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      The Surprising Places Where Abortion Rights Are on the Ballot, and Winning

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      IdahoN.D.S.D.TexasOkla.Mo.Ark.La.Miss.Ala.Tenn.Ky.Ind.Wis.W.Va.S.C.Ga.Ky.Kan.Mont.Mich.OhioMo.S.D.Fla.Ariz. Before Dobbs, abortion was legal in all 50 states. In the 14 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 15 states have enacted near-total bans () on abortion, and two states have imposed six-week limits (). But in the same time frame, the results of a series of ballot measures have revealed […] More

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      Ohio’s working class felt deserted by Democrats. Can Biden win them back?

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      David Cox is trying to persuade his members that Joe Biden has done more for working-class Americans than any US president in his decades as a construction worker and union organiser in eastern Ohio.But Cox is not sure they really want to hear it in a state where the Democratic brand was in decline long before Donald Trump snatched victory in Ohio in 2016 and then increased his support four years later.“Biden’s been great. He’s done so much for labour like we haven’t never seen in my lifetime,” he said, ticking off legislation to revitalise manufacturing and invest in technology that created many new construction jobs, as well as labour department decisions in favour of workers.“But whether it brings back those we lost to Trump remains to be seen. I think even if they aren’t inclined to go out and vote for Biden, maybe they’ll just stay home and not vote at all. That’s half a win.”Cox, an ironworker and director of the Dayton Building and Construction Trades Council, a union umbrella group representing thousands of construction workers in eastern Ohio, has good reason for scepticism.Ohio was once a swing state so crucial that presidential candidates repeatedly piled in to win over voters. But by 2020, the Democratic national funders decided it wasn’t even worth throwing serious money into the fight and left Ohio off their list of targets, essentially conceding the state to Trump and the Republicans.The only Democrat to win statewide office in more than a decade is the US senator Sherrod Brown who is expected to face a tough fight for re-election next year.Cox’s union is based in Dayton, a part of Montgomery county where the Democratic vote was once strong enough to help offset losses elsewhere in the state. Trump won the county in 2016, albeit by a whisker. Biden took it back four years later by just 2%.Party officials, nationally and locally, appear to have recognised the mistake in letting Ohio slip away. But there is disagreement on the causes and how to respond even if they see reasons for optimism.Ohio Democrats have been energised by the size of the victory and turnout in last month’s referendum on a Republican attempt to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution. The move was aimed at making it harder for voters to enshrine access to abortion in the constitution in another ballot in November. But it was defeated by 57% to 43% on an exceptionally high turnout for a ballot vote in August, reflecting what Democrats see as a major electoral issue in their favor after the US supreme court struck down constitutional protections last year.For all that, veteran Democrats say there is a long road to travel in Ohio for a party that is the architect of some of its own misfortunes.On paper, Biden should be in a relatively strong position. The economy and job numbers are growing even if inflation has hit hard. But a CNN national survey released on Thursday found Biden neck and neck with Trump and every other Republican candidate with the exception of the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who was six points ahead of the president.There are good reasons to be cautious about those numbers more than a year before the election, but they are another reminder to the Democrats of the difficulties of persuading voters in regions like eastern Ohio that Biden has been good for them. The economy may look stronger on paper but even if voters are not struggling financially many do not feel good about their deeply fractured country or the Democrats.Kim McCarthy, the Democratic chair in Greene county which includes part of eastern Dayton, said her party struggles to shake the perception that, at a national level, it is not interested in working people.“It’s not a secret that our country is run by corporate USA Inc. I feel that limitation stops Democrats from fighting for things that would bring people over to their side, like universal healthcare,” she said.McCarthy said that remained a good part of the reason for Trump’s continuing support in her county.“The appeal of Trump ultimately is that people recognise that our federal government is failing us as a society, as a nation. I’m from Australia and I think one of the most profound things that I’ve realised over my 25-odd years of living here is that the US government doesn’t care about me and my life,” she said.“When I moved here, I gave up a government that was prepared to support me to ensure that I had the tools to live my best life. I think Americans, even without having lived in another country, ultimately understand that difference. Trump, of course, is not the answer to that problem.”Cox said the Democratic party nationally and locally bears a good deal of the responsibility for losing Ohio. “Labour feels it has been left out of the picture,” he said.He added that the Democrats had been damaged goods in Dayton since Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and thousands of factory jobs were shipped to Mexico after 1994.“This was a General Motors town and every family had somebody that worked there. When Nafta happened, General Motors virtually pulled out of this town and moved to Mexico. In the Dayton area, it’s a sore issue even today. People were selling homes, selling their boats, selling their motorcycles,” he said.The legacy is visible in abandoned industrial buildings and open spaces where factories once stood. Dayton has lost one-quarter of its population since Nafta.Cox said Nafta changed the perception of the Democrats as representing American workers. Then Trump came along and renegotiated Nafta to improve some of the terms for the US which made it look as if he was at least listening to workers in cities like Dayton.“That was one of his better moves. People here liked that,” said Cox. “That and really punching China in the nose.”There’s no shortage of Democrats to admit they got it wrong in Ohio. But the chair of Montgomery county Democrats, Mohamed Al-Hamdani, sees the mistakes differently.Al-Hamdani, the first Muslim to chair a Democratic party branch in Ohio, said that the problem went beyond overlooking industrial workers.“We’ve become a polarised country and I think some of that is because demographics are changing in the United States. In 1992, when my family came here, I don’t think there was a Muslim in Congress. People of color had a few seats in Congress, women had smaller number of seats in Congress and the Senate. And you couldn’t even say LGBTQ+,” he said.“Fast-forward 35 years and the country has rapidly changed and some of that change comes at a cost for a party like us. When you’re that party that supports all that, sometimes there is a backlash. We’re on the right side of history, for sure. But doing the right thing doesn’t always get you elected.”That divide can be seen in differing views of why the former Ohio congressman Tim Ryan lost the US Senate race last year to the Republican JD Vance, the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy – a controversial account of growing up amid poverty and drug addiction.At times Ryan appeared to be running against his own party.“You’ve seen a broken economic system where both parties have sold out to the corporate interests that shift our jobs down to the southern part of this country, then to Mexico, then to China. There is no economic freedom if there’s no jobs here in the United States,” he told a 2022 election rally.Cox, who calls Ryan “the worker’s Democrat”, thinks he lost because the national Democratic party failed to fund his campaign properly. Ryan has accused the party of writing off states like Ohio that do not have a majority of voters with a university degree.Al-Hamdani thinks Ryan was so concentrated on winning back support from those who decamped to Trump, such as some of Cox’s members, that he neglected the voters who stuck with the Democrats.“Our base is still a diverse base. In Montgomery county a majority of votes that come to Democrats still come from very diverse areas, black neighborhoods,” he said.“Ryan’s team made the calculation that they thought those folks were already in the bag and that just wasn’t true. You have to work to shore up your base, and our base just didn’t show up. They didn’t vote in the numbers we wanted them to. I think a lot of it’s because they felt, and rightfully so, that they were forgotten and taken for granted, and we can’t do that as a party.”Then there are the rural voters. While Ohio’s three largest cities – Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati – remain solidly Democrat, it’s not enough to offset the huge shift away from the party outside urban areas.Fred Strahorn, a Black member of the Ohio legislature for a Dayton district for nearly 20 years who also led the Democratic caucus for four years, said the party had not been helped by east coast liberals dismissing Trump voters as motivated by nothing more than prejudice.“I think some of those voters took that as an insult, and it made them even more entrenched in their decision. I don’t think that’s how you court voters. I don’t think that you can just say, hey, because you didn’t agree with me, there’s something wrong with you,” he said.Strahorn said that if Biden was to have any chance of winning the state he needed to return to Obama’s strategy of spending a lot of time on the ground telling people what he is going to do for them. But he said the Democrats also need to engage voters on their “litmus issues” such as guns and support for the military to explain that the party is not hostile to either.“We need to say that we do support the military. The truth is the opposition supports military contracting, not necessarily military personnel, because they often try to take stuff from the military personnel and their families. They support things that go boom. There’s ways to talk about this but you have to engage them,” he said.Strahorn said there would be no quick comeback for the party in Ohio and that ultimately winning voters’ confidence was a long game. He wants the Democrats to have the courage to embrace what he regards as one of the party’s greatest strengths, defence of government as a means to improve people’s lives.He said the party had become afraid of doing it in the face of relentless Republican attacks blaming people’s problems on “big government”, a strategy reinforced by Democrats in Congress who serve the interests of corporations.“One of the failures, multi decades long, is not telling people what government does for them and remind them on a regular basis, so they’re not so easily turned against it. We’ve not defended government, not really explained all the things that government does that you actually like, want and use,” he said.“Therefore when somebody comes along and takes a swack at it, it’s easy for people to believe because they never hear anything but that. If you don’t counter that it really makes it hard for that electorate to see you as somebody who’s trying to help them because you haven’t explained how that works. That’s your battleground.” More

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      Fani Willis Sharply Rebukes House Republican Investigating Her

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      The prosecutor, Fani T. Willis, accused Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio of trying to obstruct her prosecution of the racketeering case against Donald J. Trump and his allies.The district attorney leading a criminal case against Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia accused Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio of trying to obstruct her prosecution of the case in a sharply worded letter she sent on Thursday.Soon after the district attorney, Fani T. Willis, a Democrat, announced last month that she was bringing a racketeering case against Mr. Trump and 18 other defendants for their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, Mr. Jordan, a Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that he was going to investigate Ms. Willis over whether her prosecution of Mr. Trump was politically motivated.In her letter, Ms. Willis accused Mr. Jordan of trying “to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous partisan misrepresentations,” and of not understanding how the state’s racketeering law works.“Your attempt to invoke congressional authority to intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case in Georgia is flagrantly at odds with the Constitution,” she added. “The defendants in this case have been charged under state law with committing state crimes. There is absolutely no support for Congress purporting to second guess or somehow supervise an ongoing Georgia criminal investigation and prosecution.”The letter came as the defendants and the prosecution continued sparring in legal filings over where and when the trial would take place. In a new filing, Mark Meadows, a defendant, who served as the White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump, was seeking a stay of the proceedings in state court until a judge ruled on his motion to move his case to federal court.The Georgia case is one of four criminal indictments that have been brought against Mr. Trump this year; Mr. Jordan’s investigation of Ms. Willis is the latest example of House Republicans using their power in Congress to try to derail efforts to prosecute the former president.When he announced his inquiry last month, Mr. Jordan, a close Trump ally, said it would look for any evidence of communication between Ms. Willis and the Biden administration and examine her office’s use of federal grant money.While Mr. Jordan expressed concerns that former federal officials were being unfairly targeted in a state prosecution, some of the issues he raised had little to do with the underlying facts of the investigation. For example, in a letter to Ms. Willis, he said her new campaign website had included a reference to a New York Times article that mentioned the Trump investigation.Ms. Willis’s response is the latest sign that she will not take attacks on her office and the investigation quietly — a striking difference in style from that of Jack Smith, the more reserved and laconic special prosecutor handling the two federal criminal cases against Mr. Trump.She has a track record as a pugnacious, law-and-order prosecutor, and is pursuing racketeering cases not only against the former president and his allies, but a number of high-profile Atlanta rappers accused of operating a criminal gang.In a heated email exchange in July over the terms of Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, providing testimony in her investigation, Ms. Willis called the governor’s lawyer, Brian McEvoy, “wrong and confused” and “rude,” after Mr. McEvoy expressed frustration over mixed signals he said he had received from her office, and asserted that there had been “leaks” associated with her investigation.“You have taken my kindness as weakness,” she wrote, adding: “Despite your disdain this investigation continues and will not be derailed by anyone’s antics.”On Thursday, scores of Trump supporters gathered near the State Capitol for a news conference and rally, demanding that the state legislature call a special session to defund Ms. Willis’s office. The effort, led by Colton Moore, a freshman state senator, has little support among Mr. Moore’s fellow lawmakers and is almost certain to fail.Mr. Moore, who has drawn attention and praise in recent weeks from news outlets supportive of Mr. Trump, said that Ms. Willis was engaged in “politicization” of the justice system. His constituents, he said, “don’t want their tax dollars funding this type of corrupt government power.”In her letter to Mr. Jordan, Ms. Willis invited him to purchase a book about racketeering statutes written by one her fellow prosecutors on the Trump case, John Floyd, titled “RICO State by State.”“As a non-member of the bar,” she wrote, “you can purchase a copy for two hundred forty-nine dollars.” More

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      Ohio Republicans accused of trying to mislead voters with abortion ballot wording

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      Abortion rights advocates in Ohio filed a lawsuit on Monday, claiming that state Republican leaders are trying to confuse voters on a ballot measure about access to reproductive healthcare.Last week, the Ohio ballot board – led by the Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose – approved the wording of Issue 1, a November ballot measure that will ask voters if the state constitution should guarantee a right to abortion, contraception, fertility treatment and miscarriage care.The new lawsuit accuses the ballot board’s Republican majority of presenting voters with a confusing summary of Issue 1 in an attempt “to mislead Ohioans and persuade them to oppose the amendment”.According to the lawsuit filed with the Ohio supreme court, the ballot board was asked to “put the clear, simple 194-word text of the Amendment itself on the ballot, so that voters could see exactly what they were being asked to approve”.Instead, the board approved a summary of the amendment that is longer than the amendment itself, replacing the term “fetus” with “unborn child”. The summary also does not mention the other forms of reproductive healthcare guaranteed by the amendment, like access to contraception and fertility treatments.The summary does not change the content of the constitutional amendment itself, but abortion rights advocates worry that it will mislead voters at the ballot box, dissuading Ohioans from supporting Issue 1.“The ballot board’s members adopted politicized, distorted language for the amendment, exploiting their authority in a last-ditch effort to deceive and confuse Ohio voters ahead of the November vote on reproductive freedom,” said Lauren Blauvelt, a spokesperson for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, the abortion rights coalition leading the lawsuit.The legal battle over the language of the Ohio ballot measure is the latest attempt to block voters from passing a state constitutional amendment on reproductive rights.Earlier this month, Ohio Republicans held a costly special election in an attempt to make it more difficult for voters to amend the state constitution. In a resounding failure for the Ohio GOP, voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal, opting to keep the current method of passing citizen-led amendments.A recent poll from USA Today Network/Suffolk University showed rising support for a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion.LaRose last week tweeted that the amendment was a move from “the radical left”.In the ballot board meeting, LaRose told members that he thought his summary of the amendment was “fair and accurate”.“We tried to summarize that the best way we can and make it a clear statement here in the ballot language of what this amendment would actually do,” he said.LaRose, an avowed abortion opponent, launched his campaign for US Senate last month.The Ohio Capital Journal revealed that LaRose’s campaign received a $1m donation from a new soft-money group established by the conservative lawyer David Langson, who also funded at least two additional campaigns to block the passage of the reproductive rights amendment.Other Ohio Republicans – like the state attorney general, Dave Yost – share LaRose’s staunch opposition to abortion.But the lawsuit commended the attorney general for setting aside his personal views on abortion to “lawfully and impartially” complete his “amendment-related duties”.In March, Yost approved the summary language of the amendment submitted by abortion rights advocates, writing in a certification letter that the language was a “fair and truthful” explanation of the proposed changes to the Ohio constitution.“My personal views on abortion are publicly known,” Yost wrote.But the attorney general added that he could not “use the authority” of his office to unfairly influence state policy.He added: “Elected office is not a license to simply do what one wishes.” More

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      Republicans Won’t Stop at Banning Abortion

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      There is no way to regulate and control pregnancy without regulating and controlling people. States that have enacted abortion bans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health have also considered the establishment of new regimes for the surveillance and criminalization of anyone who dares to circumvent the state’s dictates for the acceptable use of one’s body.This is why the war on abortion rights is properly seen as a war on bodily autonomy and why the attack on reproductive freedom has moved hand in hand with a renewed attack on the gay, queer and transgender community. It’s all part of the same tapestry of reaction. And this reactionary impulse extends to the means of the anti-abortion political project as well as its ends.The same lawmakers who want to rob their constituents of the right to bodily autonomy have also begun to treat democracy as an obstacle to avoid, not a process to respect. If the people stand in the way of ending abortion, then it’s the people who have to go.We just witnessed, in fact, an attempt by anti-abortion lawmakers to do exactly that — to try to remove the public from the equation.A majority of Ohio voters support the right to an abortion. The Ohio Legislature — gerrymandered into an seemingly perpetual Republican majority — does not. In many states, this would be the end of the story, but in Ohio voters have the power to act directly on the state constitution at the ballot box. With a simple majority, they can protect abortion rights from a Legislature that has no interest in honoring the views of most Ohioans on this particular issue.Eager to pursue their unpopular agenda — and uninterested in trying to persuade Ohio voters of the wisdom of their views — Republican lawmakers tried to change the rules. Last week, in what its Republican sponsors hoped would be a low-turnout election, Ohioans voted on a ballot initiative that would have raised the threshold for change to the state constitution from a simple majority to a supermajority. They defeated the measure, clearing the path for a November vote on the future of abortion rights in the state.In his opinion for the court in Dobbs, Justice Samuel Alito cast the decision to overturn Roe and Casey as a victory for democracy. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” he wrote. Reproductive rights, Alito continued, quoting Justice Antonin Scalia’s 1992 dissent in Casey, are “to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.”Citizens can persuade each other, and they can vote. But our political system is not designed to turn the aggregate preferences of a majority into direct political power. (If that were true, neither Alito nor his Republican colleagues, save for Clarence Thomas, would be on the Supreme Court.) More important, Alito’s vision of voting and representation only works if that legislative majority, whoever it represents, is interested in fair play.But as the Ohio example illustrates, the assault on bodily autonomy often includes, even rests on, an assault on other rights and privileges. In Idaho, to give another example, the No Public Funds for Abortion Act, which passed before Dobbs was decided, would punish state employees with the termination of employment, require restitution of public funds and possible prison time for counseling in favor of an abortion or referring someone to an abortion clinic. Other legislatures, such as those in Texas and South Carolina, have pushed similar restrictions on speech in pursuit of near total abortion bans in their states.There’s something that feels inevitable in this anti-abortion turn toward political restriction. The attack on bodily autonomy is not general. It is aimed, specifically, at women. It subjects their bodies to state control and in the process degrades their citizenship. “Without the ability to decide whether and when to have children, women could not — in the way men took for granted — determine how they would live their lives, and how they would contribute to the society around them,” the dissenters in Dobbs wrote. For women to take their place as “full and equal citizens,” they “must have control over their reproductive decisions.”In other words, the attack on bodily autonomy is an assault on both political equality and reproductive freedom. It creates a class of citizens whose status is lower than that of another group. And once you are in the business of degrading the citizenship of one group of people, it’s easy to extend that pattern of action to the citizenship of other groups of people. The authoritarian habits of mind that you cultivate diminishing one form of freedom may lead you to view other forms of freedom with equal contempt.For now, the anti-abortion project is an assault on one form of freedom. But don’t be surprised if, to secure whatever victories it wins, it becomes an attack on all the others.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Joe Biden links Grand Canyon national monument to fight against climate change – as it happened

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      From 4h agoJoe Biden is spending today in Arizona, where at 2pm eastern time he will announce that he is designating about one million acres around the Grand Canyon as a national monument, which will also protect it from uranium mining.The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh and Mary Yang have more:
      Joe Biden will designate a “nearly 1m acres” expanse around the Grand Canyon as a new national monument, protecting the region from future uranium mining.
      The designation, which Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday comes after years-long lobbying by tribal leaders and local environmentalists to block mining projects that they say would damage the Colorado River watershed and important cultural sites.
      The new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon national monument encompasses the headwaters of the Colorado River, as well as the habitat of the endangered California condor. It is also the homeland of several tribes. Baaj Nwaavjo means “where tribes roam” for the Havasupai tribe and I’tah Kukveni means “our footprints” for the Hopi tribe.
      “Establishing the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument honors our solemn promise to Tribal Nations to respect sovereignty, preserves America’s iconic landscapes for future generations, and advances my commitment to protect and conserve at least 30% of our nation’s land and waters by 2030,” Biden said in a statement.
      In 2012, the Obama administration had blocked new mining on federal land in the area – but the protections are due to expire by 2023. The new designation would protect the area in perpetuity. Mining industry officials have said they will attempt to challenge the decision.
      Congress has been exploring new laws to boost national uranium production and enrichment, in an effort to reduce the US’s dependence on Russian imports.
      Democrats and Republicans are closely watching a special election in Ohio that could indicate if voters, even in red states, are willing to protect abortion access. Buckeye state residents are considering Issue 1, a GOP-backed measure that would make it more difficult to change the state constitution, which reproductives rights advocates are asking voters to do in November to ensure abortion remains legal. Today’s election is viewed as a test of whether the issue, which so animated voters in last year’s midterm elections and was seen as one reason why Democrats nationwide performed better than expected, remains as potent as it once was. Polls close in Ohio at 7.30pm eastern time.Here’s what else happened today:
      Joe Biden established a new national monument around the Grand Canyon, linking the decision to his fight against climate change.
      If Issue 1 is approved in Ohio, election-day turnout will likely be crucial, a top political analyst says.
      Ron DeSantis is replacing his campaign manager in an effort to jump-start his floundering presidential bid.
      The Washington DC grand jury that last week indicted Donald Trump is continuing its work, for reasons that remain unknown.
      Addressing a rally in New Hampshire, Trump made light of the multiple criminal indictments filed against him, saying they helped him in the polls.
      Below is a map of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which Joe Biden established today.The new areas are around the national park situated in northern Arizona, and outlined in green:Meanwhile in Ohio, voting is ongoing in the special election over Issue 1, which would raise the bar to amend the state’s constitution through the ballot box, as abortion rights advocates hope voters will do later this year.It may only be one state of 50, but nonetheless expect today’s election to be viewed as a litmus test for how important the issue of reproductive rights is to Americans, more than a year after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.A CNN poll released today indicates that voters nationwide do indeed remain fired up by the court’s decision, which overturned nearly 50 years of precedent and allowed states to ban abortion completely. The share of those surveyed disapproving of the decision was 64%, the same as it was a year ago, CNN says.After a draft of the court’s decision was leaked in May 2022, the network’s pollsters found that 26% of respondents would only vote for a candidate who shared their view on abortion. That number is now up to 29% in the latest survey, according to CNN.Donald Trump is in New Hampshire, an early voting state in the Republican primaries, where he is basking in his status as the frontrunner for the nomination.The former president is an avid poll watcher, and is clearly relishing the noticeable uptick in his public support ever since the first criminal indictments again him became public earlier this year:Among those who joined Joe Biden for his speech at the Grand Canyon was Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator who last year left the Democratic party to be an independent:Sinema has had a tortured relationship with Biden and many Democrats, particularly progressives. When Democrats controlled the Senate in 2021 and 2022 by just a single vote, Sinema acted to block proposals that would have increased taxes on the wealthy, voted against raising the minimum wage and protected the filibuster, which requires most legislation to pass with at least 60 votes.She is up for re-election next year, though she has not said if she will stand for another term. Today, Emerson College released polling showing that if Sinema is on the ballot, she will probably pull support from the Republican candidate – not whoever the Democrats nominate. If that trend holds, it will be good news for Biden’s allies, who are defending several Senate seats in red or swing states next year, and can only afford to lose one and maintain their majority in the chamber.As he announced a new million-acre national monument around the Grand Canyon, Joe Biden connected the move to his fights against climate change and rightwing culture war policies.“I made a commitment as president to prioritize respect for the tribal sovereignty and self determination, to honor the solemn promises the United States made to tribal nations, to fulfill federal trust and treaty obligations,” Biden said.“At a time when some seek to ban books and bury history, we’re making it clear that we can’t just choose to learn only what we want to know. We should learn everything that’s good or bad, the truth about who we are as a nation. That’s what great nations do.”The new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon national monument is the homeland for several tribes, and includes the headwaters of the drought-stricken Colorado river.“Preserving these lands is good not only for Arizona but for the planet. It’s good for the economy, it’s good for the soul of the nation, and I believe … to my core it’s the right thing to do. But there’s more work ahead to combat the existential threat of climate change,” Biden said.Joe Biden, who is lagging his predecessors when it comes to giving news conferences and interviews to reporters, has sat for a one-on-0ne with the Weather Channel.The network said its interview airs tomorrow, and will concern climate change:Expect the president to talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, both in that interview and in his speech today at the Grand Canyon. Signed about a year ago, the measure is the first piece of federal legislation intended to address climate change.Few places in America are more beautiful than the Grand Canyon, which those aboard Air Force One got a good view of when Joe Biden arrived yesterday:According to the White House, the president will in a few minutes speak from the Red Butte Airfield, an abandoned facility that local broadcaster KPNX calls “one of Arizona’s hidden gems”.Joe Biden is spending today in Arizona, where at 2pm eastern time he will announce that he is designating about one million acres around the Grand Canyon as a national monument, which will also protect it from uranium mining.The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh and Mary Yang have more:
      Joe Biden will designate a “nearly 1m acres” expanse around the Grand Canyon as a new national monument, protecting the region from future uranium mining.
      The designation, which Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday comes after years-long lobbying by tribal leaders and local environmentalists to block mining projects that they say would damage the Colorado River watershed and important cultural sites.
      The new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon national monument encompasses the headwaters of the Colorado River, as well as the habitat of the endangered California condor. It is also the homeland of several tribes. Baaj Nwaavjo means “where tribes roam” for the Havasupai tribe and I’tah Kukveni means “our footprints” for the Hopi tribe.
      “Establishing the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument honors our solemn promise to Tribal Nations to respect sovereignty, preserves America’s iconic landscapes for future generations, and advances my commitment to protect and conserve at least 30% of our nation’s land and waters by 2030,” Biden said in a statement.
      In 2012, the Obama administration had blocked new mining on federal land in the area – but the protections are due to expire by 2023. The new designation would protect the area in perpetuity. Mining industry officials have said they will attempt to challenge the decision.
      Congress has been exploring new laws to boost national uranium production and enrichment, in an effort to reduce the US’s dependence on Russian imports.
      The supreme court’s grant of a Biden administration request to reinstate its regulations on ghost guns while a legal challenge continues came about after a split among the six-member conservative majority.Conservatives Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, while Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts joined with the court’s three liberals in allowing the regulations to remains in place, at least for now, Bloomberg News reports.Expect further litigating over the rules, which Bloomberg reports were put in place by the Biden administration to stop gun violence, only to be challenged in court:
      The ATF rule subjects gun kits to the same federal requirements as fully assembled firearms, meaning dealers must include serial numbers, conduct background checks and keep records of transactions.
      “It isn’t extreme. It’s just basic common sense,” Biden said when he announced the rule at a White House event last year.
      US District Judge Reed O’Connor tossed out the regulation, and a three-judge panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals had left the core of his ruling in force while it considers the administration’s appeal on an expedited basis. All four lower court judges are Republican appointees.
      Alito last week temporarily blocked O’Connor’s order while the high court decided how to handle the case.
      The key legal issue is whether gun kits can be classified as “firearms” under a 1968 law that imposes requirements on dealers. The administration contends that kits qualify as firearms because the law covers items that can “readily be converted” into functional weapons. The disputed weapons can be assembled by almost anyone in as little as 20 minutes, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in court papers.
      The rule is being challenged by a collection of manufacturers, dealers, individuals and gun-rights groups. They say the administration is trying to change a 50-year-old understanding of the 1968 Gun Control Act.
      The US Supreme Court has just granted a request by Joe Biden’s administration to reinstate – at least for now – a federal regulation aimed at reining in privately made firearms called “ghost guns” that are difficult for law enforcement to trace, Reuters reports.The news agency further writes:
      The justices put on hold a July 5 decision by US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas that had blocked the 2022 rule nationwide pending the administration’s appeal.
      O’Connor found that the administration exceeded its authority under a 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act in implementing the rule relating to ghost guns, firearms that are privately assembled and lack the usual serial numbers required by the federal government.
      The rule, issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2022 to target the rapid proliferation of the homemade weapons, bans “buy build shoot” kits without serial numbers that individuals can get online or at a store without a background check. The kits can be quickly assembled into a working firearm.
      The rule clarified that ghost guns qualify as “firearms” under the federal Gun Control Act, expanding the definition of a firearm to include parts and kits that may be readily turned into a gun. It required serial numbers and that manufacturers and sellers be licensed. Sellers under the rule also must run background checks on purchasers prior to a sale.
      Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency matters arising from a group of states including Texas, on July 28 temporarily blocked O’Connor’s decision to give the justices time to decide how to proceed.
      The administration on July 27 asked the justices to halt O’Connor’s ruling that invalidated a Justice Department restriction on the sale of ghost gun kits while it appeals to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.The administration said that allowing the O’Connor’s ruling to stand would enable an “irreversible flow of large numbers of untraceable ghost guns into our nation’s communities.”
      Who is James Uthmeier, Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s newly-designated campaign manager for the Republican’s presidential bid?Another youthful face now at the head of extremist DeSantis’s campaign, Uthmeier was gubernatorial chief of staff after being DeSantis’s general counsel, but he’s also a former senior adviser to Wilbur Ross, a controversial commerce secretary in the Trump administration.Reuters further reports that:
      It is unclear what direction Uthmeier will take the DeSantis campaign as its new manager. He has relatively little experience with campaigns or electoral politics in general.
      The latest shakeup fits into a historical pattern for DeSantis, said Whit Ayres, a Republican operative who was DeSantis’ pollster when he ran for Florida governor in 2018. “This is par for the course for DeSantis’ campaigns. He’s run for Congress three times, and for governor twice. He had different campaign staff for all five campaigns. It is very difficult to run for president the first time if you have nobody around you who has presidential experience,” he added.
      Florida governor Ron DeSantis has replaced the campaign manager of his bid to win the 2024 Republican nomination for US president, Generra Peck, four days after Robert Bigelow, the biggest individual donor to a group supporting the DeSantis candidacy, told Reuters he would not donate more money unless the governor changes his approach because “extremism isn’t going to get you elected,” the news agency reports. The new campaign manager will be close adviser James Uthmeier.Reuters further reports:
      Bigelow said he had told Peck, who he called “a very good campaign manager,” that DeSantis needed to be more moderate to have a chance.Asked how Peck reacted, Bigelow said, laughing: “There was a long period of silence where I thought maybe she had passed out. But I think she took it all in.”DeSantis is running second in the race for the Republican nomination to face Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election, but has been sinking in opinion polls for months. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll put his national support at just 13%, far behind former President Trump, at 47%.“James Uthmeier has been one of Governor DeSantis’ top advisors for years and he is needed where it matters most: working hand in hand with Generra Peck and the rest of the team to put the governor in the best possible position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden,” Romeo, the communications director, said in a statement.
      DeSantis had been facing increasing pressure from donors to change tack in recent months as he continued to drop in the polls and he burned through cash at a faster-than-expected rate.Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor, suggested that the move was still too tepid.
      DeSantis faces a crucial moment on August 23 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the first Republican debate of the 2024 campaign. Donald Trump has said he plans to skip the debate, which would make DeSantis the focus of attacks from other candidates.
      Democrats and Republicans are closely watching a special election in Ohio that could indicate if voters, even in red states, are willing to protect abortion access. Buckeye state residents are considering Issue 1, a GOP-backed measure that would make it more difficult to change the state constitution, which reproductives rights advocates are asking voters to do in November to ensure abortion remains legal. Today’s election is viewed as a test of whether the issue, which so animated voters in last year’s midterm elections and was seen as one reason why Democrats nationwide performed better than expected, remains as potent as it once was. Polls close in Ohio at 7.30pm eastern time.Here’s what else is going on today: More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans in Ohio are about to vote … to curtail the power of voting | Moira Donegan

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      Technically, August special elections are supposed to be illegal in Ohio. Late last year, a Republican-backed bill passed the state house prohibiting most special elections in August, reasoning that timing an election in the dog days of late summer depressed turnout, and cost too much money. But those same Republicans changed their tune in May, when it became clear that abortion rights supporters in Ohio would be able to put a ballot measure to voters securing abortion rights in the state in the November 2023 election. Ohio has a six-week ban on the books, but it is currently blocked by a court, and abortion remains legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy. The measure, if passed, would help keep it that way, amending the Ohio state constitution to grant individuals a right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions”.Ballot measures have been extremely successful tools of the pro-choice movement since the supreme court abolished the federal abortion right last year in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health: pro-choice ballot initiatives passed by surprisingly large margins even in Ohio’s heavily Republican neighbor state, Kentucky, as well as the similarly deep-red Kansas. Since Dobbs, every single time abortion rights have been put to the voters, they have prevailed. And so suddenly, the Ohio GOP felt that it was important that a vote be held in August: a vote, that is, to curtail the power of voting.Ohio voters head to the polls on Tuesday to vote on Issue 1, the Republicans’ response to the November constitutional amendment. The sole question posed to voters in the August special election is a direct attempt to stop the legalization of abortion through democratic means: if passed, Issue 1 would make it more difficult for a ballot initiative to be brought to Ohio voters, and more difficult to pass one that was. The rule change would require advocates to collect signatures in all Ohio counties before a proposal could be placed on the ballot – a procedure that would give disproportionate power to rural, conservative parts of the state – and raise the threshold for passage from 50% to 60%. Currently, the pro-choice ballot initiative slated to go before Ohio voters in November polls at about 58% approval.And so the fight over abortion rights and Issue 1 in Ohio has become a proxy for the broader fight many Republicans are waging across the states: when voters don’t like the party’s proposed policies – and overwhelmingly, voters do not like abortion bans – then instead of changing their platforms or setting out to persuade the electorate to change their minds, Republicans simply change the rules, so that the voters’ wishes don’t get in the way of their preferred policy outcomes. Don’t want to vote for the Republican party line? Then state Republicans will make sure that your vote doesn’t matter.The Issue 1 special election is just the latest in a string of efforts by state Republican parties to curtail access to ballot measures. In Missouri, a court ruled that a ballot initiative seeking to legalize abortion could be presented on the 2024 ballot, even though the Republican attorney general there, Andrew Bailey, had tried to stonewall the effort by falsely claiming that the vote would cost the state a gargantuan amount of money. But state Republicans there had already pushed another measure through the state house, requiring ballot initiatives to receive at least 57% of the vote to pass. Like in Ohio, Missouri was unable to keep the abortion rights measure off the ballot. But just as Ohio Republicans are doing, the Missouri GOP tried to rig the process, explicitly to lessen the pro-choice side’s chances. The measure failed in the Missouri state senate, but Republicans there have vowed to try again. Republicans in at least nine other states – Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah – have also tried to make it harder for ballot initiatives to pass, at least when those initiatives support abortion rights.Abortion is not the only issue where Republicans have sought to curtail access to direct democracy in order to protect their policy goals. In South Dakota, an effort last year to raise the ballot initiative passage threshold to 60% was aimed mostly at stopping Medicaid expansion in the state. (It failed.)But abortion has long been the issue around which America’s anti-democratic forces are most determined and inventive. In Texas, for instance, Republican politicians have responded to local prosecutors in large, Democratic-leaning cities like Houston who say they will not prosecute abortion cases by passing a bill allowing those prosecutors to be removed for “misconduct”. Similar bills aiming to curtail the authority of elected district attorneys over whether or not to enforce criminal abortion bans have also been brought forward by Republicans in Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina. Like the limits on ballot initiatives, the limits on the discretion of local DA’s also aim to end the ability of public opinion to influence policy outcome. If you don’t want to vote for the Republican policy, the Republicans will make sure your vote doesn’t matter; and if you vote in an official who will pursue a different policy, the Republicans will make sure that official loses the authority to do her job.Maybe it’s appropriate that Republicans have made the anti-abortion crusade the focus of so much of their anti-democracy efforts. Abortion bans, after all, are substantively anti-democratic. They are unpopular, yes, imposed by the unelected supreme court. But more importantly they are an insult to citizenship, depriving half of Americans the ability to live their lives with freedom, dignity, bodily integrity and self-determination – preconditions to any meaningful, equal status as citizens. It makes sense that Republicans would embark on sneaky, procedural efforts to undermine abortion in pursuit of this same project. They don’t want to allow women to live as full, equal citizens. But really, they don’t especially want that for anyone else, either. In justifying his decision to overturn Roe v Wade, Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, wrote that if women didn’t like what he was doing to them, they could just vote. “Women are not without political power,” he wrote. At least, the Republican ones aren’t. More

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      in Elections

      Today’s Top News: DeSantis Acknowledges Trump’s 2020 Loss, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Along with other Republican presidential candidates, Ron DeSantis has been testing new lines of attack against Donald Trump.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:DeSantis Bluntly Acknowledges Trump’s 2020 Defeat, with Nicholas NehamasWhat’s at Stake in Ohio’s Referendum on Amending the State ConstitutionThe Taliban Won but These Afghans Fought On, with Christina GoldbaumEli Cohen More