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      Mike Pence Runs Toward Abortion Fight

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      TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Former Vice President Mike Pence shared his vision for a post-Roe America on Thursday evening, supporting efforts to further limit abortion rights, even as many in the Republican Party are running away from the issue in the final stretch of the midterm elections.“Our work must also go far beyond simply working to make abortion illegal,” Mr. Pence said to a banquet hall of about 1,200 people. “We must continue to work to make it unthinkable, changing hearts and minds.”Mr. Pence, who has made abortion a centerpiece of his political platform since his days as a congressman from Indiana, was speaking at a fund-raiser for a crisis pregnancy center. Such centers, supported by anti-abortion activists, do not refer clients for abortion but rather encourage adoption or parenting.Mr. Pence’s call to make abortion “unthinkable” is language often used by people who ultimately want the procedure to be banned from conception, with few exceptions. He has said that abortion ought to be outlawed in every state. Mr. Pence, who appears to be weighing a possible run for president in 2024, is leaning into the rightward edge of anti-abortion activism, hoping to become the standard-bearer for a movement now facing new obstacles from within its own ranks.His elevation of the anti-abortion cause comes as other leaders in the party view the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as politically toxic to Republicans. Privately they’ve highlighted the unpopularity of the decision to overturn federal abortion rights among crucial independent voters. Others have urged their candidates to focus on other issues, like inflation and crime, and to avoid detailed questions about their opposition to abortion rights.But Mr. Pence’s remarks reflect the views of the powerful, socially conservative wing of the party, which sees the June decision as politically expedient and just the beginning of its ambitions to change abortion law nationwide.It was the latest in a series of similar addresses he has given for conservative groups across the country that oppose abortion, including appearances at fund-raisers for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Concerned Women for America in Washington.In his comments, Mr. Pence used other language of the movement, suggesting that fetuses should have rights as people — a legal fight that many consider the next frontier in the clash over reproductive rights.“Under Roe, unborn children were segregated into a caste of second-class citizens, devoid of the most basic human rights,” Mr. Pence said. “Those days are over.”Mr. Pence called on every state to “ensure that the resources, benefits, programs and protections that are available to children and their families are also extended to the unborn.” He urged a ban that would prohibit abortions based on the race, gender or disability of the fetus, and called for the end of abortion pills and “mail-order abortion.”He also called for paring back “the tangle” of adoption regulations, and for employers who pay for employee travel for abortion to promote adoption instead. His proposals received much applause, and shouts of “Amen.”“Remember who you are fighting for,” he said. “I believe with all my heart that the day will come that the right to life is the law of the land in every state.” More

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      Abortion is key motivator for Democrat-leaning voters in US midterms, poll finds

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      Abortion is key motivator for Democrat-leaning voters in US midterms, poll findsMore than half claim they are more motivated to vote than in previous elections, with 50% of those people citing abortion More than half of Democrat-leaning voters say abortion has become a crucial motivation for them to vote in next month’s US midterm elections, according to a recent poll.A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) conducted in September reveals that June’s supreme court decision to overturn Roe v Wade has put a fire under Democratic voters, with more than half claiming they are more motivated to vote than in previous elections, and 50% of those citing as their prime reason the ruling on abortion.US midterms 2022: the key racesRead moreThis is a steep increase since May, when the ruling on Roe v Wade was the primary motivating factor to vote among 30% of the voters, and 43% in July.In May, a leaked draft exposed that the supreme court was preparing to overturn Roe v Wade, sparking protests across the country. The next month the court followed through in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Among Republicans, the primary motivating factor to vote was the economy.In its September survey of slightly more than 1,500 American adults, KFF collected strong opinions among both parties about why they were most motivated to vote.“Because women’s rights are being threatened now more than ever and I’ll be damned if I stand by and let it happen,” said a 29-year-old woman voting Democratic from Alabama, while a 48-year-old Republican man in New York mentioned a wider range of issues: “Personal investments have plummeted, my grocery bill is astronomical, fuel cost is out of control, bail reform in NYS and criminals across the country are not being punished!”Voters also told the poll they wanted candidates to talk more about abortion.Abortion remains an important and growing issue among women: while a little less than 50% of women said they were more motivated to vote this year than previously, almost 60% of those said it was because of the overturning of Roe v Wade.The poll found the racial group most motivated to vote was white voters, making up a little more than half of that pool; Latino voters were the least motivated.Between parties, Republicans were more motivated to vote in these midterms than Democrats in general, although those numbers are quite close.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022AbortionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Abortion Bans Weigh on Republicans

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      Banning abortion is weighing on the party.For years, abortion was a straightforward rallying cry for Republicans, a way to identify with the cultural politics of their core supporters in one word: pro-life.But the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade plunged the party into a complicated reproductive reality, as I reported in this story that published this morning. The decision ended federal abortion rights, essentially forcing each state to legislate its own rules. After decades of fighting for that very outcome, when it finally happened, Republicans had no clear national message or unified policy.Almost immediately, Republican lawmakers were thrust into messy and emotional debates over some difficult issues: child rape, life-threatening medical complications from pregnancies and the devastating diagnoses of fetuses with rare and fatal conditions. As they debated, Republicans saw a once-easy way to energize their supporters transformed into a new third rail. And Democrats saw their fortunes rise in the midterms.Will that be enough for Democrats to keep control of Congress? Probably not. But the issue could be a deciding factor in some close races, particularly governors’ contests where the winners may determine abortion rights in their states.One question, many answersWhat do Republicans believe about abortion? It all depends on whom you ask. Abortion is one of the starkest areas of disagreement within the party right now.In Nevada, Joe Lombardo, the sheriff of the Las Vegas area who is running for governor, says he wouldn’t change state law, which currently allows abortion up to 24 weeks of a pregnancy — one of the latest limits in the country.Lindsey Graham proposed a 15-week federal abortion ban last month.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesIn the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is pushing for a ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. (Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, does not agree, and neither do a number of Republican colleagues.)In Michigan, Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor, would rather talk about something else, saying abortion “shouldn’t be an issue.”And in Maine, Paul LePage, a former governor and the Republican candidate for that office, seemed to dodge the question entirely. “I don’t know what you mean by 15 weeks or 28 weeks because I don’t know,” LePage said in a debate last week. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”How voters feelThe big political problem with the strictest Republican position — total or near-total bans on abortion like those enacted in at least 13 states — is that it’s simply unpopular.Public opinion on abortion is notoriously hard to measure because so much of how voters view the issue depends on how surveys frame their questions. But there are a few clear data points. A majority of voters disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, saying they support a federal right to an abortion. Similarly, in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 62 percent of Americans said they favored abortion access in either all or most circumstances. At the same time, most voters also support some restrictions starting as women enter the second trimester of pregnancy.Part of what has made these questions particularly salient in the 2022 midterms is how they are embedding in the lives of female voters. From the time they get their first period to menopause, most women have an inescapable monthly clock that they discuss mostly with other women. Many of those discussions revolve around pregnancy, which for most of human history was commonly a high-risk, if not fatal, condition.The intimacy of the issue raises its political intensity for 50.5 percent of the population — and the even bigger percentage of women who make up the typical midterm electorate. Small changes in this group can cause big political outcomes. As Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution points out, a shift of less than 3 percent of the women’s votes in Pennsylvania in 2020 could have flipped the state to Donald Trump.November and beyondWhatever happens in the midterms, Republicans are not escaping this issue. Activists in both political parties are bracing for a decades-long fight over the future of abortion rights.If Republicans win control of Congress, they will face pressure to embrace national abortion bans from social conservatives who see the court’s decision as the beginning of restrictions. That position, of course, contradicts nearly a half-century of Republican Party ideology arguing for abortion laws to return to the states.And then there’s the matter of the 2024 presidential primary. It’s easy to imagine a debate stage where Republican candidates are pressed for details about their positions on issues like exceptions for rape, life-threatening ectopic pregnancies and when, exactly, a fetus should be considered a person. We’re already seeing those kinds of questions being asked in midterm debates for Senate and governor.In the post-Roe world, just being “pro-life” doesn’t quite cut it for Republican politicians.THE LATEST NEWSPoliticsResidents demanded that three Los Angeles City Council members resign over a secretly recorded conversation that involved racist insults.President Biden said there would be consequences for Saudi Arabia after its decision to cut oil production. The cuts could raise gas prices.Republicans are fielding a historic number of nonwhite candidates for Congress.A former TV host and lawyer promoted falsehoods about the 2020 election before going to work for Trump. Now she’s under investigation.Gov. Ron DeSantis redrew Florida’s congressional maps in a way that curtails Black voters’ power, ProPublica reported.War in UkraineMoscow said it had arrested eight people over the bombing of a bridge linking Crimea to Russia and blamed Ukraine’s spy agency for the attack.Ukraine needs more of the Russian-style weapons its military is trained to use. The U.S. and NATO are scouring the world for them.BusinessThe International Monetary Fund warned of a worldwide recession if policymakers mishandle the fight against inflation.Amazon employees at a warehouse near Albany, N.Y., start voting today over whether to join a union.A Biden administration proposal could lead to millions of workers, including janitors and gig drivers, being classified as employees rather than independent contractors.Other Big StoriesIsrael and Lebanon agreed to resolve a decades-old dispute over control of a stretch of the Mediterranean Sea.Prosecutors dropped charges against Adnan Syed, the subject of the podcast “Serial,” who was released from prison last month after 23 years fighting a murder conviction.A panel of medical experts recommended that doctors screen all children 8 and over for anxiety.NASA said its mission last month to alter an asteroid’s orbit was a success. The technique could some day protect Earth.Angela Lansbury was a Hollywood and Broadway star, but captured her biggest audience as the TV sleuth Jessica Fletcher. She died at 96.OpinionsHaiti is in free fall, Lydia Polgreen argues in her debut column.Among Ukrainians, there’s an almost palpable sense that Russia is losing, Margo Gontar writes.MORNING READSA worker measuring jute for a Trader Joe’s bag.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesBiodegradable: That reusable Trader Joe’s bag? It’s rescuing an Indian industry.World’s richest man: Elon Musk has a strange social calendar.It’s Never Too Late: Pivoting from the N.F.L. to becoming a neurosurgeon.Well: Climate change is making the fall allergy season longer and more intense.Advice from Wirecutter: How to unclog a drain.Lives Lived: Leonard Kriegel, an academic and essayist, was best known for “The Long Walk Home,” a memoir in which he wrote about losing the use of his legs to polio. He died at 89.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICDodgers edge Padres: A day filled with tense playoff moments ended with the Dodgers, the best team in the N.L., squeezing past division rival San Diego, 5-3, to take a 1-0 lead in the N.L.D.S. They join the Yankees as favorites who looked the part last night.Brett Favre pushes back: The former N.F.L. quarterback said he did “nothing wrong” in a corruption case in Mississippi. Mississippi is suing Favre and others over charges of improperly using welfare funds.A mess: The Los Angeles Lakers have three stars but no visible path forward from last season. The Athletic’s John Hollinger highlights the mild positives from this off-season (adding average bench players instead of bad ones) but sees a ninth-place team.ARTS AND IDEAS Birkenstock Boston clogs should cost about $160. If you can find a pair.Jeremy Moeller/Getty ImagesA staple, for a steep priceBirkenstock’s Boston model clogs have long been a staple of comfort footwear. Now they’ve become so popular that they’re almost sold out.TikTok has fueled the trend, along with sightings of celebrities wearing them, including Kendall Jenner, Kaia Gerber and the YouTube personality Emma Chamberlain.To add a hard-to-find pair to your autumn wardrobe, The Times’s Madison Malone Kircher writes, one option is resale sites like eBay and Poshmark, though pairs sometimes go for more than double their retail value of about $160.The price isn’t the only subject of debate, according to one 27-year-old who paid about $330 for a pair: “Some people are like, ‘Hey, they’re really cute,’ and some people think they’re a potato shoe.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookLinda Xiao for The New York TimesUse sesame paste to make vegan Tantanmen with pan-fried tofu.What to WatchFrom “The Manchurian Candidate” to “Beauty and the Beast” to her run on “Murder, She Wrote” on TV, stream Lansbury’s best roles.What to ReadA new story collection by Alan Moore — author of the comics “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta” — showcases his “soaring intelligence and riotous humanity.”Late NightJimmy Kimmel responded to Trump lashing out at late night.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was formula. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Ticked off (three 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. A Times event today explores how tech and art can respond to climate change, with guests including Laurene Powell Jobs. It starts at noon Eastern.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about Ukraine. On “The Argument,” is America headed for another civil war?Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, 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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      Abortion Is Motivating Voters, but Republicans Would Rather Change the Subject

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      In Wisconsin, Tim Michels, a Republican running for governor, promised activists that he would never “flip-flop” on his support for an 1849 law that bans abortion except when a woman’s life is threatened. Less than three weeks later, he changed his stance.In the Phoenix suburbs, staffers whisked away Juan Ciscomani, a Republican House candidate, citing an urgent text, after he was asked by a voter whether he supported abortion bans.And in New Hampshire, Don Bolduc, the Republican running for governor, described abortion as a distraction from the “really important issues.”In races across the nation, Republican candidates are waffling on their abortion positions, denying past behavior or simply trying to avoid a topic that has long been a bedrock principle of American conservatism. Less than a month before the midterm elections on Nov. 8, the party lacks a unified policy on abortion, unable to broadly adopt a consistent response in the three and a half months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Republican positioning on abortion drew renewed attention last week, when Herschel Walker, the party’s Senate nominee in Georgia, was accused by an ex-girlfriend of paying for one abortion and unsuccessfully urging her to get a second one. Mr. Walker takes a hard-line stance against the procedure, supporting abortion bans with no exceptions for rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.For decades, Republicans pushed to overturn federal abortion rights, viewing the issue as an easy rallying cry to identify with a culturally conservative base. Focusing on the country’s highest court allowed them to largely avoid getting into the weeds on thorny issues — life-threatening pregnancy complications, exceptions for child rape, diagnoses of rare and fatal conditions in fetuses. And given that few voters fully believed Roe would be overturned, they were rarely pressed on the specifics of their views.The court ruled in June that each state can formulate its own abortion policy, exactly what small-government conservatives had long wanted. But it had another consequence, plunging the party into months of politically toxic debates.“You hear some of these Republican state legislators, and it’s like, for the first time they are thinking about this and realize that this is a complicated issue with lots and lots of circumstances that are not black and white,” said Christine Matthews, a pollster who has worked for Republicans. “A lot of these male legislators are realizing, ‘Oh, this is really hard to legislate.’”To escape some of those difficult questions, many Republican candidates have been trying to avoid the debate altogether. For weeks, some Republicans have been erasing sections about abortion from their websites, changing their positions on state bans and trying to refocus the national conversation on inflation, crime and the country’s southern border.“I do believe it’s caught them slightly off guard with just how bad an issue this is for them,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who leads focus groups. “The party has opted for changing the conversation entirely because abortion is just bad terrain for them.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.Some party leaders and strategists have urged candidates to adopt poll-tested positions popular with large swaths of independent voters: No restrictions on contraception, no bans before about 15 weeks and including exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. But those policies conflict with the long-held goal of the party’s socially conservative wing that views abortion as akin to murder, and they also clash with some of the past language and positions of Republican candidates.That has left candidates, particularly those in purple states, caught between the more moderate views of independent voters and a conservative base that views the court’s ruling as the beginning of restrictions, not the end. Now, many of the party’s candidates in the most competitive contests are racing to recast their positions.Tim Michels, a Republican running for governor of Wisconsin, said he supported an 1849 law that bans abortion except when a woman’s life is threatened. Weeks later, he changed his stance.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“I’m winning because people see a strong leader, a man of conviction, a man who doesn’t waffle, a man who doesn’t flip-flop,” Mr. Michels, the Republican nominee for governor in Wisconsin, told Republican activists and officials on Sept. 6 about the state ban. “I’m going to stick with what I know is right.”He reversed his position late last month, saying that, if elected, he would sign legislation to expand exceptions to include rape and incest.Many of the pivots have been even less artful. In Maine, a former governor, Paul LePage, is running to lead the state again and repeatedly stumbled over a question about whether he would sign more restrictive abortion laws if elected. “I don’t know what you mean by 15 weeks, 28 weeks. Because I don’t know,” Mr. LePage said after a protracted exchange on a debate stage last week.And in Arizona, a spokesman for Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, had to clarify last week that Ms. Lake was not advocating changes to the state’s near-total abortion ban after she told a Phoenix talk-radio host that the procedure should be “rare and legal.”In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Ms. Lake said she was trying to articulate how far the Democratic Party had moved from its Clinton-era talking points of “safe, legal and rare,” asserting that the procedure has become “anything but rare.” But she refused to say whether she would pursue restrictions on abortions sooner than 15 weeks into pregnancy, diverting the conversation to adoption and falsely casting her Democratic opponent as supportive of “abortion right up until birth.”Her remarks follow guidance circulated by party strategists who are urging their candidates to flip the script, labeling Democrats as the “extremists” on the issue. A memo from the Republican National Committee offering talking points for candidates encouraged a focus on rising prices and violent crime.Republican strategists and party officials argue that the potency of the issue is fading as economic concerns grow more intense.“To sustain that level of interest and enthusiasm in the current political climate for five months is very difficult, especially with more pressing personal pocketbook issues hurting voters,” said Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster engaged in a number of midterm races.Mark Graul, a longtime Republican strategist based in Wisconsin, said that right after the Supreme Court decision, the abortion issue was “very much front and center.”But in the final weeks of the race, Mr. Graul said, voters are saying, “‘I care about that, but I care about how much it costs to fill up my car and buy groceries. And is my family going to be safe?’” He added: “I think they’re starting to care about that more.”While polls show that the majority of voters support a federal right to an abortion, Democrats are not favored to maintain control of Congress, given still-high inflation, concerns about crime and President Biden’s low approval ratings.Still, Democrats are trying to ensure that Republicans cannot escape so easily. After decades of treating the issue as a second-tier priority, the Democratic Party has made abortion rights a centerpiece of its fall campaign, spending nearly $213 million to blanket the airwaves with ads about it, according to AdImpact, an advertising-tracking firm.Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster and strategist, called the political debate over abortion rights “the best thing going for the Democrats.”“It can’t be the only thing going for the Democrats,” she added. But many Republicans, she said, are “having a lot of difficulty” discussing the issue.The need to square decades of opposition to abortion rights with the new political environment has led to some complicated contortions for Republicans, some of whom have tried to cast themselves less as drivers of abortion bans and more as bystanders.Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican who faces a tough race for re-election, said he supported not only the 15-week federal ban but prohibiting abortion starting at conception. But Mr. Bacon also argues that such a policy would never pass the Senate because it would be unable to garner the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster — essentially telling voters not to worry about his positions because they will be blocked by Democrats.Kari Lake stated that abortions should be “rare and legal” but said she was misunderstood.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times“Whether we have a pro-abortion majority in the House and Senate, or a pro-life majority in the Senate or House, you’re not going to get past a 60-vote threshold in the Senate,” he said, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “So the reality is, most of this is going to be done at the state level.”In his primary race, Joe Lombardo, the sheriff of the Las Vegas area who is running for Nevada governor, summarized his position on abortion with three words: “Joe is pro-life.”But a 747-word note published on his campaign website late last month reversed his stance on an abortion rule in Nevada. He said he would not repeal an executive order protecting women from being prosecuted for seeking an abortion in the state, which has emerged as a safe haven for the procedure as neighboring Utah, Arizona and Idaho have restricted access.An ad by a conservative group in Nevada echoes that argument, accusing Democrats of “scaring” voters about the state’s abortion laws and saying politicians cannot change the rules allowing the procedure until 24 weeks.The claims by Mr. Lombardo and the group ignore the power of executive orders to add new restrictions and the possibility that Congress could pass a national ban, superseding state law with a stricter federal standard.Not all Republicans have been so quick to finesse their stances.A campaign ad released last week by Jeff Crossman, the Democratic candidate for Ohio attorney general, takes aim at the Republican incumbent and his public questioning of the existence of a 10-year-old rape victim who left the state for an abortion. The child was blocked from obtaining an abortion in Ohio because she was three days past a six-week limit on abortions. The attorney general, Dave Yost, initially said the report was likely to be a “fabrication.”“Dave Yost, you disgust me,” a woman identified only as Geri of Northeast Ohio says to the camera in the ad. “When a 10-year-old was raped and impregnated, Yost went on national TV and called it a hoax? I am a grandmother, and I have a 10-year-old granddaughter.”Mr. Yost has resisted calls to apologize for doubting the victim. “I don’t understand what you think I need to apologize for,” he said in an interview with a local television program. “We didn’t even know the identity, and still don’t, of that poor victim.” More

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      Can Democrats win tight midterm races with a pro-choice message? Pat Ryan says yes

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      InterviewCan Democrats win tight midterm races with a pro-choice message? Pat Ryan says yesPoppy NoorThe congressman won a swing upstate New York district with a progressive platform – and says Democrats can use his playbook When Democrat Pat Ryan got elected to New York’s 19th – a largely rural district in upstate New York that swung for Trump in 2016 and only narrowly elected Biden in 2020 – people were surprised.His contender in the August special election, Marc Molinaro, was a well-known local politician who entered the political arena when he was just 18, becoming the mayor of Tivoli, which is in the district, at 19. Molinaro was the favorite to win: leading in the polls, by as much as 10 points, right up to the moment Ryan claimed victory.The special election was watched with bated breath, as a tight race in a swing seat that could be a harbinger in the midterm elections, where Democrats are fighting to keep a slim House majority come November. Now, people are looking at Ryan’s campaign as a political playbook for how to win other tight races across the country.Many credit Ryan’s win to seizing the political moment around the fierce fight for abortion rights in the US.Just hours after the constitutional right to abortion was dismantled by the US supreme court on 24 June, Ryan, a US army vet, released a campaign ad making his stance clear. In a surprising twist, the video tied his military service to the attack on abortion.“How can we be a free country if the government tries to control women’s bodies? That’s not the country I fought to defend,” he said in the ad.It was a much-needed balm at a time when the Democratic party was being criticized at the national level for lacking a sense of urgency in responding to the fall of Roe v Wade, the landmark decision that had protected abortion rights in the US for several generations.“I think what is missing in our politics right now is just speaking from the heart, rather than poll testing,” Ryan told the Guardian when asked why he thought that message on abortion resonated.Then, a few months into Ryan’s campaign, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham introduced a bill that would ban abortion at the national level, after 15 weeks. The bill never would have had enough support to pass, but it didn’t matter: after months of the Republicans saying abortion rights should be put to the states, Graham appeared to have revealed his party’s hand in pushing for a national crackdown.“They showed themselves to be extremists. Suddenly, we saw the new Republican platform was wanting to criminalize abortions at the national level,” said Ryan.His special election win gives him just a few months representing New York’s 19th before he has to run again in the midterms. And the abortion message is one he continues to campaign on.“There was just another set of horrific reporting out of Ohio, where at least two teenage women under the age of 18 were raped and forced to fly to other states, just to get reproductive health care. That’s just as barbaric. And that’s not who we are as a country,” he said.Adding that he thinks the Democrats will hold the house and the Senate, he continued: “We absolutely have to restore those decisions back to women, and away from politicians, frankly.”Ryan just introduced a bill to make abortion medication legal at the national level. If it passes, it will undermine states’ attempts to ban abortion, considering that more than half of US abortions are completed using medication.His pledge is again a foil to the national party’s mostly lackluster attempts to curtail the destruction of abortion rights across the US, with Joe Biden’s own abortion bill coming under fire precisely because it failed to make it easier for Americans to access abortion pills.It may seem strange that a candidate like Ryan – who wants to pass gun control laws, raise taxes on the wealthy and make abortion pills nationally accessible – would win in a district that elected Trump.But it’s the way he ties together seemingly progressive ideals under the banner of freedom thats seems to resonate. He talks about seeing voters in his own district on the campaign trail. Whether in some of the most rural and conservative parts of his district, at events with small business owners, or speaking to younger people, he says abortion rights came up over and over.So to him, the playbook is simple.“All we have to do is show Americans that we understand how existential this fight is. The fight for reproductive freedom; for voting rights; the fight against gun violence; the fight for our democracy. We need to draw attention to how un-American it is to take away these freedoms,” said Ryan.Does he feel it is contradictory, to stand for the rights of American women, or children at threat of being gunned down in American schools, when he participated in a war and occupation that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians?“I have said publicly that the decision to go to war in Iraq and the way we conducted it – there’s an awful lot we should have done better,” he said.“I personally had to wrestle with seeing my fellow soldiers and innocent civilians – whom I had built relationships with – put at risk. Seeing war very close and personally, you see the darkest and the most evil in human nature come forward. We need people in Congress who understand the seriousness of sending our young men and women into combat. War has to be our absolute last resort,” he said.And with this call for unity he hopes he can win in November.“We’re so divided. And for a long time politicians have pitted people against each other, but we showed in the special election that we can take so-called ‘wedge issues’ and remind people that we actually share these values in common – things like reproductive freedom. This is a moment where we have to be clear-eyed about the stakes,” he says.“Authenticity, and just being a normal human being – that is something that is in short supply right now in our politics.”TopicsUS politicsNew YorkAbortionHouse of RepresentativesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Groups Saturate TV With Negative Ads About Warnock and Walker

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      ATLANTA — Democratic and Republican groups in Georgia are spending millions of dollars on highly personal negative advertising in the final weeks of the race between Senator Raphael Warnock and his challenger, Herschel Walker, disparaging the candidates by drawing more attention to their pasts.Days before the candidates are set to meet on a debate stage, groups aligned with each party are flooding the airwaves with a pair of ads that underline accusations of domestic violence against Mr. Walker, a Republican, and marital disputes involving Mr. Warnock, a Democrat. Their messages are shaping the final few weeks of campaigning in one of the country’s most closely watched races that could determine control of the Senate, and at times one of the most hostile.The advertising back-and-forth follows more than a week of negative headlines focused largely on Mr. Walker. After The Daily Beast first reported that Mr. Walker paid for a woman’s abortion, The New York Times confirmed the report and learned that the woman had ended their relationship after she refused to have a second abortion despite Mr. Walker’s urging.Now, as Democrats spend big to elevate those claims, Republicans are hitting back to paint Mr. Warnock as a candidate also plagued by scandal.A PAC supporting Mr. Walker, 34N22, is spending $1.5 million on an advertisement that shows footage from a police body camera after a 2020 incident between Mr. Warnock and his ex-wife, Ouleye Ndoye, who claims in the video and ensuing police report that he ran over her foot. Paramedics on the scene were unable to locate evidence of physical injury to Ms. Ndoye’s foot. Mr. Warnock was not charged with a crime.“I just can’t believe he would run me over,” she says through tears. “I’ve tried to keep the way that he acts under wraps for a long time, and today he crossed the line. So that is what is going on here, and he is a great actor. He is phenomenal at putting on a really good show.”The Democratic-aligned groups Georgia Honor and Senate Majority PAC are spending a combined $36 million to dominate the airwaves with anti-Walker advertising, including an advertisement that takes lines from a tweet that Mr. Walker’s son Christian Walker posted after the initial reports about his father’s paying for the abortion. In it, he accused Mr. Walker of domestic abuse against him and his mother, Cindy Grossman.A voice-over on the ad repeats the accusation as similar text flashes on the screen: “He threatened to kill us and had us move six times in six months running from his violence.” The ad also shows pictures of a police report that outlines an episode in which Mr. Walker arrived at Ms. Grossman’s home with a gun.“Six moves in six months running from Herschel Walker’s violence,” the voice-over says again against footage of an empty apartment and moving boxes.Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock will debate in Savannah, Ga., on Friday. Early voting in Georgia begins on Monday. More

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      In Fight for Congress, a Surprising Battleground Emerges: New York

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      After a haywire redistricting process, New York has more congressional battlegrounds than nearly any other state. Even the Democratic campaign chairman is locked in a dead heat.POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Just a month before November’s critical midterm elections, New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country, and Democrats are mired in an increasingly costly fight just to hold their ground.All told, nine of New York’s 26 seats — from the tip of Long Island to the banks of the Hudson River here in Poughkeepsie — are in play, more than any state but California.For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring: Just 10 months ago, party leaders, who controlled the once-in-a-decade redistricting process in the state, optimistically predicted that new district lines could safeguard Democrats and imperil as many as five Republican seats, allowing them to add key blocks to their national firewall.That, to put it gently, is not how things seem to be turning out.New York’s Most Competitive House Races More

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      Evangelicals Find a Way Forward With Herschel Walker

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      The time had come for the Christian supporters of Herschel Walker to make a way where there seemed to be no way.It was the morning after the Republican senate candidate’s ex-girlfriend came forward to say he had paid for her to have an abortion, though he supports banning the procedure without exception. Dozens of people gathered in a fluorescent hall of First Baptist Atlanta, a prominent Southern Baptist church. Pastor Anthony George sat on a platform, with Mr. Walker at his right hand. The pastor recalled God’s protection of King David, the ancient Israelite king, and claimed similar promise for Mr. Walker. The candidate shared a testimony of how Jesus changed his life. The pastor invited people to the front to pray for him.They surrounded him and extended their hands toward the former football star. “This is the fight of his life, holy God,” the pastor prayed. “And we call forth your ministering angels to be his defenders.” The people clapped and gave shouts of amen.The scene, a private event revealed in videos shared on social media, reflected the evangelical language of sin and salvation, persecution and deliverance. It was a ritual of sanctification, the washing away of sin and declaration of a higher call.The Senate race in Georgia has become an explicit matchup of two increasingly divergent versions of American Christianity. Mr. Walker reflects the way conservative Christianity continues to be defined by its fusion with right-wing politics and tolerance for candidates who, whatever their personal failings or flaws, advance its power and cause. Mr. Walker has wielded his Christianity as an ultimate defense, at once denying the abortion allegations are true while also pointing to the mercy and forgiveness in Jesus as a divine backstop.Former President Donald J. Trump is backing Herschel Walker’s bid for U.S. Senate in Georgia.Audra Melton for The New York TimesSenator Raphael Warnock, his Democratic opponent, is a lifelong minister who leads the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church, home to the Christian social activism embodied in the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He has inherited the legacy of the Black civil rights tradition in the South, where faith focuses on not just individual salvation, but on communal efforts to challenge injustices like segregation.“We are witnessing two dimensions of Christian faith, both the justice dimension and the mercy dimension,” said the Rev. Dr. Robert M. Franklin Jr., professor in moral leadership at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.The loyalty to Mr. Walker reflects an approach conservative Christians successfully honed during the Trump era, overlooking the personal morality of candidates in exchange for political power to further their policy objectives. After some hesitation in 2016, white evangelicals supported Mr. Trump in high numbers after reports about his history of unwanted advances toward women and vulgar comments about them. They stood by Roy Moore, who ran a failed campaign for Senate in Alabama, after he was accused of sexual misconduct and assault by multiple women.Understand the Herschel Walker Abortion AllegationsCard 1 of 6The Daily Beast articles. More