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      A Republican Advantage

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      As headlines shift in the weeks before the midterms, so do voters’ top concerns.Two weeks before November’s midterm elections, many voter surveys suggest Republicans are gaining momentum toward retaking one or both chambers of Congress.Every major Senate race, except for Georgia’s, has been trending toward Republicans. There are even warning signs for Democrats in House districts in Oregon and Rhode Island where Republicans are rarely competitive. And now, more voters say they intend to vote for Republicans instead of Democrats for Congress in their districts.In such a polarized country, understanding how one party can gain an advantage so quickly can sometimes be hard. In this case, the explanation is straightforward: It’s about the issues on the minds of voters.Over the summer, the dominant headlines and resulting public debate were focused on issues that helped Democrats, like abortion, gun violence and threats to democracy. These issues helped Democrats stay highly competitive, despite President Biden’s low approval ratings and a tendency for the sitting president’s party to get drubbed in midterm elections.But the spotlight on those matters is fading. Voters are less frequently citing them as top concerns while expressing worries about the economy, crime and immigration — issues that tend to favor Republicans. In a New York Times/Siena College poll released last week, the share of voters citing the economy, inflation, crime or immigration as the “most important problem” facing the country increased to 52 percent, up 14 points from a July version of the poll. The share citing the Democratic-friendly issues of abortion, democracy or guns dropped to 14 percent from 26 percent.Attitudes in fluxLooking back, it’s easy to see why the mood of the nation’s electorate has shifted.Our July poll was taken just a couple weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Abortion was in the headlines nearly every day, as the nation grappled with the fallout and state bans went into effect. But relevant news developments have slowed, and that affects the public’s attention. Google searches for “abortion” are now at about the level they were in early spring, before the ruling hit the headlines.In last week’s Times/Siena poll, just 5 percent of voters said that abortion was the most important problem facing the country.Other issues playing to Democrats’ strengths had similar trajectories. The House committee investigating the Capitol attack held eight public hearings in June and July, but only one after Labor Day (and it was on Oct. 13, after we conducted our most recent poll). Firearms restrictions are another core issue for Democrats that they often highlight in response to gun violence. The Times cataloged at least nine mass shootings in the two months before our July poll, including the horrific massacres at a grocery store in Buffalo and at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The spate of such mass shootings has, fortunately, faded as well.Now on voters’ mindsEconomic concerns are resurgent. The summer’s falling gas prices and somewhat optimistic inflation news have given way to renewed concerns about the rising cost of living and drops in the stock market.Crime and immigration are in a somewhat different category. These are longstanding problems, but they don’t usually dominate the front pages alongside major news stories, save for mass shootings. Republicans have nonetheless elevated them as campaign issues, including with high-profile gambits like the decision by Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis to fly migrants to the liberal bastion of Martha’s Vineyard.The swing votersIf you’re an ideologically consistent voter who agrees with your party on almost every issue, it can be hard to believe that other voters can be so fickle. But millions of Americans — perhaps even most of them — hold conflicting views. They can be drawn to different candidates or parties, depending on what they consider most important in a particular election.Take abortion: If you believe the polls that 60 percent of Americans think it should be mostly legal, then a huge share of the voters who back Republicans in any given election must support legal abortion. These voters presumably back Republicans for another reason, whether it’s the economy and taxes or an issue like immigration. But if abortion is at the top of their minds, perhaps a sliver of them will defect.In polling over the summer, some did. But in the more recent surveys, many of them came back to the Republican fold.More midterms newsA shrinking white majority is a shared feature of the congressional districts held by Republicans who rejected Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat.The Republican candidate for New York governor, Lee Zeldin, agreed to a single debate set for tomorrow against Gov. Kathy Hochul.To win Ohio’s Senate race, Representative Tim Ryan is running as a Democrat who doesn’t have much in common with his party.THE LATEST NEWSBritainBoris Johnson led Britain until early last month.Toby Melville/ReutersBoris Johnson pulled out of the race to become Britain’s prime minister, making his former finance minister, Rishi Sunak, the favorite.Sunak’s financial agenda made him unpopular with his Conservative Party. But after weeks of economic chaos, it could be the reason he gets the job.Britain’s new prime minister could be announced as early as today. Follow our updates here.InternationalXi Jinping, China’s leader, appointed loyalists to top government jobs, giving him nearly absolute power.The authorities in Brazil, which holds a presidential runoff on Sunday, have granted its elections chief the power to remove online misinformation.The Ukrainian military is rapidly learning how to shoot down the kind of drones that Russia has begun deploying in recent weeks.Other Big StoriesU.S. students recorded deep declines in math and a dip in reading on a national exam, the clearest picture yet of the pandemic’s impact on education.A Vermont town’s water superintendent resigned after admitting that he had been lowering fluoride levels for more than a decade.A solar eclipse will be visible tomorrow across Europe and Asia.OpinionsGail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss British politics and the Republicans’ midterm advantage.Terms like “queer” and “L.G.B.T.Q.” are intended to be inclusive. But not everyone they’re meant to include feels that way, says Pamela Paul.The U.S. should make pandemic preparedness a more permanent priority, like national defense, Dr. Craig Spencer says.Retaliating against Saudi Arabia for cutting oil production would only hurt American consumers, Ellen Wald argues.MORNING READSMichelle Groskopf for The New York TimesDecades of addiction: In a new memoir, the “Friends” actor Matthew Perry estimated he has spent $9 million trying to get sober.Well: Sex therapy is misunderstood. Here’s what it actually entails.Quiz time: Take our latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 8.6).Metropolitan diary: A helpful man welcomes a stranger to the neighborhood.A Times classic: What really killed President William Henry Harrison?Advice from Wirecutter: These inexpensive screen protectors will keep your iPhone safe.Lives Lived: All four of Louis Gigante’s brothers were mobsters. He chose a different path as a priest and a developer who helped revive the South Bronx. Gigante died at 90.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICThe World Series is set: Both the Astros and Phillies clinched spots yesterday, setting up a battle between juggernaut Houston and upstart Philadelphia. The Phillies star Bryce Harper is building his legacy in this season’s playoffs, The Times’s Tyler Kepner writes.Back on the field: The Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa led Miami to a 16-10 win over the Steelers last night in his first game back since a scary concussion three weeks ago. Brady and Rodgers in disarray: Two of the N.F.L.’s best quarterbacks — Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers — find themselves mired in 3-4 starts early in the season. For Green Bay, it’s a disaster. For Tampa Bay, it leaves a recent Super Bowl champion wondering whether it can even make the playoffs.ARTS AND IDEAS EJ Hill under his roller coaster.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThe art of the rideMost people look at roller coasters and see fun, or fear. EJ Hill sees art. The rides have inspired his artwork — photography, painting, sculpture and performances — for years. His latest exhibit, “Brake Run Helix,” will feature a working roller coaster that runs through the inside of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in the Berkshires. It opens Sunday.Hill, who is Black and queer, hopes the ride will help visitors connect with the “bodily threat” that he feels anytime he leaves his home. “There are things that I believe you have to feel to understand,” Hill said. “Certain ideas can be communicated via language and land really well; other things you have to feel in your gut.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChris Simpson for The New York TimesBrunswick stew, a hearty fall dish from the South, combines tomatoes, corn, beans and shredded chicken.TheaterA new show from Jill Sobule, best known for her 1995 hit song “I Kissed a Girl,” is part autobiography, part rock concert.TravelA guide to the beaches, bars and bookshops of Santa Cruz, Calif.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was painful. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Tall and thin (5 letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. Vox named Zeynep Tufekci, a Times Opinion columnist, to its inaugural list of 50 people working to make the future better.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about election denial. “Popcast” remembers Loretta Lynn.Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Democrats’ midterms hurdle: Americans are getting used to eroded democracy | Jill Filipovic

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      Democrats’ midterms hurdle: Americans are getting used to eroded democracyJill FilipovicWhile a whopping 71% of voters said that American democracy is at risk, just 7% named it as the most important issue in this election This much is clear: Democrats are in trouble in the midterms. After an initial bump from the widespread outrage at an extremist supreme court that stripped American women of our nationwide right to safe, legal abortion, voters are recalibrating, and falling into a familiar midterm routine: supporting the opposition party. Republicans, according to new polling, are leading with voters nationwide, and especially in a handful of crucial state races that will determine control of Congress.But there’s something bigger going on here than just the usual political churn, or even the idea that voters are more motivated by pocketbook issues than amorphous ones like a potential future need for abortion. Voters are adapting to authoritarianism. And that doesn’t just portend a bad outcome for Democrats in November; it suggests America’s democratic future is at acute risk.The American reaction to the supreme court’s radical decision on abortion rights is a telling hint of what’s to come. The court summarily taking away a fundamental, long-held, and oft-utilized civil right is incredibly uncommon; it hasn’t happened in my lifetime, or my mother’s lifetime. While most of the rest of the world is moving toward broader respect for human rights, including women’s rights, and expanding abortion alongside a greater embrace of democratic norms, the US is in league with only a tiny handful of nations in making abortions harder to get, and in newly criminalizing them. The nations that are cracking down on abortion rather than expanding abortion rights have one thing in common: a turn from democracy and toward authoritarian governance.When the court overturned Roe v Wade, many Americans were initially incensed. Women registered to vote in astounding numbers. Significant majorities of Americans told pollsters that the court’s decision was flat-out wrong. The legitimacy of the court took such a huge hit that several of its justices made defensive statements about the value of their increasingly devalued institution. Pollsters noted a sharp turn: after dire predictions for Democrats, the party suddenly had an edge, thanks to an overreaching conservative court.And Republicans were set back on their heels. The Dobbs decision was the result of decades of rightwing work and millions of dollars. The Republican party has made overturning Roe a singular goal. So it was interesting to see how they reacted when they finally got what they had always wanted: they went quiet. They avoided the topic. The standard Republican view on abortion – that it should be illegal nationwide – is overwhelmingly unpopular, so Republican politicians spent the summer and early fall trying to change the subject.So what, then, explains this sharp swing back to Republican favorability?Simply put, voters acclimated. The media is still covering the impact of rightwing anti-abortion laws, but not with the overwhelming force we saw in the initial weeks after Roe fell. After all, at some point the litany of horror stories – of women being refused care for miscarriages, of women being forced to carry doomed pregnancies to term, of women traveling thousands of miles for basic health care, of women getting septic infections, of women losing their uteruses, of child rape victims being forced into motherhood – blend into each other, sound like the same story over again, and become old news.Human beings are remarkably adaptable. Often, this serves us well: it means we survive, even through horrifying circumstances. But it also means that we can learn to live in horrifying circumstances. Terrible laws that don’t affect most of us every day simply fade into the background as life ticks on. Terrible governments rarely target majorities of the population immediately and all at once. Instead, authoritarian states tend to start with those who have little power, as well as those who threaten the authoritarian’s power. For many conservative, highly religious authoritarian states, women are both a group with less economic power and political representation and a chief threat.In the US, the women primarily hurt by Dobbs are those living in conservative states, and women with the fewest resources are hit hardest of all. This is not an accident. While all women in the US now live without full rights to our own bodies, and while the anti-abortion movement is coming for all of us, conservative politicians have targeted women with the least economic and political power first. A majority of American women may be angry about anti-abortion laws, but are not yet (or do not yet believe themselves to be) directly affected by them, and that is especially true for the Americans who have the greatest influence in the political and economic spheres – women and men alike.The stripping of abortion rights is one clear indicator of America’s rising authoritarianism. And Americans know that we’re in trouble. Voters – especially Democratic and independent voters – are aware that democracy is under threat, and perhaps even that trust in free and fair elections, women’s rights, and America’s democratic institutions are on the ballot this November. While a whopping 71% of voters said that American democracy is at risk, however, just 7% named it as the most important issue in this election.And that’s perhaps understandable. “Democracy” can feel like a big and nebulous thing, while a more expensive grocery bill is a tangible and immediate concern. And Democrats have been telling voters (correctly) that democracy has been at risk since Donald Trump began undermining it. They weren’t wrong to sound the alarm. But eventually even the loudest siren begins to sound like background noise.There is also the simple fact that threats to American democracy will not be solved in 2022 alone.What the US is experiencing is a pervasive problem with rising authoritarianism all over the world. Often, autocrats use democratic means to rise to power, and their takeover is a slow one, not an overnight coup. And once authoritarianism is entrenched, average citizens carry on – there may be an initial shock, but then life, for many people, evolves into a new normal.We’re seeing this dynamic now when it comes to abortion. Over the next few years, we may see it on an even larger scale, and with democracy itself.Armed with this new data, pundits, consultants and politicians themselves are telling Democrats to revamp their strategy: don’t focus on abortion so much, or focus on the economy more, or simply be prepared to lose in November. The beltway consensus seems to be that this is a messaging problem.And certainly Democratic messaging could be better. But what we’re seeing isn’t just a problem of inadequate sloganeering or a focus on the wrong things. It’s another iteration of a longstanding pattern, forged by a combination of human nature and the canniness (and historical learnedness) of those who seek to use democratic processes for undemocratic aims.How do you convince the frog in the slow-boiling pot not only that he’s in real danger, but that it’s going to take a while for the heat to come down? That’s not a question Democrats can answer with messaging alone – and not one they’re going to solve in a month.
      Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
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      The Three Blunders of Joe Biden

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      If the Democrats end up losing both the House and the Senate, an outcome that looks more likely than it did a month ago, there will be nothing particularly shocking about the result. The incumbent president’s party almost always suffers losses in the midterms, the Democrats entered 2022 with thin majorities and a not-that-favorable Senate map, and the Western world is dealing with a war-driven energy crunch that’s generally rough on incumbent parties, both liberal and conservative. (Just ask poor Liz Truss.)But as an exculpating narrative for the Biden administration, this goes only so far. Some races will inevitably be settled on the margins, control of the Senate may be as well, and on the margins there’s always something a president could have done differently to yield a better political result.President Biden’s case is no exception: The burdens of the midterms have been heavier for Democrats than they needed to be because of three notable failures, three specific courses that his White House set.The first fateful course began, as Matthew Continetti noted recently in The Washington Free Beacon, in the initial days of the administration, when Biden made critical decisions on energy and immigration that his party’s activists demanded: for environmentalists, a moratorium on new oil-and-gas leases on public lands and, for immigration advocates, a partial rollback of key Trump administration border policies.What followed, in both arenas, was a crisis: first a surge of migration to the southern border, then the surge in gas prices driven by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.There is endless debate about how much the initial Biden policy shifts contributed to the twin crises; a reasonable bet is that his immigration moves did help inspire the migration surge, while his oil-lease policy will affect the price of gas in 2024 but didn’t change much in the current crunch.But crucially, both policy shifts framed these crises, however unintentionally, as things the Biden administration sought — more illegal immigration and higher gas prices, just what liberals always want! And then instead of a dramatic attempt at reframing, prioritizing domestic energy and border enforcement, the Biden White House fiddled with optics and looked for temporary fixes: handing Kamala Harris the border portfolio, turning the dials on the strategic petroleum reserve and generally confirming the public’s existing bias that if you want a party to take immigration enforcement and oil production seriously, you should vote Republican.The second key failure also belongs to the administration’s early days. In February 2021, when congressional Democrats were preparing a $1.9 trillion stimulus, a group of Republican senators counteroffered with a roughly $600 billion proposal. Flush with overconfidence, the White House spurned the offer and pushed three times as much money into the economy on a party-line vote.What followed was what a few dissenting center-left economists, led by Larry Summers, had predicted: the worst acceleration of inflation in decades, almost certainly exacerbated by the sheer scale of the relief bill. Whereas had Biden taken the Republicans up on their proposal or even simply counteroffered and begun negotiations, he could have started his administration off on the bipartisan footing his campaign had promised while‌ hedging against the inflationary dangers that ultimately arrived.The third failure is likewise a failure to hedge and triangulate, but this time on culture rather than economic policy. Part of Biden’s appeal as a candidate was his longstanding record as a social moderate — an old-school, center-left Catholic rather than a zealous progressive.His presidency has offered multiple opportunities to actually inhabit the moderate persona. On transgender issues, for instance, the increasing qualms of European countries about puberty blockers offered potential cover for Biden to call for greater caution around the use of medical interventions for gender-dysphoric teenagers. Instead, his White House has chosen to effectively deny that any real debate exists, positioning the administration to the left of Sweden.Then there is the Dobbs decision, whose unpopularity turned abortion into a likely political winner for Democrats — provided, that is, that they could cast themselves as moderates and Republicans as zealots.Biden could have led that effort, presenting positions he himself held in the past — support for Roe v. Wade but also for late-term restrictions and the Hyde Amendment — as the natural national consensus, against the pro-life absolutism of first-trimester bans. Instead, he’s receded and left Democratic candidates carrying the activist line that absolutely no restrictions are permissible, an unpopular position perfectly designed to squander the party’s post-Roe advantage.The question in the last case, and to some extent with all these issues, is whether a more moderate or triangulating Biden could have held his coalition together.But this question too often becomes an excuse for taking polarization and 50-50 politics for granted. A strong president, by definition, should be able to pull his party toward the center when politics demands it. So if Biden feels he can’t do that, it suggests that he’s internalized his own weakness and accepted in advance what probably awaits the Democrats next month: defeat.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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      Ocasio-Cortez to Pence: ‘No one wants to hear your plan for their uterus’

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      Ocasio-Cortez to Pence: ‘No one wants to hear your plan for their uterus’Congresswoman makes remark after former vice-president says there will be ‘pro-life majorities’ in House and Senate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a simple message for Mike Pence on abortion, after the former vice-president predicted “pro-life majorities” in both houses of Congress after the midterm elections.“I’ve got news for you,” the Democratic New York congresswoman wrote. “Absolutely no one wants to hear what your plan is for their uterus.”The ‘election-denier trifecta’: alarm over Trumpists’ efforts to win key postsRead morePence was speaking in response to Joe Biden, after the president announced that if Democrats hold Congress in the midterm elections next month, he will seek to establish the right to abortion in law.The right was removed in June by the conservative-dominated supreme court, when it struck down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal.Pence, once a conservative congressman and governor of Indiana, is maneuvering for a bid for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked this week if he would support his old boss, Donald Trump, should he mount a third White House campaign, Pence said: “Well, there might be somebody else I prefer more.”He added: “All my focus has been on the midterm elections and it’ll stay that way for the next 20 days. But after that, we’ll be thinking about the future, ours and the nation’s. And I’ll keep you posted, OK?”The tweet that stoked the ire of Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent House progressive, said: “I’ve got news for President Biden. Come January 22nd, we will have Pro-Life majorities in the House and Senate and we’ll be taking the cause of the right to Life to every state house in America!”According to most polling, Republicans are well placed to take the House and possibly the Senate.Boosted by results in special elections and ballot measures earlier this year, Democrats hope turnout among women angered by the supreme court decision on abortion can help them keep control of Congress and important state posts.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Alexandria Ocasio-CortezMike PenceUS politicsAbortionDemocratsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Abortion bans create ‘insurmountable barriers’ for incarcerated women in US

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      Abortion bans create ‘insurmountable barriers’ for incarcerated women in USSupreme court’s overturning of Roe will make reproductive healthcare in prisons a lot worse than it already is, experts warn When the US supreme court decided to strip away constitutional abortion protections in June, it effectively made the situation for many pregnant incarcerated women who are seeking abortions a lot worse.Conditions for reproductive healthcare in many US prison facilities are already often abysmal. With many pregnant inmates regularly facing dire circumstances including being denied abortions or being forced to give birth while shackled, experts warn that the overturn of Roe v Wade will now result in even more severe consequences for an already marginalized community.From 1980 to 2020, the number of incarcerated women across the country increased by over 475%, according to the Sentencing Project. In 2020, Idaho led the nation in the highest female state imprisonment rate at 110 per 100,000 female residents, followed by Oklahoma, South Dakota, Arizona, Wyoming, Kentucky and Montana. As of two years ago, the imprisonment rate for Black women was 1.7 times the rate of the imprisonment for white women. Meanwhile, Latinx women were imprisoned at 1.3 times the rate of white women.The Prison Policy Initiative found that an average of 58,000 people are pregnant each year when they enter local jails or prisons. In many of the states that already have the highest female state imprisonment rates, they also now have strict abortion laws ban the procedure almost entirely.As a result, the overturn of Roe v Wade is expected to make the lives of pregnant incarcerated people who are seeking abortions increasingly difficult.“People experiencing incarceration and pregnancy in states where abortion has been severely restricted or outlawed altogether, will likely face new barriers as jails and prisons seek to hide behind the supreme court’s decision to avoid their constitutional obligation to provide healthcare (including abortion) to people in custody,” Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union told the Guardian.“Even where correctional staff and officials do not deliberately block access to care, the reduced availability of services and need to travel even greater distances to access legal abortion, and the greater demand for services in states where abortion is still legal, will only exacerbate all the financial and logistical obstacles that already existed,” she added.A study led by Carolyn Sufrin, the director of the Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People program at Johns Hopkins University, surveyed incarcerated people’s abortion access across 22 state prison systems and six county jail systems.The study, which collected policy data for 12 months in 2016 to 2017 and was eventually published in 2021, found that there were already a myriad of obstacles such as self-payment requirements that can prevent a pregnant inmate from obtaining the care. Out of the 19 states that then permitted abortions, two-thirds required the pregnant inmate to pay.Only 11 of the 816 pregnancies in state and federal prisons that ended during the study time period were abortions, or 1.3%. 33 out of 224 pregnancies that ended at study jails were abortions, with over half of those happening during the first trimester.“There were already few abortions in prison settings…so will [the overturn of Roe] impact abortion access for an incarcerated individual? Absolutely,” Sufrin told the Guardian.For a lot of incarcerated women across the country, many remain behind bars because they are unable to afford bail. As a result, self-payment requirements for those seeking abortions are often times very difficult to fulfill.“State prison systems or jails sometimes would force pregnant people to pay for the procedure, sometimes including even the cost of transport or the time to have prison guards with them, which is problematic because normally if an incarcerated person is going off site for any other medical procedure, they wouldn’t be charged for the cost of transport or the time for the guards,” Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, told the Guardian.“Trying to expect those people in jails to come up with the money for transport to an offsite abortion procedure when they can’t even come up with the money to make bail, to go home to their families, really creates an insurmountable barrier.”In 2017, Kei’Choura Cathey, a former inmate who discovered she was pregnant in August 2015 while awaiting trial, sued the Maury county sheriff in Tennessee, claiming that he denied her the right to an abortion because her pregnancy was not a threat to her health nor the result of rape or incest.Cathey’s only option at the time was to post bail so she could leave jail to receive the abortion. However, her bail was set at a staggering $1m. Eventually, her bond was lowered to $8,000. However, according to the lawsuit, by the time Cathey was able to post bond, she was already more than six months into her pregnancy, thus making her abortion illegal.For a lot of pregnant incarcerated women seeking abortions in a post-Roe reality, experts fear that they are likely going to face similar circumstances like Cathey.“Prisons or jails will argue…that’s an elective procedure so we are not going to cover it,” said Kendrick, which in turn will potentially force many incarcerated pregnant women who are unable to cover the procedure to carry their pregnancies to term.For a lot of pregnant inmates, birthing conditions in prison facilities are already dire. Numerous reports in recent years have emerged of inmates either being forced to deliver while shackled to their beds or having to deliver their babies on their own.While some states – and in effect, prison facilities – are seeing outright bans in abortions as a result of the supreme court’s ruling in June, others have not overhauled abortion protections just yet.In Wyoming, for example, abortion is currently legal but remains restricted as it is only allowed to be performed until fetal “viability”.In a statement to the Guardian, Wyoming’s department of corrections said that the supreme court ruling on Roe in June has not affected its policies on abortion related issues.“The WDOC has not had any change in policy or care for abortion related issues in the WDOC for inmates or offenders. The WDOC does on occasion have female inmates that are pregnant during incarnation and they are cared for at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institute in Torrington, WY. We rely upon the expertise of expert medical advice in all decisions related to the health and wellness of our inmates.”Ultimately, according to Sufrin, “There’s tremendous variability in what healthcare service deliveries look like on the ground and systems are not really set up to provide the full scope of comprehensive pregnancy and postpartum care for people.”For pregnant incarcerated people who are sent off-site for abortions, another issue that has emerged since Roe’s overturn is the hesitancy or even outright refusal from external healthcare providers to perform the abortions.“We’ve already seen instances of local hospitals turning people away and not providing medically necessary care because of ambiguities in the law, [such as] there might still be a heartbeat, those sorts of things. Then the carceral facility is left to manage dangerous bleeding or an ectopic pregnancy and they’re just very much ill-equipped to do that and don’t want to and should not,” explained Sufrin.“Even in the best of circumstances, there’s still a lot of constraints and a lot of trauma that pregnant folks experience. So now after the Dobb’s decision, we anticipate… that we’re going to have more pregnant people in our country and fewer people with access abortion. And I believe that we will see that in incarcerated settings as well,” she said.TopicsUS prisonsWomenUS politicsAbortionUS supreme courtLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      This Minnesota Race Will Show the Potency of Crime vs. Abortion

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      Keith Ellison, the state’s progressive attorney general, faces a Republican challenger who is looking to harness public unease since George Floyd’s murder.WAYZATA, Minn. — Here in light-blue Minnesota, where I’m traveling this week, there’s a race that offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.Keith Ellison, the incumbent attorney general and a Democrat, insists that his bid for re-election will hinge on abortion, which remains legal in Minnesota.But his Republican challenger, Jim Schultz, says the contest is about public safety and what he argues are “extreme” policies that Ellison endorsed after the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — the aftermath of which Minnesota is still wrestling with.Schultz, a lawyer and first-time candidate, said in an interview that watching Floyd’s death under the knee of Derek Chauvin, a police officer who was later convicted of murder, had made him “physically ill.” He added that Ellison’s prosecution of Chauvin was “appropriate” and that he supported banning the use of chokeholds and what he called “warrior-style police training.”But Schultz, a 36-year-old graduate of Harvard Law School who has worked most recently as the in-house counsel for an investment firm, was scathing in his assessment of Ellison, presenting himself as the common-sense opponent of what he characterized as a “crazy anti-police ideology.”He decided to run against Ellison, he said, because he thought it was “immoral to embrace policies that led to an increase in crime in at-risk communities.”Ellison fired right back, accusing Schultz of misrepresenting the job of attorney general, which has traditionally focused on protecting consumers. County prosecutors, he said in an interview, were the ones primarily responsible for crime under Minnesota law — but he noted that his office had prosecuted nearly 50 people of violent crimes and had always helped counties when asked.“He’s trying to demagogue crime, Willie Horton-style,” Ellison said, referring to a Black man who was used in a notorious attack ad in the 1988 presidential election that was widely seen as racist fearmongering. Schultz’s plans, he warned, would “demolish” the attorney general’s office and undermine its work on “corporate accountability.”“He’s never tried a case or stepped in a courtroom in his life,” Ellison added.An upset victory by Schultz would reverberate: He would be the first Republican to win statewide office since Tim Pawlenty was re-elected as governor in 2006.Ellison, 59, served six terms in Congress and rose to become a deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee. Before leaving Washington and winning his current office in 2018 — by only four percentage points — he was a rising star of the party’s progressive wing.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.Debates Dwindle: Direct political engagement with voters is waning as candidates surround themselves with their supporters. Nowhere is the trend clearer than on the shrinking debate stage.As one of the most prominent Democratic attorneys general of the Trump era, he has sued oil companies for what he called a “a campaign of deception” on climate change and has gone after pharmaceutical companies for promoting opioids.But the politics of crime and criminal justice have shifted since Floyd’s killing, and not necessarily to Ellison’s advantage. In a recent poll of Minnesota voters, 20 percent listed crime as the most important issue facing the state, above even inflation.Maneuvering on abortion rightsDemocrats would prefer to talk about Schultz’s view on abortion. They point to his former position on the board of the Human Life Alliance, a conservative group that opposes abortion rights and falsely suggests that abortion can increase the risk of breast cancer, as evidence that his real agenda is “an attempt to chip away at abortion access until it can be banned outright,” as Ken Martin, the chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party, put it. Democratic operatives told me that in their door-knocking forays, abortion was the topic most on voters’ minds — even among independents and moderate voters.So Ellison has been talking up his plans to defend abortion rights and warning that Schultz would do the opposite.“We will fight extradition if they come from another state, and we’ll go to court to fight for people’s right to travel and to do what is legal to do in the state of Minnesota,” Ellison said at a recent campaign stop. Schultz, he argued, “will use the office to interfere and undermine people’s right to make their own choices about reproductive health.”Schultz denies having an aggressive anti-abortion agenda. Although he said he was “pro-life” and described himself as a “person of faith” — he is a practicing Catholic — he told me he “hadn’t gotten into this to drive abortion policy.” Abortion, he said, was a “peripheral issue” to the attorney general’s office he hopes to lead, and he pointed out that the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled the practice legal in 1995.Historically, the attorney general’s office in Minnesota has focused on protecting consumers, leaving most criminal cases to local or federal prosecutors.But none of that, Schultz insisted, is “written in stone.” The uptick in crime in Minneapolis, he said, was a “man-made disaster” that could be reversed with the right policies.Ellison countered that Schultz “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” and cited four statutes that would have to be changed to shift the focus of the attorney general’s office from consumer protection to crime.Schultz acknowledged his lack of courtroom experience but said he would hire aggressive criminal prosecutors if he won. He is promising to beef up the attorney general’s criminal division from its current staff of three lawyers to as many as three dozen and to use organized crime statutes to pursue “carjacking gangs.”He’s been endorsed by sheriffs and police unions from across the state, many of whom are critical of Ellison’s embrace of a proposed overhaul of the Minneapolis Police Department, which fell apart in acrimony. Had it passed, the city would have renamed the police the Department of Public Safety and reallocated some of its budget to other uses.Ellison, who lives in Minneapolis and whose son is a progressive member of the City Council, seems to recognize his political danger. But what he called Schultz’s “obsessive” focus on crime clearly frustrates him.“He doesn’t really care about crime,” Ellison said at one point.He also defended his support for the police overhaul in Minneapolis as necessary to create some space for meaningful change and challenged me to find an example of his having called to “defund the police” — “there isn’t one,” he said. And he noted that he had supported the governor’s budget, which included additional money for police departments.In George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, iron sculptures in the shape of fists mark the four entrances to the intersection, which shows lingering signs of the anger that followed Floyd’s murder.Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesWhere it all beganDemocrats in Minnesota insist that the crime issue is overblown — and murders, robberies, sex offenses and gun violence are down since last year. But according to the City of Minneapolis’s official numbers, other crimes are up: assault, burglaries, vandalism, car thefts and carjacking.And it’s hard, traveling around the area where Floyd’s murder took place, to avoid the impression that Minneapolis is still reeling from the 2020 unrest. But there’s little agreement on who is to blame.Boarded-up storefronts dot Uptown, a retail area where shopkeepers told me that the combination of the pandemic and the 2020 riots, which reached the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare of Hennepin Avenue, had driven customers away.A couple of miles away, on a frigid Tuesday morning, I visited George Floyd Square, as the corner where he was killed is known. Iron sculptures in the shape of fists mark the four entrances to the intersection, which is covered in street art and shows lingering signs of the eruption of anger that followed Floyd’s murder.A burned-out and graffitied former Speedway gas station now hosts a lengthy list of community demands, including the end of qualified immunity for police officers, which Schultz opposes. In an independent coffee shop on the adjoining corner, the proprietor showed me a photograph he had taken with Ellison — the lone Democratic politician, he said, to visit in recent months.I was intercepted at the square by Marquise Bowie, a former felon and community activist who has become its self-appointed tour guide. Bowie runs a group called the George Floyd Global Memorial, and he invited me on a solemn “pilgrimage” of the site — stopping by murals depicting civil rights heroes of the past, the hallowed spot of asphalt where Floyd took his last breath and a nearby field of mock gravestones bearing the names of victims of police violence.Bowie, who said he didn’t support defunding the police, complained that law enforcement agencies had abandoned the community. Little had changed since Floyd’s death, he said. And he confessed to wondering, as he intercepted two women who were visiting from Chicago, why so many people wanted to see the site but offer little in return.“What good does taking a selfie at a place where a man died do?” he asked me. “This community is struggling with addiction, homelessness, poverty. They need help.”What to read tonightHerschel Walker, the embattled Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia, often says he has overcome mental illness in his past. But experts say that assertion is simplistic at best, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports.As we wrote yesterday, swing voters appear to be tilting increasingly toward Republicans. On The Daily, our chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, breaks down why.Oil and gas industry lobbyists are already preparing for a Republican-controlled House, Eric Lipton writes from Washington.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      The Battle Between Pocketbooks and Principles

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      You are never in the voting booth alone.You bring with you your hopes and fears, your expectations and your disappointments. Your choice is made through a maze of considerations, but it hinges primarily on how the candidates — their principles and their party — line up with your worldview. Would they, if elected, represent and promote the kind of community and country you want to live in? Are they on your side, fighting for you and people like you?Often, the things that are top of mind as you consider those questions are urgent and imminent, rather than ambient and situational. Issues like the economy, for instance, will almost always take top billing, since they affect the most people most directly.Anger over abortion can also be potent, and in some races, it may determine the outcome, but it is a narrower issue. First, no person assigned male at birth will ever have to personally wrestle with a choice to receive an abortion or deal with health complications from a pregnancy that might necessitate an abortion. So, for half the electorate, the issue is a matter of principle rather than one of their own bodily autonomy.Furthermore, at the moment, abortion is still legal in most states. Yes, clinics have disappeared completely in 13 of the 50 states, according to the latest data from the Guttmacher Institute, but for millions of American women living in blue states, abortion access hasn’t changed since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs.That is not to diminish the outrage people do and should feel about this right being taken away from them. It doesn’t diminish my personal outrage, nor does it assume that abortion rights are safe in the states that have yet to outlaw the practice.But I mention it as a way to understand something I’ve seen over and over in the electorate: Incandescent rage, however brightly it burns at the start, has a tendency to dim. People can’t maintain anger for extended periods. It tends to wear on the mind and the body, as everyday issues like gas and rent and inflation push to get back into primary consideration.I have seen repeatedly how people abandon their principles — whether they be voting rights, transgender issues, gun control, police reform, civil rights, climate change or the protection of our democracy itself — when their pocketbooks suffer. There is a core group of people who will feel singularly passionate about each of these problems, but the rest of the public adjusts itself to the outrage and the trauma, shuffling each issue back into the deck. They still care about these problems as issues in the world, but they don’t necessarily see them as urgent or imminent.In a New York Times/Siena College poll released this week, voters were asked “What do you think is the MOST important problem facing the country today?”A plurality, 26 percent, said the economy, and 18 percent said inflation or the cost of living. Just seven percent said the state of democracy, and four percent said abortion.After the Supreme Court struck down Roe, Democrats saw a measurable shift in their direction, as voters began to say that they were leaning toward the Democrats in the midterm elections. The anger among many voters was palpable; the offense was fresh. But now, that momentum has stalled, and some see a swing back toward Republicans as we get further out from the ruling and worrisome economic news retakes the headlines.I still believe that anger over abortion will be felt in the midterms. I believe that taking away such a fundamental right feels like a betrayal that must be avenged. I believe that many parents of daughters are incensed at the idea of those girls inheriting an America where they will have less say over their bodies than their mothers had.But I also know that energy attrition in the electorate is real. I know that historical trends are on the side of Republicans going into the midterms, and even a minor stalling of momentum and erosion of energy could make the already slim chance that Democrats would hold the House of Representatives an impossibly long shot.In the closing days of this campaign cycle, Republicans are driving home perennial issues: the economy and crime. Democrats are arguing big issues of policy: abortion and protecting democracy. In this battle of pocketbooks and principles, which will win out?For those with any sense of political vision and history, the policy side must take precedence. Economic issues are cyclical. They’ll always present themselves. But grand issues like bodily autonomy can define generations. And protecting democracy can define empires.What is the point of a cheaper tank of gas, if it must be had in a failed democracy that polices people’s most intimate choices about their own bodies?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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Politician, Thy Name Is Hypocrite

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      What’s worse — politicians passing a bad law or politicians passing a bad law while attempting to make it look reasonable with meaningless window dressing?You wind up in the same place, but I’ve gotta go with the jerks who pretend.Let’s take, oh, I don’t know, abortion. Sure, lawmakers who vote to ban it know they’re imposing some voters’ religious beliefs on the whole nation. But maybe they can make it look kinda fair.For instance Mark Ronchetti, who’s running for governor in New Mexico, was “strongly pro-life” until the uproar following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe. Now, his campaign website says he’s looking for a “middle ground” that would allow abortions “in cases involving rape, incest and when a mother’s life is at risk.”That’s a very popular spin. The public’s rejection of the court’s ruling, plus the stunning vote for abortion rights in a recent statewide referendum in Kansas, has left politicians looking for some way to dodge the anti-choice label. Without, um, actually changing. “I am pro-life, and make no apologies for that. But I also understand that this is a representative democracy,” said Tim Michels, a Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor, when he embraced the rape-and-incest dodge.Mehmet Oz, who’s running for Senate in Pennsylvania, used to support abortion access back when he wanted the world to call him “Dr. Oz.” But now that his day job is being a conservative Republican, he’s “100 percent pro-life.” Nevertheless, he still feels there should be an exception for cases of … rape and incest.We’ve come a long — OK, we’ve come at least a little way from the time, a decade ago, when Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri, argued it was impossible for a woman to get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” And Akin did lose that race.The backtracking can get pretty creative — or desperate, depending on your perspective. In New Hampshire, Don Bolduc, who’s running for the Senate, was strongly anti-choice before he won the Republican primary. (“Killing babies is unbelievably irresponsible.”)Now, Bolduc the nominee feels a federal abortion ban “doesn’t make sense” and complains that he’s not getting the proper respect for his position. Which is that it’s a state issue. And that his opponent, Senator Maggie Hassan, should “get over it.”These days, it’s hard to sell an across-the-board rule that doesn’t take victims of forced sex into account. In Ohio recently, Senate candidate J.D. Vance tried to stick to his anti-abortion guns, but did back down a smidge when questioned about whether that 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who was taken out of state for an abortion should have been forced to have a baby.And then Vance quickly changed the subject, pointing out that the man accused of raping her was an “illegal alien.” This is an excellent reminder that in this election season there is virtually no problem that Republicans can’t find a way of connecting to the Mexican border.As sympathetic as all rape victims are, the exemption rule would not have much impact. No one knows exactly what proportion of pregnancies are caused by rape and incest, but the number “looks very, very small,” Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute told me.And what about, say, a young woman who’s already a teenage mother, working the night shift at a fast-food outlet, whose boyfriend’s condom failed? No suggestion for any special mercy there. You can’t help thinking the big difference is a desire to punish any woman who wanted to have sex.Another popular method of dodging the abortion issue is fiddling with timelines. Blake Masters, the ever-fascinating Arizona Senate candidate, originally opposed abortion from the moment of conception. (“I think it’s demonic.”) Now his revamped website just calls for a national ban once a woman is six months pregnant.And we will stop here very, very briefly to mention that the number of six-month abortions is infinitesimal.Whenever this issue comes up, I remember my school days, which involved Catholic education from kindergarten through college. Wonderful world in many ways, but there wasn’t much concern about keeping religion out of public policy. Especially when it came to abortion. Any attempt to stop the pregnancy from the moment of conception on was murder.That’s still Catholic dogma, you know. Politicians who think they can dodge the issue with their rape-and-incest exceptions appear to ignore the fact that as the church sees it, an embryo that’s the product of a rape still counts as worthy of protection.It took me quite a while to get my head around the abortion issue and I have sympathy for people who have strong religious opposition to ending a pregnancy.Some folks who hold to that dogma try to encourage pregnant women to have their babies by providing counseling, financial support and adoption services, all of which is great as long as the woman in question isn’t being forced to join the program.But anti-abortion laws are basically an attempt to impose one group’s religion on the country as a whole. It’s flat-out unconstitutional, no matter how Justice Samuel Alito feels.And the rape-or-incest exception isn’t humanitarian. It’s a meaningless rhetorical ploy intended to allow politicians to have it both ways.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