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      Mercedes-Benz Workers in Alabama Ask for Unionization Vote

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      The United Automobile Workers union is mounting its most ambitious effort to gain an industry foothold beyond Detroit’s Big Three.Workers at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama have petitioned federal officials to hold a vote on whether to join the United Automobile Workers, the union said on Friday, a step forward for its drive to organize workers at car factories in the South.The union is trying to build on the momentum from the contracts it won last year at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, which gave workers at the three Detroit carmakers their biggest raises in decades.The U.A.W. is also trying to organize workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee and a Hyundai factory in Alabama, establishing a bigger presence in states that have drawn much of the new investment in automobile manufacturing in recent decades. A vote at the Volkswagen plant is scheduled for April 17 to 19.The drive has taken on added importance as Southern states like South Carolina and Georgia attract billions of dollars in investment in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing. The U.A.W. is trying to ensure that jobs created by electric vehicles do not pay less than jobs at traditional auto factories.A large majority of workers at the Mercedes plant, near Tuscaloosa, had earlier signed cards expressing support for a vote. On Friday they formally petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election on whether to be represented by the U.A.W., the union said.Mercedes, which makes luxury sport utility vehicles in Alabama, said in a statement that it “fully respects our team members’ choice whether to unionize” and that it would ensure that workers had “access to the information necessary to make an informed choice.”Southern states have traditionally been difficult territory for unions, in some cases because of legislation unfavorable to organized labor or because elected officials openly campaigned against unions. The lack of a strong union presence is probably one reason the region has attracted a big share of auto industry investment.Attempts in 2014 and 2019 to organize Volkswagen’s factory in Chattanooga, where the German company makes the Atlas sport utility vehicle and ID.4 electric S.U.V., failed in part because of opposition from Republican elected officials in Tennessee.Toyota, Volkswagen and other carmakers raised hourly wages after the union won pay increases for Ford, G.M. and Stellantis workers. Still, the nonunion workers tend to earn less. In many cases, pay is less of an issue than work schedules, health benefits and time off.In a video on Friday, the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said workers were fighting for “work-life balance, good health care you can afford, a better life for your family.”The union has complained to the National Labor Relations Board that Mercedes has retaliated against organizers in Alabama. The carmaker denied the accusations, saying it “has not interfered with or retaliated against any team member in their right to pursue union representation.” More

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      The Persistent Threat to Abortion Rights

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      The Supreme Court this week heard the first major challenge to abortion rights since it struck down Roe v. Wade two years ago — an attempt to severely limit access to mifepristone, the most commonly used abortion pill in the country, by a group of doctors who are morally opposed to the practice.The justices seem prepared to throw out the lawsuit. During oral arguments, they questioned whether the doctors had suffered the harm necessary to bring the suit in the first place.But that should come as small comfort to anyone concerned for the future of reproductive freedom in America. Judges at the state and federal level are ready to further restrict reproductive options and health care access. The presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, has indicated support for a 15-week national abortion ban. And while the Supreme Court, in overturning Roe, ostensibly left it to each state to decide abortion policy, several states have gone against the will of their voters on abortion or tried to block ballot measures that would protect abortion rights. Anti-abortion forces may have had a tough week in the Supreme Court, but they remain focused on playing and winning a longer game.Even potential victories for reproductive freedom may prove short-lived: The mifepristone case, for instance, is far from dead. Another plaintiff could bring the same case and have it considered on the merits, a possibility Justice Samuel Alito raised during oral arguments.“Is there anybody who could challenge in court the lawfulness of what the F.D.A. did here?” he asked the solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar. Such a challenge would be exceptionally weak, given that the F.D.A. provided substantial support for its approval and regulatory guidance on the use of mifepristone, but the right-wing justices on the Roberts court may be willing to hear it again anyway. The justices have already illustrated their hostility to the authority of administrative agencies, and that hostility may persist even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence.Then there is the Comstock Act, a 151-year-old federal law that anti-abortion activists are trying to revive to block the mailing of mifepristone and other abortion medication. During the oral arguments this week, Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas repeatedly expressed their openness to the use of the law, which was pushed by an anti-vice crusader decades before women won the right to vote. If anti-abortion activists can get themselves before a sympathetic court and secure a national injunction on this medication being mailed, they may well be able to block access to abortion throughout the country, including in states where it is legal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alabama Democrat Marilyn Lands says voters ready for ‘change’ after surprise win – as it happened

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      In an interview with Huntsville, Alabama broadcaster WHNT, the Democrat Marilyn Lands predicted better days ahead for the beleaguered party:Lands yesterday was elected to Alabama’s state house in a special election to fill a vacant seat previously held by the GOP, in a rare instance of Democrats making inroads in one of the most thoroughly Republican states in the country.Democrats are cheering Marilyn Lands, who managed to seize a state house seat from Republicans in deep-red Alabama, fuelled by her promises to protect IVF access and repeal the state’s abortion ban. To be clear: the party does not have the numbers to make either of those promises happen in a state thoroughly dominated by the GOP, but it’s nonetheless the latest instance of Joe Biden’s allies using concerns about reproductive rights to win elections in hostile territory. Meanwhile, in Texas, a federal appeals court maintained the block on a Republican-backed law that would allow state police to arrest suspected illegal border crossers. The legislation will probably remain on hold until either appeals judges or the US supreme court rules on its merits.Here’s what else happened:
      Israel wants to reschedule a meeting with US officials that it called off after Washington allowed a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to pass.
      Disney ended its feud with allies of Republican governor Ron DeSantis, which erupted after the entertainment giant criticized the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” law.
      Kansas Republicans moved to force abortion providers to ask patients the reason why they are seeking the procedure, and probably have the votes to get around an expected veto by the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly.
      Donald Trump is under a new gag order in his hush-money case. But it does not apply to the presiding judge Juan Merchan, so the former president attacked him on his social media network this morning.
      Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official indicted alongside Trump in Georgia for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election, pleaded the fifth at a hearing that could lead to him losing his law license in Washington DC.
      Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis says a settlement reached between Disney and his allies over who controls Walt Disney World’s governing district “vindicated” his administration’s policies:Here’s more on the end of the long-running squabble:Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official who was indicted in Georgia alongside Donald Trump for allegedly trying to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the state, repeatedly declined to answer questions today at a hearing that could see him lose his law license in Washington DC, Politico reports.Clark repeatedly invoked the fifth amendment’s protecting against self incrimination in response to questions from DC Bar panel investigators, who rested their case after today’s hearing.Here’s more on that, from Politico:
      Clark’s decision to invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination underscores the criminal jeopardy he faces in other ongoing legal proceedings. In Atlanta, he’s charged alongside Trump in an alleged racketeering conspiracy to corrupt the 2020 election, and in Washington DC, federal prosecutors identified him – but have not charged him – as one of Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in a scheme to seize power.
      “I will invoke the Fifth,” Clark said in response to a question about when he first met Trump. Clark also said the question was covered by attorney-client, law enforcement and executive privileges. “A veritable phalanx of privileges,” Clark added wryly as the exercise wore on.
      The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution protects Americans from being forced to provide testimony that may incriminate themselves in legal proceedings. For Clark, that’s particularly important as he faces a potential criminal trial in Georgia. His attorneys worried that forcing Clark to take the stand simply to invoke his Fifth Amendment right would drive headlines or embarrass Clark, but the DC Bar panel presiding over the hearing permitted investigators to pose several dozen questions to Clark.
      Clark himself grew combative as the questioning wore on, accusing the lead investigator, Hamilton Fox, of seeking to humiliate him on the stand by forcing him to repeatedly invoke the Fifth Amendment. His bristling prompted Merrill Hirsh, the chair of the panel presiding over the hearing, to admonish Clark not to argue with Fox or risk potentially waiving the privileges he invoked.
      Democrats nationwide are taking heart from Marilyn Lands’s victory in Alabama, seeing it as a validation of their strategy to make concerns over reproductive care access a centerpiece of their pitch to voters.But Lands’s election does not change the fundamental balance of power in Alabama, where the Republican party firmly controls the levers of power. All elected officials are members of the GOP, which has supermajorities in the state house and senate.Republican lawmakers in Alabama have lately spent their time passing laws restricting diversity and inclusion programs from being established at public schools and state agencies, and barring trans people from using public bathrooms that align with their gender identity at colleges and universities.They also moved quickly to pass legislation allowing in vitro fertilization care to continue after the state supreme court issued a ruling that forced fertility clinics to cancel appointments. Democrats supported that effort:Marilyn Lands’s victory yesterday in the special election for Alabama’s state house is probably the most exciting thing to happen for Democrats in the state since Doug Jones won a Senate seat in 2018.His victory came after multiple women alleged sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior by the Republican candidate, Roy Moore. In an interview last night with CNN, Jones, who was ousted from the Senate by the Republican Tommy Tuberville in the 2020 elections, described Lands’s win as “a huge deal”:In an interview with Huntsville, Alabama broadcaster WHNT, the Democrat Marilyn Lands predicted better days ahead for the beleaguered party:Lands yesterday was elected to Alabama’s state house in a special election to fill a vacant seat previously held by the GOP, in a rare instance of Democrats making inroads in one of the most thoroughly Republican states in the country.The recovery operation in Baltimore continues amid reports that a truck has been found amid the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key bridge.For more on the disaster, and the effort to get the economically vital port of Baltimore back up and running, follow our live blog:The White House media briefing is under way in the west wing now, with the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, just introducing the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, who’s appearing as the guest today to talk about the bridge disaster in Baltimore.Buttigieg paid tribute to the six workers who are missing and presumed dead after the bridge collapse, and the two workers who survived, one badly injured, who were all repairing the bridge’s road surface “while we all slept”, he said.Buttigieg said that the port will be reopened as soon as possible.The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the bridge’s collapse, with Buttigieg saying that the bridge, which was completed in the 1970s, was not build to withstand an impact from the size of container ship that operates these days and which hit the bridge strut in the early hours of Tuesday morning, leading to the entire bridge’s collapse, closing the port for all traffic.Guardian US has a dedicated live blog covering all the developments in the Baltimore bridge disaster and you can follow that news here.Israel has asked to reschedule a meeting with US officials to discuss its military plans in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, a US official said on Wednesday, days after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, abruptly scrapped the planned talks, Reuters reports.Netanyahu called off a planned visit to Washington by a senior Israeli delegation after the US allowed passage of a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the United Nations on Monday, in a move that appeared to reflect growing US frustration with the Israeli premier.US officials said the Biden administration was perplexed by the Israeli cancellation and considered it an overreaction to the security council resolution, insisting there had been no change in policy.On Wednesday, a US official said Netanyahu’s office “has said they’d like to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah. We are now working with them to set a convenient date.”Netanyahu is considering sending a delegation for a White House meeting on Rafah as early as next week but the scheduling is still being worked out, an Israeli official in Washington told Reuters on condition of anonymity.There was no immediate comment from the Israeli prime minister’s office. The planned talks are expected to focus on Israel’s threatened offensive in Rafah, the last relatively safe haven for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.The White House said last week it intended to share with Israeli officials alternatives for eliminating the Palestinian militant group Hamas without a ground offensive in Rafah that Washington says would be a “disaster”.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to France and Belgium next week, a state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Wednesday, Reuters reports.Blinken will meet with the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, and the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, while in Brussels for a Nato meeting, Miller said at a regular news briefing.Meanwhile, the state department does not think hostage talks with Israel and Hamas are over, Miller said, adding that Washington thinks there is an ability to continue to pursue the release of hostages.He also said “we do” when asked if the department believed a limited military campaign in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, can take out remaining commanders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.Hamas controls the territory and led the attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year in which more than 1,200 people were massacred and more than 240 people were taken hostage into Gaza, with more than 100 remaining captive at this time.Democrats are cheering Marilyn Lands, who managed to seize a state house seat from Republicans in deep-red Alabama, fueled by her promises to protect IVF access and repeal the state’s abortion ban. To be clear: the party does not have the numbers to make either of those promises happen in a state thoroughly dominated by the GOP, but it’s nonetheless the latest instance of Joe Biden’s allies using concerns about reproductive rights to win elections in hostile territory. Meanwhile, in Texas, a federal appeals court maintained the block on a Republican-backed law that would allow state police to arrest suspected illegal border crossers. The legislation will probably remain on hold until either appeals judges or the US supreme court rules on its merits.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Disney ended its feud with allies of Republican governor Ron DeSantis, which erupted after the entertainment giant criticized the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” law.
      Kansas Republicans moved to force abortion providers to ask patients the reason they are seeking the procedure, and probably have the votes to get around an expected veto by the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly.
      Donald Trump is under a new gag order in his hush-money case. But it does not apply to the presiding judge Juan Merchan, so the former president attacked him on his social media network this morning.
      Apparently in some kind of foul mood, Donald Trump also insulted his one-time ally Ronna McDaniel following her hiring from NBC yesterday, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Donald Trump mocked the former Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna McDaniel, for her firing by NBC days after being hired as a political analyst.“Wow!” the former president and presumptive Republican nominee, who ejected McDaniel from the RNC in favour of his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, wrote on his Truth Social platform.“Ronna McDaniel got fired by Fake News NBC. She only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear. It leaves her in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”McDaniel’s hiring was announced by NBC last Friday. Interviewed on Meet the Press on Sunday, she disavowed Trump’s lie that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election but also claimed there were electoral “problems” in battleground states.Protests from on-air talent and an NBC union group also concerned McDaniel’s combative relations with the press in seven years as RNC chair, a period coinciding with Trump’s takeover of the Republican party. On Tuesday evening McDaniel was gone – giving her a four-day NBC career, not the two claimed by Trump. More

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      Democrat wins election in conservative Alabama after focus on abortion and IVF

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      An Alabama Democrat who campaigned against the state’s near-total abortion ban has won a special election to the state legislature, a stark signal that reproductive rights is a potent issue for Democratic candidates, even in the deep south.Marilyn Lands won the state house seat on Tuesday, defeating Teddy Powell, a Republican, by 63% to 37%. Lands, a licensed professional counselor, previously ran for the seat in 2022 and lost by 7% to David Cole, a Republican who resigned last year after pleading guilty to voter fraud.Lands made Alabama’s abortion ban and access to contraception and in vitro fertilization central to her campaign, speaking openly about her own previous abortion experience in a TV ad that featured her saying that it was “shameful that today women have fewer freedoms than I had two decades ago”.Lands said that her win sent a clear message in the wake of Alabama’s near-total abortion ban, which came into effect after the US supreme court struck down Roe v Wade in 2022. In February, there was also a highly controversial state supreme court decision that threatened the use of IVF.“This is a giant step forward for Alabama, this is a victory tonight for women, for families, for Alabama in general,” Lands told WHNT News 19 in the wake of her win.“It feels like it’s the start of a change here,” she added of the state’s politics. “I think we are ready for something different, we are tired of Alabama being 49th and 50th in all the key metrics. We can do better, we are better and I want to make that happen.”Lands said she would work to overturn Alabama’s abortion law, one of the most stringent in the US, which outlaws abortion at any stage of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest. It is only permitted in situations where the life of the pregnant person is in danger.“Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation,” she said in a statement. “Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception.”The special election does little to tip the balance of power in conservative Alabama, with Republicans holding a commanding 75 to 27 advantage over Democrats in the state house.However, Democrats have hailed the victory as a further sign that restricting access to abortion has proved electorally damaging to Republicans, particularly in the sort of seat contested by Lands. The Democrat won in the state’s 10th district, which comprises parts of Huntsville and Madison, a relatively affluent and educated area of northern Alabama only narrowly carried by Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.“This special election is a harbinger of things to come – Republicans across the country have been put on notice that there are consequences to attacks on IVF – from the bluest blue state to the reddest red, voters are choosing to fight for their fundamental freedoms by electing Democrats across the country,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, in a statement sent to Politico. More

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      Democrat Running on Abortion and I.V.F. Access Wins Special Election in Alabama

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      Marilyn Lands, a Democrat, won a special election Tuesday for a State House seat in Alabama after campaigning on access to abortion and in vitro fertilization, underscoring the continued political potency of reproductive rights.Ms. Lands defeated her Republican opponent, Teddy Powell, by about 25 percentage points — an extraordinary margin in a swing district where she lost by seven points in 2022. The special election was called when David Cole, the Republican who had held the seat, resigned and pleaded guilty to voter fraud.“Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation,” Ms. Lands, a licensed counselor, said Tuesday night. “Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to I.V.F. and protect the right to contraception.”Her election, in the largely suburban House District 10 in northern Alabama, does not change the balance of power in the state; Republicans still hold supermajorities in both its House and its Senate. And the race was small, with only about 6,000 votes cast.But the outcome and the margin add further evidence to the pile of election results over the nearly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that abortion, and, now, I.V.F., is a reliably motivating issue. Democrats are counting on abortion rights in 2024 to continue to help power wins in key states.Alabama has banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape and incest. And last month, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were people with rights — upending I.V.F. care, which typically involves creating multiple embryos but implanting only one at a time, and indefinitely freezing or sometimes destroying those left over.In response to the backlash over that ruling, the Alabama Legislature passed a law giving I.V.F. clinics criminal and civil immunity and Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed it. It did not address embryos’ legal status.Mr. Powell, the Republican candidate, avoided talking about abortion and I.V.F. during the campaign, focusing instead on issues including education and local infrastructure. That strategy, which many national candidates have also adopted over the past two years, does not appear to have been effective.Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to state legislatures, called Ms. Lands’s victory “a harbinger of things to come.”“Republicans across the country have been put on notice that there are consequences to attacks on I.V.F.,” Ms. Williams said.President Biden’s re-election campaign, which is planning to focus heavily on abortion as well, also highlighted the result, calling it a “major warning sign” for former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump, who appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, has indicated that he is likely to support a 15-week federal abortion ban.“Voters will not stand for his attacks on reproductive health care,” Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement. More

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      Why the rift between anti-abortion activists and Republican lawmakers is growing

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      There is a growing rift in the decades-old marriage between anti-abortion activists and Republican lawmakers.The problem came into view last month, after a bombshell decision from the Alabama supreme court temporarily halted in vitro fertilization (IVF). The ruling, which described frozen embryos as “extrauterine children”, unraveled when the Republican-controlled legislature passed short-term protections for IVF providers.Under a new law signed last week by Republican governor Kay Ivey, IVF providers are temporarily protected from civil litigation and criminal prosecution in the event of “damage or death of an embryo” during treatment.“In our state, we work to foster a culture of life,” the governor said in a statement about the court ruling. “This certainly includes some couples hoping and praying to be parents who utilize IVF.”The move offered a helpful, if limited lifeline, to IVF patients in the state. The new law does not refute the Alabama supreme court’s controversial position that an embryo, stored for the purpose of IVF, is a person. Nor does it permanently shield IVF providers from legal penalties.Despite its limited scope, the Republican-backed law took a step to align the GOP with US public consensus, which overwhelmingly supports IVF. It also invoked the wrath of rightwing Christian activists.“Tragically, the Governor of Alabama has given the IVF industry a license to kill,” said Lila Rose, president of Live Action, a non-profit that opposes abortion. “Stripping embryonic human beings of legal protections is also unconstitutional.”Some anti-abortion groups are even running ads against Alabama Republicans using the same provocative imagery – “blood, babies and scalpels” – that is typically leveraged against Democrats, according to Politico.View image in fullscreenThe backlash from anti-abortion groups, many of which are hostile to IVF, represents a persistent problem for Republicans in the post-Roe era. The party, once united under the simple goal of repealing Roe v Wade, cannot figure out how to advance the anti-abortion movement’s most hardline policy goals without alienating large swaths of US voters.In their rush to announce a restrained, politically-safe stance in support of IVF, Alabama Republicans inadvertently angered their own Christian conservative base.“You have a lot of Christian Right and pro-life groups that think that Alabama’s supreme court decision was good, and – if anything didn’t go far enough,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “For state lawmakers in solidly red districts, where there’s no chance that a Democrat could win, the Christian right could launch a primary challenge against Alabama Republicans who supported the IVF bill.”It’s not the first time that the rightwing Christian movement has demanded that Republican lawmakers split from public opinion on reproductive healthcare.In 2022, after the US supreme court repealed the constitutional right to abortion guaranteed by Roe v Wade, anti-abortion activists rejoiced: the Right to Life lobby had finally won. Uninhibited by Roe, state Republican leaders were free to set their own laws on abortion access – and yet wholly unprepared to answer the thorny legal questions that followed: should abortion bans offer an exception for cases where the life of the mother is jeopardized? What about cases where a rape or incest victim is impregnated by their abuser?Like IVF, abortion ban exceptions are supported by the majority of US voters.The GOP’s conservative Christian base, however, argued that exceptions should not exist, or at least be extremely narrow in scope. Rightwing activists believe that a fetus is a “preborn person” entitled to the same rights and protections as any other American citizen.The concept of fetal personhood, once a fringe ideology that could be mostly ignored by mainstream Republican lawmakers, now underscores much of the modern anti-abortion movement’s work.Abortion bans in states like Georgia and Alabama, for example, contain language that define a fetus as a person. In 2022, Georgia’s department of revenue announced that “any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat” can be counted as a dependent on tax forms.The Alabama supreme court ruling itself hinges on the belief that a fetus is a legally-protected person.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven before Roe’s demise, fetal personhood seeped into the criminal justice system, enabling the prosecution and criminalization of pregnancy complications. In 2020, Oklahoma police arrested a 19-year-old woman who had a miscarriage in her second trimester of pregnancy. Alleging that she had used meth, police charged her with first-degree manslaughter of the fetus (a medical examiner identified five other potential factors that may have led to the miscarriage).As fetal personhood continues to transform American politics and law, anti-abortion lobbyists have been more willing to turn on Republican allies for failing to champion the ideology.View image in fullscreen“Politicians cannot call themselves pro-life, affirm the truth that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, and then enact laws that allow the callous killing of these preborn children simply because they were created through IVF,” said Rose in her statement condemning the Alabama governor’s support of IVF.Prompted by Alabama’s IVF wars, leading far-right think tanks are also pressuring congressional Republicans to back fetal personhood on the national stage. In a memorandum released late last month, the Heritage Foundation urged conservatives to view the Alabama supreme court decision on embryos as a means of protecting children.“This ruling merely ensures that parents using the service can rest assured that their children will receive the same legal protections as everyone else’s,” the memo said.It is unclear if the GOP will ultimately back fetal personhood, or decide that the ideology is too extreme.In 2023, 124 Republicans co-sponsored the federal Life at Conception Act, which would give embryos the rights of people “at the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment when the individual comes into being”.A recent attempt by Senate Democrats to advance a bill protecting the procedure failed after a single Republican blocked it.Meanwhile, House Republicans have repeatedly sidestepped questions about federal protections for IVF, leaving Alabama lawmakers to answer fundamental questions about fetal personhood on their own.“It’s not my belief that Congress needs to play a role here,” said the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, at a West Virginia press conference on Thursday. “I think this is being handled by the states.” More

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      Katie Britt defends sex trafficking story she falsely links to Biden presidency

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      In her first interview since delivering her widely ridiculed rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, Republican senator Katie Britt refused to apologize for invoking a story about child rape that she implied resulted from the president’s handling of the ongoing crisis at the southern US border – even though the abuse occurred years earlier in Mexico while her party controlled the White House.Britt, 42, appeared on Fox News Sunday and denied hiding the fact that the rape and sex trafficking case to which she referred had actually occurred during the presidency of George W Bush. She also made it a point to criticize what she called “the liberal media” for how they have covered her rebuttal to Biden’s speech on Thursday, which earned being parodied on the latest episode of Saturday Night Live.“I very specifically said … I very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12. So I didn’t say a teenager – I didn’t say a young woman,” Britt replied after being asked whether she intended to give the impression that the abuse occurred under the Biden administration’s watch. “[It was] a grown woman … trafficked when she was 12.”Britt also said: “To me, it is disgusting to try to silence the voice of telling the story of what it is like to be sex trafficked.”The junior Alabama senator’s remarks to Fox News Sunday came after even her fellow Republicans pronounced her rejoinder on Thursday to Biden’s State of the Union speech – from the setting of a kitchen – “one of our biggest disasters”.During that rebuttal, as she oscillated between smiling and seeming to fight back tears, Britt described traveling to the Del Rio sector of the US-Mexico border and speaking to a woman whom the senator said had relayed horrific experiences.“She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12,” Britt said. “She told me not just that she was raped every day – but how many times a day she was raped.”Britt avoided saying when or where the abuse took place. But she strongly implied that it had stemmed from the Biden administration’s management of immigration issues at the southern border.“We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America. And it’s past time we start acting like it. President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace,” Britt said. “It’s despicable, and it’s almost entirely preventable.”On Friday, in a seven-minute video on TikTok, author and former Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz established that Britt was describing events that unfolded in Mexico in between 2004 and 2008, when Bush was president.The tale centered on Karla Jacinto Romero, an activist who in May 2015 testified to Congress about her experiences at the hands of sex traffickers who held her captive between the ages of 12 and 16 in her native Mexico. Britt met Jacinto Romero on a visit to the border with other Republican senators in January 2023.But while the meeting with Jacinto Romero, now 31, occurred shortly after Britt took office, her abuse occurred as many as two decades earlier and not in the US.Katz lambasted Britt as dishonest and misleading, and many others have since done the same. A Biden White House spokesperson on Sunday issued a statment which said Britt had peddled “debunked lies”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for Britt confirmed to the Washington Post that the senator was referring to Jacinto Romero in her speech Thursday. Yet that spokesperson also insisted Britt’s presentation of Jacinto Romero’s story was “100% correct”. And Britt doubled down on that position Sunday.“This is a story of what is happening,” Britt said. “We have to tell those stories, and the liberal media needs to pay attention to it because there are victims all the way coming to the border, there are victims at the border, and then there are victims all throughout the country.”Britt’s guest spot on Fox News Sunday came hours after the actor Scarlett Johansson stood in a kitchen portraying the Alabama senator and satirized the latter’s State of the Union rebuttal on Saturday Night Live’s cold open.Among other things, Johansson said sarcastically: “I’ve invited you into this empty kitchen because Republicans want me to appeal to women voters and women love kitchens.”Britt went out of her way Sunday to explain “exactly why [she] was sitting at a kitchen table” when she rebutted Biden.“Republicans care about kitchen table issues,” Britt said. “We care about faith, family. We care about freedom.” More

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      Journalist says Katie Britt’s story about child sex abuse ‘out-and-out lie’

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      Doubts have been cast on the accuracy of a story about horrific child sex abuse told by the Republican senator Katie Britt in her widely ridiculed speech delivered in rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.The journalist and author Jonathan Katz has accused Britt of being “fundamentally dishonest” for invoking the case of a woman who had been sex-trafficked at age 12 and raped multiple times to illustrate the supposed failure of the Biden administration’s border control policies.The controversy further intensifies the spotlight on Britt – a rising Republican star – after she came under fire from members of her own party for delivering a rejoinder to Biden on Thursday from the setting of a kitchen.In that speech, Britt described travelling to the Del Rio sector of the US-Mexico border and cited the case of an unidentified woman, whom Britt said confided harrowing experiences. The senator implied these were a direct result of the ongoing crisis at the border, which Republicans have sought to exploit as a campaign issue.“I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me,” Britt said. “She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped.”The senator did not say where or when the events occurred, but in outraged tones she implied that they had happened in the US on Biden’s watch: “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America. And it’s past time we start acting like it. President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable and it’s almost entirely preventable.”However, in a seven-minute video posted on TikTok, Katz – a former AP reporter who has written on drug wars in Mexico – cited details that appeared to show the story Britt was describing had happened not just outside the US, but many years before Biden became president.He concluded that Britt had deliberately misrepresented the tale of Karla Jacinto Romero, an activist who has publicly recounted her experiences on numerous occasions at the hands of sex traffickers in her native Mexico.Now 31, Romero testified to a US Congressional subcommittee in May 2015 describing her experiences at the hands of a trafficker who held her captive between the ages of 12 and 16, before she was eventually rescued. She has also spoken before the Mexican house of representatives and the Vatican.Britt met Jacinto Romero on a visit to the border with two other Republican senators, Marsha Blackburn and Cindy-Hyde Smith, in January 2023.The visit was described on Blackburn’s senatorial webpage, which included photos of the three senators sharing a platform with Romero at a news conference.In his video, Katz dissected what he said was Britt’s attempt to conflate Romero’s story with the US-Mexico border imbroglio, where the build-up of asylum seekers promises to become a central issue in the 2024 presidential election, before lambasting her for “dishonesty”.Katz said that Britt, by not giving a location or a timeframe for the story, had deliberately tried to create a “beyond misleading” impression that the events had taken place recently and on US soil.“All I had to do was key in Karla Jacinto Romero’s name … and it took me to [her] testimony to Congress from 2015 about her experiences in Mexico,” he said.“It took place between 2004 and 2008. I don’t know what they put in the textbooks of Alabama these days, but Joe Biden was not the president of the United States in 2004 or 2008. In 2004 and 2008, the president of the United States was George W Bush, a Republican. [But] none of this really matters because none of these events took place in the United States – or even near the border.”Katz added: “It seems very clear to me that she is trying to create an association in people’s minds between Joe Biden, the border, Mexicans, you know, Latins – people of Latin descent – and sexual violence. That’s what she’s going for and she is doing it on the basis of something that you can only say is an out-and-out lie.“It must have been obvious to her, at the very least, that she was not talking to somebody who had recently been 12 years old.”Katz said he had sought a comment from Britt’s spokesperson but had received no reply. “For now, it just looks as if she got up on national television and lied about something really horrific and important – and for her own personal and her party’s political gain,” he said.In a statement to media outlets, Britt’s spokesperson Sean Ross sidestepped commenting on whether the senator had been alluding to Romero in Thursday’s speech but insisted her account was “100% correct”.“The Biden administration’s policies – the policies in this country that the president falsely claims are humane – have empowered the cartels and acted as a magnet to a historic level of migrants making the dangerous journey to our border,” he said. “Along that journey, children, women and men are being subjected to gut-wrenching, heartbreaking horrors in our own backyard.”Following Britt’s speech, the gun control advocate Shannon Watts noted that the senator had used stories of sexual abuse in an effort to elect Donald Trump, who has been accused of rape in an allegation a judge called “substantially true”, and of assault or misconduct by more than 20 other women. “Senator Katie Britt says sexual assault is the worst thing that can happen to a woman while encouraging Americans to vote for a convicted sexual predator,” Watts said. 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