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      Trump asks supreme court to block release of 6 January records

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      Trump asks supreme court to block release of 6 January recordsAn appeals court ruled against the former US president two weeks ago but prohibited documents from being turned over Donald Trump turned to the supreme court Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol.A federal appeals court ruled against the former US president two weeks ago, but prohibited documents held by the National Archives from being turned over before the supreme court had a chance to weigh in. Trump appointed three of the nine justices.Michael Flynn sues Capitol attack committee in bid to block subpoenaRead moreTrump is claiming that as a former president he has right to assert executive privilege over the records, arguing that releasing them would damage the presidency in the future.But Joe Biden determined that the documents were in the public interest and that executive privilege should therefore not be invoked.The documents include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, handwritten notes “concerning the events of January 6” from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and “a draft executive order on the topic of election integrity”, the Archives has said.The House committee has said the records are vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly riot that was aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Texas governor Greg Abbott stays silent on whether he will pardon George Floyd

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      Texas governor Greg Abbott stays silent on whether he will pardon George FloydParole board unanimously recommended pardon for 2004 drug arrest by ex-officer whose work is no longer trusted by prosecutors Doling out pardons is a Christmas tradition for Greg Abbott, who grants them typically for minor offenses committed years or decades ago. This year, one name stands out on the Republican Texas governor’s desk: George Floyd.Abbott has not said if he will posthumously pardon Floyd for a 2004 drug arrest in Houston by a former officer whose work is no longer trusted by prosecutors.Floyd, who was Black, spent much of his life in Houston before moving to Minnesota, where his murder by a white police officer, who knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, led last year to a global reckoning on race and policing.Texas’ parole board – stacked with Abbott appointees – unanimously recommended a pardon for Floyd in October.Abbott, who is up for reelection in 2022, has given no indication of whether he will grant what would be only the second posthumous pardon in Texas history.“It doesn’t matter who you think George Floyd was, or what you think he stood for or didn’t stand for,” said Allison Mathis, a public defender in Houston who submitted Floyd’s pardon application. “What matters is he didn’t do this. It’s important for the governor to correct the record to show he didn’t do this.”A spokeswoman for Abbott did not respond to requests for comment.Pardons restore the rights of the convicted and forgive them in the eyes of the law. Floyd’s family and supporters said a posthumous pardon in Texas would show a commitment to accountability.In February 2004, Floyd was arrested in Houston for selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting. He pleaded guilty to a drug charge and served 10 months in prison.His case happened to be among dozens that prosecutors revisited in the fallout over a deadly drug raid in 2019 that resulted in murder charges against an officer, Gerald Goines, who is no longer with the Houston force.Prosecutors say Goines lied to obtain a search warrant in the raid that left a husband and wife dead, and the office of the Harris county district attorney, Kim Ogg, has dismissed more than 160 drug convictions tied to Goines.Goines has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys accuse Ogg of launching the review for political gain.Abbott has several primary challengers from the far right. His silence about a pardon for Floyd has raised questions over whether political calculations are at play. His office has not responded to those charges.Abbott attended Floyd’s memorial service last year in Houston, where he met family members and floated the idea of a George Floyd Act that deals with police brutality.But Abbott never publicly supported such a measure when lawmakers returned to the Capitol, where Republicans instead made police funding a priority.State senator Royce West, a Democrat who carried the George Floyd Act in the Senate, said he understands the politics if Abbott was waiting until after the primary in March. But he said the governor should act on the recommendation.“As he’s always said, he is a law and order governor,“ West said. “And this would be following the law.”TopicsGeorge FloydGreg AbbottTexasLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      America’s death penalty divide: why capital punishment is getting better, and worse

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      America’s death penalty divide: why capital punishment is getting better, and worseThis year the US saw the fewest executions since 1988, but those states sticking with judicial killings are displaying grotesque aberrations More than half of the states in the US have either abolished the death penalty or have formal suspensions in place, as the country’s use of the brutal punishment continues to wither on the vine.When Virginia became the first southern state to scrap capital punishment in March, it raised to 23 the number of states that have abolished the practice outright. In a further three states, governors have imposed a moratorium on executions.Virginia’s seismic shift away from judicial killings has created a death penalty-free zone on the north-east seaboard of the US that runs from Maine’s border with Canada down to the edge of the Carolinas. A similar zone now runs all the way down the west coast of the US.The growing block of states where capital punishment is no longer welcome is one of the headline findings of the annual review of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). The report contains nuggets that will make an abolitionist’s heart soar, including a record low number of new death sentences in 2021 (18) and the fewest executions carried out since 1988 (11).Virginia becomes the first southern state to end the death penalty Read moreBut there is a powerful sting in the tail. As the fondness for judicial killings generally recedes, those states that are sticking with capital punishment are displaying grotesque aberrations in its application.“The handful of states that continue to push for capital punishment are outliers that often disregard due process, botch executions, and dwell in the shadows of long histories of racism and a biased criminal legal system,” said DPIC’s executive director Robert Dunham.Five states, together with the US government, judicially killed prisoners this year. Seven imposed new death sentences.Three states have the dubious distinction of standing out in this year’s review – Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas. Between them they accounted for a half of all death sentences and most of the 11 executions.Oklahoma botched its first execution in six years, that of John Grant who was observed convulsing and vomiting on the gurney. The Guardian revealed that another death penalty state, Arizona, spent thousands of dollars obtaining hydrogen cyanide for its gas chamber, the same lethal chemical used by the Nazis in Auschwitz.Racism continues to leap out of the statistics, as it has since the early days of US capital punishment with its roots in slavery and racial terror lynchings. Ten of the 18 (56%) new death sentences were meted out to prisoners of colour, while the same percentage of death row inmates who were executed (six out of 11) were African American.Arizona ‘refurbishes’ its gas chamber to prepare for executions, documents revealRead moreReflecting a centuries-old distortion, more than three out of every four of the victims of this year’s murders ending in new death sentences were white. No non-white victim was involved in any case leading to a white person being condemned to death.Horrors abound in other aspects of the behaviour of the rump of death penalty states. This was a year in which the callous disregard for the mental impairments of those prisoners put to death was on visceral display.As Ngozi Ndulue, DPIC’s deputy director, pointed out, all but one prisoner executed this year had serious impairments including brain injury or damage, mental illness and intellectual disabilities, or had histories of gruesome childhood neglect and abuse.“We are seeing fewer and fewer executions, but those that do occur demonstrate that the death penalty is not reserved for the worst of the worst, but the most vulnerable of the vulnerable,” she said.Perhaps the most powerful argument of all against the death penalty is that it runs the risk of killing innocent people, and there was plenty of food for thought in that regard in 2021. Two death-row inmates were exonerated during the year, taking the total number of prisoners in the modern era who had been awaiting execution only to be found innocent to a staggering 186.DPIC points out that the figure is equivalent for one exoneration for every eight executions that have been carried out in the past 50 years. Both this year’s exonerees, Eddie Lee Howard and Sherwood Brown, were from Mississippiand were cleared with the help of DNA testing after both had been on death row for 26 years.The annual record for 2021 contains a hangover from an earlier era, in the form of the federal government’s flurry of executions in the dying days of the Trump administration. Three people on federal death row were killed in less than 10 days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, as part of Donald Trump’s rush to carry out 13 executions in six months.Those who died in 2021 at the hands of the Trump administration were Lisa Montgomery, a profoundly mentally-ill woman who had suffered a lifetime of abuse tantamount to torture; Corey Johnson who was severely intellectually disabled; and Dustin Higgs who indisputably did not kill anybody.Since Biden took office in January there have been no further federal executions and in June the US attorney general Merrick Garland announced a formal pause to give the Department of Justice time to review its policies.Anti-death penalty campaigners have been hoping the Biden administration would end the federal death penalty and commute sentences of the remaining 45 federal death row inmates to life imprisonment. So far, there has been no sign of that happening.TopicsCapital punishmentLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Judges weigh social media posts in criminal sentences for US Capitol attack

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      Judges weigh social media posts in criminal sentences for US Capitol attackMuch of the evidence has come from rioters’ own words and videos, as many used social media to celebrate the violence For many insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January, self-incriminating messages, photos and videos that they broadcast on social media before, during and after the attack are influencing their criminal sentences.Earlier this month, US district judge Amy Jackson read aloud some of Russell Peterson’s posts before she sentenced the Pennsylvania man to 30 days imprisonment.“Overall I had fun lol,” Peterson had posted on Facebook, using the social media abbreviation for “laugh out loud”.The judge told Peterson that his posts made it “extraordinarily difficult” for her to show him leniency.“The ‘lol’ particularly stuck in my craw because, as I hope you’ve come to understand, nothing about January 6th was funny,” Jackson added. “No one locked in a room, cowering under a table for hours, was laughing.”Among the biggest takeaways so far from the justice department’s prosecution of the insurrection is how large a role social media has played, with much of the most damning evidence coming from rioters’ own words and videos, in addition to evidence of entering the Capitol, destroying property or hurting people.Extremist supporters of Donald Trump broke into the Capitol following days of build-up among the rightwing and after a rally in Washington, DC, where the then president urged the crowd to try to stop the official certification by Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 presidential election.FBI agents have identified scores of rioters from public posts and records subpoenaed from social media platforms. Prosecutors used posts to build cases and judges are now weighing them in favor of tougher sentences.As of last Friday, more than 50 people have been sentenced for federal crimes related to the insurrection.In at least 28 of those cases, prosecutors factored a defendant’s social media posts into their requests for stricter sentences, according to an Associated Press review of court records.Many insurrectionists used social media to celebrate the violence or spew hateful rhetoric. Others used it to spread misinformation, promote baseless conspiracy theories or play down their actions.Prosecutors also have accused a few defendants of trying to destroy evidence by deleting posts.Approximately 700 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot. About 150 of them have pleaded guilty.More than 20 defendants have been sentenced to jail or prison terms or to time already served behind bars. Over a dozen others received home confinement sentences.Prosecutors recommended probation for Indiana hair salon owner Dona Sue Bissey, but the judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, sentenced her to two weeks in jail for her participation in the riot.The judge noted that Bissey posted a screenshot of a Twitter post that read: “This is the First time the U.S. Capitol had been breached since it was attacked by the British in 1814.”Chutkan said: “When Ms. Bissey got home, she was not struck with remorse or regret for what she had done. She’s celebrating and bragging about her participation in what amounted to an attempted overthrow of the government.”‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidencyRead moreFBI agents obtained a search warrant for Andrew Ryan Bennett’s Facebook account after getting a tip that the Maryland man live-streamed video from inside the Capitol.Two days before the riot, Bennett posted a Facebook message that said: “You better be ready chaos is coming and I will be in DC on 1/6/2021 fighting for my freedom!”Judge James Boasberg singled out that post as an “aggravating” factor weighing in favor of house arrest instead of a fully probationary sentence.“The cornerstone of our democratic republic is the peaceful transfer of power after elections,” the judge told Bennett. “What you and others did on January 6th was nothing less than an attempt to undermine that system of government.”Meanwhile, videos captured New Jersey gym owner Scott Fairlamb punching a police officer outside the Capitol. His Facebook and Instagram posts showed he was prepared to commit violence there and had no remorse for his actions, prosecutors said.Senior Judge Royce Lamberth said other rioters in Fairlamb’s position would be “well advised” to join him in pleading guilty.“You couldn’t have beat this if you went to trial on the evidence that I saw,” Lamberth said before sentencing Fairlamb to 41 months in prison.The role of social media has drawn criticism of the tech companies behind the relevant platforms. Facebook was shown to have ignored warning signs in the build-up to the attack.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS crimeLaw (US)Social medianewsReuse this content More

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      The supreme court’s abortion ruling is even more unsettling than it may seem | Moira Donegan

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      The supreme court’s abortion ruling is even more unsettling than it may seemMoira DoneganIn allowing Texas’s outrageous abortion ban to stay in place, the court signaled that it is willing to sacrifice its own legitimacy and power in order to destroy Roe Don’t be fooled by the supreme court’s nominal hedging on its endorsement of SB8, the Texas abortion ban that deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who assists in an abortion after six weeks’ gestation. In a ruling on Friday, the court held that a lawsuit by Texas abortion providers could go forward – but only on narrow grounds. Only those state officials responsible for licensing medical providers may be sued, the court ordered – no one else involved in the state’s practical maintenance of SB8 is liable. The ruling said, for instance, that the providers could not sue court clerks, those bureaucrats tasked with actually docketing the lawsuits that would enforce SB8.For providers, it seems that the best possible outcome for the suit now is that they may be able to secure an injunction preventing medical providers from being delicensed. These perplexing limits placed by the court on which parties can be sued to challenge SB8 ensures that though the suit against the law will be at least partly allowed to go forward, it will be largely toothless.In the meantime, SB8 will remain law. Women in Texas are effectively banned from securing a legal abortion in the state, even though the still-standing Roe v Wade decision says that they have a right to one. It’s likely that SB8 will remain in effect at least for the duration of Roe’s lifetime – meaning that Texas women will not be able to obtain legal abortions after six weeks for the foreseeable future. Many of the initial media responses to the court’s opinion emphasized that since the suit was allowed to go forward, on technical grounds, the ruling was a narrow win for the abortion providers. But in reality Friday was a massive win for the rightwing Texas government, and for anti-choice forces nationwide.That SB8 has been allowed to take effect – now for the second time – by the supreme court reflects the justices’ eagerness to gut abortion rights. The fact of the matter is that the court is already set to overturn Roe and allow states to ban abortion outright. That much was clear to anyone who listened to last week’s oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, a case surrounding the constitutionality of a 15-week ban in Mississippi, which devolved into grim misogynist spectacle as the Republican appointees held court on the supposed ease of giving infants up for adoption and their own robust comfort with overturning long-settled precedent.That ruling is scheduled to come down in late May or early June. When it does, a slim majority of states are expected to ban abortion, either immediately or very soon thereafter. That means that soon SB8 – and the copycat bills that it has inspired in states like Florida and Arkansas – won’t be necessary for the anti-choice lobby to achieve their aims. Instead of concocting an elaborate enforcement process in which rogue anti-woman vigilantes enforce their abortion bans, the states will be able to enforce their bans themselves.SB8, then, and the supreme court’s embrace of it, can be understood not only as a harbinger of the justices’ deep contempt for the abortion right, but also of their childish impatience to exert this contempt upon American women. They can’t even wait six months. They want to ban abortion right now. In pursuit of this goal, the supreme court has proven itself willing to undermine its own capacity to oversee state laws, to enforce federal supremacy, and to protect constitutional rights.The anti-choice substance of the court’s decision in SB8 was not surprising; its embrace of Texas’s tactics perhaps was. Aside from its direct attempt to undermine women’s rights, SB8 also took aim at judicial authority. By banning abortion long before viability, the law flouted the supreme court’s precedents in Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey. But that much a slew of vehemently anti-choice justices would probably forgive: all six of the Republican appointees clearly believe that Roe was wrongly decided, and at least five of them (all but Roberts, who seems more trepidatious) appear eager to overturn it. But in its novel enforcement mechanism, SB8 sought specifically to evade judicial review – not just to give the court an opportunity to overturn its own precedent, but to make it so that within Texas borders supreme court precedent didn’t matter.In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared SB8 to the views of John C Calhoun – a nineteenth-century pro-slavery campaigner who argued that states have the right to nullify federal laws that they do not like. America fought its civil war in no small part over this question. By first allowing the SB8 to go into effect, in September, and then by gutting the lawsuit against it this Friday, the supreme court has, shockingly, endorsed a scheme to undermine its own power, and granted a state the ability to evade federal precedent. Nullification, it seems, is back in style.For years, court watchers have wondered whether the justices’ institutionalist instincts would overcome their misogynist ones: if the Court had to choose between maintaining its own power and legitimacy, and overturning Roe, which would it choose? Now, it seems, we have our answer.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)AbortioncommentReuse this content More

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      How dismantling Roe v Wade could imperil other ‘core, basic human rights’

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      How dismantling Roe v Wade could imperil other ‘core, basic human rights’Supreme court appears inclined to severely curtail or overturn Roe v Wade after hearing Mississippi case, which could have affect gay rights, contraceptives and fertility treatments Constitutional scholars in the US said a litany of rights, from same-sex marriage and sex to birth control and in vitro fertilization, could come into question if the country’s highest court moves to overrule or weaken Roe v Wade.The supreme court last week heard arguments in the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which centers on whether the state of Mississippi can ban abortion at 15 weeks gestation, roughly nine weeks before bans are permitted under current law.The Mississippi case is widely regarded as the most important abortion rights case since Roe v Wade, when the supreme court effectively legalized abortion nationally in 1973. A decision in the Dobbs case is expected June 2022.Although supreme court opinions are notoriously difficult to predict, a majority of justices on the conservative-leaning court appeared inclined to severely curtail or overturn Roe v Wade, which protects abortion rights in states hostile to the procedure.Legal scholars warned that the impacts of such a move would likely be widespread, because abortion rights are rooted in the same implied constitutional right to privacy that is the foundation for other intimate personal decisions Americans now take for granted.Gay rights, contraceptives, certain fertility treatments and even interracial marriage, “are imperiled because they’re all rooted in that right to privacy,” Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University law school and an expert in constitutional, family and reproductive rights law, told the Guardian.“All of this has been implied because they’re understood to be core, basic human rights,” said Murray. “You don’t need the state to recognize them because they are vested in you by virtue of being a human.”Currently, states are prevented from banning abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb, a concept known as “viability”. But at the hearing on 1 December, a majority of justices appeared ready to uphold Mississippi’s law, which would require either invalidating the “viability” standard or overturn Roe v Wade entirely.In arguments, justices pointed to several ways they may reinterpret the Roe v Wade decision. Some, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, were skeptical there is a right to privacy and were swayed by the lack of an explicit reference to the right in the constitution, a concept known as “textualism”.“If we were talking about the second amendment, I know exactly what we’re talking about,” said Thomas. “If we’re talking about the fourth amendment, I know what we’re talking about because it’s written. It’s there.”That argument could be paired with one pushed forward by conservatives, such as Mississippi solicitor general Scott Stewart, who argued a right to abortion is not grounded in the “history or tradition” of the country.“A right to abortion [is] not grounded in the text,” said Stewart. “It’s grounded on abstract concepts that this court has rejected in other contexts as supplying a substantive right”.The theory underlying that right to privacy is called “substantive due process”, or the doctrine that the constitution protects both the procedures of due process, such as how criminal law is applied, and “substantive” guarantees of life, liberty and property.“If you ask where rights come from in the US constitution there’s basically two general answers,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and a historian who has studied abortion rights since Roe v Wade. “There’s the rights spelled out in the text of the constitution,” such as rights to bear arms or against unreasonable search and seizure, “and there’s other rights, like the right to marry and the right to parent that are not in the text of the constitution”.Those are rights established by substantive due process. For example, in 1965 the court struck down birth control bans for married couples in Griswold v Connecticut. In 1967 with Loving v Virginia, the court invalidated anti-miscegenation laws that barred interracial marriage. In 1972 in Eisenstadt v Baird, the court found people who were not married also had a right to birth control. In 1973, the court recognized a right to terminate a pregnancy.“These rights of parental autonomy are underpinnings of the right to privacy, marriage is included in this,” said Murray. “In a later case, the state says marriage [and] procreation are basic civil rights of man.”Cases based in substantive due process continued into the modern era, when in 2003 the court invalidated anti-sodomy statutes in Lawrence v Texas, and established a right to same-sex conduct. In 2016, the court found same-sex couples also had a right to marry in Obergefell v Hodges.Attorneys for Jackson Women’s Health Organization responded on the principle of substantive due process when quizzed on this principle by Thomas.“If I were to ask you what constitutional right protects the right to abortion, is it privacy? Is it autonomy? What would it be?” asked Thomas.“It’s liberty, Your Honor,” said Julie Rikelman, litigation director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the abortion clinic.Briefs to the court in Dobbs directly challenge that principle, such as from the conservative, anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life. Attorneys for the group, the conservative legal activists Adam Mortara and Jonathan Mitchell, argued the court does not necessarily need to overturn decisions protecting gay rights.“But neither should the court hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread,” wrote Mortara and Mitchell. “Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are as lawless as Roe.” The same brief argued women could control their reproduction by refraining from sex. Neither Mitchell nor Mortara responded to an interview request.Until the supreme court issues a decision, it is unclear exactly how rights protected by substantive due process might be affected. However, scholars consider same-sex and reproductive rights to be the most vulnerable because there is an active political campaign to circumscribe them. By contrast, there is little contemporary criticism of interracial marriage.If Roe v Wade is overruled, “It will be on the ground it was a right that was untethered from constitutional text,” said Murray. If that view prevails on the court, rights to contraception, gay rights and in vitro fertilization could also be quickly implicated, since, “all of these things are untethered from constitutional text and historically were not available in the US”.What’s more, the history of abortion rights may provide a roadmap for other rights to be hobbled, even if substantive due process prevails.Murray offered the example of a 2017 case, in which three conservative justices, led by justice Neil Gorsuch, argued states could restrict birth certificates of same-sex parents. Gorsuch argued there appeared to be nothing unconstitutional about a “biology-based birth registration regime” where only one same-sex parent would be listed on the certificate.“It is a really good example of how they have dismantled Roe piecemeal and incrementally could be applied to these other rights,” said Murray.TopicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsAbortionfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Court rules Trump cannot block release of documents to Capitol attack panel

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      Court rules Trump cannot block release of documents to Capitol attack panelThe former president is expected to appeal the ruling to the supreme court An appeals court has ruled against former US president Donald Trump’s effort to shield documents from the House committee that is investigating the 6 January attack on Capitol in Washington DC earlier this year.Trump is expected to appeal to the supreme court.More details to comeTopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsLaw (US)news More

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      Republicans confident supreme court will overturn abortion rights

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      Republicans confident supreme court will overturn abortion rightsMississippi governor Tate Reeves says state ‘snap-back’ legislation will ban almost all abortion if Roe v Wade is thrown out entirely

      Opinion: the supreme court is coming for women’s rights
      As the supreme court weighs the future of abortion access in America, Republicans on Sunday expressed confidence that the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision would soon be overturned, paving the way for a raft of anti-abortion legislation around the country next year.‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical angerRead moreOn Wednesday, the supreme court heard arguments over a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Observers suggested that the conservative supermajority on the court appeared poised to uphold the law and potentially go further by overturning Roe, which protects a woman’s right to choose. A decision is not expected until June next year.Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, told CNN’s State of the Union he had “some reason for optimism” after this week’s arguments.He also confirmed that if the landmark ruling was overturned entirely, Mississippi would enforce a ban on almost all abortions in the state under a so-called “trigger law”.“That is a yes,” Reeves said when asked if he would enforce the “snap-back” legislation.“Because if you believe as I believe very strongly that that innocent, unborn child in the mother’s womb is in fact a child, the most important word when we talk about unborn children is not unborn, but it’s children.”The position is not representative of the majority of Americans. According to recent polling, seven in 10 are opposed to overturning Roe v Wade while 59% believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances.Nonetheless, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a global research and policy organisation “committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights”, 21 US states are certain to attempt some form of ban on abortion should Roe be overturned, using laws already on the books.Reeves caveated his answer by cautioning that Mississippi’s response to the forthcoming supreme court ruling would be “dependent upon how the court rules and exactly what those opinions allow us to do”. He also noted that any decision would not lead to a national ban but could permit states to make their own determinations.Mike Braun, a Republican senator for Indiana, echoed a number of Reeves’ arguments. He told NBC’s Meet the Press he wanted “abortions to be eliminated from the landscape” but would not be drawn into specifics regarding potential laws in his state.Indiana has enacted 55 abortion restrictions and bans in the past decade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, but does not have a “trigger law” or equivalent on the books. It is listed by the institute as one of five states without these laws that are still likely to move towards almost total bans should Roe be overturned.“When it comes to things like abortion, I think it’s clear it’s time to turn it back to the states,” Braun told NBC.Since former president Donald Trump installed three conservative justices to the supreme court in just four years, both sides of the fight over abortion rights have been preparing for a legal showdown.According to the Associated Press, campaign finance data reveals that pro-abortion-access groups donated $8m in 2018 and more than $10m in 2020.Those numbers outpace the public contributions of anti-abortion groups, which donated $2.6m in 2018 and $6.3m in 2020, according to data. But the complexity of the network of nonprofits and “dark money” funds makes it difficult to produce a full accounting of the money flows.TopicsRepublicansMississippiUS supreme courtAbortionUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US healthcarenewsReuse this content More