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      ‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversal

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      ‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversalTop Democrats again call for appointing additional justices to blunt conservative super-majority which made ruling possible Leading Democrats on Sunday continued calling the supreme court’s legitimacy into question after it took away the nationwide right to abortion last week, and some again called for appointing additional justices to the panel so as to blunt the conservative super-majority which made the controversial ruling possible.Abortion banned in multiple US states just hours after Roe v Wade overturnedRead moreThe Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren suggested to ABC’s This Week that there was urgency to do that because supreme court justice Clarence Thomas indicated within Friday’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that he’s open to reconsidering precedents guaranteeing contraception, same-sex marriage rights and consensual gay sex.“They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had,” Warren said of the supreme court. “They just took the last of it and set a torch to it.”Warren joined Georgia gubernatorial candidate and Democratic organizer Stacey Abrams in again lobbying to expand the supreme court in a way that balances the current makeup of six conservatives and three liberals.Joe Biden has rejected the strategy. But Abrams – who’s also previously served in Georgia’s house of representatives – said the president doesn’t have the final word on the matter, with legislators also having a potential say.“There’s nothing sacrosanct about nine members of the United States supreme court,” Abrams said on CNN’s State of the Union.Warren didn’t just once again mention the idea of abolishing the filibuster, a delaying tactic that both parties use to prevent legislative decisions, which Biden and centrist Democrats have also rejected.She also urged Biden to issue orders shielding medication abortions and authorizing the terminations of pregnancies on federal land.Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez argued that drastic measures were justified.Trying to avoid burn-out: a Colorado abortion clinic braces for even more patientsRead more“I believe that the president and the Democratic party needs to come to terms with is that this is not just a crisis of Roe – this is a crisis of our democracy,” Ocascio-Cortez said.The congresswoman also said the supreme court was undergoing “a crisis of legitimacy”, making it a point to allude to how Thomas’s wife, Ginni, emailed 29 Republican lawmakers in Arizona as she tried to help overturn Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.“The supreme court has dramatically overreached its authority,” Ocascio-Cortez said. “This is a crisis of legitimacy.”Speaking from a Republican point of view on another program, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem fawningly said it was “incredible” that reproductive laws had been returned to the states. South Dakota is one of 13 states where trigger laws banning most abortions came into effect after Friday’s decision.“The supreme court did its job: it fixed a wrong decision it made many years ago and returned this power back to the states, which is how the constitution and our founders intended it,” Noem told CBS’ Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”.World leaders condemn US abortion ruling as ‘backwards step’Read moreSouth Dakota, she said, would ensure that “babies are recognized and that every single life is precious”.The governor said the state would move to block Democratic efforts to allow access to out-of-state telemedicine and the ability of health practitioners in legal abortion states to provide pills in the mail that would allow them to end a pregnancy.Noem voiced that abortion pills were “very dangerous medical procedures”, though Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan correctly pointed out that the pills were approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.Nonetheless, Noem insisted, saying, “A woman is five times more likely to end up in an emergency room if they’re utilizing this kind of method for an abortion.“It’s something that should be under the supervision of a medical doctor and it is something in South Dakota that we’ve made sure happens that way.”The governor, a rising star in Republican circles, said that mothers would not be prosecuted for receiving abortions, rather the state planned to target illegal abortion providers.“We will make sure that mothers have the resources, protection and medical care that they need and we’re being aggressive on that. And we’ll also make sure that the federal government only does its job,” Noem added.TopicsUS politicsElizabeth WarrenAlexandria Ocasio-CortezRoe v WadeUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      There’s rage at this Roe v Wade mess – and those on the left who didn’t see it coming | Emma Brockes

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      There’s rage at this Roe v Wade mess – and those on the left who didn’t see it comingEmma BrockesFrom anti-Hillary Democrats to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who clung on at Supreme Court, unlikely targets are being identified for blame After the initial shock, the blame. On Monday, when news broke of the leaked US supreme court draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, millions of horrified Americans sought emotional release. “I am angry,” said Elizabeth Warren, voice shaking, leading a pack of reporters straight over a flowerbed outside the supreme court. Her face ignited with rage as she reminded them that 69% of Americans are against overturning the abortion legislation. “The Republicans have been working towards this day for decades,” she said. In the background, a man shouted, “You want to dismember children in the womb!”For many of us, that man – the you-want-to-kill-babies guy – and his ilk were not the first target for righteous abuse. It’s hard, in moments of duress, to get much satisfaction from reiterating an existing and long-held revulsion, particularly when its subject is beyond reasonable reach. When considering the rightwing architects of this moment, there was no “what if” in attendance; all the what ifs belonged to the left. Political purists who in 2016 urged Democrats to avoid voting for Hillary Clinton (hi, Susan Sarandon) were the first in line, and social media echoed to the sound of, “We told you this would happen.”Biden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happenedRead moreSacrificing the good in pursuit of the better and winding up with the absolute worst – a dynamic as familiar to British as to American leftwing politics – was, in this moment of horror, a more enraging consideration than flat hatred of the right. From revived outrage at the Bernie bros, it was a quick descent into rage against various champions of the left. “You know who I blame for this?” said a friend. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” The late supreme court justice’s vanity in hanging on to her seat, her overconfidence that Clinton would win, her refusal to listen to warnings from the Obama White House that, should the unthinkable happen and the Republicans regain the presidency, the first casualty would be Roe v Wade – her fundamental enjoyment, one assumed, of being RBG when she could have ceded her seat to an Obama appointee – twisted us up into pretzels. I love Ginsburg, so all this had about it the extra and extremely female zing of self-harm.Oh, and Clinton wasn’t off the hook either. “If she’d bothered to campaign in Michigan,” said another friend sourly, “none of this would’ve happened.” All the terrible, bad-tempered fights of that election flew back up into the air, like a water column after a bomb. The only Republican who came in for similar ire was that idiot Susan Collins, senator from Maine, a supporter of abortion rights who had nonetheless voted in line with her party to confirm both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court. Both had assured her, she said at the time, that they wouldn’t go after Roe v Wade. Shocked! Shocked, she was, this week to discover these were not men of their word.Of course, all this fury was mere displacement for the fundamental truth that rightwing forces were smarter, more organised, disciplined and talented in prosecuting a digestible narrative – “don’t kill babies” – than the fractured and dissembling left. Progressives tried to rally towards concrete solutions. There were things to be done – in the first instance, register to vote. (After less than a year of citizenship, I hadn’t. This weekend, I will). There was the call for fundraising. Celebrities started throwing around $10,000 matching donations to anyone giving to local abortion funds.And both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, as well as senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, hyped the necessity of codifying Roe v Wade in Congress, a move backed by President Biden that would enshrine the right to abortion in federal law irrespective of actions taken by the supreme court. It sounds good, and has the advantage of generating political action. But it is also a long shot, a case of last-resort measures, and too little too late. Earlier this year, Democrats tried to codify Roe, and while it passed the House it failed in the Senate, overcome by a filibuster. (Then “we must end the filibuster”, tweeted Sanders. None of this can happen quickly, if at all.)The fact is that if, as Warren said, the Republicans had been planning this moment for decades, rigging composition of the supreme court with precisely this endgame in mind, there was, irrespective of the scale of public outrage, no immediate way to turn back. In this first week of shock, before anger might become effectively organised, there was only the tiny compensation of the blame spiral.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionElizabeth WarrenUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)WomencommentReuse this content More

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      ‘An abomination’: Pelosi leads outcry on supreme court draft abortion ruling

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      ‘An abomination’: Pelosi leads outcry on supreme court draft abortion rulingSpeaker warns scrapping Roe v Wade would be ‘greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years’ as AOC calls for Senate reform

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      Supporters of abortion rights reacted with outrage to the leak on Monday night of a supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which has safeguarded the right till now.According to Politico, the draft ruling, written by Samuel Alito, is supported by Clarence Thomas and the three conservative justices appointed by Donald Trump: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.It would also overturn Planned Parenthood v Casey, a 1992 decision which upheld Roe.Supreme court voted to overturn Roe v Wade abortion law, leaked draft opinion reportedly showsRead moreNancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, said: “If the report is accurate, the supreme court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years – not just on women but on all Americans.“The Republican-appointed justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history,” Pelosi said.“Several of these conservative justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the US Senate, ripped up the constitution and defiled both precedent and the supreme court’s reputation.”Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said an “extremist supreme court” was poised to “impose its far-right, unpopular views on the entire country.“It’s time for the millions who support the constitution and abortion rights to stand up and make their voices heard,” she said. “We’re not going back – not ever.”If confirmed, the ruling would make abortion rights a state matter. As many as 26 Republican-run states are poised to end or restrict access.Congress could codify Roe into law but it would require scrapping the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires a 60-vote majority for most legislation. That seems unlikely, given the 50-50 split in the chamber and opposition from moderate Democrats such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia.Republican senators including Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who have expressed concern over abortion rights, were slower to react to the Politico report than their Democratic counterparts. Their support would be needed for filibuster reform.Among progressives, outrage was fierce.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman, tied her outrage to calls for Senate reform and to impeach Thomas, the senior conservative on the court, over the political activities of his wife around the January 6 insurrection.Tell us: have you had to travel to another US state for an abortion? Read moreOcasio-Cortez also warned of possible court moves on other hitherto protected rights.“[The court] isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage and civil rights.“Manchin is blocking Congress codifying Roe. House has seemingly forgotten about Clarence Thomas. These two points must change.”Ocasio-Cortez also took aim at Joe Biden, calling for the use of executive actions.“People elected Democrats precisely so we could lead in perilous moments like these – to codify Roe, hold corruption accountable and have a president who uses his legal authority to break through congressional gridlock on items from student debt to climate. It’s high time we do it.“If we don’t, what message does that send? We can’t sit around, finger-point and hand-wring as people’s futures and equality are on the line. It’s time to be decisive, lead with confidence, fight for a prosperous future for all and protect the vulnerable. Leave it all on the field.”Campaigners were equally vocal.The National Women’s Law Center called the “language in the draft opinion … outrageous, irresponsible and shocking”. Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the women’s health provider Planned Parenthood, called the draft ruling “horrifying and unprecedented”.Laphonza Butler, president of the advocacy group Emily’s List, pointed to the effect the draft ruling could have on Democratic campaigning and turnout in the November midterm elections.Supreme court abortion law leak: what happened and why does it matter?Read more“For years, anti-choice politicians have worked overtime to strip away our fundamental rights and give government control of critical healthcare decisions. They are working to ban abortion, full stop. This was the plan all along.“It’s past time to vote out every official who stands against the pro-choice majority.“We will fight harder than ever to make them pay, by electing more Democratic pro-choice women at all levels of government who will protect our rights and ensure that our abortion rights do not depend on our zip code or our financial situation. And we will work to vote every one of them out.”Cecile Richards, formerly president of Planned Parenthood, pointed to polling which shows clear support for abortion rights.“This is not what the American people want,” she said. “This is Republican politicians putting government in charge of your pregnancy. Full stop.”TopicsAbortionUS supreme courtUS politicsNancy PelosiAlexandria Ocasio-CortezDemocratsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker test positive for Covid amid US Omicron surge

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      Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker test positive for Covid amid US Omicron surge
      Massachusetts and New Jersey senators confirm they have both been vaccinated
      Fauci: Omicron ‘raging through the world’
      US senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker have confirmed they have tested positive for Covid-19, as the US deals with another surge in cases and the emergence of the Omicron variant.Doug Ericksen, state senator who fought vaccine mandates, dies at 52Read moreWarren, a progressive Democrat who ran for the presidential nomination in 2020, tweeted that she was vaccinated, had received her booster shot and was experiencing mild symptoms in a breakthrough case of the virus.“Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms and am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated and boosted,” the Massachusetts senator wrote, using the occasion to also urge anyone not vaccinated to do so.Warren, 72, didn’t elaborate on where she might have contracted the virus but said she was regularly tested and had returned a negative result earlier this week.Her office did not respond to an email seeking comment.Booker, a Democratic senator for New Jersey who also ran for president in 2020, said in a statement on Sunday he had tested positive for Covid after feeling symptoms a day earlier.“Fortunately, my symptoms are relatively mild. I’m beyond grateful to have received two doses of vaccine and, more recently, a booster – I’m certain that without them I would be doing much worse. I encourage everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated and boosted,” he said.Warren was at the US Capitol this week along with other senators as Democrats sought to pass Joe Biden’s $1.75tn Build Back Better social and environment bill.That effort resulted first in delay and then, on Sunday, in fury, as the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a centrist and therefore key vote in the 50-50 chamber, said he would not support the bill.TopicsElizabeth WarrenUS politicsDemocratsUS SenateUS CongressCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More

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      Elizabeth Warren: Democratic party was reluctant to nominate a woman in 2020

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      In a new book, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren suggests part of the reason for her failure in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination lay in the party’s reluctance to nominate another woman.“I had to run against the shadows of Martha and Hillary,” Warren writes in Persist, which will be published on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported.Hillary Clinton, a former New York senator and secretary of state, lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.Martha Coakley, an attorney general of Massachusetts, lost a 2010 election for a US Senate seat long held by Ted Kennedy, to Scott Brown, and a 2014 gubernatorial election to Charlie Baker.Both women started as favourites but suffered losses which dealt crushing blows to Democrats on the national stage.Warren led the 2020 Democratic primary early on. In her book, the Post said, she repeats a conversation with her husband, Bruce Mann, who said: “Babe, you could actually do this. You could be president.” Warren also writes about she imagined her inauguration.But she did not win any states and withdrew on 5 March. With most of the rest of the field, she endorsed Joe Biden against the progressive standard bearer, Bernie Sanders. Biden went on to beat Trump convincingly but Warren was passed over for vice-president and a cabinet post.On the page, Warren attributes some of the blame for her defeat to a failure to explain how she would pay for her ambitious progressive proposals, particularly on expanding healthcare.She also reportedly “offers a heavy dose of praise for allies and competitors and little score-settling or tale-telling”, calling Biden a “steady, decent man” and Sanders “fearless and determined”.The Post said Warren’s book “glosses over” a clash with Sanders over whether he told her a woman could not beat Trump. Warren says he did. Sanders says he did not.Warren considers a debate in Nevada in which she assailed the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg over his behaviour towards women and compared him to Trump. Warren, the Post said, writes that she was surprised Bloomberg did not immediately respond.“Like so many women in so many settings, I found myself wondering if he had even heard me,” she writes.Warren’s book, her third, also considers a previously disclosed incident at the University of Houston when she says a male colleague tried to grope her, and its effect on her academic career.The book’s title comes from a famous clash with Mitch McConnell in 2017. Attempting to silence Warren during debate, the then Republican majority leader said: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”The Post said text on the back of Warren’s book says it is about “the fight that lies ahead”.“Warren offers few hints on whether she might run again for president,” the paper said. “At 71, she is younger than Biden and could plausibly launch another campaign in 2024, particularly if he does not seek a second term.” More

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      Fit for office? From Trump to Abbott, 'vitality' is too often conflated with character in politics | Eleanor Gordon-Smith

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      It was important to US president Donald Trump to beat Covid-19. Not to recover from it, or to be successfully treated for it, but to beat it, as you would a wrestling enemy with the back of a chair. Already he has begun reframing his hospital discharge as a sign of strength. On Monday, campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp told Fox News: “We’re going to defeat this virus. We’re not going to surrender to it like Joe Biden would surrender,” deliberately leaving open the interpretation that the relevant “surrender” was getting sick and dying. The president retweeted columnist Miranda Devine’s characterisation of him as an “invincible hero, who not only survived every dirty trick the Democrats threw at him, but the Chinese virus as well”.It is the latest instalment in a long history of the conflation between physical fitness and fitness for office, as though facts about a person’s character can be deduced from whether they get sick.Rightwing, authority-hungry leaders often make this move. From the state of their bodies we are supposed to deduce things about the state of their person. Vladimir Putin rides horses shirtless; shoots tigers; hugs bears. Jair Bolsonaro removed his mask after his Covid-19 diagnosis to show reporters how little it affected him. “Just look at my face, I’m fine”, he said.When these are the characters who voice a connection between physical wellness and moral character, the falsity of that connection is obvious. It is cartoonish, even – Trump himself is so obviously unfit (apparently owing to a belief that humans are born with finite heartbeats and to exercise is to waste them) that it’s almost impossible to take the position seriously.But the presumed link between physical health and strength and worthiness is far more politically widespread. In March a staffer for Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren tweeted a photograph of her jogging jauntily up a set of stairs, hair springing with her gait, while fellow candidate Bernie Sanders trailed behind her on an escalator, paunched and balding. “This hits me so hard,” said the staffer, assuming an obvious connection between physical mobility and leadership.The character endorsements for “fighters” who make it through disease are common; Gabrielle Giffords’ recovery from a cranial gunshot wound was used to show her strength of character, and Barack Obama –in his own right a good athlete – took many photographed opportunities to play basketball in shirtsleeves. Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott was possessed of genuine physical strength, which the public was seldom able to forget, as his rivals needed help to do a pull-up or failed to sink a basket.The assumption in all cases is that the visual impression of a person’s body is a reasonable guide to their character, or that since certain traits express themselves physically, the physical lack of those things shows they are lacking in the person’s character. This is just a bad and backwards deduction; intellectually energetic people are often physically spry but not all un-spry people lack intellectual energy. But this does not stop candidates leveraging physical wellness as a sign of some deeper strength.Now, of course, a candidate for political office has to be well enough to do the job. There are reasonable criticisms of an ageing political class and of specific individuals who stay in their jobs past the point where they can do them well. When your job involves working on other people’s behalf, you have to be able to do it better than the next best candidate, and there are some forms of physical wellness that bear on whether that’s true.But the broader connection between vitality, power and physical health is damagingly false whether it comes out of Trump’s mouth or the Warren campaign’s. It should be seen with special suspicion by those committed to accessible healthcare, a policy built on the idea that whether you are sick is not a function of what you deserve and that usual interventions of character will not save us.If – as most of us do – we believe that physical illness is not a sign of decrepit character or weakness, then we have to be careful about the photonegative thought that physical wellness is a sign of burnished character or strength. It is not only Trump and his fellow rightwing personality-leaders who seek to leverage that thought. Political positioning everywhere leverages the idea of physical health as strength, which in turn licenses the associated thought that physical illness is weakness. Whichever side of politics it appears on, that thought hurts millions of people. As any sufferer of chronic illness will tell you, the presumed connection between character and body runs deep in society, in the glances of strangers, the minds of loved ones.The president’s bizarre machismo around the virus is just the latest and most visible expression of that thought. Perhaps seeing it in such an extreme form can help us identify its more pedestrian, creeping, insidiously ordinary forms. We would do well to regard them, too, with the same sense of absurdity.• Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a writer and ethicist currently at Princeton University More

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      'A savagely broken food system': Cory Booker wants radical reform … now

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      From a viral pandemic to the movement for racial justice to the worsening climate crisis, Senator Cory Booker says the massive challenges facing the US right now are all tied to a “savagely broken food system”.And last week, his most recent challenge to that system gained new momentum, when a coalition of 300 farm, food, and environmental advocacy organizations sent a letter to Congress urging legislators to pass a bill that would eventually eliminate the country’s largest concentrated animal feeding operations (Cafos).Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Booker, a New Jersey senator who ran for the democratic presidential nomination earlier this year, says: “Nobody seems to be calling out how multinational, vertically integrated industrial agricultural companies are threatening American wellbeing, and I just think that the more people learn about these practices, the more shocked they are.“I don’t think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don’t think they realize that … these big companies like Smithfield and Cargill and others have our American farmers now living like sharecroppers in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I’ve watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air … and I’ve seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are.“Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system.”Booker was elected to the Senate in 2013, after serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, from 2006 to 2013. During his time in the Senate he has focused his efforts on progressive issues like criminal justice reform, reducing economic inequality and increasing access to healthcare.More recently, the food system and the way it shapes inequalities in the US has emerged as one of his defining interests. As mayor of Newark, where more than 50% of the city’s residents are people of color, Booker observed a high rate of poverty and food insecurity. “I learned early in my time as mayor, when I was focused on things like criminal justice reform and economic justice, that all of these issues and injustices were intersectional, and you have to deal with them with a holistic view,” he says.“Kids who walk into bodegas can buy a Twinkie product cheaper than they can buy an apple because 90% of our agriculture subsidies go to four major monocrops,” he says. Workers exposed to dangers in meatpacking plants and to poor working conditions and pesticide exposures on farms are also disproportionately people of color, concerns recently amplified by the Black Lives Matter movement.Kids who walk into bodegas can buy a Twinkie product cheaper than they can buy an apple“What’s motivating me is that I think we need to really sound the alarm in America,” he says. “There are so many crises [that relate] to public health, from global warming to economic justice to humane treatment of animals. What should not be surprising is that a senator is taking this on. What should be more surprising is that we as a country have not seen this broken food system, especially after a Covid crisis, which has so exposed the fragility of the American food system. The real question is why isn’t Congress as a whole moving to address this massive threat to public health?” More