most of the world, the authorities can’t do much about deepfakes, as few laws exist to regulate the technology. China hopes to be the exception.Lessons for a New Generation: Finland is testing new ways to teach students about propaganda. Here’s what other countries can learn from its success.Covid Myths: Experts say the spread of coronavirus misinformation — particularly on far-right platforms like Gab — is likely to be a lasting legacy of the pandemic. And there are no easy solutionsA ‘War for Talent’: Seeing misinformation as a possibly expensive liability, several companies are angling to hire former Twitter employees with the expertise to keep it in check. In the 32nd District, Joe McAndrew, a former executive director of the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, defeated Clayton Walker, a Republican pastor. The seat had been held by Tony DeLuca, a Democrat who was the longest-serving member of the Pennsylvania House before his death in October from lymphoma. Still, Mr. DeLuca was overwhelmingly re-elected in the heavily Democratic district.In the 34th District, Abigail Salisbury, a Democratic lawyer, prevailed against Robert Pagane, a Republican security guard and former police officer. Ms. Salisbury will fill the seat of Summer Lee, a Democrat who in November became the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania. Last year, Ms. Salisbury had previously lost to Ms. Lee in a Democratic primary for the legislature..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.In the 35th District, Matt Gergely, a Democrat who is the chief revenue officer of McKeesport, Pa., defeated Don Nevills, a Republican who operates a tattoo shop and ran unsuccessfully for the seat in November. Austin Davis, a Democrat who previously represented the district, was elected as lieutenant governor in the fall.The power shift dealt another blow to Republicans coming off the midterms, when the party failed to meet heightened expectations in Pennsylvania and nationally that were generated by economic turmoil and President Biden’s lackluster job approval ratings.In November, Pennsylvania voters consistently rejected Republicans in marquee races featuring candidates endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, who espoused false claims about fraud in the 2020 election.Democrats flipped a U.S. Senate seat and held onto the governor’s office when Josh Shapiro, who was previously Pennsylvania’s attorney general, defeated Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator and an election denier, in an open-seat race.After losing control of the House, Republicans will be unable to override a veto by the governor.In a potential end-run around the governor, G.O.P. lawmakers have resorted to trying to amend the state Constitution in order to pass a voter ID bill. The complex amendment process, which ultimately requires putting the question to voters, is the subject of pending litigation.But both chambers of the General Assembly need to pass the bill this session in order to place it on the ballot.First-time voters and those applying for absentee ballots are currently required to present identification in Pennsylvania, but Republicans want to expand the requirement to all voters in every election and have proposed issuing voter ID cards. Critics say the proposal would make it harder to vote and could be a privacy risk.Mr. Shapiro has not ruled out compromising with Republicans on some voting rules, but has said that he would not support any proposal that hinders voting.Republicans, now likely to be thwarted legislatively, have also sought to use the constitutional amendment process to place new restrictions on abortion in Pennsylvania. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Surge in complications from unsafe abortions likely post-Roe, doctors warn

      by

      Surge in complications from unsafe abortions likely post-Roe, doctors warnPeople in underserved medical communities in states that ban abortions may be more likely to attempt self-managed abortions Top doctors in the US warn that surgeons should be prepared to treat more patients with complications from self-managed abortions and forced pregnancy after the overturning of Roe v Wade.In a recent opinion piece published in the BMJ, 17 experts from medical centers and universities including the University of Chicago, Duke Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania urged surgeons to be prepared to treat medical consequences related to a person’s inability to access an abortion.“In the aftermath of the supreme court’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health decision, acute care surgeons face an increased likelihood of seeing patients with complications from both self-managed abortions and forced pregnancy in underserved areas of reproductive and maternity care throughout the USA,” read the op-ed.The Dobbs v Jackson case eliminated the nationwide abortion rights established by Roe v Wade in 1972. While many states still provide access to abortions, many others now generally prohibit the termination of pregnancies.Physicians noted that self-managed abortions with pills such as mifepristone are extremely safe and used across the country to help provide access to abortion services.But physicians warned that people in underserved medical communities in states that ban abortions may be more likely to attempt a self-managed “by ingestion of toxic substances or by self-inflicted physical injury”.“Depending on their location and state laws regarding abortion access, trauma and acute care surgeons may find themselves providing care for people [affected] by the Dobbs ruling who undergo [self-managed abortion] and suffer injury as a result,” the op-ed noted.“While we should strive to prevent such injury by advocating for the protection of access to safe abortion care, surgeons should also prepare to treat resulting complications.”Doctors noted that surgeons must act to protect patient privacy and legal safety, especially as conservative states have weighed prosecuting pregnant people who seek an abortion in a state that prohibits it.“The patient’s legal safety should also be of utmost concern and underscores the significance of knowing your state laws around this issue,” the op-ed noted.“Providers have the ethical duty to protect patient privacy and to not report these complications which implicate self-induced abortion to law enforcement in states where this is prohibited.”Providers also warned that surgeons may have to deal with the medical complications associated with forced pregnancy, especially given higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality in the US.“Again, in those states that restrict access to abortion care, maternal morbidity, and inevitably mortality, will increase and require physicians from all fields to expand their ability to care for these needs,” read the op-ed.Physicians warned that the consequences of abortion bans will most affect marginalized communities, including people of color and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who are overrepresented in patients seeking abortion services and are more likely to live in areas where abortion access is restricted.The op-ed urged medical professionals to become educated on how to treat pregnant patients who may face health consequences as a result of not being able to access an abortion.At least 22 states have taken some action to limit abortion access, with 12 states banning the procedure from conception.Medical providers in states that have banned abortion have stated that they are often delayed in providing life-saving treatment due to bans on the procedure.A recent study from Texas showed that even with high-risk pregnant patients, doctors were forced to wait until some were “at death’s door” before providing pregnancy termination services.A separate study from Texas found that delays in miscarriage care due to anti-abortion laws resulted in severe health consequences, including admission into an intensive care unit and a hysterectomy.Meanwhile, states have begun enshrining abortion protections amid the continuing battle over reproductive rights.Minnesota on Saturday became the first state to pass a bill that would codify abortion rights following the Dobbs decision.“This is a crucial first step in establishing rock-solid protections for everyone in Minnesota to make their own decisions about their reproductive destiny,” said Abena Abraham, campaign director for the advocacy group UnRestrict Minnesota, in a statement, according to the Star Tribune.TopicsUS newsAbortionRoe v WadeUS healthcareUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      2023’s Biggest, Most Unusual Race Centers on Abortion and Democracy

      by

      The election for a swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has huge policy stakes for the battleground state. Cash is pouring in, and some of the candidates have shed any pretense of judicial neutrality.In 10 weeks, Wisconsin will hold an election that carries bigger policy stakes than any other contest in America in 2023.The April race, for a seat on the state’s evenly divided Supreme Court, will determine the fate of abortion rights, gerrymandered legislative maps and the governor’s appointment powers — and perhaps even the state’s 2024 presidential election if the outcome is again contested.The court’s importance stems from Wisconsin’s deadlocked state government. Since 2019, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has faced off against a Republican-controlled Legislature with near-supermajority control thanks to one of the country’s most aggressive partisan gerrymanders, itself approved last year by the Wisconsin justices.Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has been left to arbitrate a host of thorny issues in the state, and has nearly always sided with Republicans. But now, with a conservative justice retiring, liberals hope to reverse many of those decisions by taking control of the open seat and its 10-year term.“If you change control of the Supreme Court from relatively conservative to fairly liberal, that will be a big, big change and that would last for quite a while,” said David T. Prosser Jr., a conservative former justice who retired from the court in 2016.The contest will almost certainly shatter spending records for a judicial election in any state, and could even double the current most expensive race. Wisconsinites are set to be inundated by a barrage of advertising, turning a typically sleepy spring election into the latest marker in the state’s nonstop political season. The seat is nonpartisan in name only, with officials from both parties lining up behind chosen candidates.Indeed, the clash for the court is striking because of how nakedly political it is.While past state judicial candidates and United States Supreme Court nominees have largely avoided weighing in on specific issues — instead pitching opaque judicial philosophies and counting on voters or senators to read between the lines — some of the Wisconsin contenders are making all but explicit arguments for how they would rule on topics that are likely to come before the court.Judge Janet Protasiewicz has argued that abortion should be “a woman’s right to choose.”Caleb Alvarado for The New York TimesJanet Protasiewicz, a liberal county judge from a Milwaukee suburb, is leading the charge on both fund-raising and the new approach to judicial campaigning, shedding the pretense that she does not hold firm positions on the hottest-button issues. She turned heads this month at a candidate forum when she declared the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps “rigged.”In an interview last week, Judge Protasiewicz argued that abortion should be “a woman’s right to choose”; said that Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011 law effectively ending collective bargaining rights for most public employees was unconstitutional; and predicted that, if she won, the court would take up a case seeking to invalidate the Republican-drawn state legislative and congressional maps put in place last year.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.Voting Laws: The tug of war over voting rights is playing out with fresh urgency at the state level, as Republicans and Democrats seek to pass new laws before the next presidential election.A Key Senate Contest: Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat, said that he would run for the Senate in 2024 in a potential face-off with Senator Kyrsten Sinema.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.“Obviously, if we have a four-to-three majority, it is highly likely that we would be revisiting the maps,” she said.The other liberal candidate, Judge Everett Mitchell of Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, said in an interview that “the map lines are not fair.”Both candidates have also expressed full-throated support for the right to an abortion, which became illegal last summer under a law that was enacted in 1849 but that is being challenged by the state’s Democratic attorney general in a case likely to come before the court this year.Their declarations signify how the race is transmogrifying into a statewide election like any other in Wisconsin, a perpetual political battleground. Like November’s contests for governor, state attorney general and the Senate, the court election is set to be dominated by a focus on abortion rights (for Democrats) and crime (for Republicans).“We’re still on the November hangover where the top two issues were crime and abortion,” said Mark Graul, a Republican political operative in the state who is a volunteer for Jennifer R. Dorow, a conservative Waukesha County judge in the Supreme Court race. Judge Dorow presided over the trial last fall of a man convicted of killing six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade.Jennifer R. Dorow, a conservative Waukesha County judge, presided over the trial last fall of a man convicted of killing six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade.Caleb Alvarado for The New York TimesJudge Dorow and another conservative, Dan Kelly, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who lost a 2020 election to retain his seat, will compete against the two liberals in an officially nonpartisan Feb. 21 primary to replace Justice Patience D. Roggensack, who is retiring.The top two will advance to an April 4 general election, with the winner joining a court that is otherwise split between three conservative and three liberal justices.In narrowly divided Wisconsin, a one-seat edge is all the majority needs to change the state’s politics.In recent years, in addition to approving the Republican-drawn maps, the court has ruled that most drop boxes for absentee ballots are illegal; struck down Mr. Evers’s pandemic mitigation efforts; stripped regulatory powers from the state schools superintendent, a Democrat; allowed political appointees of Mr. Evers’s Republican predecessor to remain in office long past the expiration of their terms; and required some public schools to pay for busing for parochial schools.Many of those cases, which Democrats hope to roll back, were brought to the court by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a think tank and legal organization that has served as the leading edge of the state’s conservative movement. The group’s founder, Rick M. Esenberg, said the court’s role ought to be upholding laws precisely as legislators have written them — not proposing major changes to them.“Having control of the judiciary shouldn’t mean that you can make new policy,” Mr. Esenberg said. “Some judicial candidates have spoken as if that’s exactly what’s at stake. And for them, it may well be.”The conservative candidates, Justice Kelly and Judge Dorow, have been less forthright about how they would rule, but both have left ample clues for voters. Justice Kelly last year participated in an “election integrity” tour sponsored by the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Judge Dorow, who was so well known in the Milwaukee suburbs that people dressed as her last Halloween, said in a 2016 legal questionnaire that the worst U.S. Supreme Court decision was Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 decision that struck down anti-sodomy laws.From left, Judge Dorow, Dan Kelly, Everett Mitchell and Judge Protasiewicz at a forum in Madison this month.John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal, via Associated PressBoth have ties to former President Donald J. Trump. In 2020, Mr. Trump endorsed Justice Kelly and praised him at a Milwaukee rally. Judge Dorow’s husband, Brian Dorow, was a security official for Trump campaign events in Wisconsin. Neither Justice Kelly nor Judge Dorow agreed to be interviewed.The race has already broken state fund-raising records for a judicial race. Judge Protasiewicz — whose campaign on Tuesday released a cheeky video teaching Wisconsinites how to say her name: pro-tuh-SAY-witz — raised $924,000 last year, more than any Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate ever in the year before an election. Judge Dorow and Justice Kelly each raised about one-third as much, while Judge Mitchell collected $115,000.Far more money will flow in from outside groups and the state’s political parties, which have no limits on what they may receive and spend. Both parties are expected to direct tens of millions of dollars to their favored general election candidates.Justice Kelly has the support of the billionaire Uihlein family, whose political action committee pledged last year to spend millions of dollars on his behalf. So far, the Uihleins’ contributions have amounted to just $40,000 — a pair of maximum individual contributions to his campaign. Last year the Uihlein-backed super PAC spent $28 million in Wisconsin’s Senate race; Richard and Liz Uihlein contributed an additional $2.8 million to the state Republican Party.Dan Curry, a spokesman for Fair Courts America, the Uihleins’ political action committee, declined to answer questions about the family’s spending plans in the Supreme Court race.The enormous stakes in the race so far have not been matched by commensurate public interest. Marquette University Law School, which conducts Wisconsin’s most respected political polls, has no plans to survey voters about the Supreme Court election, said Charles Franklin, the poll’s director.Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said there was no question that spending on the race would eclipse the most expensive U.S. judicial race on record, a $15 million campaign in 2004 for the Illinois Supreme Court, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.Mr. Wikler, who has spent recent weeks stumping for cash from major Democratic donors, said he hoped to make the race a national cause célèbre for liberals along the lines of Jon Ossoff’s 2017 House campaign in Georgia or the referendum on abortion rights in Kansas last year.Last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that most drop boxes for ballots were illegal, a decision that could be revisited with a new justice.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesHe cited the court’s 4-to-3 ruling in December 2020 that rejected the Trump campaign’s effort to invalidate 200,000 votes cast in Milwaukee County and Dane County — an argument that has resonated with top Democrats in Washington worried that a more conservative court could reach an opposite conclusion in the future.“Wisconsin is extremely important for the presidency,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said in an interview. “The Supreme Court is the firewall to an extreme Legislature that wants to curtail voting rights. And so this election is very important, not just for Wisconsin, but for the country.”Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general who leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, plans to campaign in the state after the primary.For Wisconsin Democrats, the election is an opportunity to imagine a world in which they can exert some control over policy rather than simply trying to block Republican proposals, after a dozen years of playing defense.In an interview last month, Mr. Evers called the race “a huge deal.” His election lawyer, Jeffrey A. Mandell, said that if a liberal candidate won, Mr. Mandell would ask the State Supreme Court to take direct action to invalidate the state’s legislative maps on Aug. 2, the day after the new justice is seated.Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator, said the campaign would focus almost entirely on abortion rights — because the next justice will be in position to overturn the state’s ban and because, she argued, the midterms showed that it was a winning issue.“It’s going to be abortion morning, noon and night,” Ms. Roys said, “even more than November was.”Kitty Bennett More

    • 225 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      In a more just world, this would be the 50th anniversary of Roe v Wade | Moira Donegan

      by

      In a more just world, this would be the 50th anniversary of Roe v WadeMoira DoneganUntil last year, Roe made it more possible for women’s lives to be determined by their choices, not merely by their bodies If the supreme court hadn’t overturned it last June, undoing a longstanding precedent and inflicting untold harm to women’s well-being and dignity, Sunday 22 January would have been the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v Wade.Over those 50 years, Roe changed American life dramatically. Abortion became a routine part of life, a resource people planned their lives around having. In contrast to its political controversy, abortion in the Roe era was – as it is now – aggressively common. Approximately one in four American women will have an abortion at some point in the course of their reproductive lives.The figure lends credence to the pro-choice assertion that everyone loves someone who had an abortion – and the accompanying quip that if you think you don’t know a woman who has had an abortion, you really just don’t know any women who trust you enough to tell you. But part of the legacy of Roe is not just that these women you know and love have been able to have freer, healthier, more volitional lives, but also that their abortions, for many of them, are not worth confessing. For most, abortions were not tragedies to be whispered about, or life-altering moments of shame, but banalities, choices to which they were unquestionably entitled, and from which they could move unconflictedly on. But Roe is gone. Now, for many women, these choices are crimes.It’s worth reflecting on what we had during those 49 years. While it stood, Roe offered a promise: that women’s lives need not be circumscribed by so-called “biological destiny”; that gender – its relations, performances, and obligations – might not be something that is imposed on women, but something that they take up and discard on their own terms. In the Roe era, this frank entitlement by women to determine the courses of their own lives was the decision’s greatest legacy. Individual women’s distinction and determination, or their conflictedness and confusion, or their ambivalence and exploration: once, before Roe, these parts of a woman’s personality almost didn’t matter; they were incidental eccentricities along the inevitable road to motherhood. Roe made it more possible for women’s lives to be determined by their characters, not merely by their bodies.It is easy to speak of Roe’s impact in material terms – the way it enabled women’s long march into paid work and into better paid work, how it was a precondition for their soaring achievements in education and the professions, their ascents into positions of power and influence. So little of the vast and varied lives of twentieth-century American women could have been achieved in the absence of abortion or birth control – these women, their minds and careers, are gifts the nation could never have received if they’d been made to be pregnant against their wills, or made to care for unplanned, unlonged-for babies.But it is less easy to discuss the sense of dignity that Roe gave to American women, the way that the freedom to control when and whether they would have children endowed American women, for the first time, with something like the gravitas of adults. Roe opened a door for women into dignity, into self-determination, into the still wild and incendiary idea that they, like men, might be endowed with the prerogatives of citizenship, and entitled to chart the course of their own lives.This, at least, was the aspiration that Roe came to stand for: women’s freedom, their independence, their acceptance as equals in the American project. Of course, it never quite did work out that way: the Hyde amendment, which banned Medicaid funding for abortions, was passed just three years after Roe, in 1976, and effectively excluded poor women from Roe’s promise. Black women faced the dual barriers of moral judgement and eugenicist legacy – for them, often neither the choice to abort nor the choice to parent were fully free. Members of the anti-choice movement, assisted by a judiciary that became increasingly willing to do their bidding, were inventive and sadistically persistent in chipping away at abortion access, making it more expensive, more onerous, and more stigmatized than other kinds of medical care.Even in robustly liberal states, where support for abortion was high and restrictions were few, walking into a clinic still felt like doing something illegal – there was the gauntlet of protestors outside, the receptionists seated behind bulletproof glass. If Roe was supposed to make women equals, why were they made so unequal when they tried to access its protections?Maybe part of the answer is that Roe’s authors never intended the decision to take on the symbolic value that it did. Justice Harry Blackmun’s 1973 opinion famously treats abortion legality as a matter of the rights of doctors, a reasoning that derived from his own respect for medical professionalization, and a legal theory, en vogue at the time, that found privacy protections in the 14th amendment. Like many of his successors on the bench, Blackmun adopted pretensions to medical and moral expertise when confronted with abortion cases that he did not in fact possess. Largely absent from his reasoning were women’s claims to liberty and equality. For the court, for decades, women’s self-determination was largely an afterthought.It was the women’s movement – feminists and pro-choice activists – that transformed Roe into a symbol of women’s aspiration to equality; it was the abortion patients, hundreds of thousands of them, who embodied Roe’s promise when they lived lives they chose for themselves.It was this symbol that the anti-choice movement attacked, and this aspiration that the supreme court, in its ruling overruling Roe, cut down. For 49 years, Roe dignified American women; it outlawed the abortion ban, one of the most egregious attempts to dominate us by force, and it endowed us with the trust and respect of physical freedom. While it lasted, the abortion right was a promise: that the state would not commandeer our insides, could not turn our own bodies against us in order to thwart our desires. This was what the court imposed when it struck down Roe. One day, self-determination, liberty, and autonomy were women’s constitutional right. The next day, women were reduced – in their status, in their citizenship, and in their safety.We still haven’t seen the full extent of what the overturning of Roe will take from us. We haven’t yet seen women’s numbers diminish in public life; we still haven’t grasped the human cost of the lost dreams, the damaged health, the foregone curiosity. Maybe part of the inability to mourn is related to how much we took for granted in the Roe era. As a nation, we became so accustomed to women’s reproductive freedom that we didn’t realize the extent of what it gave to us. We will miss it now that it is gone.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS supreme courtAbortioncommentReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Older Voters Know Exactly What’s at Stake, and They’ll Be Here for Quite a While

      by

      Is it time to call the next election “the most important in American history”? Probably. It seems like it may involve a judgment on democracy itself. Americans with a lot of history will play a key role in determining its outcome.And judging in part by November’s midterms, they may not play the role that older voters are usually assigned. We at Third Act, the group we helped form in 2021, think older Americans are beginning a turn in the progressive direction, a turn that will accelerate as time goes on.A lot has been written about the impact of young voters in November’s contests, and rightly so. The enormous margins that Democrats ran up among voters under 30 let them squeak through in race after race. Progressives should be incredibly grateful that the next generation can see straight through Trumpism in a way too many of their elders can’t.But there were also intriguing hints of what looked like a gray countercurrent that helped damp the expected red wave. Yes, older people by and large voted Republican, in keeping with what political scientists have long insisted: that we become more conservative as we age. But in the 63 most competitive congressional districts, the places where big money was spent on ads and where the margin in the House was decided, polling by AARP, an advocacy group for people over 50, found some fascinating numbers.In early summer, Republicans had a sturdy lead among older voters in 50 of those districts, up 50 percent to 40 percent. Those had Republicans salivating. But on Election Day, voters over 65 actually broke for Democrats in those districts, 49 to 46.That doesn’t surprise us at Third Act. We’re nonpartisan, but we’ve learned that demographic is far less settled than people sometimes suppose.Some of the issues that benefited Democrats are obvious, of course. Republican messaging included calls for weakening Social Security and Medicare even though most older beneficiaries rely on Social Security for most of their income, and for an estimated 40 percent it’s all their retirement income. The cruelty of toying with people’s life support systems is matched only by its political foolishness. Among voters 65 and over, Social Security and Medicare were among the top concerns.But something else happened, too. When the Supreme Court tossed out Roe v. Wade in early summer, most of the pictures were of young women protesting, appropriately, since it’s their lives that will be turned upside down. But people we know in their 60s and 70s felt a real psychic upheaval: A woman’s right to choose had been part of their mental furniture for five decades. And they’ve lived their entire lives in what they had imagined was a stable and working democracy.The top concern to voters 65 and over, especially women, was “threats to democracy,” according to AARP. And exit polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that among women 50 and older, the court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion had a major impact on which candidate they supported. Sixty-six percent of Black women said so, as did 61 percent of Hispanic women and 48 percent of white women. Voters who said the Supreme Court’s abortion decision was the single most important factor in their vote supported Democrats by a margin of 2 to 1.Some of our members helped organize access to abortion before Roe was decided in 1973; they don’t want to go back. And it’s not only abortion: The Supreme Court also took on the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We helped win these fights once, turning out by the tens of millions to oppose the war in Vietnam or for the first Earth Day. And we can help win them again — we have the muscle memory of what organizing on a big scale feels like.Hundreds of us from around the country converged on Nevada in the days before the midterm vote, because we determined — correctly, as it turned out — that it might be the place where control of the Senate would be decided. We may walk a tad slower door-to-door, but in this case slow and steady helped to win the race.With the election past, Third Act is now digging into work on climate change — in particular targeting the big American banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America) that are also the biggest lenders to the fossil fuel industry. On March 21 we’ll be cutting up bank credit cards and picketing bank branches across the country. We know that young people have been in the lead in this fight, because they’ll have to live with the world we’re creating. But as long as we’re still here, we’ll have to live with the knowledge of what we’re leaving behind, so we want to change it while we still can.We recognize that this will require a sustained effort beyond the next election and the election after that. Numerous analysts and demographers do believe that coming demographic changes in the United States will generally favor Democrats. But complications abound. Partisan gerrymandering continues to favor Republicans, for instance, and at least five states that generally vote Democratic have each lost a seat from their congressional delegations.But here’s the thing. Many of us are going to be here for quite a while. Ten thousand Americans turn 60 every day, and on average we’ll live another 23 years. The last of the baby boomers, will be 65 or older in 2030. Youth voters, moreover, are youth voters for only about a decade. One guarantee for 2024: We’ll vote in huge numbers, as we always do. One possibility is that we’ll help turn back the clock a little, toward the world we actually built in our youth.We’re not your parent’s grandparents.Bill McKibben is the founder of Third Act, helped found the climate advocacy group 350.org and is the author of the memoir “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon.” Akaya Windwood is the lead adviser for Third Act and a co-author of “Leading With Joy.”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