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      Louisiana woman denied abortion despite fetus’s fatal abnormality to travel to North Carolina

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      Louisiana woman denied abortion despite fetus’s fatal abnormality to travel to North CarolinaHospital feared loss of license as state law did not explicitly allow the procedure for this rare condition An expectant Louisiana woman who is carrying a skull-less fetus that would die almost immediately after birth has cemented plans to travel to North Carolina to terminate her pregnancy, she said on Friday.Nancy Davis, 36, has been facing a choice of either carrying the fetus to term or traveling several states away for an abortion after she says her local medical provider would not perform the procedure amid confusion over whether the state’s abortion ban outlawed it.Standing on the steps of Louisiana’s capitol building in her home town of Baton Rouge, Davis announced that her trip would be next week. The trip is being financed by more than $30,000 in donations raised by an online GoFundMe campaign that was launched after she went public with her plight earlier this month.Her lawyer, the prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, also called on Louisiana’s lawmakers to at least clarify the wording of their abortion ban – or to repeal it altogether – to prevent anyone else there from enduring what Davis and her family had during the last several weeks. He said the state’s governor, John Bel Edwards, should call a special legislative session in advance of the regular one scheduled to begin in April of next year to do that if necessary.“Louisiana lawmakers inflicted unspeakable pain, emotional damage and physical risk upon this beautiful mother,” Crump said, gesturing at Davis, who was accompanied Friday by her partner, Shedric Cole, their young daughter and her two stepchildren. “They replaced care with confusion, privacy with politics and options with ideology.“Ms Davis was among the first women to be caught in this crosshairs of confusion due to Louisiana’s rush to restrict abortion. But she will hardly be the last.”Louisiana is among the American states that have outlawed abortion with very few exceptions following the US supreme court’s decision in June to strip away nationwide abortion rights that had been in place since the 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade.Davis was about 10 weeks pregnant in late July when an ultrasound at Woman’s hospital in Baton Rouge revealed that her fetus was missing the top of its skull, a rare but devastating condition known as acrania that kills babies within days – if not minutes – of birth.Because Louisiana’s list of conditions justifying an exception from the state’s abortion ban did not explicitly include acrania, hospital officials turned down terminating Davis’ pregancy, apparently fearing they could be subject to prison time, costly fines and forfeiture of their operating licenses if they performed the procedure.“Basically, they said I had to carry my baby to bury my baby,” Davis remarked Friday.Her providers said her Medicaid insurance would not cover the procedure anyway and directed her to an abortion clinic.Yet Louisiana’s abortion clinics have announced plans to leave the state amid brewing legal battles over whether the ban can constitutionally be enforced.After Davis went public with her story and retained Crump to help her sort out her options, the state senator who authored Louisiana’s abortion ban, Katrina Jackson, has insisted that Woman’s hospital could have legally terminated Davis’s pregnancy. The statute contains a general exception for fetuses that cannot survive outside their mothers’ wombs.However, Crump said, that exception was clearly not worded in a way that gave Davis’s providers confidence that they could proceed without potentially being heavily penalized.Davis instead raised money through a GoFundMe that attracted more than 1,000 donors and booked arrangements to travel with Cole, her partner, to North Carolina. That state – more than 900 miles from Baton Rouge – allows abortions up to the 20th week of pregnancy.“The law in Louisiana is clear as mud,” Crump said. “We’re going to prepare ourselves to go out of state and trust the people who are saying they can perform the termination of the pregnancy safely and without anybody having to risk going to prison.”Cole on Friday asked the public to imagine what Davis and the rest of her family had experienced since learning of their baby’s fatal diagnosis and being forced to make the decision to head to North Carolina to abort the baby whom the couple had been expecting.“It’s really complex – it’s really difficult,” Cole said. “From afar, it’s really easy to have an opinion about something … but you don’t understand how complex it is” until you personally go through it.Davis, for her part, said: “This is not fair to me, and it should not happen to any other woman.“Being a mother starts when the baby is inside the womb, not on the outside, [because of] the attachment and everything that comes with it. As a mother, as a parent, it’s my obligation to have my children’s best interests at heart.”TopicsAbortionUS politicsLouisiananewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats Might Get Exceptionally Lucky This Fall, and They Should Be Ready for That

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      Republicans are still favored to gain seats in the midterm elections but are not as favored as you might have thought.They have lost their lead in the generic congressional ballot and face longer-than-expected odds to win the Senate as a result of flawed, extreme and extremely flawed nominees in Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And while Republicans are heavily favored to win control of the House of Representatives, Democrats, according to the forecast at FiveThirtyEight, are still in the game, with a one in five chance to keep their majority,This is, for comparison’s sake, just a notch lower than Donald Trump’s odds of winning the White House in 2016. Recent election results — like the Democratic victory in a special election for New York’s 19th Congressional District — provide even stronger evidence that the national environment may have shifted away from the Republican Party.There is a real chance, in other words, that Democrats could enter the next Congress with their majority intact, a major change from earlier this year, when it looked as if Republicans would ride a red wave to victory in November. And if Democrats get exceptionally lucky — if conditions break just the right way in their favor — then there’s a chance that they begin the new year with a larger majority in the Senate in addition to a majority in the House.The question is: In the unlikely event that Democrats enter 2023 with a stronger majority than they’ve had the past two years, what should they do? There has been plenty of discussion about what Republicans should do with their putative future majorities, but what should the Democrats do with theirs?The easy answer is: everything Democrats couldn’t do in the previous Congress. But as we’ve seen, time is precious, and success depends as much on the willingness to set priorities as it does on the ability to find consensus. What, then, should Democrats prioritize?If the legislative story of the past two years — of the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act — is the return of industrial policy, then the legislative story of the next two years must be the return of social policy, as well as an all-out effort to protect and secure the rights that are under assault by the Republican Party and its allies on the Supreme Court.This might sound expansive, but it amounts to just a handful of proposals. On social policy, Democrats should fight to make a child allowance a permanent feature of the social safety net. We already know it works; in just its first round of payments, President Biden’s child tax credits — enacted under the American Rescue Plan — brought more than three million children out of poverty.The Biden plan expired at the end of 2021, but there are still proposals on the table. Last year, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah introduced a plan to give every family a monthly benefit of up to $350 per child for children 5 and under and $250 per child for children 6 to 17. If passed into law, Romney’s plan would, according to the Niskanen Center, cut child poverty by roughly a third. The latest version of the Romney plan isn’t as generous as the original, but it would still put a significant dent in America’s rates of child poverty. There aren’t many policies as clearly good and necessary as a permanent child allowance, which would improve the lives of millions of Americans as well as help Democrats appeal to working- and middle-class voters. They absolutely have to do it.On the question of rights, there are three places Democrats should act as quickly as possible. The first is abortion and reproductive health. In this future in which Democrats still control Congress, they will almost certainly owe their majority to the backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the subsequent drive to criminalize abortion in Republican-led states.In a sense, Democrats would have no choice but to codify abortion rights into law, most likely using the framework developed in Roe v. Wade. There’s actually a bill that would do just that — the Women’s Health Protection Act, which passed the House last year. A less expansive bill, the Reproductive Freedom for All Act, is pending in the Senate.Passing abortion rights into federal law isn’t just the smart thing for Democrats to do; it is the right thing to do — the only way to show the public that the party is willing and able to live up to its rhetoric on reproductive freedom.You can say the same for the other two issue areas that Democrats must address if they somehow keep their majority: labor and voting rights. Both are under assault from right-wing judges and politicians, both need the protection of the federal government, and both are fundamental to the maintenance of a free and fair society. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would strengthen the right of workers to form unions and bargain with their employers, is still on the table, as are proposals to revitalize the Voting Rights Act and end partisan gerrymandering.Of course, to pass any of these laws, Democrats will have to kill the legislative filibuster. Otherwise, this agenda or any other is dead in the water. If Democrats win a Senate majority of 51 or 52 members, they might be able to do it. And they should.It is not often that a political party gets a second bite at the apple. If Democrats win one, there is no reason to let the filibuster — a relic of the worst of our past — stand in the way of building a more decent country, and a more humane one at that.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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      ‘A Stirring of Democratic Hearts’: Three Writers Discuss a Transformed Midterm Landscape

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Molly Jong-Fast, the writer of the “Wait, What?” newsletter for The Atlantic, and Doug Sosnik, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, to discuss whether the Democrats have shifted the narrative of the midterm elections.FRANK BRUNI: Doug, Molly, an apology — because we’re doing this in cyberspace rather than a physical place, I cannot offer you any refreshments, which is a shame, because I do a killer crudité.MOLLY JONG-FAST: The case of Dr. Oz is baffling. I continue to be completely in awe of how bad he is at this.DOUG SOSNIK: He is a terrible candidate, but he is really just one of many right-wing and unqualified candidates running for the Senate and governor. Herschel Walker in Georgia and most of the Republican ticket in Arizona are probably even more unqualified.BRUNI: Let’s pivot from roughage to the rough-and-tumble of the midterms. There’s a stirring of Democratic hearts, a blooming of Democratic hopes, a belief that falling gas prices, key legislative accomplishments and concern about abortion rights equal a reprieve from the kind of midterm debacle that Democrats feared just a month or two ago.Doug, do you now envision Democrats doing much better than we once thought possible?SOSNIK: I do. Up until the start of the primaries and the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, this looked like a classic midterm election in which the party in power gets shellacked. It has happened in the past four midterm elections.BRUNI: Is it possible we’re reading too much into the abortion factor?JONG-FAST: No, abortion is a much bigger deal than any of the pundit class realizes. Because abortion isn’t just about abortion.BRUNI: Doug, do you agree?SOSNIK: I am increasingly nervous about making predictions, but I do feel safe in saying that this issue will increase in importance as more people see the real-life implications of the Roe decision. So, yes, I agree that it will impact the midterms. But it will actually take on even more importance in 2024 and beyond.JONG-FAST: One of the biggest things we’ve seen since the Dobbs decision is doctors terrified to treat women who are having gynecological complications. In 1973, one of the reasons Roe was decided so broadly was because some doctors didn’t feel safe treating women. We’re having a messy return to that, which is a nightmare for the right.SOSNIK: For decades, the getting-candidates-elected wing of the Republican Party — which means people like Mitch McConnell — has had a free ride with the issue of abortion. They have been able to use it to seed their base but have not been forced to pay a political price. With the overturning of Roe, that has all changed. And polling shows that a majority of Americans don’t agree with their extreme positions.JONG-FAST: I also think a lot of suburban women are really, really mad, and people who don’t care about politics at all are furious. Remember the whole news cycle devoted to the 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio having to go out of state for an abortion. Roe is seismic.BRUNI: I noticed that in an NBC News poll released last week, abortion wasn’t one of the top five answers when voters were asked about the most important issue facing the country. Fascinatingly — and to me, hearteningly — more voters chose threats to democracy than the cost of living or jobs and the economy. Do you think that could truly be a motivating, consequential factor in the midterms? Or do you think abortion will still make the bigger difference?SOSNIK: There are two issues in midterms: turnout and persuasion. I am quite confident that the abortion issue will motivate people to vote. The NBC poll shows that Democrats have closed the enthusiasm gap for voting to two points, which since March is a 15-point improvement. And for persuasion, those suburban women swing voters will be motivated by this issue to not only vote but to vote against the Republicans.BRUNI: Is this election really going to be all about turnout, or will swing voters matter just as much? And which groups of Democratic voters are you most worried won’t, in the end, turn out to the extent that they should?SOSNIK: Yes, this midterm will be primarily about turnout. For Democrats, I would start by worrying about young people turning out, which was no doubt on the administration’s mind when it released a plan on Wednesday to forgive student loans.There is also a pretty sizable group of Democrats who have soured on President Biden. They are critical for the Democrats to turn out.BRUNI: Molly, Doug just mentioned President Biden’s announcement that he was forgiving some college debt for some Americans. Is that decision likely to be a net positive for the party, drawing grateful voters to the polls, or a net negative, alienating some Democrats — and energizing many Republicans — who think he’s being fiscally profligate and playing favorites?JONG-FAST: I grew up extremely privileged and for years grappled with the issue of fairness. In my mind, $10,000 was the floor for debt forgiveness. I am particularly pleased with the $20,000 for Pell grant recipients who qualify. I never thought America was a fair country, and it’s become increasingly unfair. Biden was elected with this promise, and he’s keeping it. I think that should help turn out the base.SOSNIK: Student loan forgiveness is a Rorschach test for voters. If you believe in government and a progressive agenda, it is great news. If you think that the Democrats are a bunch of big spenders and worried about the elites — the 38 percent of the country that gets a four-year college degree — then it will work against them.BRUNI: Will former President Donald Trump’s feud with the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. after the Mar-a-Lago search boost Republican turnout and work to the party’s advantage?JONG-FAST: Trump has been fighting with parts of the government for years. I’m not sure how fresh that narrative is. The people who are Trump’s people will continue to be Trump’s people, but much of this persecution-complex narrative is old.SOSNIK: The F.B.I. raid goes with several other items — Jan. 6, Roe, the Trump-endorsed right-wing nominees — that are driving this to be what I’d call a choice election.There have been only two elections since World War II when the incumbent party did not lose House seats in the midterms — 1998 and 2002 — 2002 was an outlier, since it was really a reaction to 9/11.Nineteen ninety-eight was a choice election: We were in the middle of impeachment when the country largely felt that the Republicans were overreaching; 2022 could be only the second choice midterm election since World War II.BRUNI: Democratic hopes focus on keeping control of the Senate or even expanding their majority there. Is the House a lost cause?JONG-FAST: The result of the special election in New York’s 19th Congressional District on Tuesday — widely considered a bellwether contest for control of the House in November, and in which the Democrat, Pat Ryan, beat a well-known, favored Republican, Marc Molinaro, by two points — makes people think that it is possible for Democrats to keep the House.I know that Democrats have about dozens of fewer safe seats than Republicans. And they hold a very slim majority — Republicans need to pick up a net of five seats to regain the majority. But I still think it’s possible Democrats hold the House.SOSNIK: It will be very difficult for the Democrats to hold the House. They have one of the narrowest margins in the House since the late-19th century. Because of reapportionment and redistricting, the Republicans have a much more favorable battlefield. There are now, in the new map, 16 seats held by Democrats in districts that would have likely voted for Trump. Expecting a bad cycle, over 30 Democrats in the House announced that they would retire.The Cook Report has the Republicans already picking up a net of seven seats, with the majority of the remaining competitive races held by Democrats.BRUNI: I’m going to list Democratic candidates in high-profile Senate races in purple or reddish states that aren’t incontrovertibly hostile terrain for the party. For each candidate, tell me if you think victory is probable, possible or improbable. Be bold.John Fetterman, Pennsylvania.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Raphael Warnock, Georgia.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Cheri Beasley, North Carolina.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Possible.BRUNI: Val Demings, Florida.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Ugh, Florida.BRUNI: Mark Kelly, Arizona.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Tim Ryan, Ohio.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Possible.BRUNI: Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: ​​ Name a Democratic candidate this cycle — for Senate, House or governor — who has most positively surprised and impressed you, and tell me why.JONG-FAST: Fetterman is really good at this, and so is his wife. Ryan has been really good. I think Mandela Barnes is really smart. I’ve interviewed all of those guys for my podcast and thought they were just really good at messaging in a way Democrats are historically not. Val Demings is a once-in-a-lifetime politician, but Florida is Florida.SOSNIK: Tim Ryan. I don’t know if he can win, but he has proved that a Democrat can be competitive in a state that I now consider a Republican stronghold.BRUNI: OK, let’s do a lightning round of final questions. For starters, the Biden presidency so far, rated on a scale of 1 (big disappointment) to 5 (big success), with a sentence or less justifying your rating.JONG-FAST: Four. I wasn’t a Biden person, but he’s quietly gotten a lot done, more than I thought he could.SOSNIK: Four. They have accomplished a lot under very difficult circumstances.BRUNI: The percentage chance that Biden runs for a second term?JONG-FAST: Fifty percent.SOSNIK: Twenty-five percent.BRUNI: If Biden doesn’t run and there’s a Democratic primary, name someone other than or in addition to Kamala Harris whom you’d like to see enter the fray, and tell me in a phrase why.JONG-FAST: I hate this question. I want to move to a pineapple under the sea.SOSNIK: Sherrod Brown. He is an authentic person who understands the pulse of this country.JONG-FAST: I also like Sherrod Brown.BRUNI: What’s the one issue you think is being most shortchanged, not just in discussions about the midterms but in our political discussions generally?JONG-FAST: The Supreme Court. If Democrats keep the House and the Senate, Biden is still going to have to deal with the wildly out-of-step courts. He will hate doing that, but he’s going to have to.SOSNIK: I agree with Molly. On a broader level, we have just completed a realignment in American politics where class, more than race, is driving our politics.BRUNI: Last but by no means least, you must spend either an hour over crudité with the noted gourmand Mehmet Oz or an hour gardening with the noted environmentalist Herschel Walker. What do you choose, and briefly, why?JONG-FAST: I’m a terrible hypochondriac, and Oz was an extremely good surgeon. I would spend an hour with him talking about all my medical anxieties. Does this mole look like anything?SOSNIK: The fact that you are raising that question tells you how bad the candidate recruitment has been for the Republicans this cycle.Other than carrying a football and not getting tackled, Walker has not accomplished much in his life, and his pattern of personal behavior shows him to be unfit to hold elected office.BRUNI: Well, I once spent hours with Oz for a profile and watched him do open-heart surgery, so I’m pulling weeds with Walker, just out of curiosity. And for the fresh air.Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) writes the “Wait, What?” newsletter for The Atlantic. Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser in President Bill Clinton’s White House from 1994 to 2000 and is a counselor to the Brunswick Group.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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      Slew of trigger laws kick in as three more US states ban abortions

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      Slew of trigger laws kick in as three more US states ban abortionsTennessee, Texas and Idaho join eight other states as millions of women will lose access to abortion and in certain cases doctors will be punished for performing procedure A slew of trigger bans across three US states kicked in on Thursday as Tennessee, Texas and Idaho join eight other states that have formally outlawed abortion since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June.Depending on the state, trigger laws are designed to take effect either immediately following the overturn of Roe or 30 days after the supreme court’s transmission of its judgment, which took place on 26 July.Currently, nearly one in three women between the ages of 15 to 44 live in states where abortion has been banned or mostly banned. According to data obtained by the US census, that is nearly 21 million women affected.“More people will lose abortion access across the nation as bans take effect in Texas, Tennessee and Idaho. Vast swaths of the nation, especially in the south and midwest, will become abortion deserts that, for many, will be impossible to escape,” Nancy Northup, CEO of the Center of Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.“Evidence is already mounting of women being turned away despite needing urgent, and in some cases life-saving, medical care. This unfolding public health crisis will only continue to get worse. We will see more and more of these harrowing situations, and once state legislatures reconvene in January, we will see even more states implement abortion bans and novel laws criminalizing abortion providers, pregnant people, and those who help them,” she added.Thursday’s trigger bans strip away the right to abortion access for millions of women in Tennessee, Texas and Idaho and in certain cases punish doctors and healthcare providers for performing the procedure.In Tennessee, the state’s previous abortion law that bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy has been replaced with a stricter law. Aside from the exception of preventing the mother’s death or permanent bodily injury, the law bans abortion completely. It does not make any exceptions for victims of incest or rape.The law, called the Human Life Protection Act, makes it a felony for those who are caught performing or attempting to perform an abortion. Consequences include fines, prison time and the loss of voting rights.According to the law, abortions are prohibited from being performed based on mental health claims, including claims that the woman may “engage in conduct that would result in her death or substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function”.Texas, which already passed one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws last yearbanning the procedure beyond six weeks of pregnancy and offering no exceptions for incest or rape, will see a new trigger law take effect that makes the provision of abortion a first-degree felony. Consequences include life sentences and a civil penalty of $100,000 for each violation.“The criminal penalties will further chill the provision of care to women who need it,” Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy and advocacy for the Center of Productive Rights, told the Washington Post.Texas’s trigger ban comes a day after a federal judge in the state blocked an order from the Biden administration issued in the wake of the supreme court’s overruling of Roe that required hospitals to provide emergency abortions.According to Judge James Hendrix, a Donald Trump-appointee, the US Department of Health and Human Services overreached in its guidance interpreting the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labour Act. The 1986 law, also known as Emtala, requires people to receive emergency medical care regardless of their ability to pay for the services.“That guidance goes well beyond EMTALA’s text, which protects both mothers and unborn children, is silent as to abortion, and preempts state law only when the two directly conflict,” Hendrix wrote in a 67-page ruling.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, condemned the decision, calling it a “a blow to Texans”, and adding, “It’s wrong, it’s backwards, and women may die as a result. The fight is not over.”Abortions in Idaho were previously limited to a six-week period into pregnancy. However, Thursday’s trigger law completely prohibits abortion with the exceptions of reported cases of rape and incest and to prevent the death of the mother – but not necessarily to safeguard her health.The ban makes performing an abortion in any “clinically diagnosable pregnancy” a felony that is punishable by up to five years of jail time.Despite the sweeping ban, an Idaho judge barred the state at the 11th hour from enforcing its abortion ban in medical emergencies, making the ruling the exact opposite of Hendrix’s decision in Texas. The ruling from federal judge Lynn Winmill on Wednesday evening says that the state cannot prosecute anyone who performs an abortion in an emergency medical situation.“At its core, the supremacy clause says state law must yield to federal law when it’s impossible to comply with both. And that’s all this case is about,” Winmill wrote. “It’s not about the bygone constitutional right to an abortion,” he added.With such conflicting rulings, both cases could be appealed and the supreme court may be asked to intervene.TopicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtAbortionRepublicansUS politicsTennesseeTexasnewsReuse this content More

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      Ads Begin in Texas Governor Race, With O’Rourke’s Highlighting Abortion

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      HOUSTON — With early voting now two months away, the ad competition has begun in the race for Texas governor. Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott released a first ad and, on Thursday, Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman and perennial Democratic hopeful, countered with two of his own.The O’Rourke campaign, looking for leverage in a tightening but still uphill campaign, focused on abortion, seeking to harness anger among women at the overturning of Roe v. Wade and to direct that anger at Mr. Abbott.Its two ads were released on the day that a so-called trigger law — made possible by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade — went into effect in Texas. The law, signed last year by Mr. Abbott, bans abortion with no exception for rape or incest and with only limited medical exceptions.“From this day forward, Aug. 25, women all across Texas are no longer free,” several women say in one ad, speaking one after another. “All because of Greg Abbott’s abortion law.”“So I’m voting for Beto, who will give women our freedom back,” they conclude.Another 30-second ad from Mr. O’Rourke similarly seeks to link him to the idea of freedom, trying to recapture a word that is more often used by Republicans. That ad, also focused on the state’s abortion ban under Mr. Abbott, features a politically mixed Texas couple who are now both supporting Mr. O’Rourke.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAug. 23 Primaries: The Democratic establishment in Florida and New York had a good night. Here are some key takeaways and a rundown of who won and who lost.The Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Challenging DeSantis: Florida Democrats chose Representative Charlie Crist, a former Republican, to take on Gov. Ron DeSantis, setting up a contest between a centrist and a hard-right G.O.P. incumbent.“This is a free country,” says the husband, Trey Ramsey, shown as a lifelong Republican who supported former president Donald J. Trump. “We need a governor who gets that, and that’s Beto.”The ad appeared to be part of a strategy by Mr. O’Rourke to challenge Mr. Abbott for wavering Republican votes, including in typically conservative strongholds around rural Texas. In recent weeks, he has crisscrossed the state, appearing in front of supportive crowds in deep-red areas but occasionally attracting vocal, and armed, protesters.In contrast to Mr. O’Rourke’s attacks, the governor’s campaign opted for a strategy for its first ad that has worked well in previous elections: a biographical portrait of the governor, a two-term incumbent who uses a wheelchair and has been in statewide elective office in Texas since the 1990s.An ad by Mr. Abbott tells a biographical story about his family, injury and recovery.Texans for Greg AbbottThe ad recounts his recovery from an accident that partly paralyzed him and is narrated by his wife, Cecilia, who is Hispanic. The governor’s campaign has said it believes Mr. Abbott can win a majority of Hispanic voters, who have been increasingly turning to Republicans, particularly in more rural areas of South Texas.“Hard work, perseverance and family: That’s what defines Greg Abbott and how he governs Texas,” Mrs. Abbott says.The ad is the first of what is likely to be a barrage of messages from Mr. Abbott, who has vowed to spend $100 million on the race and whose campaign has already secured some $20 million in television and digital space for ads.Mr. O’Rourke, also a proficient fund-raiser, started behind Mr. Abbott, who entered the race with tens of millions on hand. As of the July filing, the governor had $46 million on hand and Mr. O’Rourke had $24 million. The O’Rourke campaign has repeatedly stressed to potential donors the high cost of advertising statewide in Texas.Several polls in recent weeks put Mr. O’Rourke at five to seven percentage points behind Mr. Abbott, who won in 2018 by 13 percentage points. More

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      Democrats Sense a Shift in the Political Winds, but It May Not Be Enough

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      Energized abortion-rights voters. Donald J. Trump back in the spotlight. Stronger-than-expected special elections, including a surprising win early Wednesday in New York.Democratic leaders, once beaten down by the prospect of a brutal midterm election in the fall, are daring to dream that they can maintain control of Congress this November.An unexpected victory by Pat Ryan, a Democrat, in a special House election to fill a vacancy in New York’s Hudson Valley offered Democrats solid evidence that their voters were willing to come out and that their message was resonating. It followed strong Democratic showings in other special elections, in Nebraska, Minnesota and upstate New York, since the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. Mr. Ryan placed abortion rights front and center while his Republican opponent, Marc Molinaro, sidestepped the issue to focus on the problems his party still believes will drive voters — inflation, crime, the economy. It didn’t work.“Kevin McCarthy made a big mistake by measuring the drapes too early and doubling down on Trumpism, and it’s proving to be fatal,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, referring to the House Republican leader.But the House map in 2022 favors Republicans, thanks to Republican-led redistricting and a slew of retirements of Democratic lawmakers. That means the shifting political winds are more likely to merely blunt any Republican wave in the House rather than save the Democratic majority.Primary races and special elections, which fill seats that are vacated before the end of a lawmaker’s term, are not necessarily reliable predictors of general election turnout, Republicans note.“Majorities are won in November, not August,” said Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans’ official campaign arm. “We look forward to prosecuting the case against Democrats’ failed one-party rule that’s left American families worse off.”That endeavor is becoming harder. Falling gas prices have robbed Republicans of the starkest visual evidence of inflation. Passage in recent weeks of legislation to control prescription drug prices, tackle climate change, extend health insurance subsidies, bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and impose tighter gun controls on teenagers and the mentally ill have given Democrats achievements to run on while countering accusations of a do-nothing Congress.And the F.B.I.’s seizure of hundreds of highly classified documents from Mr. Trump’s Florida home has put the former president back into the spotlight as Democrats press their efforts to cast Republicans as extremists and make the November election a choice between the two parties, not a referendum on President Biden.Demonstrators against former President Donald J. Trump near Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., shortly after the FBI recovered boxes of government documents.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesFor the first time since the fall of 2021, polling averages indicate a narrow majority of voters who say they prefer Democratic over Republican control of Congress.Even some Republicans own up to nervousness.“It looks like troubling clouds on the horizon to me,” said Representative Billy Long, a Republican from Missouri. “The Republicans need to heed Satchel Paige’s advice of ‘Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.’”And yet, for all the trend lines tilting toward Democrats, there is still the unavoidable math of the midterms.Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaFetal Personhood: A push to grant fetuses the same legal rights as people is gaining momentum, as anti-abortion activists move beyond bans and aim to get the procedure classified as murder.Struggling to Decode Laws: Doctors’ concerns about complying with new abortion bans left a pregnant Louisiana woman with a fatal diagnosis for her fetus, but no clear path for an abortion.Surrogacy Industry: Fearful of legal and medical consequences of new abortion laws, gestational surrogates and those working with them are rewriting contracts and changing the way they operate.A Rare Prosecution: A teenager used pills to terminate her pregnancy at home with the aid of her mother. Their Facebook messages are now key evidence in a rare prosecution over abortion.Republicans need a mere five seats to win a House majority — and their candidates are in strong positions to win the bulk of nine districts that Mr. Trump would have won easily two years ago if the new maps had been in place. Seven of those nine seats do not have a Democratic incumbent to defend them. Republicans might have their pick of another seven Democratic seats that Mr. Trump would have won in 2020, though by narrower margins. Four of those have no incumbent to defend them.The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates 10 Democratic seats as leaning toward or likely to be Republican, against three Republican seats that lean Democratic. That works out to a Republican majority.“The Republicans don’t need a wave to win back the House,” said Nathan L. Gonzalez, a nonpartisan House election analyst. “There will be some Democrats who win in Trump districts, but they will be the exceptions, not the rule.”Still, more than a dozen interviews with Democratic candidates illustrated the consistency of their optimism. They all saw Democratic and independent voters as newly energized by the abortion issue. They believed recent Democratic achievements had changed their image as an ineffectual majority to an effective one. And they detected real fear among voters of a resurgent, anti-democracy right wing, abetted by the Republican leadership. More

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      N.Y. Special Election Shows Power of Abortion Debate to Move Democrats

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      Within an hour of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade in June, Pat Ryan, a combat veteran, released an ad for his congressional campaign, stressing his support for abortion rights. After Kansans overwhelmingly voted to defend abortion protections this month, Mr. Ryan cast his upcoming race as the next major test of the issue’s power.And on Wednesday, hours after Mr. Ryan won his special election in a battleground district in New York’s Hudson Valley, he said that the lessons from his contest were clear.“Stand up and fight. Stop pulling our punches,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview. “Conventional wisdom is that abortion rights and reproductive rights are a really emotional, very personal topic, but to me that calls even more for being clear, so people really know where your heart is,” he added. Mr. Ryan’s victory in the 19th District of New York quickly topped the list of signs that the fall campaigns may be more competitive, in more places, than strategists in both parties had once anticipated.The New York race also came a few weeks after the Kansas referendum, which showed that voters even in traditionally conservative states believe it is possible to go too far in restricting abortion rights — but that was an up-or-down vote on a single ballot question. Democrats quickly looked to Mr. Ryan’s race to test whether the issue could resonate in a congressional contest, as voters weighed two personalities and a range of other considerations.Special elections are always an imperfect gauge of the electorate. But Mr. Ryan was one of several Democrats to outperform President Biden’s 2020 numbers in contests this summer. Mr. Ryan’s victory is the latest evidence that once apathetic Democrats who had trailed Republicans on questions of enthusiasm are now increasingly engaged, even as the party continues to face significant political headwinds. And some Republicans acknowledge that they no longer have total ownership on enthusiasm.Abortion rights advocates rallied in front of the Nebraska State Capitol in July after a woman was charged with aiding an abortion in Lincoln.Kenneth Ferriera/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated Press“I worry about us being complacent going into the fall, everyone thinking that these are going to be kind of massive waves, no end in sight, red, red, red, and — doesn’t appear to be that way,” said Robert Blizzard, a veteran Republican pollster. “It’s as if the goal posts have been pushed back a bit on us.”Mr. Blizzard cautioned against overreading the results of special elections and stressed that Democrats continue to face staggering challenges, especially amid Mr. Biden’s abysmal approval ratings. “Until Biden’s approval rating gets out of the toilet with independent voters, it’s still going to be a very good year for Republicans,” he said. Still, he added, “The angrier people is where the energy always is. But you can’t overturn Roe v. Wade and not have some more fired-up Democrats.”A recent NBC poll found that Democrats had closed a significant enthusiasm gap: 68 percent of Republicans expressed a high level of interest in the upcoming election, while 66 percent of Democrats said the same. In March, Republicans had a 17 percentage point advantage on that question, according to NBC.And Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, has released data showing that since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision handed control over abortion protections back to the states, there has been a surge in voter registration among women. They are “mostly younger, and they’re overwhelmingly Democrats,” he said in an interview, adding on Twitter on Wednesday, “Women accounted for 58% of the early/absentee votes in NY19, despite comprising only 52% of registered voters.”“Women have surged in registration in ways that we’ve never seen in this country,” he said. Whether that dynamic lasts through November is an open question, he said, but for now, “it shows no signs of slowing down,” he added.What was especially striking about the result in New York, Mr. Bonier noted, was that the Republican candidate, Marc Molinaro, could be regarded as a “pre-Trump Republican.” In other words, he is a county executive who is well-known locally and kept his messaging far more focused on crime and inflation than on the far-right cultural battles some candidates have embraced.Mr. Molinaro has said both that he would vote against a federal law ensuring abortion access nationwide and that he would oppose a nationwide ban. Abortion is legal in New York.Headed into the special election, some Republicans cautioned that Mr. Ryan could do better than public polling suggested because the contest was held at the same time as New York’s primaries — when independent voters, who appear deeply unhappy with President Biden, are unaccustomed to turning out. Other fundamentals, they argue — including dissatisfaction with the direction of the country — continue to work against the party in power.“Democratic voters were energized by the Supreme Court decision, and because we were running in the midst of a Democratic primary, they showed up to vote,” Mr. Molinaro said in an interview.Through a quirk of New York’s complicated redistricting process, both candidates will run again in November but not against each other. Mr. Molinaro is running for a full term in the new 19th Congressional District. Mr. Ryan is seeking a full term in the neighboring 18th District, which will now contain his home in Ulster County.“November is going to be about, as midterm elections always are, a check on the party in power,” Mr. Molinaro said, arguing that cost of living remained top of mind for many voters. “The dynamic and the turnout and, I believe, the results, are going to be different.”For now, though, it was evident that Mr. Ryan’s efforts to frame the contest as a referendum on abortion rights had resonated with some voters.“You’re going to force a religious right, fundamentalist Christian whatever on the whole country?” said John Ravine, as he came out to vote for Mr. Ryan on Tuesday. Describing himself as “staunchly Catholic,” Mr. Ravine expressed his concerns about the rollbacks of abortion rights across the country. “You can’t do that. You can’t hold a country hostage.”Grace Ashford contributed reporting from Hudson, N.Y. More