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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. More

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      State of the Union address as it happened: Biden spars with Republicans and announces aid pier for Gaza

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      In his third, and potentially last, State of the Union address, Joe Biden eschewed tradition and delivered a barrage of attacks on Donald Trump – who he only referred to as “my predecessor”. It was a sign of how Biden believes Trump’s potential return to the White House poses an existential risk to American democracy, and perhaps also his awareness that he has a lot of support to rebuild to win a second term in November. While Democrats leapt to their feet for Biden’s promises to protect social security, cut child poverty and overhaul the country’s infrastructure, some found the president’s use of the word “illegal” objectionable. Meanwhile, Alabama’s Republican senator Katie Britt delivered the party’s rebuttal, asking: “Are you better off now than you were three years ago?”Here are the highlights:
      The 81-year-old president directly addressed his age, saying “I’ve been told I’m too old” while arguing he is still up for the job.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing nemesis, got unusually close to Biden, then heckled him during the speech over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
      Six supreme court justices were present at the speech, only for Biden to criticize them directly for overturning Roe v Wade.
      Protesters upset over Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza blocked a road leading to the Capitol ahead of the speech.
      George Santos was in the House chamber for the speech, reportedly to hang out with the people who removed him from office.
      Several Democratic House lawmakers have criticized Joe Biden for describing the undocumented migrant suspected of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley as an “illegal”.Biden made the remark during his State of the Union address, while being heckled by rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blamed the president’s border security policies for Riley’s murder. Biden held up a pin with Riley’s name on it, and called her “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal”.Democrats took issue with that terminology, including Illinois’s Chuy Garcia:Ilhan Omar of Minnesota:And Delia Ramirez of Illinois:“Just ask yourself, are you better off now than you were three years ago?” Katie Britt asks in the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.Expect that to be a theme of GOP campaigns nationwide, including Donald Trump’s.More, from Britt:
      Look, we all recall when presidents faced national security threats with strength and resolve. That seems like ancient history right now. Our commander-in-chief is not in command. The free world deserves better than a doddering and diminished leader. America deserves leaders who recognize that secure borders, stable prices, safe streets and a strong defense are actually the cornerstones of a great nation.
      Alabama senator Katie Britt is delivering the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, and responded to his comments on Laken Riley.“Tonight, President Biden finally said her name, but he refused to take responsibility for his own actions,” said Britt.“Mr President, enough is enough. Innocent Americans are dying and you only have yourself to blame. Fulfill your oath of office, reverse your policies, end this crisis and stop the suffering.”One of the most striking moments of the night happened when Joe Biden addressed the topic of immigration – which polls show is a major weakness of his going into the November contest against Donald Trump.As he spoke, the president was heckled by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing antagonist. Greene demanded he say the name of Laken Riley, who is suspected to have been murdered by an undocumented migrant.Biden, who usually wants nothing to do with Greene, took her up on the offer. Here’s what happened:During Joe Biden’s speech, there were several rowdy heckles from Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. Then came an unexpected yell from the public balcony, directly opposite from where I am sitting in the press gallery.A man wearing dark suit, blue shirt and yellow tie cupped his hands and shouted: “Remember Abbey Gate! United States Marines.” Abbey Gate, outside Kabul’s airport, is where 13 US service members were killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan two years ago.His point made, the man voluntarily left before security yanked him out. Biden did not seem thrown off by the interruption as he carried on speaking. But the episode was a reminder that his approval rating has never quite recovered from the chaos in Kabul.Joe Biden rarely discusses his age, but did so directly as he closed his State of the Union address.“I’ve been told I’m too old,” he said, continuing:
      Whether young or old … I’ve always known what endures. I’ve known our north star, the very idea of Americans, that we’re all created equal, deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea. We’ve never walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.
      “I know it may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” said the 81-year-old president, the oldest to ever hold the job.“You get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever,” Biden continued. “I know the American story. Again and again, I’ve seen the contrast between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation, between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.”Biden appears to be wrapping up, in high spirits.“Let me close with this,” he said, to sardonic applause.“I know you don’t want to hear any more, Lindsey. But I gotta say a few more things,” Biden said. He was presumably talking to South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham.As Joe Biden discussed the war in Gaza, two progressive House Democrats sitting in the audience staged a minor protest.Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush remained sitting and held up signs that read: “Lasting ceasefire now.” More

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      State of the Union guest list shows reproductive rights in spotlight after Alabama IVF bill signed into law – live

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      Becerra’s comments come ahead of Joe Biden addressing the nation in the State of the Union on Thursday night. Although the White House has not released the speech, a large number of Democratic guests suggest reproductive rights may feature heavily.Among the guests of high-ranking Democrats are Elizabeth Carr, the first person in the US to be born via IVF; Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who nearly died of septic shock when she was denied a medically necessary abortion; and Kate Cox, who had to flee Texas for an abortion after she learned her fetus had a fatal chromosomal condition.More guests include reproductive endocrinologists, an Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim, and leaders of reproductive rights groups.Becerra’s comments emphasizing the importance of reproductive rights, Democrats’ guest list for the State of the Union and a recent administration officials’ trips to states with abortion restrictions are the most recent evidence of Democrat’s election bet: that when Republicans married the motivated minority of voters who support the anti-abortion movement, they also divorced themselves from the broader American public, broad margins of whom support IVF, contraception and legal abortion.My colleague Chris Stein will be covering Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this evening on our dedicated live blog. In the meantime, here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      LaTorya Beasley, an Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children, and Kate Cox, the Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for an abortion, are among those set to attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.
      Joe Biden will announce in the State of the Union speech that US forces will build a temporary port on the Gaza shoreline in the next few weeks to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale.
      Biden welcomed Sweden into Nato in a statement after the country officially became the 32nd member of the western military alliance. The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, will be attending the State of the Union address tonight.
      Katie Boyd Britt, a first-term 42-year-old Republican senator from Alabama, will deliver the GOP’s official response to Biden’s State of the Union address tonight – a move likely designed to highlight the big age gap between the two.
      Byron Donalds, a Republican Florida congressman being floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump, suggested he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he was vice president.
      No Labels, the third-party presidential movement, will reportedly to announce on Friday that it will move forward with a presidential bid in the November election.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign described a new ad from a pro-Trump Super Pac questioning whether Biden can “even survive til 2029” as “a sick and deranged stunt”.
      Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is running for Senate, has said he would not vote for Donald Trump in the November election.
      Daniel Rodimer, a former pro wrestler who won a prominent endorsement from Donald Trump while unsuccessfully running for Congress in Nevada, surrendered to authorities on Wednesday on an arrest warrant for murder.
      Republican Florida congressman Byron Donalds became the latest vice-presidential contender to refuse to commit to certifying election results.Donalds, at an Axios event, suggested he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he was vice president. He also did not clarify if he would have certified the 2020 election results.Donalds is one of the names being floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump. When asked if he would certify the 2028 results as vice president, he replied:
      If you have state officials who are violating the election law in their states … then no, I would not.
      Asked if he agreed with former vice-president Mike Pence’s move to certify the results, Donalds said: “You can only ask that question of Mike Pence.”Republicans have chosen Katie Boyd Britt, a first-term senator from Alabama, to deliver the party’s official response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight – a move likely designed to highlight the big age gap between the two.Britt, 42, is one of nine women in the Senate Republican conference and the youngest female Republican elected to the Senate.In a statement announcing her speech, she said it was time for the next generation of American politicians “to step up”. She added:
      The Republican Party is the party of hardworking parents and families, and I’m looking forward to putting this critical perspective front and center.
      Senate Republicans say she will offer a split screen of sorts when she delivers the party’s rebuttal to the State of the Union address by Biden, 81.“She’s young, female and full of energy – opposite of everything Joe Biden is,” senator Markwayne Mullin told the Hill. “The contrast between the two, it’s so different.”The third-party presidential movement No Labels is expected to announce it will move forward with a presidential bid in the November election, according to multiple reports.About 800 No Labels delegates are expected to meet virtually in a private meeting and vote on Friday in favor of launching a presidential campaign for this fall’s election, sources told AP and Reuters.The group will not name its presidential and vice presidential picks on Friday, but instead it is expected to roll out a formal selection process late next week for potential candidates who would be selected in the coming weeks, the people said.The House passed a bill that would require federal authorities to detain any migrant charged with theft or burglary, named after a Georgia nursing student police have said was killed by a man who entered the US illegally.The measure, called the Laken Riley Act, requires immigrations and customs enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants accused by local authorities of theft, burglary, larceny or shoplifting.The bill would also allow states and individuals to sue the federal government for crimes committed by immigrants who enter the country illegally.The bill was named after 22-year-old Laken Riley, who was killed on the campus of the University of Georgia while on a morning run last month. Riley’s death has become a rallying point for Donald Trump, after authorities arrested a Venezuelan man who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.The House approved the legislation hours before Joe Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address. Republicans have seized on Riley’s death to hammer the Biden administration’s border policies.“Republicans will not stand for the release of dangerous criminals into our communities, and that’s exactly what the Biden administration has done,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News.
      Laken is just one of the tragic examples of innocent American citizens who have lost their lives, been brutally and violently attacked by illegal criminals who are roaming our streets.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has responded to a new ad from a pro-Trump Super Pac questioning Biden’s ability to serve a second term in a new TV ad and whether the president can “even survive til 2029.”The ad, by Make America Great Again Inc, shows a clip from Biden’s press conference after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.During the briefing, Biden spoke about comments by Donald Trump about letting Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato allies. Pausing for dramatic effect, Biden then says he should clear his mind “and not say what I’m really thinking.”In the Maga Inc ad, a narrator says: “We can all see Joe Biden’s weakness. If Biden wins, can he even survive to 2029. The real question is, can we?”Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told NBC News that the ad is “a sick and deranged stunt from a broke and struggling campaign”, adding:
      Trump tried this strategy four years ago and got his ass kicked by Joe Biden – he should tune in tonight alongside tens of millions of Americans to see why President Biden will beat him again this November.
      A former congressional candidate backed by Donald Trump has been arrested for murder. The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:A former pro wrestler who won a prominent endorsement from Donald Trump while unsuccessfully running for Congress in Nevada surrendered to authorities on Wednesday on an arrest warrant for murder.Daniel Rodimer, 45, was booked in connection with the slaying of 47-year-old Christopher Tapp, who was reportedly beaten to death in Resorts World Las Vegas on 29 October.Rodimer met Tapp – who was once charged with murder himself – “through the classic car and racing circuit”, according to the local television news station KLAS, which reviewed police documents.Investigators allege that Rodimer fatally attacked Tapp after he offered Rodimer’s stepdaughter cocaine during a hotel room party.Initially, authorities believed Tapp’s death stemmed from a drug overdose and a fall, after an autopsy found evidence of blunt trauma and cocaine use. But detectives later determined Tapp had been in a fight inside the hotel room where he was found injured. He died later at a hospital.For the full story, click here:Here is a video of Maryland’s former Republican governor Larry Hogan – who we reported about earlier – saying that he will not vote for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump:Hogan, who recently stepped down from his third-party movement No Labels, said: “I think we’ll hopefully have some ability to vote for someone that these people actually want to vote for rather than just voting against.”In a tweet on Thursday, Joe Biden urged Americans to tune into his State of the Union address in which he plans to address “how far we’ve come in building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up …”He went on to add that he plans to address “the work we have left to lower costs and protect our freedoms against MAGA attacks”.An Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children will attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.LaTorya Beasley of Birmingham, Alabama, is among the first lady’s 20 invited guests who “personify issues or themes to be addressed by the president in his speech,” the White House said in a statement.Beasley and her husband had their first child, via IVF, in 2022. They were trying to have another child through IVF but Beasley’s embryo transfer was suddenly canceled because of the Alabama court decision.Also on the guest list is Kate Cox, the Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for an abortion. The White House said the cases of Beasley and Cox, showed “how the overturning of Roe v Wade has disrupted access to reproductive healthcare for women and families across the country”. In a statement, the White House said:
      Stories like Kate’s and LaTorya’s should never happen in America. But Republican elected officials want to impose this reality on women nationwide.
      Joe Biden has welcomed Sweden into Nato in a statement after the country officially became the 32nd member of the western military alliance.Stockholm’s ratification process was finally completed in Washington on Thursday, as Sweden and Hungary – the last country to ratify Sweden’s membership – submitted the necessary documents after a drawn-out process that has taken nearly two years.The ratification marked the end of a 20-month-long wait that started in May 2022 when it submitted its application to join alongside Finland, prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February that year.In a statement, Biden said he was “honored” to welcome Sweden as Nato’s newest ally, and that the alliance was “stronger than ever” with its addition. He added:
      Today, we once more reaffirm that our shared democratic values – and our willingness to stand up for them – is what makes Nato the greatest military alliance in the history of the world. It is what draws nations to our cause. It is what underpins our unity. And together with our newest Ally Sweden – NATO will continue to stand for freedom and democracy for generations to come.
      The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, will be attending Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as a guest of the first lady, the White House has confirmed.Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is running for Senate, has said he would not vote for Donald Trump in the November election.Hogan, at an Axios event, said he will vote for neither Trump nor Joe Biden and would instead seek out a third-party candidate. He said:
      I’m like 70% of the rest of people in America who do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president, and I’m hoping that there potentially is another alternative.
      He added that he didn’t know yet who that candidate will be. Hogan, one of the most outspoken and only Trump critics in the Republican party, last year said he would support the party’s nominee for president, but at the time said he did not think Trump would be that candidate.Joe Biden will announce in the State of the Union speech that US forces will build a temporary port on the Gaza shoreline in the next few weeks to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale.“We are not waiting on the Israelis. This is a moment for American leadership,” a senior US official said on Thursday, reflecting growing frustration of what is seen in Washington as Israeli obstruction of road deliveries on a substantial scale.The port will be built by US military engineers operating from ships off the Gaza coast, who will not need to step ashore, US officials said. The aid deliveries will be shipped from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, which will become the main relief hub. The official said:
      Tonight, the president will announce in his State of the Union address that he has directed the US military to undertake an emergency mission to establish a port in Gaza, working in partnership with like minded countries and humanitarian partners. This port, the main feature of which is a temporary pier, will provide the capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of assistance each day.
      Biden will also announce the opening of a new land crossing into the occupied and devastated coastal strip. Biden has been fiercely criticised within his own party for the failure to open up Gaza to humanitarian aid, with a famine looming and 30,000 Palestinians dead already since the start of war on 7 October.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight will highlight Democratic successes and show the chaos in the House Republican party in stark relief.During his floor remarks reported by CNN, Schumer said Biden will make it clear that “after so much adversity, America’s economy is growing, inflation is slowing, and Democrats’ agenda is delivering.” He said:
      The difference between the parties will be as clear as night and day. Democrats are focused on lowering costs, creating jobs, putting money in people’s pockets. But the hard right, which too often runs the Republican party in the House and now increasingly in the Senate, is consumed by chaos, bullying, and attacking things like women’s freedom of choice.
      Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner for president, Donald Trump, has “made it abundantly clear that he’s not running to make people’s lives better, but rather on airing his personal political grievances,” Schumer added.Joe Biden will deliver the final State of the Union address of his presidential term this evening, giving him an opportunity to tout his accomplishments and pitch his re-election campaign as he prepares for a rematch against Donald Trump in November.Previewing Biden’s State of the Union speech, his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said his remarks would focus on the president’s vision for the nation’s future and his legislative accomplishments.“You’re going to hear the president address how democracy is under attack, how freedoms are certainly under attack,” including women’s reproductive rights and voting rights, Jean-Pierre told MSNBC.Biden’s speech will also highlight his agenda for a potential second term, the White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told NPR. Those include “lowering costs, continuing to make people’s lives better by investing in childcare, eldercare, paid family and medical leave, continued progress on student debt”, he said, adding:
      The president is also going to call for restoring Roe v. Wade and giving women freedom over their healthcare. And he’ll talk about protecting, not taking away, freedoms in other areas, as well as voting rights.
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, reportedly pleaded with his party to show “decorum” on Thursday, when Joe Biden comes to the chamber to deliver his State of the Union address.“Decorum is the order of the day,” Johnson said, according to an unnamed Republican who attended a closed-door event on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and was quoted by the Hill.The same site said another unnamed member of Congress said Johnson asked his party to “carry ourselves with good decorum”. A third Republican was quoted as saying:
      He said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum. We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations.
      Last year’s State of the Union saw outbursts from Republicans and responses from Biden that made headlines, most awarding the president the win. Kevin McCarthy, then speaker, also asked his Republican members not to breach decorum. But in a sign of his limited authority, months before he became the first speaker ejected by his own party, such pleas fell on deaf ears. More

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      in US Politics

      Who is Katie Britt? Alabama senator to deliver rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union

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      Republicans have chosen first-term Alabama senator Katie Britt, the youngest Republican woman ever to serve in the Senate, to deliver the rebuttal to the State of the Union address tonight.At 42, Britt is also the third-youngest senator serving today, presenting a counterpoint to the oldest sitting president.Her rebuttal will come on the heels of a high-stakes political showdown over women’s access to in vitro fertilization in her home state.After Alabama’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos preserved for IVF “are children” under state law, Britt told reporters that “defending life and ensuring continued access to IVF services for loving parents are not mutually exclusive,” pushing for changes to state and federal law to protect the procedure.Alabama’s legislature subsequently wrote new legislation intended to do so, which Governor Kay Ivey signed into law on Wednesday.Britt was elected to the Senate in 2022. Her political fortunes can be attributed in part to her astute balancing act navigating relationships with Alabama’s business elite as a consummate political insider, while connecting herself to president Donald Trump and Trumpist populism as a candidate.She also got lucky. Her opponent in the race, Mo Brooks, had Trump’s endorsement to succeed the retiring senator Richard Shelby, but squandered an early polling lead. Trump withdrew his endorsement mid-race, and the business-backed Britt swept into place.Britt has two school-age children with her husband, former San Diego Chargers offensive tackle Wesley Britt.Her political resume began in high school, when she was elected in 1999 by the delegates of Alabama Girls State program to be their governor . The high school valedictorian graduated from the University of Alabama as student body president in 2004. After a stint serving as former Shelby’s communications chief, she earned a law degree there in 2013. More

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      US health secretary on Alabama’s IVF ruling: ‘Pandora’s box was opened’ after fall of Roe

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      The health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, said the US must provide federal protections for reproductive rights if Americans hope to avoid further restrictions on in vitro fertilization, contraception and abortion in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.Becerra’s comments come in the wake of an Alabama supreme court decision that gave embryos the rights of “extrauterine children” and forced three of the state’s largest fertility clinics to stop services for fear of litigation and prosecution. The fallout from the decision prompted the Alabama legislature to hastily sign new legislation that will give IVF providers with immunity from civil and criminal suits, which the governor signed into law on Wednesday night.He said the events in Alabama were linked directly to the “take-down” of Roe v Wade, a decision that provided a constitutional right to abortion grounded in privacy and was overturned by conservative US supreme court justices in 2022.“It wasn’t until this new court came in” – that is, that three new supreme court justices were confirmed by former President Trump – “that we saw the attacks on Roe v Wade take hold, and today without Roe v Wade there are women who are trying to have babies in Alabama who are facing the consequences,” said Becerra.He continued: “None of this would be happening in Alabama on IVF if Roe v Wade was still the law of the land, and no one should try to deny that.”Becerra’s comments come ahead of Joe Biden addressing the nation in the State of the Union on Thursday night. Although the White House has not released the speech, a large number of Democratic guests suggest reproductive rights may feature heavily.Among the guests of high-ranking Democrats are Elizabeth Carr, the first person in the US to be born via IVF; Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who nearly died of septic shock when she was denied a medically necessary abortion; and Kate Cox, who had to flee Texas for an abortion after she learned her fetus had a fatal chromosomal condition.View image in fullscreenAlso, sitting alongside First Lady Jill Biden as a guest of the president will be Latorya Beasley, from Birmingham, Alabama.She and her husband had their first child, via IVF, in 2022. They were trying to have another child through IVF but Beasley’s embryo transfer was suddenly canceled because of the Alabama court decision.Beasley’s “recent experience is yet another example of how the overturning of Roe v Wade has disrupted access to reproductive health care for women and families across the country,” the White House said on Thursday.More guests include reproductive endocrinologists, an Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim, and leaders of reproductive rights groups.Becerra’s comments emphasizing the importance of reproductive rights, Democrats’ guest list for the State of the Union and a recent administration officials’ trips to states with abortion restrictions are the most recent evidence of Democrat’s election bet: that when Republicans married the motivated minority of voters who support the anti-abortion movement, they also divorced themselves from the broader American public, broad margins of whom support IVF, contraception and legal abortion.“As a result of the fall of Roe v Wade – or actually the take-down of Roe v Wade – my daughters have fewer rights in America than their mom did,” said Becerra. “And that happens only when you have a supreme court that acts to overturn a constitutional protection.”While Becerra said his agency would continue to enforce federal laws in Alabama, including laws that provide medical patients a right to privacy and the right to stabilizing emergency care, including emergency abortions, it is ultimately the courts in and politicians of Alabama who need to fix the upheaval their policies caused.“The supreme court in Alabama is the one that has to undo its wrongful decision,” said Becerra. “The state legislature in Alabama should move to provide protections to families that rely on IVF – and serious comprehensive protections, not short-term, piecemeal protections that threaten anyone going through the process or any provider who wishes to provide quality IVF services.”Although Alabama politicians have passed a bill to give IVF providers immunity from civil and criminal suits, national associations of fertility doctors have said the law does not go far enough to address the core problem – the supreme court “conflating fertilized eggs with children”.“Clearly, this goes way beyond abortion,” said Becerra. “It would not surprise me if we also begin to see actions which undermine the ability of women to get basic family planning services,” including contraception.While doctors and patients have reacted with astonishment, anger and sorrow at the Alabama supreme court’s decision, the anti-abortion movement has cheered the decision. “Fetal personhood” has long been the ultimate aim of the movement.For years, Republicans have abetted this aim. As recently as 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”. This week, Kentucky Republicans advanced a bill to allow people to claim fetuses as dependents on their taxes.They have also blocked federal legislation to protect IVF – twice. In late February, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois introduced an IVF protection bill. Most recently, its expedited passage was blocked by Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi (a state which, like Alabama, has a near-total abortion ban).Nevertheless, the Alabama decision has been palpably uncomfortable for many members of the party. Former president Donald Trump has said he supports IVF, and views anti-abortion policies as a threat to his campaign. Republicans such as Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Joni Ernst of Iowa have issued awkward, noncommittal statements about the decision. Ernst supported federal fetal personhood statutes in the past.“When Roe v Wade was struck down by the Dobbs decision the Pandora’s box was opened,” said Becerra. “Now, we see the consequences and how far the loss the protections of Roe go beyond abortion.” More

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      Alabama Lawmakers Pass Bill to Protect I.V.F. Treatments

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      Some doctors said the measure would allow them to resume treatments quickly, though legal experts cautioned that state constitutional challenges may still arise.Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday passed legislation to shield in vitro fertilization providers from civil and criminal liability, capping off their scramble to allow the fertility treatment after a State Supreme Court ruling found that frozen embryos should be considered children.But it was unclear whether the protections would be enough for the state’s major fertility clinics to restart treatments. Doctors at one clinic said they were ready to begin again as early as the end of the week, while another clinic said it was not assured about the scope of protections and would wait for “legal clarification.”As the measure headed to Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, for her signature, lawmakers and legal experts acknowledged that it did not address existential questions raised by the court about the definition of personhood, leaving open the prospect of legal challenges in the future. The overwhelming vote of support — 81 to 12 with nine abstentions in the House and 29 to 1 in the Senate — came barely two weeks after the ruling. It demonstrated the intense urgency among Republicans to protect I.V.F. treatments, even if that meant sidestepping the thorny contradictions between their pledge to protect unborn life and fertility treatment practices.“It’s happy tears, it’s a sigh of relief just because we know we are protected,” said Stormie Miller, a Hoover, Ala., mother who had twin girls through I.V.F. and has two remaining frozen embryos. Talking about the future of those embryos, she added, “We’re able to make that decision for ourselves and not have someone make that decision for us.”Reproductive medicine in the state was thrown into turmoil by the court ruling, which applied to a group of families who filed a wrongful-death claim over the accidental destruction of their embryos at a clinic in Mobile in 2020. But the court’s interpretation of Alabama statute that frozen embryos should be considered children — coupled with an impassioned, theology-driven opinion from the chief justice — sowed fear about civil and criminal liability among doctors and clinics, and raised concern about the ramifications of other states taking a similar stance.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