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      John Fetterman, Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate, suffers stroke

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      John Fetterman, Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate, suffers strokeLieutenant governor and frontrunner in Democratic primary says he’s recovering and insists ‘campaign isn’t slowing down one bit’ John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and frontrunner in the state’s Democratic US Senate primary, suffered a stroke Friday, and is recovering, he said in a statement.“On Friday, I wasn’t feeling well, so I went to the hospital to get checked out. I didn’t want to go – I didn’t think I had to – but Gisele insisted, and as usual, she was right,” Fetterman said in a statement posted to Twitter, referring to his wife. “I hadn’t been feeling well, but was so focused on the campaign that I ignored the signs and just kept going.”“On Friday it finally caught up with me. I had a stroke that was caused by a clot from my heart being in an A-fib rhythm for too long,” the statement continued.“The good news is I’m feeling much better, and the doctors tell me I didn’t suffer any cognitive damage. I’m well on my way to a full recovery,” Fetterman said.The doctors are keeping Fetterman in hospital for observation, he said in the statement, but “I should be out of here sometime soon.”“The doctors have assured me that I’ll be able to get back on the trail, but first I need to take a minute, get some rest, and recover,” he also said. “There’s so much at stake in this race, and I’m going to be ready for the hard fight ahead.”Fetterman insisted “our campaign isn’t slowing down one bit, and we are still on track to win this primary on Tuesday.”Fetterman also posted a video from hospital where he is recovering.TopicsPennsylvaniaUS politicsDemocratsStrokenewsReuse this content More

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      The Democratic party needs new, younger leadership before it’s too late | Cas Mudde

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      The Democratic party needs new, younger leadership before it’s too late Cas MuddeThe party’s leaders came of age in a distant era and haven’t grasped that today’s Republican party belongs to the extreme right The population of the United States is much younger than that of most European countries, but its political establishment is much older. The 2020 presidential election was fought between 74-year-old Donald Trump and 77-year-old Joe Biden – compare that to 53-year-old Marine Le Pen and 44-year-old Emmanuel Macron in last month’s French presidential election. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, is 71, while minority leader Mitch McConnell is 80. In the generally younger House of Representatives, the majority leader, Nancy Pelosi, is 82, making minority leader Kevin McCarthy look like a spring chicken at a mere 57. This is not just a problem for the functioning of the democratic system; it endangers the survival of it.While the majority of political leaders in the US are over 65, only a small minority of the population – 16.9% – is. This is a serious problem for the representativeness of the political system. Not only are previous generations much less diverse in terms of ethnicity and race, they have very different ideological and partisan profiles. Obviously, there is nothing new to this “rule by the elderly”, but it is increasingly threatening not just satisfaction with the democratic system but the system itself.Although political socialization is a lifelong process, the “impressionable or formative years” are between childhood and adulthood. Similarly, professionally, we are often heavily shaped by the early years of our careers, only partly updating our views later. For the Democratic leaders, this means that they were politically socialized in the 1960s and their professional socialization was in the 1980s – for Biden it even started in the 1970s. All have served in Congress for at least 35 years, starting when Ronald Reagan was president – in Biden’s case it was Richard Nixon – presidents, and Republicans, that most voters know only from the history books.In itself, this huge age gap between elites and masses does not have to create a problem of representation. Politicians like Bernie Sanders (80) and Jeremy Corbyn (72) have become the political heroes of a new generation of voters in recent years. And in terms of political priorities and values even Biden and Pelosi might be relatively close to the people they represent. The real problem is in their dated understanding of politics and the contemporary Republican party, and its political leadership, which has gotten stuck in the 1980s.For instance, President Biden regularly reminisces about the days when he could have lunch with segregationists, when he and politicians he disagreed with could still “respect” each other. (Incidentally, the segregationists were in his own party at that time.) And Pelosi recently said, “I want the Republican party to take back the party to where you were when you cared about a woman’s right to choose, you cared about the environment.” Now, I only moved to this country in 2008, but I am almost 55 and have been following US politics for quite a while, and I cannot remember that Republican party.What Biden and Pelosi still cannot come to grips with, is that the Republican party is a far-right party, increasingly closer to the extreme right than the radical right. A recent poll showed that nearly half of all Republicans agree with the so-called great replacement theory, a racist conspiracy theory mainly propagated by the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, but with a decades-long past in far-right Europe. And while the theory might be new (to the US), the racist sentiments are not. Scholars like Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto showed a decade ago that the Tea Party mobilization was fueled by racial resentment and, as Rachel Blum more recently showed, the Tea Party has since captured the GOP (thereby enabling Trump’s takeover and further radicalization).Like many other older members of the liberal media and political establishment, Biden and Pelosi seem to think that media figures like Carlson and politicians like Ted Cruz do not really mean what they say and simply try to mobilize a crowd with their endorsement of Trump’s stolen election lie, their whitewashing of the storming of the Capitol, or their racist conspiracy theories about a “great replacement”. Leaving aside whether that actually matters, and whether it is morally less reprehensible or politically less dangerous – I actually think it is both more reprehensible and dangerous – it is politically irrelevant. The genie is out of the bottle!Not only are Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy not in control of the Republican party, even Donald Trump is not. When he spoke out in support of Covid-19 vaccines, for example, few if any of “his” base changed their position. And people like Cruz and Josh Hawley have always run after the radicalized base, rather than led it. The point is, even if there were still people left in the Republican party with the courage and conviction to “take back” the party, they lack the power to do so. In fact, it hasn’t been “their” party for decades now.It is high time that both Democrats and Democrats understand this. It is high time that Democratic leaders as well as liberal journalists stop listening to Republican politicians who say in private that they disagree with Trump, the insurrection, or “stop the steal”. They don’t matter! What the Democratic party is facing, as the rest of the country, is a political party that openly undermines the democratic system in word and deed. That is the only Republican party that exists, at least for now. And if they don’t act very quickly, that party will have full control of all major institutions of the country: the presidency, Senate, House and supreme court. To prevent this, we need leaders who live in the here and now, not in some (imagined) past.
      Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia
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      Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rights

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      Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rightsFinal tally was 49-51, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin, voting against the measure The US Senate on Wednesday failed to advance legislation that would codify the right to an abortion into federal law, after it was blocked by Republicans.It was a largely symbolic vote by Democrats to mobilize Americans around the issue ahead of a likely supreme court decision striking down the protections enshrined by Roe v Wade. Pro-choice states rush to pledge legal shield for out-of-state abortionsRead moreThe Senate roll call was a stark reflection of the partisan divide over abortion rights, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of Virginia, voting against the measure. The final tally was 49-51, well short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of color to serve as vice-president, presided over the vote.“Sadly the Senate failed to stand in defense of a women’s right to make decisions about her own body,” Harris told reporters, after stepping off the dais. Pointing to the onslaught of laws restricting abortion access in Republican-led states, she said “the priority should be to elect pro-choice leaders at the local, the state and the federal level”.Democrats moved quickly to hold the doomed vote after a leak last week of a draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito in February and confirmed as authentic, indicated that the court’s conservative majority had privately voted to strike down Roe and subsequent rulings. The extraordinary disclosure ignited protests around the country, pushing reproductive rights to the center of the political debate six months before the congressional midterms. A final ruling from the court is expected this summer.Ahead of the vote, a group of House Democratic women marched across the Capitol to protest against the end of Roe, chanting: “My body, my decision.”Democrats, under intensifying pressure to act, saw a political opportunity in forcing Republicans to vote against a bill protecting abortion at a moment when the threat to access is urgent and polls show a majority of Americans want the procedure to remain legal in all or some cases.They hope to use the Republican blockade as a data point in their midterm message to voters: that the GOP has become a party of “ultra-Maga” extremists, on the cusp of fulfilling a decades-long goal to strip women of their reproductive rights.It is an issue Democrats hope will energize young voters disenchanted by the Biden administration and persuade Republican-leaning suburban women to back them again this cycle.“If we do not take a stand now to protect a woman’s right to choose, then mark my words, it will be open season, open season on our God-given freedoms,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. He called “one of the most consequential we will take in decades”.If passed, the bill would have codified Roe v Wade into federal law, ensuring the right of healthcare providers to perform abortions and the right of patients to receive them. But it would also go further, in some cases invalidating state-level restrictions on abortion access enacted after the Roe decision in 1973.As such, Republicans cast the bill as a “radical” attempt to expand reproductive rights that goes far beyond Roe and would legalize “abortion on demand”.“We will stand with the American people, stand with innocent life, and block the Democrats’ extreme bill,” the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Wednesday.Republicans are betting the economy will take precedence over abortion this November. Polling shows Republicans are well positioned to make significant gains in the midterm elections, buoyed by historical headwinds, discontent with the party in power and widespread concern over the rising cost of gas, food and rent.But there are signs that Republicans do worry about a potential political backlash if Roe is overturned and states move swiftly to outlaw abortion, as many are preparing to do.A day ahead of the vote, McConnell sought to tamp down conservative calls for a nationwide ban on abortion if they take control of the chamber in November, telling reporters: “Historically, there have been abortion votes on the floor of the Senate. None of them have achieved 60 votes.”The two Senate Republicans who support abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, opposed the bill, instead urging support for an alternative measure that they say is tailored to reflect the landscape of abortion rights. But many Democrats see their proposal, which is not expected to receive a vote, as too weak.“Unlike some far-left activists, Senator Murkowski and I want the law today to be the law tomorrow,” Collins said on Wednesday, objecting to the lack of protections for religious exemptions in the Democrats’ bill.0In a dramatic shift, one of the only other Democrats in Congress with conservative views on abortion rights, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, said he would support the measure and voted in favor of advancing it. In a statement citing the leaked supreme court ruling, Casey said the “circumstances around the entire debate on abortion” had changed since the last time the Senate voted on the measure.Without a clear legislative path forward, Democrats are turning to the fall elections, urging Americans to elect them as the “last lines of defense” against the end of Roe.Abortion is also likely to be a major issue in races for governor and state offices, as the battle lines shift to the states.The show vote on Wednesday only intensified calls from progressives and abortion rights groups for Democrats to eliminate the filibuster. The long-simmering debate has divided the party, which does not have enough votes to end the rule. It has also energized efforts to reform the supreme court, including controversial proposals such as expanding the number of justices on the bench or imposing term limits.TopicsUS SenateAbortionRoe v WadeUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Supreme court overturning Roe allows 'open season' on American freedoms, warns Schumer – video

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      The supreme court overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that protects women’s rights to abortion in the US would create an open season on Americans’ freedoms, majority leader Chuck Schumer has said.
      Schumer was speaking before a vote in which the US Senate rejected legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law 51-49.
      On 2 May, a draft decision by the United States supreme court to overturn Roe was published by Politico, which has been verified as genuine by the justices but it ‘does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.’

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      Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rights 49-51 – as it happened

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      Senators have voted 51-49 to reject Democrat-sponsored legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law.The defeat of the Women’s Health Protection Act, introduced after a leaked supreme court draft ruling last week jeopardized almost half a century of constitutional abortion protections, was expected.The West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin announced this morning he would join Republicans in voting against the measure, leaving it no chance of achieving a majority. The backing of at least 60 senators would have been needed for it to pass. But Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer insisted on pressing ahead with the doomed vote in order to put Republican senators on record.Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of voters don’t want to see the supreme court overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that protected abortion rights, and Democrats see the issue as a vote-winner ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections. In comments before the symbolic vote, Schumer said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Every American will see how they voted. And I believe the Republican party, the Maga Republican party, will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.We’re ending the live US politics blog now, but look out shortly for the Guardian’s full coverage of Wednesday’s historic vote in which Democrats’ efforts to enshrine abortion rights into federal law fell well short in the US Senate.The day was dominated by the vote on the women’s health protection act, which Democrats knew was doomed to failure, but which they hope can now be used against Republicans who went on record to defeat the legislation.Here are the day’s highlights:
      Senators voted 51-49 to reject the women’s health protection act, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans.
      Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to abortion rights but promoting instead more restrictive legislation.
      Arizona ended an eight-year death penalty hiatus when it executed convicted murderer Clarence Dixon by lethal injection.
      A New York district judge said he would lift a civil contempt order against Donald Trump for failing to cooperate with a criminal investigation into his business activities if the former president paid $110,000 and met other obligations.
      Joe Biden hailed American farmers as the “backbone of freedom” during a speech in Illinois and announced measures to support the agriculture industry and reduce food prices.
      A judge in Florida struck down new congressional districts drawn by the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis, saying they made it harder for Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.
      A reminder you can follow developments in the Ukraine war in our live 24-hour news blog here.Democrats criticize Republican Senators after doomed vote on abortion After leaving the chamber, the vice president, Kamala Harris, told reporters that the Senate is “not where the majority of Americans are on this issue”. “This vote clearly suggests that the Senate is not where the majority of Americans are on this issue,” ⁦@VP⁩ Harris says after presiding over the failed vote on abortion rights. pic.twitter.com/BrEmO7yqvt— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) May 11, 2022
      A number of Senators from the Democrats also quickly reacted after the expected failure to advance their legislation to protect abortion.Ron Wyden, from Oregon, said the vote was a “punch in the gut” for those who “believe in liberty, privacy and equal rights. Now Americans know which side every Senator stands on.”Angus King, of Maine, said women across the country are worried the Supreme Court “may take away their basic right to make decisions about their own body,” adding “we cannot move backwards”. Senators have voted 51-49 to reject Democrat-sponsored legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law.The defeat of the Women’s Health Protection Act, introduced after a leaked supreme court draft ruling last week jeopardized almost half a century of constitutional abortion protections, was expected.The West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin announced this morning he would join Republicans in voting against the measure, leaving it no chance of achieving a majority. The backing of at least 60 senators would have been needed for it to pass. But Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer insisted on pressing ahead with the doomed vote in order to put Republican senators on record.Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of voters don’t want to see the supreme court overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that protected abortion rights, and Democrats see the issue as a vote-winner ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections. In comments before the symbolic vote, Schumer said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Every American will see how they voted. And I believe the Republican party, the Maga Republican party, will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.Vice-President Kamala Harris has called the vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act and senators have begun voting. 60 Senate votes are needed for it to pass. Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski has issued a statement insisting that “I strongly support women’s reproductive freedoms, including the right to abortion”.But she says she also “believes in limited government” and won’t be voting for the Women’s Health Protection Act in the imminent US Senate vote.Murkowski’s statement follows an earlier joint release with Maine Republican Susan Collins, in which they promoted their own reproductive rights act as an alternative.In her new statement, Murkowski says:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The legislation before the Senate today goes well beyond the precedent established in Roe and Casey. It does not include the Hyde amendment, which prohibits taxpayer dollars from being spent on abortions – and has been the law almost as long as Roe.
      It does not include conscience protections for healthcare providers that refuse to perform abortions based on religious beliefs. It explicitly overrides the religious freedom restoration act for the first time. It also allows late-term abortions without any notable restrictions.
      Instead of taking yet another failed vote on a wholly partisan measure, I urge Democrats and Republicans alike to recognize that what Senator Collins and I have offered is in line with the views of a strong majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose but believe that legal abortion should include reasonable limitations. The Senate is edging ever closer to the abortion rights vote. Members are currently finishing a vote on confirming Joe Biden’s pick Alvaro Bedoya to the federal trade commission, and will turn their attention to the Women’s Health Protection Act next, according to C-Span.Joe Biden has just wrapped up an address to agricultural workers in Kankakee, Illinois, in which he promised support for farmers and new measures to make food prices more affordable.The president hailed farmers as “the backbone of the country” and “the backbone of freedom” as he blamed soaring inflation and high prices on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}You feed America. You got us through a pandemic and you’re literally the backbone of our country. But you’re also feeding the world. And we’re seeing Putin’s war in Ukraine, you’re like the backbone of freedom.
      America’s fighting on two fronts. At home, inflation and rising prices. Abroad, it’s helping Ukrainians defend democracy, and feeding those who are left hungry around the world because Russian atrocities exist.
      American farmers understand Putin’s war has has has cut off critical sources of food.On Tuesday, at the White House, Biden insisted that tackling inflation was “my top priority”. Despite a small lift this morning with news that inflation had slowed for the first time since August, it remains at a near 40-year high and is likely to remain uppermost on voters’ minds as November’s midterm elections approach.Biden laid out measures he was taking to “lower costs on farmers”, including doubling an investment in fertilizer production to $500m, and looking at extending crop insurance protection “to give financial security to farmers”.By protecting farmers, Biden said, food prices could stabilize and fall.“Every little bit matters,” he said as he went back over previous initiatives to tackle high prices, including issuing a summer waiver for ethanol-rich fuel which he said would reduce gas prices.The AAA, however, was reporting on Wednesday a new record high national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline at $4.40. The White House released a fact sheet setting out Biden’s proposals to “make food more affordable, and lower costs for farmers”.Arizona ended an eight-year hiatus on executions Wednesday when it put to death a man convicted of killing a college student in 1978. The state halted the death penalty in 2014 following an execution critics say was botched, and difficulties in finding lethal injection drugs, Reuters reported.Clarence Dixon, 66, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction in the killing of 21-year-old Arizona state university student Deana Bowdoin, making him the sixth person to be executed in the US in 2022. Dixon’s death was announced late Wednesday morning by Frank Strada, a deputy director with Arizona department of corrections.Dixon’s death appeared to go smoothly, said Troy Hayden, an anchor for the Fox10 TV news program who witnessed the execution.“Once the drugs started flowing, he went to sleep almost immediately,” Hayden said.Dixon’s lawyers asked to postpone his execution, but judges rejected his argument that he wasn’t mentally fit to be executed and didn’t have a rational understanding of why the state wanted to execute him. The US supreme court rejected a last-minute delay of Dixon’s execution less than an hour before the execution began. In another Arizona death penalty case, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reported last week that Frank Atwood, convicted for murdering an eight-year-old girl, has two weeks to decide whether to be executed with cyanide gas, the poison known as Zyklon B used by the Nazis to murder millions of people in Auschwitz and other extermination camps, or lethal injection.Atwood’s execution is set for 8 June.Last month, the Texas court of criminal appeals issued a stay of execution for Melissa Lucio, a Mexican-American woman set to be judicially killed for the death of her two-year-old daughter Mariah. A state judge struck down new congressional districts in north Florida on Wednesday, saying that the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who drew the lines, made it harder for Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.“I am finding the enacted map is unconstitutional because it diminishes African Americans’ ability to elect candidates of their choice,” circuit judge Lane Smith said on Wednesday, according to the Tributary. Lawyers for the state of Florida are expected to immediately appeal the ruling, and the Florida supreme court shaped by DeSantis could ultimately decide the case.The decision dealt specifically with DeSantis’ decision to dismantle Florida’s fifth congressional district, which stretched from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, was 46% Black, and is currently represented by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat. DeSantis’ new district chopped the district up into four districts where Republican candidates would be favored to win.A coalition of civic action groups and Florida voters immediately challenged the map, saying that they violated a provision in Florida’s constitution that says new districts can’t “diminish” the ability of minority voters to elect the candidate of their choosing. Last month, plaintiffs asked the court to block the districts in northern Florida specifically from taking effect for the 2022 election. Smith ordered the state to adopt a map that maintained a 5th congressional district stretching from Jacksonville to Tallahasee, according to the Tributary.The Florida map is one of the most aggressively gerrymandered maps in the US. Republicans currently have a 16-11 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation, but DeSantis’ plan would add an additional four GOP-friendly seats, increasing that advantage to 20-8 (Florida is gaining an additional US House seat because of population growth). It’s an effort that’s seen as a critical part of Republican efforts to retake control of the US House in the midterm elections.In a separate court on Tuesday, DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential candidate, won the opening legal round of his fight with Disney over the state’s “don’t say gay” bill that bans classroom discussions of sexual preference and gender identity issues.Three central Florida taxpayers alleged state laws were broken when DeSantis signed a new law dissolving Disney’s self-governing status, which critics said was in retaliation for the company attacking the “don’t say gay” law.But district court judge Cecilia Altonaga threw out the lawsuit, partly because the plaintiffs aren’t personally harmed, the Orlando Sentinel reports.The supreme court’s upcoming decision to reverse Roe v Wade (an early draft of which was leaked last week) doesn’t ban abortions. It leaves the issue to the states. As a result, it will put another large brick in the growing wall separating blue and red America.The second American civil war is already occurring, but it is less of a war than a kind of benign separation analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.One America is largely urban, racially and ethnically diverse, and young. The other is largely rural or exurban, white and older.The split is accelerating. Red zip codes are getting redder and blue zip codes bluer. Of 3,143 counties, the number of super landslide counties – where a presidential candidate won at least 80% of the vote – jumped from 6% in 2004 to 22% in 2020.Surveys show Americans find it increasingly important to live around people who share their political values. Animosity toward those in the opposing party is higher than at any time in living memory. Forty-two per cent of registered voters believe Americans in the other party are “downright evil”.Almost 40% would be upset at the prospect of their child marrying someone from the opposite party. Even before the 2020 election, when asked if violence would be justified if the other party won the election, 18.3% of Democrats and 13.8% of Republicans responded in the affirmative.Increasingly, each America is running under different laws.The second American civil war is already happening | Robert ReichRead moreGood news, of a sort, for Donald Trump out of New York, where a judge has said the former president must pay the state attorney general $110,000 and meet other conditions to purge a contempt of court order, but also that the fine will not grow by $10,000 a day, as it had been doing.The New York attorney general, Letitia James, says her civil investigation of the Trump Organization has found evidence of fraudulent behaviour in tax filings. Trump says the investigation is a politically motivated witch hunt.The judge in the contempt case, Arthur Engoron, said the daily fine on Trump stopped accruing on Friday, when the former president filed affidavits about his search for requested information – and his inability to find four phones which investigators would like to look at. Engoron said the contempt order could be restored if certain conditions are not met.Here’s our report on Trump’s phones, from yesterday:Trump tells court he lost phones linked to alleged fraud by his companyRead more More

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      Mitch McConnell says Senate Republicans couldn’t pass abortion ban

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      Mitch McConnell says Senate Republicans couldn’t pass abortion banRepublican leader says ‘I think it’s safe to say there aren’t 60 votes’ to pass ban should Republicans take control in midterm elections A day before Democrats staged a vote in the Senate to codify into law the right to abortion, a right under threat from the supreme court, the Republican leader in the chamber said his party would not be able to pass an abortion ban should it take control in midterm elections in November. Pro-choice states rush to pledge legal shield for out-of-state abortionsRead more“Historically, there have been abortion votes on the floor of the Senate. None of them have achieved 60 votes,” Mitch McConnell told reporters.“I think it’s safe to say there aren’t 60 votes there at the federal level, no matter who happens to be in the majority, no matter who happens to be in the White House.”The chamber is split 50-50 and therefore controlled by the tie-breaking vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Democrats and progressives have urged the party to seek to scrap the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes for most legislation.Such reform seems unlikely. With key Democrats opposed, Punchbowl News, a Washington outlet, reported on Wednesday that the issue was not even discussed at a party Senate lunch the day before.When Donald Trump was in power McConnell, too, came under pressure to scrap the filibuster to advance the Republican agenda.On Tuesday, the Kentucky senator told reporters there were “no issues that Republicans believe should be exempt from the 60-vote threshold”.The measure before the Senate on Wednesday – for which the Democrats do not even have 50 votes, with opposition from some in their own party as well as pro-choice Republicans – is the Women’s Health Protection Act. It would codify Roe v Wade, the 1973 supreme court decision that protects the right to abortion.Roe has been under imminent threat since last week, when a draft supreme court ruling overturning it, reportedly supported by five conservative justices, was leaked.On Wednesday, Politico, which published the leak, said the draft ruling by Samuel Alito was still the only one in circulation, with publication expected in June.The Democratic Senate vote is a response to protests that have spread since the draft ruling was published. Many Republican-run states have trigger laws ready to ban abortion at various stages should Roe fall.McConnell said: “If the leaked opinion became the final opinion, legislative bodies – not only at the state level but at the federal level – certainly could legislate in that area.”Total abortion bans would be possible, he said.Polling shows consistent majority support for abortion rights but Republicans say they doubt the issue will damage them at the midterms in November.Divided States of America: Roe v Wade is ‘precursor to larger struggles’Read moreMcConnell’s deputy, John Thune of South Dakota, told the Hill: “Our members are going to continue to hammer away on inflation, the economy, the border, crime.”Democrats hope the vote on Wednesday will prove politically useful.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, told reporters: “Every senator will have to vote, and every, every American will see how they voted. And I believe the Republican party … will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.”Jackie Rosen, of Nevada, said: “We have to take that fear, we have to take that anger that we’re feeling, channel it into action to defend our majority. You have to elect more pro-choice senators. We’re not living in a hypothetical.”TopicsUS SenateAbortionDemocratsUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden calls inflation his ‘top domestic priority’ but blames Covid and Putin – live

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      US politics liveUS politicsJoe Biden calls inflation his ‘top domestic priority’ but blames Covid and Putin – livePresident says he understands American’s frustration with Democrats, who control all three branches of government: ‘I don’t blame them’
      US immigration agency operates vast surveillance dragnet, study finds
      Divided States of America: Roe v Wade is ‘precursor to larger struggles’
      Sign up to receive First Thing – our daily briefing by emailLIVE Updated 48m agoLauren Gambino in WashingtonTue 10 May 2022 17.05 EDTFirst published on Tue 10 May 2022 09.15 EDT0Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events onlyFrom More

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      Gillibrand calls abortion rights ‘fight of generation’ after ‘bone-chilling’ court draft opinion

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      Gillibrand calls abortion rights ‘fight of generation’ after ‘bone-chilling’ court draft opinionNew York Democrat urges her party to stand up to concerted efforts from Republicans seeking to abolish constitutional right Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on Sunday called the battle over abortion rights in the US the “biggest fight of a generation”.The New York Democrat urged her party to stand up to Republicans seeking to abolish the constitutional right, and called the draft US supreme court opinion leaked last week, revealing a conservative-leaning super-majority supports overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, “bone-chilling”.She told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday politics talk show: “This is the biggest fight of a generation … and if America’s women and the men who love them do not fight right now, we will lose the basic right to make decisions, to have bodily autonomy and to decide what our futures look like.”Mississippi Republican governor Tate Reeves praised the draft ruling, which emerged last Monday evening and immediately sparked protests outside the supreme court in Washington DC, with more the next day and huge demonstrations planned across the US.His state has the pivotal case currently before the court that includes the option not just to severely restrict the procedure further but specifically to overturn the Roe v Wade opinion that made abortion a federal right, which was reaffirmed by the supreme court in 1992.“While this is a great victory for the pro-life movement, it is not the end. In fact, it’s just the beginning,” Reeves said of the draft opinion. Mississippi hopes to ban almost all abortion in a state that normally carries out around 3,500 such procedures a year.He talked of providing more education for women, to help them get better jobs to support children.Gillibrand called Reeves “paternalistic” and his and the court’s stance outrageous.“It’s taking away women’s right for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, our right to be a full citizen,” she said, adding that women are “half citizens under this ruling and if this is put into law, it changes the foundation of America”.Reeves said Mississippi plans to improve adoption processes and foster care systems and provide more resources for those expecting. However the state has a poor record on healthcare for low-wealth women, particularly women of color, in a nation frequently called out for high infant mortality rates and poor antenatal health.CNN show host Jake Tapper noted that Mississippi has the highest rate of child mortality in the United States, the highest rate of child poverty, no guaranteed paid maternity leave and that the legislature in Mississippi “just rejected extending postpartum Medicaid coverage”, referring to government health insurance for low-income populations. Tapper also pointed out that Mississippi’s foster care system is the subject of a long-running federal lawsuit over its failure to protect children from abuse.Reeves said: “I was elected not to try to hide our problems but to try to fix our problems.”Jake Tapper to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves: You say you want to do more to support mothers and children, but you’ve been in state government since 2004… Based on the track record of the state of Mississippi, why should any of these girls or moms believe you?” pic.twitter.com/VLuA6gcS1F— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) May 8, 2022
      Gillibrand said she was offended by Reeves’s remarks, adding: “I thought he was quite paternalistic towards women. He doesn’t look at women as full citizens.”Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a fellow New York Democrat, said on Sunday that a piece of legislation that has been stalled in Congress would be put to the vote by the Senate again, on Wednesday.The Women’s Health Protection Act, which enshrines the rights afforded by Roe into federal legislation, rather than relying on court decisions, has passed the House of Representatives but was struck down in the senate in March, with one Democrat joining Republicans in opposing it.Abortion deserts: America’s new geography of access to care – mappedRead moreThe final supreme court decision on Roe is due in June. Overturning Roe and instead letting each state set its own law on abortion would leave entire regions of the country without an abortion clinic within a day’s drive, reshaping the geography of abortion access in America in a single seismic shift.Minnesota Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar told ABC’s This Week host Martha Raddatz that there were Democrats in Congress and Democratic candidates who do not support abortion rights.But she said: “You have people who are personally pro-life but believe that that decision should be a woman’s personal choice, even if they might not agree with them. We have people in our party who vote to uphold Roe v Wade who might have different personal opinions, that’s a really important distinction.”“In the wake of the leaked draft, activists on both sides of the debate immediately began mobilizing for a drastic shift in America’s abortion laws.” @MarthaRaddatz sits down with the leaders of two advocacy groups: https://t.co/ECy1oebCRT pic.twitter.com/fU8IVPgdlf— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 8, 2022
      She accused the supreme court, which achieved a right-leaning controlling majority after Donald Trump nominated three justices – now having six conservatives and only three liberal-leaning judges on the nine-member bench, of wanting to take America back into ancient history.The draft opinion was written by conservative justice Samuel Alito.“The court is looking at reversing 50 years of women’s rights, and the fall will be swift. Over 20 states have laws [to ban] in place already. Who should make this decision, should it be a woman and her doctor, or a politician? Should it be [conservative Republican Senator] Ted Cruz…or a woman and her family? Justice Alito is literally not just taking us back to the 1950s, he’s taking us back to the 1850s,” Klobuchar said.Pro-abortion rights groups NARAL pro-choice America, Planned Parenthood and Emily’s List plan between the three of them to put more than $150m into campaigns to support abortion rights advocates as political candidates in elections this year.Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL, told ABC: “As a movement, this has been probably the most devastating year since pre-1973.”TopicsDemocratsKirsten GillibrandUS politicsAbortionUS supreme courtMississippiRepublicansnewsReuse this content More