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      in UK Politics

      Sectioned patients to avoid being locked in cells in overhaul of mental health system

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      Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.CloseRead moreClosePatients sectioned under the Mental Health Act will have more dignity and a say over their care under proposed reforms to what has been described as an “outdated” system.Among the changes as part of the Mental Health Bill, which will come before parliament on Wednesday, police cells and prison cells will no longer be used for people experiencing a mental health crisis, with patients instead expected to be looked after within a suitable healthcare facility.In July’s King’s Speech, Labour vowed to update the Mental Health Act in a bid to shift the balance of power from the system to the patient, with the aim of putting service users at the centre of decisions about their own care.Writing exclusively for The Independent, health secretary Wes Streeting raised the story of Georgie, who was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa at 16, forced to quit school, and admitted to a mental health ward.Health secretary Wes Streeting has promised that the new bill will address a significant shift in attitudes to mental illness More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s queasy prescription to ‘make America healthy again’ takes shape

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      From assertions that America’s highest-profile vaccine critic would lead health agencies to new promises for “massive reform” of Obamacare, the chaotic last week of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign will probably serve as a preview of what “Make America healthy again” could mean should the former president regain power.The jumble of proposals echoed conservative policy documents, channeled the residual anger of the post-pandemic anti-vaccine movement and alarmed experts who help set the nation’s health policies.“My first reaction is that a Trump administration would be the most anti-public health, anti-science administration in history,” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown Law School.“In my mind, health is very much on the ballot,” he said.Over the last week of the campaign, Trump said he would let the nation’s foremost vaccine skeptic “go wild” at the nation’s food and drug agencies and refused to rule out banning certain vaccines. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, also promised “massive reform” of Obamacare should Trump win.Vaccines are among society’s most effective public health interventions, saving an estimated 154 million lives worldwide over 50 years, according to a study in the Lancet. Obamacare has grown in popularity even among Republicans.“It reminds me of the chaos of the first administration, right in the midst of the pandemic,” said Gostin, referring to a time when Trump floated bogus treatments for Covid from injecting disinfectant to ivermectin to hydroxychloroquine – all debunked and often actively harmful.“But it’s far worse,” continued Gostin, “because while Trump at least was surrounded by credible scientists like Tony Fauci, I don’t think there will be any similar restraint in the next Trump administration.”The official Republican party platform is short on details, but blames immigrants for high healthcare prices, and says the party will “commit” to lowering healthcare prices through “choice” and “transparency”. It also pledges to “protect” Medicare from Democrats, who it claims plan to allow “tens of millions of new illegal immigrants” to enroll in the program.Voters in both parties cite healthcare costs as their top health-related issue. However, transparency measures would probably only result in a 1% reduction in healthcare prices over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. “Choice” is often a euphemism for reducing health insurance regulations, which would allow Americans to buy plans that cover fewer services.Undocumented migrants are not eligible to enroll in Medicare, and the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, backed away from a policy that would have provided government-backed healthcare to all residents of the US, regardless of immigration status.A detailed look at how Trump’s supporters might attempt to change US health policy is found in the conservative playbook Project 2025. There, health policy proposals are dominated by calls to restrict abortion and diminish the role of scientific research.In it, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should be known as the “Department of Life”, approval for medication abortion should be withdrawn, and health policy should promote “fatherhood” and the “nuclear family” and stop research that amounts to “woke transgender activism”.HHS should stop focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity” and end policies that are “subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage”. Its sub-agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should be split in two with the power to make policy recommendations severely curtailed. The “incestuous relationship” between government researchers and vaccine manufacturers should end, the plan says.As voters head to the polls, the people who might institute these policies have also come into focus. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent candidate and staunch vaccine critic, said he had been “promised” a role helming the nation’s health agencies by Trump.“The key, which President Trump has promised me, is control of the public health agencies,” said Kennedy on a Zoom call with supporters, according to ABC News. Those agencies include “HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, Food and Drug Administration, [National Institutes of Health] and a few others. And also the [United States Department of Agriculture], which is, you know, key to making America healthy”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKennedy ended his presidential run and endorsed Trump in August after a conspiracy theory-fueled campaign that revealed he had health issues related to a brain worm, once sawed the head off a whale and dumped a dead bear in Central Park.Dr Joseph Ladapo has been floated as a potential pick for the head of HHS. The Harvard University-educated Florida surgeon general warned state residents against using Covid-19 vaccines and allowed unvaccinated children to go to school during a measles outbreak.Although ideas floated by Trump’s supporters may be easily disproved, health researchers and policy experts said they take the threat of their influence deadly serious, with the last week highlighting how legitimate concerns about the power of pharmaceutical and chemical companies can be exploited.“I think we leaned into a libertarian left hook,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of an advisory committee on vaccines for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).Offit said he worried vaccine mandates primed some Americans to believe vaccine misinformation, and even though he supported them, worried they may “have done more harm than good”.Another research advocate who spoke anonymously to Science magazine said: “We’re all in a state of panic … I don’t know anybody who isn’t worried about this.”Soon, the nation will know the extent to which such messages resonated with voters.“I’m surprised that anti-vaccine rhetoric is considered to be convincing enough to get you elected,” said Offit. “I’m surprised that such a significant portion of the population would be compelled by that.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      in US Politics

      ‘If Harris wins, it’s because of abortion’: election tests fallout from Roe reversal

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      Leslie Lemus’s top issue in the 2024 election is probably the economy. But she has a close second: “Them fucking with abortion.”Really, for the 26-year-old Arizona native, the two issues are one and the same. On Monday, she got an abortion at Camelback Family Planning, one of the last abortion clinics in Arizona, in large part because Lemus feels like she can’t financially care for a child right now.“I look at the world and it’s not very pretty. I’m not ready for that yet, to bring a child into the world right now, where the economy is not OK,” said Lemus, who said she lived paycheck to paycheck. Some months, she has to choose between making her car payments and paying off her credit card debt. “Everybody’s struggling left and right.”View image in fullscreenLemus is registered to vote in Maricopa county, which is home to 60% of the Arizona electorate and may determine whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the valuable swing state. Harris has made access to reproductive rights a key part of her policy platform – particularly as a contrast to Trump, who appointed three of the US supreme court justices who overturned Roe v Wade and who has toggled between branding himself as a champion of reproductive rights and as “the most pro-life president”.Lemus is a passionate supporter of Harris, who she calls “my homegirl”.Majorities of Americans have backed abortion access and Roe v Wade for decades, but it was rarely their top issue in the voting booth. Now that the US supreme court has overturned Roe, permitting more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions and several more to ban it at six, 12, or – as in Arizona – 15 weeks, abortion may become the deciding issue of the 2024 election. It is now the most important issue for women under 45, like Lemus.“If Harris wins the election, it will be because of abortion and women voting for her in large part because of that issue,” said Tresa Undem, a pollster who’s been surveying people about abortion for more than two decades.On Monday, Camelback had about 40 patients to see; at least one had traveled in from Texas, which bans almost all abortions. Visitors to the lobby were greeted by a sign urging them to register to vote while they waited for their abortion. The sign advised: “The health of our democracy is in our hands.”‘That gives me hope’On Tuesday, Arizona will become one of 10 states where voters will decide whether to amend their state constitutions to add or expand abortion protections. (In one of those states, Nebraska, voters will vote on both a ballot measure that could expand abortion rights and on the nation’s sole anti-abortion measure.) Five of those states, including Arizona, have some kind of abortion ban on the books. If any of the measures supporting abortion rights pass, it would be the first time that a state has overturned a post-Roe v Wade ban.Democrats have long hoped these measures would boost turnout among their base, but the rosy polling for the measures in steadfastly red states indicates that a significant swath of voters are essentially splitting their votes by supporting both abortion rights and Republicans, the party that helped engineer Roe’s downfall. Although the measure looks likely to pass in Arizona, for example, polling suggests that Trump will win the state.View image in fullscreenJulio Morera helped collect signatures at the Arizona state fair in order to get the measure on the ballot. His group’s booth, he recalled, was set up next to a man who was hawking rightwing memorabilia adorned with eagles, guns and the slogan “Don’t Tread On Me”. When asked to sign the petition, the man demurred. “I got customers to think about,” he said.But at the very end of the fair, Morera said, the man added his signature.“That gives me hope that this is gonna pass,” Morera said. “There are quite a few people that may not be Democrats or left-leaning who would support this access to abortion.”A vote for Trump, however, may ultimately cancel out a vote for a ballot measure. If Trump wins the presidency, he will be able to skirt Congress and use a 19th-century anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act to ban the mailing of all abortion-related materials – which would result in a de facto national abortion ban and render these measures’ successes moot.Project 2025, an influential policy playbook for the next conservative administration, suggests using the Comstock Act to at least ban the mailing of abortion pills, which account for roughly two-thirds of US abortions. It also suggests rolling back privacy protections for abortion patients and reshaping the nation’s largest family planning program, which would curtail access to contraception, among a bevy of other anti-abortion policies.Harris, meanwhile, has forcefully defended abortion rights. “Over these past two years, the impact of Trump abortion bans has been devastating,” she told a rally in Texas in October. “We see the horrific reality that women and families face every single day.”For Lemus, abortion bans all come down to one thing: “Men being in control of women.”View image in fullscreenThe economy was not the only reason that Lemus sought an abortion on Monday. She is also worried about the mental toll of having a child. At 18, Lemus gave birth to a son who was born prematurely and died just a month after birth.“I was there with all the medical stuff, seeing my child in the incubator until he passed away,” she said quietly. Eight years later, Lemus is not ready to have another one.“We fought so hard to have choices,” she said. “Why do they feel like we can’t have a choice?”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      in US Politics

      In Florida, the future of abortion might come down to men

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      When Maxwell Frost bounded on stage at a Saturday morning rally in support of Florida abortion rights, the 27-year-old congressman was quick to explain why he had shown up.“I’m so proud to be here as an ally and partner in this fight!” he yelled to the roughly hundred-strong crowd who had gathered in an Orlando church courtyard, clutching handwritten sings with messages like “abortion bans are killing us” and “womb-tang clan ain’t nothing to fuck with”.His biological mother had given him up for adoption, said Frost, who wore a black T-shirt that read “Abortion is Health Care”. “The thing that made it sacred was the fact that she had a choice,” Frost said. “I’ve had enough of people trying to use parts of all of our identities to take away freedoms from other people.”The crowd – mostly women – roared in response.In an election where women’s access to abortion has become a top issue, activists are now rushing to convince men that they also have a stake in the fight – and that, come Tuesday, they should vote accordingly.Although men support abortion rights at similar rates as women, they seem to be far less driven by the issue. Less than half of men identify as “pro-choice”, according to Gallup, and are far more likely to see the economy or immigration as their top issue. One poll of men of color found that, although more than 80% believe abortion should be legal, less than half prioritized candidates who supported abortion rights.“It’s that common misconception that abortion is a woman’s issue,” said Zach Rivera, a 24-year-old activist with Men4Choice, a national group dedicated to energizing men who support abortion rights.View image in fullscreenOver the last several weeks, Rivera has spent countless hours knocking on doors in Florida neighborhoods in support of amendment 4, a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the Florida constitution and overturn the state’s ban on the procedure past six weeks of pregnancy. Nine other states are also set to vote on similar ballot measures on election day, but amendment 4 may face the steepest odds. In order to pass, the measure must secure 60% of the vote in a state that has veered sharply to the right in recent years and whose state government has repeatedly tried to kneecap the campaign behind the amendment.Recent polling has found that support for measure hovers somewhere in the 50% range: while one poll found that 58% of Florida voters support it, another closer to 54%. In the latter poll, 55% of women supported the measure, compared to 53% of men. In an election as tight as Florida’s, nudging more men to vote yes could mean the difference between victory and defeat.As Saturday morning gave way to a humid afternoon punctuated by bursts of rain, Rivera trudged from house to house in a wealthy, blue area of Orlando, dropping off Men4Choice stickers and attempting to talk to voters about amendment 4. Numerous houses had blue “Harris/Walz” signs in their front lawns – but not a single one had a purple “Yes on 4” sign. Voters were reluctant to talk about it. “I’m friends with everyone,” one woman said.Rivera has had better luck, he said, with phone banking. In one recent conversation, Rivera described urging one reluctant man to think about his future wife and children: what if, 10 years down the line, his wife died because an abortion ban blocked her from accessing medical care? How would he reveal to his kids that he didn’t vote?“The whole point of this movement is to think about future you,” Rivera recalled telling him. The man, Rivera said, decided to vote in favor of amendment 4.At an early voting site in Tampa, 24-year-old Brandon McCray cited women’s rights as one of his greatest concerns in the 2024 elections. It helped convince him to vote for Kamala Harris. “Amendment 4 would just protect a lot of women,” he said. Banning abortion, he said, “is the biggest violation to a human right”.McCray may be a relative anomaly among his peers. Appalled by the triple-punch of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, the sexual violence exposed by the #MeToo movement in late 2017 and the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, young women have become the most progressive cohort ever measured in US history – but young men have inched towards the right. While 62% of young women now support Harris, 55% of young men back Donald Trump, according to recent New York Times polling. Moreover, young men’s participation in politics is falling, with young women now on track to vote, rally and donate more frequently.For many young women, the trend is so obvious that its unremarkable. “The right-leaning has more traditional values and more traditional values tends to benefit men more than it benefits women,” said Briana Valle, 22. “For obvious reasons, people are always gonna go for what benefits them.”Leila Wotruba, 22, added: “There’s a lot more at stake for women.”As a gay man, Rivera knows that he may appear to not have much at stake in the fight over abortion rights. But Rivera sees the future of the issue, especially in Florida, as a “litmus test” for other rights.“That’s what I tell people: Even if this might not be a personal issue to you overall … you are definitely next,” he said. “They are just waiting until there’s nobody left to defend you.” More

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      in US Politics

      RFK Jr says Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that the former president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected.Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear-and-tear, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on Twitter/X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S​. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again”, he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”The Republican nominee declined to say whether he would seek a cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added: “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views”.The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over US public health.

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      In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in US kids.In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. US district judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including the Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former attorney general Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy.Kennedy traveled with Trump on Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added. More

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      in US Politics

      RFK Jr could lead US health and food safety in a second Trump term

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr could assume some control over US health and food safety in a second Trump administration, according to reports on Saturday, alarming Democrats who believe the former environmental lawyer and independent presidential candidate could be empowered to act on his vaccine-sceptical views.According to the Washington Post, Kennedy has met with Trump transition officials to help draw up an agenda for a new administration and could take a broad “health tsar” position that would not require confirmation by the Senate.Kennedy, who ended his White House bid and endorsed Trump, and his advisers have also been drafting 30-, 60- and 90-day plans for a second Trump term, the outlet reported, citing a source “familiar” with the planning process.Kamala Harris slammed the idea, saying Friday that Kennedy is “the exact last person in America who should be setting healthcare policy for America’s families and children”.The Democratic candidate further described Kennedy as “someone who has routinely promoted junk science and crazy conspiracy theories”.Last week, Kennedy warned in a post on X that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”He added: “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1 Preserve your records, and 2 Pack your bags.”Ted Kennedy Jr, a cousin of RFK Jr and a healthcare lawyer, said he was “deeply concerned” about Trump’s choice.“We can’t put anyone in charge of healthcare who doesn’t understand how doctors and scientists develop best practices and keep us safe, and has no medical background and no knowledge about how health care is organized, delivered and paid for,” he told Stat.But Trump seems determined. He told rightwing figure Tucker Carlson last week that Kennedy was “going to work on health and women’s health”.“He really wants to with the pesticides and the, you know, all the different things. I said, he can do it,” Trump said. “He can do anything he wants. He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants – everything. I think it’s great. I think it’s great.”“He’s a great guy. I’ve known him a long time. And all he wants to do – it’s very simple – he wants to make people healthy,” Trump told NBC News on Friday. Campaign officials previously told the outlet that Kennedy might spearhead an “Operation Warp Speed for childhood chronic disease”, a reference to the Trump administration’s $20bn Covid vaccine development program.But the discussion over a potential role for Kennedy in a new Trump administration has also raised the topic of the response to the 2020-21 Covid-19 pandemic that has been largely absent from the campaign trail.JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential pick, expressed scepticism about the Covid vaccine during a sit-down with podcaster Joe Rogan released on Thursday.“I took the vax, and you know, I haven’t been boosted or anything, but the moment where I really started to get red-pilled on the whole vax thing was the sickest that I have been in the last 15 years by far was when I took the vaccine,” the Ohio senator told Rogan.Kennedy, who has also expressed doubts about Covid vaccines, told a rally last week that Trump had promised him “control” of public health agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.Howard Lutnick, the Trump transition team co-chair, confirmed to CNN this week that he’d spent two-and-a-half hours with Kennedy “and it was the most extraordinary thing”.“I said: ‘So, tell me. How’s it going to go?’ And he said: ‘Why don’t you just listen to me explain things,’” Lutnick said. He did not deny that Kennedy was correct to say he would lead public health agencies in a Trump administration.“I think it’ll be pretty cool to give him the data. Let’s see what he comes up with,” Lutnick added.In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said there were “no formal decisions” about potential Trump administration appointments. But she added that the former president “has said he will work alongside passionate voices like RFK Jr to make America healthy again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children”, referring to type 2 diabetes. More

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      in US Politics

      Contested state supreme court seats are site of hidden battle for abortion access

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      Abortion will be on the ballot in 10 states on Tuesday, and it’s one of the top issues in the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But it is also key to less publicized but increasingly contested races for seats on state supreme courts, which often have the last word on whether a state will ban or protect access to the procedure.This year, voters in 33 states have the chance to decide who sits on their state supreme courts. Judges will be on the ballot in Arizona and Florida, where supreme courts have recently ruled to uphold abortion bans. They are also up for election in Montana, where the supreme court has backed abortion rights in the face of a deeply abortion-hostile state legislature.In addition, supreme court judges are on the ballot in Maryland, Nebraska and Nevada – all of which are holding votes on measures that could enshrine access to abortion in their state constitutions. Should those measures pass, state supreme courts will almost certainly determine how to interpret them.Indeed, anti-abortion groups are already gearing up for lawsuits.“We’re all going to end up in court, because they’re going to take vague language from these ballot initiatives to ask for specific things like funding for all abortions, abortion for minors without parental consent,” said Kristi Hamrick, chief media and policy strategist for the powerful anti-abortion group Students for Life of America, which is currently campaigning around state supreme court races in Arizona and Oklahoma. “Judges have become a very big, important step in how abortion law is actually realized.”In Michigan and Ohio, which voted in 2022 and 2023 respectively to amend their state constitution to include abortion rights, advocates are still fighting in court over whether those amendments can be used to strike down abortion restrictions. Come November, however, the ideological makeup of both courts may flip.Spending in state supreme court races has surged since Roe fell. In the 2021-2022 election cycle, candidates, interest groups and political parties spent more than $100m, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. After adjusting for inflation, that’s almost double the amount spent in any previous midterm cycle.View image in fullscreenIn 2023, a race for a single seat on the Wisconsin supreme court alone cost $51m – and hinged on abortion rights, as the liberal-leaning candidate talked up her support for the procedure. (As in many other – but not all – state supreme court races, the candidates in Wisconsin were technically non-partisan.) After that election, liberals assumed a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin supreme court. The court is now set to hear a case involving the state’s 19th-century abortion ban, which is not currently being enforced but is still on the books.It’s too early to tally up the money that has been dumped into these races this year, especially because much of it is usually spent in the final days of the election. But the spending is all but guaranteed to shatter records.In May, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and Planned Parenthood Votes announced that they were teaming up this cycle to devote $5m to ads, canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts in supreme court races in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. Meanwhile, the ACLU and its Pac, the ACLU Voter Education Fund, has this year spent $5.4m on non-partisan advertising and door-knocking efforts in supreme court races in Michigan, Montana, North Carolina and Ohio. The scale of these investments was unprecedented for both Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, according to Douglas Keith, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s Judiciary Program who tracks supreme court races.

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      “For a long time, judicial campaign ads often were just judges saying that they were fair and independent and had family values, and that was about it. Now, you’re seeing judges talk about abortion rights or voting rights or environmental rights in their campaign ads,” Keith said. By contrast, rightwing judicial candidates are largely avoiding talk of abortion, Keith said, as the issue has become ballot box poison for Republicans in the years since Roe fell. Still, the Judicial Fairness Initiative, the court-focused arm of the Republican State Leadership Committee, announced in August that it would make a “seven-figure investment” in judicial races in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.Balancing the federal benchAbortion is far from the only issue over which state courts hold enormous sway. They also play a key role in redistricting, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights and more. And with the US Congress so gridlocked, state-level legislation and its legality has only grown in importance.For years, conservative operatives have focused on remaking the federal judiciary in their ideological image – an effort that culminated in Donald Trump’s appointments of three US supreme court justices and has made federal courts generally more hostile to progressive causes. Now, the ACLU hopes to make state supreme courts into what Deirdre Schifeling, its chief political and advocacy officer, calls a “counterbalance” to this federal bench.“We have a plan through 2030 to work to build a more representative court,” said Schifeling, who has a spreadsheet of the supreme court races that will take place across eight states for years to come. (As a non-partisan organization, the ACLU focuses on voter education and candidates’ “civil rights and civil liberties” records.) This cycle, the organization’s messaging has centered on abortion.“Nationally, you’re seeing polling that shows the top thing that voters are voting on is the economy. But these judges don’t really influence the economy,” Schifeling said. “Of the issues that they can actually influence and have power over, reproductive rights is by far the most important to voters.”Abortion rights supporters are testing out this strategy even in some of the United States’ most anti-abortion states. In Texas, where ProPublica this week reported two women died after being denied emergency care due to the state’s abortion ban, former US air force undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones has launched the Find Out Pac, which aims to unseat three state supreme court justices.Justices Jane Bland, Jimmy Blacklock and John Devine, the Pac has declared, “fucked around with our reproductive freedom” in cases upholding Texas’s abortion restrictions. Now, Jones wants them out.“Why would we not try to hold some folks accountable?” Jones said. “This is the most direct way in which Texas voters can have their voices heard on this issue.” (There is no way for citizens to initiate a ballot measure in Texas.) The Pac has been running digital ads statewide on how the Texas ban has imperiled access to medically necessary care.However, since state supreme court races have long languished in relative obscurity, voters don’t always know much about them and may very well default to voting on party lines in the seven states where the ballots list the affiliations of nominees for the bench. Although the majority of Texans believe abortions should be legal in all or some cases, nearly half of Texans don’t recall seeing or hearing anything about their supreme court in the last year, according to Find Out Pac’s own polling.“This conversation that we’re having in Texas, around the importance of judicial races, is new for us as Democrats,” Jones said. “It’s not for the Republicans.” More

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      US lawmakers call on EPA to ban pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease

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      More than 50 US lawmakers are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to join dozens of other countries in banning a widely used weedkiller linked to Parkinson’s disease and other health dangers.In a 31 October letter to the agency, seven US senators said that paraquat, a weedkiller commonly applied on US farms, was a “highly toxic pesticide whose continued use cannot be justified given its harms to farmworkers and rural communities”. The call for a ban from the senators came after 47 members of the US House of Representatives sent a similar letter to the EPA calling for a ban earlier in October.The lawmakers cite scientific links between paraquat use and development of Parkinson’s and other “life threatening diseases” as well as “grave impacts on the environment”. “Health risks include a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease, with some studies finding a 64% increase in the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, thyroid cancer, and other thyroid issues,” they wrote.The New Jersey senator Cory Booker, organizer of the Senate letter, said the risks of paraquat exposure were “well documented” and that it was “irresponsible” for the EPA to continue to allow its use. “I hope the EPA will follow the science and ban paraquat,” Booker said.The EPA has long maintained that there is no “clear link” between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease, though the agency does have a number of restrictions on use of the chemical due to its acute toxicity. The agency issued a draft report earlier this year affirming its position.Still, the agency said at that time that it would be reviewing more scientific studies and would issue a final report by 17 January 2025.When asked about the congressional call for a ban, an EPA spokesperson said only that the agency “will respond to the letter appropriately”.Several California lawmakers pushed for a ban in the most recent state legislative session, also citing the risks of Parkinson’s. A compromise measure signed by the governor last month requires an expedited regulatory review of paraquat.The push to ban paraquat in the US was “long overdue”, said Ray Dorsey, a professor of neurology at the University of Rochester who studies the causes of Parkinson’s disease.“For 60 years, paraquat has been helping fuel the rise of Parkinson’s disease,” Dorsey said. “The evidence from human, laboratory and apparently even the company’s own research is overwhelming. When paraquat is banned, more lives will be spared the consequences of Parkinson’s.”Chinese-owned Syngenta, the longtime maker and marketer of paraquat products did not respond to a request for comment about the congressional letters. The company has denied there is any valid connection between Parkinson’s and paraquat. In response to previous reporting, it asserted that no “peer-reviewed scientific publication has established a causal connection between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease”.Internal Syngenta documents revealed by the Guardian show the company was aware many years ago of scientific evidence that paraquat could affect the brain in ways that cause Parkinson’s, and that it secretly sought to influence scientific research to counter the evidence of harm.Syngenta was allegedly aided in suppressing the risks of paraquat by a “reputation management” firm called v-Fluence, the Guardian reported in September.Thousands of US paraquat users who suffer from Parkinson’s are currently suing Syngenta, alleging the company should have warned them of the risk of developing the incurable brain disease, but instead worked to hide the evidence of risk.This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group More