Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization (Supreme Court Decision)

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      Does Biden Really Believe We Are in a Crisis of Democracy?

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      Strip away the weird semi-fascist optics, the creepy crimson lighting and the Marines standing sentinel, and the speech Joe Biden gave on Thursday night outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall could have been given by other prominent Democrats throughout the Trump era.The song is always the same: On the one hand, dire warnings about Trumpian authoritarianism and the need for all patriotic Republicans and independents to join the defense of American democracy; on the other, a strictly partisan agenda that offers few grounds for ideological truce, few real concessions to beliefs outside the liberal tent.In this case, Biden’s speech conflated the refusal to accept election outcomes with opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage — implying that the positions of his own Catholic Church are part of a “MAGA Republican” threat to democracy itself — while touting a State of the Union‌-style list of policy achievements, a cascade of liberal self-praise.The speech’s warning against eroding democratic norms was delivered a week after Biden’s own semi-Caesarist announcement of a $500 billion student-loan forgiveness plan without consulting Congress. And it was immediately succeeded by the news that Democrats would be pouring millions in advertising into New Hampshire’s Republican Senate primary, in the hopes of making sure that the Trumpiest candidate wins through — the latest example of liberal strategists deliberately elevating figures their party and president officially consider an existential threat to the ‌Republic.The ultimate blame for nominating those unfit candidates lies with the G.O.P. electorate, not Democrats. But in the debate about the risks of Republican extremism, the debate the president just joined, it’s still important to judge the leaders of the Democratic Party by their behavior. You may believe that American democracy is threatened as at no point since the Civil War, dear reader, but they do not. They are running a political operation in which the threat to democracy is leverage, used to keep swing voters onside without having to make difficult concessions to the center or the right.It’s easy to imagine a Biden speech that offered such concessions without giving an inch in its critique of Donald Trump. The president could have acknowledged, for instance, that his own party has played some role in undermining faith in American elections, that the Republicans challenging the 2020 result were making a more dangerous use of tactics deployed by Democrats in 2004 and 2016.Or his condemnations of political violence could have encompassed the worst of the May and June 2020 rioting, the recent wave of vandalism at crisis pregnancy centers or the assassination plot against Brett Kavanaugh as well as MAGA threats.Or instead of trying to simply exploit the opportunities that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision has created for his party, he could have played the statesman, invoked his own Catholic faith and moderate past, praised the sincerity of abortion opponents and called for a national compromise on abortion — a culture war truce, if you will, for the greater good of saving democracy itself.You can make a case for Biden refusing these gestures (or a different set pegged to different non-liberal concerns). But that case requires private beliefs that diverge from Biden’s public statements: In particular, a belief that Trumpism is actually too weak to credibly threaten the democratic order, and that it’s therefore safe to accept a small risk of, say, a Trump-instigated crisis around the vote count in 2024 if elevating Trumpists increases the odds of liberal victories overall.For actual evidence supporting such a belief, I recommend reading Julian G. Waller’s essay “Authoritarianism Here?” in the spring 2022 issue of the journal American Affairs. Surveying the literature on so-called democratic backsliding toward authoritarianism around the world, Waller argues that the models almost always involve a popular leader and a dominant party winning sweeping majorities in multiple elections, gaining the ground required to entrench their position and capture cultural institutions, all the while claiming the mantle of practicality and common sense.As you may note, this does not sound like a description of the current Republican Party — a minority coalition led by an unpopular chancer that consistently passes up opportunities to seize the political center, a party that enjoys structural advantages in the Senate and the Electoral College but consistently self-sabotages by nominating zany or incompetent candidates, a movement whose influence in most cultural institutions collapsed in the Trump era.If Jan. 6 and its aftermath made it easier to imagine a Trumpian G.O.P. precipitating a constitutional crisis, they did not make it more imaginable that it could consolidate power thereafter, in the style of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez or any other example. Which in turn makes it relatively safe for the Democratic Party to continue using crisis-of-democracy rhetoric instrumentally, and even tacitly boost Trump within the G.O.P., instead of making the moves toward conciliation and cultural truce that a real crisis would require.Such is an implication, at least, of Waller’s analysis, and it’s my own longstanding read on Trumpism as well.That reading may well be too sanguine. But in their hearts, Joe Biden and the leaders of his party clearly think I’m right.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Women Are So Fired Up to Vote, I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It

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      I’ve watched Americans in recent years acclimate to some very grim realities. Especially since the ascension of Donald Trump, numerous tragedies and extreme policies have been met with little political consequence: schools targeted by mass murderers, immigrants treated as subhuman and autocratic regimes around the globe affirmed as allies. While Mr. Trump did fail in his re-election bid, a swing of just over 20,000 votes in the three states with the narrowest margins would have produced a win for him, and Democrats hold razor-thin majorities in the House and the Senate.In the weeks following the leak of a draft ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which all but guaranteed the end of abortion protections under Roe v. Wade, it initially seemed this pattern would hold. About three weeks after the leak, a CNN analyst claimed that “the Republican wave is building fast” heading into the midterm elections. In late May, the highly respected election analysts at the Cook Political Report increased their estimate of how many House seats the G.O.P. would gain. The discussion was not focused on whether the November general election would be a “red wave” but rather just how big of a wave it would be.But once the actual Dobbs decision came down, everything changed. For many Americans, confronting the loss of abortion rights was different from anticipating it. In my 28 years analyzing elections, I’ve never seen anything like what’s happened in the past two months in American politics: Women are registering to vote in numbers I’ve never witnessed. I’ve run out of superlatives to describe how different this moment is, especially in light of the cycles of tragedy and eventual resignation of recent years. This is a moment to throw old political assumptions out the window and to consider that Democrats could buck historic trends this cycle.One of the first big signs that things had changed came from Kansas. After voters there defeated a constitutional amendment that would have removed abortion protections in the state in a landslide, I sought to understand how activists could have accomplished such an astounding upset. While it takes several weeks for state election officials to produce full reports on who voted in any given election, there was an immediate clue. I looked at new voter registrants in the state since the June 24 Dobbs decision. As shocking as the election result was to me, what I found was more striking than any single election statistic I can recall discovering throughout my career. Sixty-nine percent of those new registrants were women. In the six months before Dobbs, women outnumbered men by a three-point margin among new voter registrations. After Dobbs, that gender gap skyrocketed to 40 points. Women were engaged politically in a way that lacked any known precedent.Repeating the Kansas analysis across several other states, a clear pattern emerged. Nowhere were the results as stark as they were there, but no other state was facing the issue with the immediacy of an August vote on a constitutional amendment. What my team and I did find was large surges in women registering to vote relative to men, when comparing the period before June 24 and after.The pattern was clearest in states where abortion access was most at risk, and where the electoral stakes for abortion rights this November were the highest. The states with the biggest surges in women registering post-Dobbs were deep red Kansas and Idaho, with Louisiana emerging among the top five states. Key battleground states also showed large increases, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, which are all facing statewide races in which the fate of abortion access could be decided in November.The surge in women registering and voting helped the Democrat Pat Ryan prevail over Marc Molinaro — one of the more credible Republican recruits this cycle — in New York’s fiercely contested 19th Congressional District last month. This is not the type of performance you would see in a red wave election. Among the mail and early votes cast in the district, women outnumbered men by an 18-point margin, despite accounting for about 52 percent of registered voters.With over two months until Election Day, uncertainty abounds. Election prognostication relies heavily on past precedent. Yet there is no precedent for an election centered around the removal of a constitutional right affirmed a half-century before. Every poll we consume over the closing weeks of this election will rely on a likely voter model for which we have no benchmark.The stakes are high. Going into the midterms this fall, the G.O.P. need only gain six seats in the House and one seat in the Senate to retake control of those chambers, thwarting any hope of advancing federal abortion protections or any number of other liberal priorities.Already, several Republicans seem to be sensing that they’re in trouble. In Arizona, the Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters, an ardent abortion opponent, recently wiped language advocating extreme abortion restrictions from his website.Whether the coming elections will be viewed as a red wave, a Roe wave or something in between will be decided by the actions of millions of Americans — especially, it seems, American women. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority decision in Dobbs: “Women are not without electoral or political power.” He was right about that. Republicans might soon find out just how much political power they have.Tom Bonier is a Democratic political strategist and the C.E.O. of TargetSmart, a data and polling firm. He teaches political science at Howard University and is a member of S.E.I.U. Local 500.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Where the Midterms Could Affect Abortion Most

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      Now that the United States Supreme Court has returned the power to regulate abortion to the states, every election has implications for access. The 2022 midterms will bring the issue’s first big electoral test since the court overturned Roe v. Wade. Five states have put abortion rights directly on the ballot with measures to amend […] More

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      ‘Governors Are the C.E.O.s’: State Leaders Weigh Their Might

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      At a National Governors Association gathering, attendees from both parties speculated about 2024 at a moment of increasing frustration with Washington.PORTLAND, Maine — A single senator put parts of President Biden’s domestic agenda in grave danger. The president’s approval ratings are anemic amid deep dissatisfaction with Washington. And as both Mr. Biden, 79, and Donald J. Trump, 76, signal their intentions to run for president again, voters are demanding fresh blood in national politics.Enter the governors.“Governors are the C.E.O.s,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican who hopes a governor will win his party’s 2024 presidential nomination. He added that Washington lawmakers “don’t create new systems. They don’t implement anything. They don’t operationalize anything.”In other years, those comments might have amounted to standard chest-thumping from a state executive whose race was overshadowed by the battle for control of Congress.But this year, governors’ races may determine the future of abortion rights in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Mass shootings and the coronavirus pandemic are repeatedly testing governors’ leadership skills. And at a moment of boiling voter frustration with national politics and anxiety about aging leaders in both parties, the politicians asserting their standing as next-generation figures increasingly come from the governors’ ranks, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, a California Democrat, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Florida Republican.Supporters of abortion rights protested outside the National Governors Association meeting.Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesAll of those dynamics were on display this week at the summer meeting of the National Governors Association in Portland, Maine, which took place as Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia appeared to derail negotiations in Washington over a broad climate and tax package.His move devastated vital parts of Mr. Biden’s agenda in the evenly divided Senate, although the president vowed to take “strong executive action to meet this moment.” And it sharpened the argument from leaders in both parties in Portland that, as Washington veers between chaos and paralysis, America’s governors and would-be governors have a more powerful role to play.“Washington gridlock has been frustrating for a long time, and we’re seeing more and more the importance of governors across the country,” said Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, pointing to Supreme Court decisions that have turned questions about guns, abortion rights and other issues over to states and their governors.Americans, he added, “look at governors as someone who gets things done and who doesn’t just sit at a table and yell at each other like they do in Congress or state legislatures.”The three-day governors’ conference arrived at a moment of growing unease with national leaders of both parties.A New York Times/Siena College poll showed that 64 percent of Democratic voters would prefer a new presidential standard-bearer in 2024, with many citing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age. In another poll, nearly half of Republican primary voters said they would prefer to nominate someone other than Mr. Trump, a view that was more pronounced among younger voters.And at the N.G.A. meeting, private dinners and seafood receptions crackled with discussion and speculation about future political leadership. “I don’t care as much about when you were born or what generation you belong to as I do about what you stand for,” said Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, a 47-year-old Republican. “But I think certainly there is some angst in the country right now over the gerontocracy.”In a series of interviews, Republican governors in attendance — a number of them critical of Mr. Trump, planning to retire or both — hoped that some of their own would emerge as major 2024 players. Yet for all the discussions of the power of the office, governors have often been overshadowed on the national stage by Washington leaders, and have struggled in recent presidential primaries. The last governor to become a presidential nominee was now-Senator Mitt Romney, who lost in 2012.Democrats, who are preoccupied with a perilous midterm environment, went to great lengths to emphasize their support for Mr. Biden if he runs again as planned. Still, some suggested that voters might feel that Washington leaders were not fighting hard enough, a dynamic with implications for elections this year and beyond.“People want leaders — governors, senators, congresspeople and presidents — who are vigorous in their defense of our rights, and people who are able to galvanize support for that among the public,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat.Mr. Pritzker has attracted attention for planning appearances in the major presidential battleground states of New Hampshire and Florida and for his fiery remarks on gun violence after a shooting in Highland Park, Ill. Mr. Biden, for his part, faced criticism from some Democrats who thought he should have been far more forceful immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Asked if Mr. Biden had been sufficiently “vigorous” in his responses to gun violence and the abortion ruling, Mr. Pritzker, who has repeatedly pledged to support Mr. Biden if he runs again, did not answer directly.“President Biden cares deeply about making sure that we protect those rights. I have said to him that I think that every day, he should be saying something to remind people that it is on his mind,” Mr. Pritzker replied. He added that Americans “want to know that leadership — governors, senators, president — you know, they want to know that we all are going to fight for them.”Gov. Phil Murphy, a New Jersey Democrat and the new chairman of the National Governors Association (who hopes to host next year’s summer meeting on the Jersey Shore), praised Washington lawmakers for finding bipartisan agreement on a narrow gun control measure and said Mr. Biden had “done a lot.”Two Republican governors, Mr. Cox, left, and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, center, spoke with a Democratic governor, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, at the meeting in Maine.Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesBut asked whether voters believe Washington Democrats are doing enough for them, he replied: “Because governors are closer to the ground, what we do is more immediate, more — maybe more deeply felt. I think there is frustration that Congress can’t do more.”Few Democrats currently believe that any serious politician would challenge Mr. Biden, whatever Washington’s problems. He has repeatedly indicated that he relishes the possibility of another matchup against Mr. Trump, citing The New York Times/Siena College poll that found that he would still beat Mr. Trump, with strong support from Democrats.A Biden adviser, also citing that poll, stressed that voters continued to care deeply about perceptions of who could win — a dynamic that was vital to Mr. Biden’s 2020 primary victory. He is still working, the adviser said, to enact more of his agenda including lowering costs, even as there have been other economic gains on his watch.“We had younger folks step forward last time. President Biden won the primary. President Biden beat Donald Trump,” said another ally, former Representative Cedric Richmond, who served in the White House. “The Biden-Harris ticket was the only ticket that could have beat Donald Trump.”But privately and to some degree publicly, Democrats are chattering about who else could succeed if Mr. Biden does not ultimately run again. A long list of governors — with varying degrees of youth — are among those mentioned, including Mr. Murphy, Mr. Pritzker, Mr. Newsom and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, if she wins her re-election.Some people around Mr. Cooper hope he will consider running if Mr. Biden does not. Pressed on whether that would interest him, Mr. Cooper replied, “I’m for President Biden. I do not want to go there.”Indeed, all of those governors have stressed their support for Mr. Biden. But the poll this week threw into public view some of the conversations happening more quietly within the party.“There’s a severe disconnect between where Democratic Party leadership is and where the rest of our country is,” said former Representative Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina Democrat who is running for governor and who has called on Mr. Biden to forgo re-election to make way for a younger generation.Signs of Mr. Biden’s political challenges were evident at the N.G.A., too. Asked whether she wanted Mr. Biden to campaign with her, Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, a Democrat in a competitive race for re-election this year, was noncommittal.“Haven’t made that decision,” she said.Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, right, addressed the gathering alongside Gov. Janet Mills of Maine. Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesIn a demonstration of just how much 2024 talk pervaded Portland this week, one diner at Fore Street Restaurant could be overheard discussing Mr. Biden’s legacy and wondering how Mr. Murphy might fare nationally. At the next table sat Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican, who confirmed that he was still “testing the waters” for a presidential run.Some of the most prominent Republican governors seen as 2024 hopefuls, most notably Mr. DeSantis, were not on hand. But a number of others often named as possible contenders — with different levels of seriousness — did attend, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland.“I call them the ‘frustrated majority,’” Mr. Hogan said, characterizing the electorate’s mood. “They think Washington is broken and that we’ve got too much divisiveness and dysfunction.” More

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      A Culture Warrior Goes Quiet: DeSantis Dodges Questions on Abortion Plans

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida faces political pressure from Republicans to further curb abortions — and risks to his re-election campaign and any presidential aspirations if he goes too far.When the Supreme Court erased the constitutional right to an abortion last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was among the many Republicans who celebrated. “The prayers of millions have been answered,” he tweeted.But while other Republican leaders vowed to charge ahead with new restrictions — or near-total bans — Mr. DeSantis offered only a vague promise to “work to expand pro-life protections.”More than two weeks later, he has yet to explain what that means.Mr. DeSantis, a favorite among those Republicans who want to move on from the Trump era, is rarely a reluctant partisan warrior. But his hesitance to detail his plans for abortion policy reflects the new and, in some states, difficult political terrain for Republicans in the post-Roe v. Wade era, as Democrats grasp for advantage on the issue in an otherwise largely hostile midterm election year.In April, Mr. DeSantis signed a law barring abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, bringing the state’s limit down from 24 weeks. But with Roe overturned, some on the right now see a 15-week ban as insufficient, and other Republican governors, particularly in Southern states, have pushed for more aggressive restrictions.Mr. DeSantis has described fetuses in the womb as “unborn babies.” Yet he has largely avoided specifying what other restrictions he might endorse. When a state representative filed legislation last year seeking a six-week ban, the governor would not support or oppose it. “I have a 100 percent pro-life record,” he said instead.Now, campaigning for a second term as governor, Mr. DeSantis is coming under intense pressure from powerful parts of the G.O.P. base to further curb abortions in Florida — the most populous state with a Republican governor where abortions are still fairly widely available.Yet doing so could undermine Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to recruit residents and businesses to his state and complicate his re-election campaign, not to mention his national ambitions, because polls show that a majority of Floridians, and of Americans, want to keep most abortions legal. In a New York Times/Siena College poll this week, U.S. voters, by a 2-to-1 margin, or 61 percent to 29 percent, said they opposed the Supreme Court’s decision.Abortion rights demonstrators in front of the Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee on Friday.Lawren Simmons for The New York TimesThat leaves Mr. DeSantis in an unfamiliar position: on the sidelines on a major cultural-political issue. Though he has spoken about wanting to prevent abortions from taking place late in pregnancy — a far less controversial stance than pushing for an outright ban — he has said nothing about calling a special session to enact additional restrictions, as anti-abortion activists hope he will.And Republicans nationally have noticed his hesitancy so far.“This is a guy who jumps into the culture wars when he thinks he can make a point,” said Mike DuHaime, who managed Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential campaign in 2008 and was a top adviser to Chris Christie’s in 2016.Read More on the End of Roe v. WadeA Culture Warrior Goes Quiet: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida celebrated the end of Roe. But his hesitance to detail his plans for abortion policy in his state reflects the new and difficult political terrain for Republicans.Under Pressure to Act: Democrats in Congress are moving ahead on measures to preserve abortion access, but with Republicans and at least one Democrat opposed in the Senate, the bills are all but certain to fail.The Right to Travel?: Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said the Constitution did not allow states to stop women from traveling to get abortions. But what a state may choose to do if a resident travels to get an abortion is not clear.‘Pro-Life Generation’: Many young women mourned the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe. For others it was a moment of triumph and a matter of human rights.Mr. DeSantis is not the only Republican governor whose supporters expect more from him now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. But few have as much at stake: Mr. DeSantis’s next move could not only affect his re-election in Florida but also complicate a presidential bid.Mr. DeSantis was the most popular alternative to Donald J. Trump among Republican primary voters when they were asked about potential 2024 presidential candidates, according to the Times/Siena poll. Mr. DeSantis trailed Mr. Trump 49 percent to 25 percent, but was favored over the former president by younger Republicans, those with a college degree and those who said they voted for President Biden in 2020.The poll showed that Mr. DeSantis was still relatively unknown, with about one-fourth of Republicans saying they didn’t know enough to have an opinion about him. But he was well liked among those who did. Among white evangelical voters, 54 percent said they had a favorable opinion of the Florida governor while just 15 percent said they had an unfavorable view of him.And abortion opponents are not shy about pressing Mr. DeSantis for bold new action.“There’s an enormous expectation,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, a conservative Christian group. “I think he realizes this is something that has to be dealt with.”A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis’s office would only refer to a previous statement when asked whether a special session of the legislature — or any other move related to abortion — was in the offing.Mr. DeSantis signed the new 15-week abortion ban to great fanfare in April.“This will represent the most significant protections for life that have been enacted in this state in a generation,” he said at the time, accusing the “far left” of “taking the position that babies can be aborted up to the ninth month.”“We will not let that happen in the State of Florida,” he vowed.The new law, which took effect July 1, was briefly blocked by a state judge, but that ruling was placed on hold pending appeal, leaving the 15-week ban in place. Mr. DeSantis’s administration wants the Florida Supreme Court to uphold the new law.Doing so would require reversing 30 years of legal precedent asserting that a privacy provision in the State Constitution applies to abortion. But the seven-member court, which for decades pushed back against some of the more ambitious policies enacted by Republican governors and lawmakers, is now made up entirely of conservative justices appointed by Republican governors, including three appointed by Mr. DeSantis.Mr. Stemberger predicted that if, as expected, the court allows the 15-week ban to stand, lawmakers will move to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — either during a special session after the November election or in the next regular legislative session in March.Kelli Stargel, a Republican state senator, sponsored Florida’s 15-week abortion ban.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressState Senator Kelli Stargel, the Lakeland Republican who sponsored the 15-week abortion ban, said lawmakers would undoubtedly face pressure to do more, especially if women from other states with newly tightened restrictions started coming to Florida for abortions.“Hearing that people are going to be traveling into Florida is very disturbing to me and I’m sure very disturbing to others,” said Ms. Stargel, who is reaching her term limit and is running for Congress.Even as the Florida law was being debated, some anti-abortion activists described it as merely a first step; others explicitly told lawmakers it did not go far enough in restricting the procedure. In May, after a draft of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe was published, Florida abortion opponents pushed for a complete ban to be taken up in one of the Legislature’s special sessions.State Representative Anna V. Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, said she expected Republicans to file proposals for a six-week abortion ban and for a complete ban next year, as well as for new restrictions on medical abortions, in which prescription drugs are used to end a pregnancy. The fact that medical abortion was defined for the first time in this year’s law suggests to Ms. Eskamani that such abortions could be regulated in the future.Ms. Eskamani noted that Mr. DeSantis’s statement after Roe was overturned was “pretty watered-down.”“It’s clear that he knows this is politically unpopular,” she said. “It’s also a wake-up call for Democratic voters.”Mr. DeSantis has widely been expected to win re-election by a comfortable margin, which could bolster his standing in a crowded Republican presidential primary field for 2024.But a large margin of victory is not assured.Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, at an art exhibit in Miami on Friday. At least one poll has shown a prospective race between Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Crist as tight.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesRepresentative Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner, are competing in the Democratic primary for governor. Public polling of the general election is scant; the most recent credible surveys are from earlier this year and show Mr. DeSantis with a healthy lead over Mr. Crist. Mr. DeSantis’s popularity in the state has grown since last year. A Suffolk University/USA Today poll of likely voters in January showed Mr. DeSantis leading Mr. Crist by six points and leading Ms. Fried by 11.At least one poll has shown a prospective race between Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Crist as tight. That private survey, taken last month by the veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio, who often works for former President Donald J. Trump and has frequently worked in Florida, showed Mr. DeSantis as the slight favorite in a competitive race, running just three points ahead of Mr. Crist. That survey was of registered voters, which can be less predictive than one of likely voters.Races for governor in Florida have been close in recent years as politics have become more polarized. In 2014, then-Gov. Rick Scott barely eked out a victory over Mr. Crist. In 2018, Mr. DeSantis won by a narrow margin over the Democrat, Andrew Gillum, who was recently indicted on conspiracy and fraud charges.And Mr. DeSantis is one of the most polarizing and overtly partisan statewide elected Republicans in the country — taking on Disney after it criticized a bill limiting what schools can teach about sexual and gender identity, denouncing Covid-19 vaccines for young children and opening up several fronts in the broader Republican battle against critical race theory.Some anti-abortion activists appeared willing to give Mr. DeSantis room to maneuver politically.“Ron DeSantis is one of the best governors in the country, and I believe that he will work to pass the most conservative bill he can possibly get through the Legislature,” said Penny Nance, chief executive and president of Concerned Women for America, which calls itself the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. She said she supported a six-week abortion ban in Florida.“There are no concerns or reservations about his pro-life convictions,” said Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “And for that reason, I think he’s going to have running room to make his own decision when it comes to taking the next steps with legislation to protect unborn children.”With abortion a topic of fresh intensity among conservatives positioning themselves to run for president — some of whom, like former Vice President Mike Pence, want to see bans in every state — Mr. DeSantis faces pressure from the right both in Florida and beyond.As even his admirers are reminding him.Andrew Shirvell, founder and executive director of Florida Voice for the Unborn, described Mr. DeSantis as “a tremendous ally for the pro-life movement,” but expressed some impatience with his silence on abortion since the Supreme Court’s decision.“It is frustrating that the governor doesn’t speak out more about this,” he said. “But I attribute that to other pressures going on just months before the election.”Still, to hear Mr. Shirvell tell it, Mr. DeSantis will eventually need to press for further action on abortion in Tallahassee. “It’s really up to the governor to twist the arms of the legislative leaders if he’s got presidential ambitions,” he said. 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      Will the Abortion Debate Keep Moderate Women in the Democrats’ Camp?

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      Worried about inflation and dissatisfied with President Biden, many moderate women have been drifting away from Democrats. Now the party hopes the fight for abortion rights will drive them back.GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer prepared to kick off a round-table discussion about abortion rights at a brewery recently, Alisha Meneely sat at one corner of the table, feeling politically abandoned.Ms. Meneely voted for Donald Trump in 2016 before supporting President Biden in 2020, she said. Now, she is struggling with both parties, gravely disappointed in Mr. Biden’s leadership but anguished by what she sees as a Republican lurch toward extremism, with little room for disagreement — especially on abortion rights.“This scares me a lot,” said Ms. Meneely, 43, who described herself as a “pro-choice Republican” in an interview shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.A few days later, as many Republican officials embraced the far-reaching implications of the decision, she was unequivocal. “This,” Ms. Meneely said, “is not my party.”After struggling for months against daunting political challenges, Democrats have a new opening to engage moderate women like Ms. Meneely, who have been critical to the party’s recent victories but are often seen as swing voters this year, according to interviews with more than two dozen voters, elected officials and party strategists across the country.From the suburbs of Philadelphia and Grand Rapids to more conservative territory in Nebraska, there are early signs that some voters who disapprove of Mr. Biden also increasingly believe that Republicans have gone too far to the right on a range of issues, particularly abortion.Democrats see a new opportunity to engage dissatisfied voters in the fight over abortion rights. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIt’s a dynamic with the potential to shape statewide races and some House contests, and one that crystallizes a central tension of the midterm elections as Democrats test whether efforts to define today’s Republicans as extremist can mitigate the political headwinds they confront.High inflation remains the overriding concern for many voters, and Republicans are betting that most Americans will vent about pocketbook frustrations above all else. Mr. Biden has long struggled with anemic approval ratings. Americans also overwhelmingly believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, another troubling sign for the party in power. And some Democrats doubt that even something as significant as the overturning of Roe will dramatically alter the political environment.For many Americans, economic struggles outweigh abortion rights as the top issue.Sarah Silbiger for The New York Times“Does it have an effect? Absolutely,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist. “Does it fundamentally change the landscape? No. Not in an off-year election, when your president’s approval rating is below 40 percent and gas is $5 a gallon.”Those crosscurrents all converged last week at a few shopping centers in Warrington, Pa., in Bucks County outside Philadelphia. It’s a swing township within a swing county in the nation’s ultimate swing state. The next governor and a Republican-controlled legislature will most likely determine access to abortion, after the Supreme Court’s recent decision handed control over abortion rights back to the states.Sophia Carroll, 22, said that growing up, some of her friends were engaged in anti-abortion activism. Citing her Catholic upbringing, Ms. Carroll, a registered Republican, said she felt mixed emotions when Roe was overturned. But she intended to vote for Democrats this fall, “just because of this issue” of protecting abortion rights.From Opinion: The End of Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s decision to end ​​the constitutional right to abortion.David N. Hackney, maternal-fetal medicine specialist: The end of Roe “is a tragedy for our patients, many of whom will suffer and some of whom could very well die.”Mara Gay: “Sex is fun. For the puritanical tyrants seeking to control our bodies, that’s a problem.”Elizabeth Spiers: “The notion that rich women will be fine, regardless of what the law says, is probably comforting to some. But it is simply not true.”Katherine Stewart, writer: “​​Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.”“As someone who knows other women who have had to make the decision to choose, it’s a very personal and very intimate decision,” she said in an interview at an outdoor shopping center.Ms. Carroll pointed out Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion, which suggested that the court should revisit its cases establishing rights to same-sex marriage, same-sex consensual relations and contraception.“Are they going to ban birth control next?” she said.There is limited polling that captures attitudes after the Supreme Court decision, and none of it predicts how voters will feel in November. A recent survey from NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist found that 56 percent of adults surveyed opposed the decision and 40 percent supported it. Among people in suburbs, which in recent years have been home to many moderates and swing voters, 57 percent said they mostly support abortion rights; only a third said they mostly oppose abortion rights. Among women in the suburbs and small cities, support for abortion rights jumped to 61 percent.Another survey from Morning Consult and Politico found that among suburban voters, around 60 percent said it was very or somewhat important to support a candidate in the midterm elections who backs abortion access; roughly 40 percent said it was very or somewhat important to support a candidate who opposes that access.But polls have also consistently shown that the economy and inflation remain top issues for many Americans. And many voters are inclined to take their frustration about cost-of-living concerns out on the Democrats.“The economy is always going to be the biggest thing for me,” Diane Jacobs, 57, said in an interview outside a Wegmans grocery store in Warrington. Ms. Jacobs, who said that she typically votes for Republicans, identifies as “pro-life” but does not believe abortion should be illegal. She also voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, she said, as an antidote to divisiveness. But Ms. Jacobs said she would not do so again and planned on supporting Republicans this year.“Just look at inflation,” she said.Some voters are not yet aware of the implications of overturning Roe, which are unfolding day-by-day and state-by-state. Democrats may have room to expand their support on the issue as voters learn more. Republicans, however, may ultimately benefit if many voters who disagree with the decision don’t dive in on the details. Ms. Jacobs said she had not heard of Republicans in the area who wanted to outlaw the procedure.“If there was a presidential candidate who said they wanted to outlaw it in every single case, I don’t know that I’d vote for that person,” she said. “That’s pretty extreme.”Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, has promised to veto “any bill that would restrict abortion rights.”Hannah Beier/ReutersAbortion is now banned in at least eight states, with few exceptions allowed. Some legal challenges are underway, and more bans are expected to take effect soon. Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, has sponsored a roughly six-week abortion ban and has indicated interest in further restrictions, saying life begins at conception. Asked whether he believes in exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother, he replied at a debate, “I don’t give a way for exceptions.”Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee, has promised to veto “any bill that would restrict abortion rights.”The Pennsylvania governor’s race is one of several, including governor’s contests in Michigan and Wisconsin, that could directly affect abortion rights in battleground states.Barrie Holstein, 58, said she felt a new sense of political urgency. Ms. Holstein, who lives in Dresher, Pa., declined to say how she voted in 2020. She said she does not always vote in midterm elections and was often open to candidates of both parties. But this year, she said, she intended to vote for candidates who backed abortion rights and gun control.“I’m not political,” she said. “But it’s enough. I’m pissed. I’m pissed about gun control and I’m pissed about abortion. I really am.”Strategists in both parties are still trying to quantify how many voters like Ms. Holstein are out there.In a small private focus group of suburban swing voters last week sponsored by progressive organizations, a clear majority of participants said the Roe decision would hold either a lot or a medium amount of weight when considering how to vote in upcoming elections.But in one warning sign for Democrats, at least one participant said she felt it was “too late” — the party in power had already failed to protect abortion rights, so she would be weighing a broader set of issues.While some Republicans see openings to paint Democrats as radical on the issue of abortion rights late into pregnancy, many officials have largely sought to keep their focus on cost-of-living matters and on Mr. Biden.“I would be surprised if an energized Democratic electorate overcame the dead-weight anchor of a 40 percent job approval for a Democratic president,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist. “But it might make some races closer than they would otherwise have been.”That may have been the case in a recent Nebraska special election, when a Democratic candidate did better than expected in a heavily Republican-leaning district. Turnout was just under 30 percent of registered voters.Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party chairwoman, conducting party business remotely at the Lancaster County Democrats headquarters in Lincoln, Neb., in 2020.Walker Pickering for The New York Times“This is real and resonating and you feel it on the ground,” said Jane Kleeb, the chairwoman of the Nebraska Democratic Party. “Folks, I think, in the Midwest, really respect people’s privacy. Ranchers always say, ‘If it doesn’t bother the cattle, it doesn’t bother me.’ That mentality is very much alive, I think, in voters’ minds.”Last week, Ms. Meneely of Michigan — who has a background in government work and engages in efforts to combat human trafficking and online exploitation of children — said that she had decided to vote for Ms. Whitmer, the Democratic governor.She also said she would support Representative Peter Meijer, a Republican who applauded the Roe decision, in his primary. Ms. Meneely noted his willingness to challenge Mr. Trump. (He was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for impeachment after the Capitol riot.)But she sounded open to persuasion in general election contests.“Right now,” she said, “I am so ticked at the Republican Party.” More

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      The Long Path to Reclaim Abortion Rights

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      The Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe, far from settling the matter, instead has launched court and political battles across the states likely to go on for years.Attempting to recover from their staggering loss in the Supreme Court, abortion rights groups have mounted a multilevel legal and political attack aimed at blocking and reversing abortion bans in courts and at ballot boxes across the country.In the week since the court overturned Roe v. Wade, litigators for abortion rights groups have rolled out a wave of lawsuits in nearly a dozen states to hold off bans triggered by the court’s decision, with the promise of more suits to come. They are aiming to prove that provisions in state constitutions establish a right to abortion that the Supreme Court’s decision said did not exist in the U.S. Constitution.Advocates of abortion rights are also working to defeat ballot initiatives that would strip away a constitutional right to abortion, and to pass those that would establish one, in states where abortion access is contingent on who controls the governor’s mansion or the state house.And after years of complaints that Democrats neglected state and local elections, Democratic-aligned groups are campaigning to reverse slim Republican majorities in some state legislatures, and to elect abortion rights supporters to positions from county commissioner to state supreme court justices that can have influence over the enforcement of abortion restrictions.“You want all the belt and suspenders that you can have,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which litigated Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe. While the Supreme Court said it wanted to end five decades of bitter debate on abortion, its decision has set up a new fight, one that promises to be long and equally bitter.Although abortion rights supporters say their strategy is promising, the path ahead is slow and not at all certain. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly say that the decision to have an abortion should be made by women and their doctors rather than state legislatures. But Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed hundreds of restrictions on abortion over the last decade, and legislative districts are heavily gerrymandered to protect Republican incumbents. Litigation in state courts will be decided by judges who in many cases have been appointed by anti-abortion governors.Although abortion rights supporters say their strategy is promising, the path ahead is not at all certain.Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesAbortion rights groups say their cases relying on state constitutions offer a viable path forward to establish Roe-like protections in states. Even in conservative states such as Oklahoma and Mississippi, they see an opportunity to overturn abortion bans and establish a constitutional backstop against further restriction.But in other places, the goal of the litigation is to at least temporarily restore or preserve abortion access, now that the court’s decision stands to make it illegal or effectively so in more than half the states, which include 33.5 million women of childbearing age.In Louisiana, for example, though the state constitution expressly says there is no right to abortion, the legal challenge has allowed three clinics to continue serving women whose plans to end their pregnancies were thrown into disarray by the court’s decision.From Opinion: The End of Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s decision to end ​​the constitutional right to abortion.Michelle Goldberg: “The end of Roe v. Wade was foreseen, but in wide swaths of the country, it has still created wrenching and potentially tragic uncertainties.”Spencer Bokat-Lindell: “What exactly does it mean for the Supreme Court to experience a crisis of legitimacy, and is it really in one?”Bonnie Kristian, journalist: “For many backers of former President Donald Trump, Friday’s Supreme Court decision was a long-awaited vindication.” It might also mark the end of his political career.Erika Bachiochi, legal scholar: “It is precisely the unborn child’s state of existential dependence upon its mother, not its autonomy, that makes it especially entitled to care, nurture and legal protection.”“We have to take these things in steps,” said Joanna Wright, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner who, with the Center for Reproductive Rights, is leading the Louisiana case. “A lot can change in a day, a month and six months. Time will tell the rest, but this is the fight right now.”The Supreme Court’s decision has flipped the dynamic of abortion strategy that has prevailed for the half-century since Roe, when anti-abortion groups chipped away at legal access by electing like-minded state legislators and passing increasingly strict laws, and abortion rights groups could rely on Roe to prevent the most severe bans from taking effect.Now, anti-abortion groups and congressional Republicans discuss federal legislation that would ban abortion across the country after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and abortion rights groups have begun climbing the steeper and narrower path state by state. “Democracy is a collective action,” said Ms. Wright, “and what we’ve seen from the anti-abortion movement is an ability to mobilize all the pieces of that,” which culminated, she added, with the overturning of Roe.By Friday, the groups had temporarily blocked bans from taking effect in Utah, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Florida; judges have set hearings over the next several weeks to consider permanent injunctions. But they lost bids to hold off bans in Ohio and Texas.Anti-abortion groups had argued for decades that the question of abortion should be left up to states, not to unelected judges in Washington. Within hours of the court’s decision, Republican politicians and law enforcement officials announced that bans, once held up in court, were now in effect, and would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.They decried their opponents’ strategy in the courts.“To say that the State Constitution mandates things like dismemberment abortions, I just don’t think that’s the proper interpretation,” Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said after Florida’s ruling temporarily blocking a law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks.The legal challenges argue that the Supreme Court’s decision has thrown abortion providers and patients into chaos, subjecting them to state laws that are often unclear, contradictory or confusing. Women have shown up for appointments only to be told that their pregnancies have now progressed too far to be eligible for abortion under new laws banning abortion after six weeks. In Montana, Planned Parenthood clinics said recently that they would require proof of residency for women seeking abortion pills, because of fears that prosecutors in other states might prosecute anyone who helped their residents get abortions.Abortion rights groups have not given up on hopes of federal action to protect abortion: They are pushing President Biden to use a declaration of a public health emergency to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to authorize out-of-state providers to prescribe and provide abortion pills to women in states where abortion bans have made them illegal.They are also pushing the Senate to suspend its filibuster and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would establish a right to abortion before viability, as was provided in Roe. Mr. Biden reversed himself on Thursday to say that he supported lifting the filibuster, though he also told a group of Democratic governors that there were not enough votes in the Senate to do so.Abortion rights groups have not given up on hopes of federal action to protect abortion, but they have begun pursuing legal and legislative action state by state. Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesBut by necessity, the groups are focused first on state action.While the Supreme Court’s opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, declared that it was returning the regulation of abortion regulation “to the people and their elected representatives,” its decision has delivered the issue to other courts, those in the states.“If the Supreme Court and Justice Alito and the anti-abortion advocates thought this was going to settle the question, they are going to see just how wrong they are,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a news conference Friday alongside lawyers and leaders from the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood. “The proliferation of litigation that will embroil the states in our country for years to come is going to underscore that this is not settled in the public’s mind.”The lawsuits argue that state constitutions offer more protection for abortion than the federal constitution, either by quirk of state tradition or history. Some, such as Florida’s, include an explicit right to privacy. In Kentucky, lawyers argue their constitution provides a right to “bodily autonomy” as well as privacy. The Roe decision in 1973 declared that the U.S. Constitution afforded a right to privacy that included a woman’s right to abortion; while the Supreme Court overturned that decision, it generally cannot overturn what states say in their own constitutions.The suit in Utah, one of the most conservative states in the country, seeks to protect abortion under a provision of the state constitution — adopted in 1896 — that provides that “both males and female citizens of this state shall enjoy equally all civil, political and religious rights and privileges.”Largely because of the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the constitution also ensures that state residents have the right to plan their own families; the lawsuit argues this includes the right to choose abortion.Even in states where lawsuits have been successful, abortion rights groups say they are playing Whack-a-Mole. In Utah, as soon as the court put a temporary injunction on the state’s trigger law banning abortion, a legislator declared that the state’s law against abortion after 18 weeks, which courts had upheld while Roe was in effect, was now the operative law.“We’re in a chess game and we haven’t gotten checkmate,” said Karrie Galloway, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood in Utah. “We’re doing check, check, check, check. Unfortunately, we’re doing check, check, check with pregnant people and their families’ lives.”In Kansas, a state Supreme Court decision in 2019 found a right to abortion under the constitutional provisions for “equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But anti-abortion groups put an initiative on the primary ballot this August that seeks to amend the constitution to explicitly say that it does not include a right to abortion, and that the Legislature has the authority to pass further restrictions.That vote will be the first indication of how much the outrage seen in response to the Supreme Court’s decision translates into support for abortion rights in elections.Historically, voters who oppose abortion have been more driven to vote on the issue than those who support a right to abortion. But polls taken since the leak of a draft of the Supreme Court’s decision in May and the final decision in late June show that those who support abortion rights — largely Democrats — now cite it as one of their top concerns, and that the court’s decision has motivated them more to vote in elections this fall.Vote Pro Choice is attempting to turn out women, especially Black and Latina women, to vote in races including county commissioners, judges and sheriffs, particularly in states such as Texas and Georgia with restrictive abortion laws — positions responsible for enforcing anti-harassment laws outside abortion clinics, and deciding whether to give government money to crisis pregnancy centers, which anti-abortion groups have used to steer women away from abortions.Democrats need to learn from the successes of the anti-abortion groups and Republicans, said Sara Tabatabaie, the group’s chief political officer.“We have been out-raised, out-organized and out-funded for 50 years, and that is across the board,” she said. But she is encouraged by the number of people who say abortion will guide their votes in November: “In moments of tragedy, I am hopeful that there comes solidarity and increased clarity.” More