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      Democrats condemn judge’s ‘draconian’ decision threatening abortion drug

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      Democrats angrily denounced as “dangerous” and “draconian” a decision by a Texas judge that threatens access to a widely used abortion medication, while demanding the Joe Biden White House do more to protect reproductive rights.Nearly a quarter-century after the Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion pill mifepristone, the federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Friday sought to invalidate the agency’s decision, handing down an unprecedented order that – if upheld – would severely restrict access to one of the most commonly used methods of terminating a pregnancy.In a dueling court ruling, handed down moments after, a judge in Washington state contradicted the Texas decision, ordering the FDA to maintain the “status quo” availability of mifepristone.With the future of access to medication abortion in potential jeopardy, even in states where the procedure remains legal, Democrats, reproductive rights advocates and providers vowed to keep fighting to protect the drug’s availability.In a statement, Biden called the ruling the “next big step toward the national ban on abortion that Republican elected officials have vowed to make law in America” and pledged to fight Kacsmaryk’s decision. On Friday night, the justice department gave notice that it would appeal the Texas ruling and said it was reviewing the Washington decision.The conflicting court orders left much uncertainty about the future of abortion access, probably elevating the issue to the US supreme court. With little faith in a majority conservative court that overturned Roe v Wade, Democrats are urging the administration to act more aggressively.“Ignore this ruling,” the US senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, said, arguing that the FDA has the authority to disregard the decision by Kacsmaryk, who was appointed to the federal bench by the Donald Trump White House.Wyden added: “The FDA, doctors, and pharmacies can and must go about their jobs like nothing has changed and keep mifepristone accessible to women across America.”Mifepristone is the first pill in a two-drug medication abortion regimen, which is approved for use through the 10th week of pregnancy. More than half of abortions in the US rely on the medication, and the Texas decision, if allowed to stand, would have severe ramifications for access.The president of the abortion rights group All* Above All, Morgan Hopkins, said Biden’s administration must “act immediately to ensure medication abortion care remains available, without interference from politicians or judges”.Since the supreme court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, administration officials have moved to expand access to abortion medication and protect patients seeking care who travel to states where the procedure is legal. But the White House has so far resisted calls from reproductive rights advocates to declare a public health emergency for abortion.Biden has insisted, as he did again on Friday, that the “only way to stop those who are committed to taking away women’s rights and freedoms” is to elect candidates who will codify abortion protections into federal law.The Texas ruling comes days after a liberal judge won a commanding victory to serve on the Wisconsin supreme court in a contest that underscored the enduring potency of abortion politics. The judge, Janet Protasiewicz, had effectively promised voters that if they elected her, flipping the ideological balance of the court from conservative to liberal, the new majority would overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban.Successive victories in favor of abortion rights from Kansas to Michigan have galvanized Democrats, who say the issue was key to their unexpectedly strong showing in last year’s midterms. The party plans to continue harnessing voter anger over the loss of federal abortion protections in upcoming elections.“The Republican party is playing with fire,” said Cecile Richards, a former president of Planned Parenthood who is now a co-chair at American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic organization. “They have put their rightwing politics ahead of the health and wellbeing of American women. They are trying to strip Americans of our basic rights to control our bodies and our futures.”Laphonza Butler, president of Emily’s List, said the group was “working overtime to replace Republicans up and down the ballot with Democratic pro-choice women who are committed to protecting our reproductive freedoms no matter what”.Democrats were quick to cast the decision by Kacsmaryk, who had written critically of the Roe precedent, as part of a broader effort by conservatives to erode women’s reproductive rights.“This judge’s ruling is bullshit,” tweeted Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat of Nevada who narrowly won re-election last year after making abortion rights a central issue of her campaign.The Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy added in a statement: “We cannot allow rightwing judges to ignore the science, and put the health, safety, and autonomy of millions of women at risk.”And Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the US House Democratic leader, said Republican efforts to restrict access to abortion care were “like a malignant tumor” spreading across the US.Yet despite their fury, congressional Democrats see few legislative options. With Republicans in control of the House, and Senate Democrats unable to eliminate the 60-vote legislative filibuster, efforts to protect abortion access are all but certain to fall short.Nevertheless, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, said his caucus was “relentlessly working to protect a woman’s right to choose from this extreme … Republican agenda” and recommitted to passing the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation that seeks to enshrine abortion protections in federal law. But the measure lacks enough support to overcome the filibuster.In response to the Texas judge’s ruling, a number of Democrats renewed calls to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate, though they do not have enough support among their caucus to do so.Some prominent conservatives celebrated Kacsmaryk’s decision. For instance, Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, said: “Life won again today”.But some top Republicans, including Trump, the leading contender for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, were silent late on Friday, reflecting a growing unease within the party about the political risks of overreaching on one of the most emotionally charged issues in American politics. More

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      ‘The dominating issue’: judicial election will decide fate of abortion in Wisconsin

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      One weekend in late March, McKenzie Schroeder offered to drive her friend across the Wisconsin border into Illinois to get an abortion. Abortion has been illegal in Wisconsin since June, when the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, reviving the state’s 1849 near-total abortion ban.“If you’ve never been in that situation, you can never understand how a woman feels if they’re pregnant and don’t know what to do,” said Schroeder, 30, who lives in Sun Prairie and works for a property management company and as a waitress. “I don’t think that any human being on the face of the earth should control what I do with my body.”Wisconsin’s abortion law has divided voters in the state, who next week could pave the way for getting rid of the ban entirely in the most consequential election of 2023.At stake on 4 April is control of the Wisconsin supreme court, which will ultimately decide the fate of the 1849 ban (a challenge is already working its way through state courts). The seven-member supreme court will probably hear consequential cases over voting disputes ahead of the 2024 election in Wisconsin, a key presidential battleground. The outcome of the election could determine whether Wisconsin’s state legislative districts last for another decade or are replaced. Republicans drew the lines and the districts are so heavily distorted in their favor that it is essentially impossible for Democrats to ever take control of the legislature.That perfect storm of issues has caused a record amount of money – about $30m – to flood the race. Daniel Kelly, a conservative, and Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal, are vying to replace the retiring conservative justice Patience Roggensack. Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority on the state court, so whoever wins the race will determine control of the bench.During the first days of early voting, which began on 21 March, people at the polls across the state cited abortion and voting rights as well as fair elections as key concerns going into election day. Voters also described crime, a subject that has dominated political ads, as a top concern. The homicide rate in Milwaukee’s, Wisconsin’s largest city, rose by 11% in 2022 from the year before, but overall violent crime and other serious offenses dropped by 7%.“My number one is abortion,” said Pauline Tanem, a retired foundry worker in Oak Creek. Concerns about democracy and voting rights also informed her support for Protasiewicz. She said she was motivated by “anything that has to do with voting, and not limiting voting”, noting that early voting at her polling place closed before 5pm. “People usually work until five.”Barry Burden, a political science professor who closely follows races in Wisconsin and directs the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that voters seem to be most interested in a small number of issues.“Abortion is the dominating issue,” he said. “And redistricting and other voting matters are not far behind. Everything else is far down the list.”In an interview with the Guardian, Protasiewicz pointed to abortion as a defining issue of the election, but refrained from calling it the most important one. She has campaigned heavily on her support for a woman’s right to choose, though she has said she would decide abortion issues based on existing law.“I think that people are very interested in whether or not they have a right to make their own reproductive healthcare choices,” she said. “I’d be hard pressed to say that it’s a referendum on abortion, but it’s certainly an issue that concerns people.”During the race, Kelly has refrained from voicing his opinions on abortion rights, although in a since-deleted blogpost he referred to pro-choice organizations and politicians as promoting “sexual libertinism”. He has been endorsed by three anti-abortion groups in Wisconsin. (Kelly’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.)Political advertising has saturated the airwaves. Protasiewicz has raised a staggering $10m, while both sides have been supported by significant outside spending. The anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony has reported spending $2m on the race in support of Kelly, while the advocacy arm of Planned Parenthood has contributed at least $1m in support of Protasiewicz.“Political ads are, in my opinion, an unnecessary evil,” said Steve Scheuer, an insurance adjuster from Oconomowoc, a heavily Republican city in Waukesha county. “I think there’s a lot of money spent on that that’s wasted.” Scheuer and his wife, Heather, who works as a secretary at a local Lutheran church, said they were unpersuaded by television advertisements and pointed to abortion as the issue driving their support for Kelly.“We are against abortion,” said Heather Scheuer, who said the issue was a long-term concern and closely tied to her religious beliefs. “They are human beings at conception. That’s what we believe in 100%.”Omar Ward, a 26-year-old canvasser with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said voting rights were particularly important to him. Ward, who is from Milwaukee, had his voting rights restored after four years when the state expunged a felony from his record in 2022. His first time casting a ballot since then was in the supreme court primary in February.While canvassing in Milwaukee and Racine, Ward said he heard more about abortion rights and crime than other issues. “Nobody feels like they should have to go all the way to Chicago to make a decision on their body and wellbeing,” he said. “And on both sides, whether they’re Democrat or Republican, everybody wants the crime to come down.”During the candidates’ only debate, which was televised on 22 March, Kelly and Protasiewicz clashed repeatedly over abortion and safety – with Kelly casting his opponent as soft on crime.Protasiewicz told the Guardian she wanted to push back on that characterization, given “that’s what I’ve spent my entire career doing, you know, holding people accountable”. More

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      Wyoming becomes first US state to outlaw use of abortion pills

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      Wyoming has become the first US state to outlaw the use or prescription of medication abortion pills after the governor, Mark Gordon, signed into law a bill that was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature earlier this month.The crux of the two-page Wyoming bill is a provision making it illegal to “prescribe, dispense, distribute, sell or use any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion”.So-called “morning-after” pills, prescription contraceptive medication used after sex but before a pregnancy can be confirmed, are exempted from the ban.The measure also includes an exemption for any treatment necessary to protect a woman “from an imminent peril that substantially endangers her life or health”, as well as any treatment of a “natural miscarriage according to currently accepted medical guidelines”.Violation of the ban is to be treated as a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $9,000.The measure stipulates that a woman “upon whom a chemical abortion is performed or attempted shall not be criminally prosecuted”.In a statement, Wyoming ACLU advocacy director Antonio Serrano criticised the governor’s decision to sign the law.“A person’s health, not politics, should guide important medical decisions – including the decision to have an abortion,” Serrano said.The governor said he was also allowing enactment, without his signature, of a separate bill passed by state lawmakers to prohibit conventional abortion procedures except when necessary to protect the health and life of the mother, or in case of rape or incest. Exception is also permitted to end a pregnancy if doctors determine there to be a lethal abnormality of the foetus.Wyoming’s new law comes as a rightwing push to crack down on medication abortions gathers momentum, with a federal judge in Texas currently considering a nationwide ban on the abortion pill mifepristone in response to a lawsuit by anti-abortion groups.A two pill combination of mifepristone and another drug is the most common form of abortion in the US.Medication abortions were the preferred method for ending pregnancy in the US even before the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the ruling that protected the right to abortion for nearly five decades.Since that decision last June, abortion restrictions have been up to states and the landscape has shifted quickly. Thirteen states are now enforcing bans on abortion at any point in pregnancy, and one more, Georgia, bans it once cardiac activity can be detected, or at about six weeks’ gestation.Courts have put on hold enforcement of abortion bans or deep restrictions in Arizona, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. Idaho courts have forced the state to allow abortions during medical emergencies.Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      The Democrats botched the Ohio disaster response – and handed Trump a victory | Michael Massing

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      The Democrats botched the Ohio disaster response – and handed Trump a victoryMichael MassingThe failure of Pete Buttigieg, the US secretary of transportion, to appear for nearly three weeks recalls the incompetence of Fema during Hurricane Katrina“Where’s Pete Buttigieg?” someone shouted at a February 15 town hall meeting in East Palestine, Ohio. “I don’t know,” Mayor Trent Conaway replied.Twelve days earlier, a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals had derailed near the town. Three days later, the company announced it was going to carry out a controlled burn of vinyl chloride that would send dangerous gasses into the air, forcing many of East Palestine’s 4,700 residents to evacuate. They returned after receiving assurances that the air and water were safe, but a strong chemical odor clung to the town, and many continued to complain of headaches, nausea, and burning throats. And so several hundred residents had crowded into a local school to demand answers. Conaway said that two weeks had passed before anyone at the White House had contacted him, and the US secretary of transportation still hadn’t materialized.In Washington, Republicans made hay. “Secretary Buttigieg laughing about Chinese spy balloons, while ignoring the Ohio train derailment, shows you how out of touch Democrats are,” Ohio congressman Jim Jordan tweeted. Senator Marco Rubio called Buttigieg “an incompetent who is focused solely on his fantasies about his political future & needs to be fired”.On Fox, Tucker Carlson mocked Buttigieg for commemorating “Transit Equity Day” while remaining silent about the majority-white, struggling East Palestine. If the disaster had happened in a rich Washington DC neighborhood like Georgetown, he said, the National Guard would have been called in, and the story would have led every news channel. “But it happened to the poor benighted town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten and in the view of people who lead this country, forgettable.”But it wasn’t just the right who complained. Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted that “East Palestine railroad derailment will have a significant negative impact on the health and wellbeing of the residents for decades … We need Congressional inquiry and direct action from @PeteButtigieg to address this tragedy.” In a rare show of partisanship, Senator Ted Cruz said he “fully agreed” with her.On 22 February, Donald Trump visited East Palestine. He distributed thousands of bottles of Trump-branded water, walked through the town with his son Donald Trump Jr and Ohio senator JD Vance, and visited a local McDonald’s to buy food for first responders. “You are not forgotten,” Trump said in a speech not far from the accident site. “In too many cases, your goodness and perseverance were met with indifference and betrayal.”The next day, Buttigieg finally showed. Surveying the site of the derailment in a hard hat and safety vest, he acknowledged that he could have spoken out “sooner” about the accident. “I was taking pains to respect the role that I have, the role that I don’t have – but that should not have stopped me from weighing in about how I felt about what was happening.” He tweeted a photo of himself at the site along with the message that he was “amazed by the resilience and decency of the people of East Palestine”.The Department of Transportation did not have the lead role in the accident response – that fell to the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board – but the failure of the nation’s top transportation official to appear at the disaster site for nearly three weeks inevitably recalled the incompetence and disengagement of Fema director Michael Brown during Hurricane Katrina. (President George W Bush famously claimed Brown was doing “a heck of a job”.) It also allowed Trump to present himself as the champion of blue-collar America.How could so poised and polished a figure as Buttigieg so badly miscalculate? A glowing Washington Post profile in August 2021 described him as a skilled communicator and “nimble public speaker” who “rarely makes verbal miscues”.President Joe Biden had made Buttigieg the lead spokesman for his massive infrastructure program, offering him an opportunity to meet with local officials around the country as he promoted roads, ports, bridges and tunnels. During the presidential campaign, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor had assumed the mantle of outsider, but, the Post observed, he had “quickly morphed into a quintessential Washington insider” – omnipresent on television, a fixture at dinners, a tireless networker seeking to advance both the president’s agenda and his own political prospects.Buttigieg’s East Palestine no-show can help answer the question, What’s the matter with Ohio? Formerly considered a “battleground state”, it has in recent years become unshakably red. Columbiana county, where East Palestine is located, is a microcosm. In 2008, John McCain barely took the county with 52% of the vote. Donald Trump won 68% in 2016 and 71.5% in 2020 – a reflection of the perception that the Democrats had abandoned small-town America.In January, Biden went to Covington, Kentucky, to publicize the awarding of $1.6bn in federal funds to reconstruct a bridge over the Ohio River to Cincinnati, a key regional artery. He was joined by Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, and Ohio governor Mike DeWine. The Democrats hope that such investments and ceremonies over the long term can help repair the damage done to the Democrats’ standing in the midwest by their longstanding embrace of free trade, globalization and the outsourcing of jobs to China and Mexico.In the short term, however, Buttigieg’s no-show in East Palestine reinforces the perception that the Democrats really don’t care. It didn’t help that on February 20, as East Palestine was still dealing with the fallout from the derailment, Biden made his surprise visit to Kyiv. “The biggest slap in the face,” Mayor Conaway called it on Fox News, adding, “that tells you right now he doesn’t care about us. He can send every agency he wants to, but I found out this morning that he was in Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there and not to us, and I’m furious.”All the investment in bridges, roads, and factories will not translate into political gains if the party continues to be missing in action.Heck of a job.
      Michael Massing is the author most recently of Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpPete ButtigiegOhioPollutionHealthcommentReuse this content More

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      John Fetterman can help lift the stigma around mental illness and depression | Akin Olla

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      John Fetterman can help lift the stigma around mental illness and depressionAkin OllaThe US senator checked into a hospital for clinical depression – and has provoked a conversation about mental healthMy senator, John Fetterman, has checked into a hospital for clinical depression.This is an action that an increasing number of Americans will likely take in their lifetimes, given the rising rates of depression. Still, Fox News has already pounced: Tucker Carlson argued that Fetterman is “unfit to serve in the United States Senate”, while Laura Ingraham went as far as to imply that Fetterman’s wife has worked to hide his condition and that the act was “craven or a cruel political calculation by a stage wife and political nihilist”.Fetterman isn’t exactly the only person in the United States suffering from some form of depression. According to a Boston University study, “[d]epression among adults in the United States tripled in the early 2020 months of the global coronavirus pandemic – jumping from 8.5% before the pandemic to a staggering 27.8%”, and it only got worse from there. According to the same study, rates of depression continued “climbing to 32.8% and affecting 1 in every 3 American adults”.Stroke victims, which Fetterman is, are particularly susceptible to depression. According to a study in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, “depression occurs in roughly one-third of stroke survivors.” In terms of major depression, which involves at least two weeks of depressive symptoms like problems with sleep and sense of self-worth, the National Institute of Mental Health reported that roughly 8.4% of all Americans had at least one depressive episode in 2020, with higher rates among “adult females (10.5%) compared to males (6.2%)”.This disparity is why it’s important for women in positions of influence like Olympian Simone Biles and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden to speak out about their own mental health struggles. Similarly, it’s important for men in positions of power like Fetterman, especially given the reluctance of men in particular in seeking treatment. Trying to push Fetterman out of politics belittles millions of Americans and signals to roughly one-tenth of the country that they are not worthy of being elected to office.Fetterman, like many Americans who have experienced clinical depression, can still accomplish much of what he sets out to do. Shooting him down now would be similar to what was done to Thomas Eagleton, the original running mate of democrat George McGovern’s 1972 run for the presidency. Eagleton was essentially shamed out of the position after it was revealed that he’d suffered from depression in the past and received electroshock treatment for it. Despite the slights against him and his resignation from the candidacy, he’d won the heart of his constituents and served another two terms as senator.Every day, millions of depressed Americans go to work, the country wouldn’t function without them. While Fetterman may need to step down or decline to run in the future as Arden did, he should actually be given a chance to govern.Fetterman seeking treatment should not trigger calls of incompetency. Instead, it should trigger empathy and questions of how we can ensure that others can seek the help that they need.In the words of Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, who spoke openly about her depression in 2019: “De-stigmatizing and de-mystifying mental illness is just the beginning. Everyone can be a friend to those in need by urging them to take advantage of the resources available to them. But the one hundred of us here in the Senate have a responsibility to make sure those resources are available to everyone.”
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian US
      TopicsDepressionOpinionMental healthUS politicsHealthUS CongressPennsylvaniacommentReuse this content More

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      in UK Politics

      NHS: A&E and cancer unit nurses set to join fresh strikes

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      Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Nurses in England are preparing to escalate their dispute with the government by involving staff from NHS A&E departments, intensive care and cancer wards in a series of 48-hour strikes. The Royal […] More