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      The US is ‘absolutely’ ready for a female president, Harris says in NBC interview

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      Kamala Harris said that she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, insisting that Americans care more about what candidates can do to help them, rather than presidential contenders’ gender.The vice-president’s statement came during an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson, who asked whether she thought the country was ready for a woman, and a woman of color, to be in the Oval Office. “Absolutely,” Harris said. “Absolutely.”“In terms of every walk of life of our country,” Harris said, “part of what is important in this election is really, not really turning the page – closing a chapter, on an era that suggests that Americans are divided.“The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us and what the American people want in their president is a president for all Americans,” she said.Harris was asked why she hasn’t leaned into the historic nature of her candidacy – that she is a woman of color running for the presidency.“I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”“That is why I spend the majority of my time listening and then addressing the concerns, the challenges, the dreams, the ambitions and the aspirations of the American people,” Harris continued, saying that Americans deserve a president focused on them, “as opposed to a Donald Trump, who is constantly focused on himself”.Harris also said she was aware that Trump might potentially try thwarting the presidential election results, noting that her team “will deal with election night and the days after as they come”.Harris said that she is focused on campaigning over the next two weeks while noting “we have the resources and the expertise and the focus” on any potential threats to election results. Jackson noted that Trump declared victory before all the votes were tallied in 2020.Trump, who has refused to accept the 2020 election results and claimed the race was stolen, has been stoking fears with unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud in the 2024 cycle. “This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol, and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked, some who were killed. This is a serious matter,” Harris told Jackson.Trump supporters on 6 January 2021 stormed the US Capitol in an effort to prevent certification of Joe Biden’s victory. That day, four people died at the Capitol and a police officer working during the insurrection died several days later; four other police officers posted at the building on 6 January 2021 committed suicide, according to CBS News.“The American people are, at this point, two weeks out, being presented with a very, very serious decision about what will be the future of our country,” Harris also said.Jackson also asked about voters’ concerns about the economy, noting that many blame the US president for rising prices.Harris said her policies “will not be a continuation of the Biden administration” and with inflation, “I bring my own experiences, my own ideas to it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJackson noted that if Harris won, her victory might coincide with Republican control of Congress, which would thwart protecting abortion at the national level.“What concessions would be on the table?” Jackson asked.“I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body,” Harris said.Harris said she would not “get into those hypotheticals” when asked if a pardon might be on the table for Trump.“I’m focused on the next 14 days.”Harris was pressed on the pardon topic, asked if she thought it could help the country move forward together and be less divisive.“Let me tell you what’s going to help us move on: I get elected to president of the United States.” More

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      Harris stresses abortion rights and early voting in packed Atlanta rally

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      Kamala Harris highlighted the threat to women’s reproductive rights and Donald Trump’s apparent exhaustion at a rally Saturday in south Atlanta, continuing a full-court press for votes in Georgia as early voting breaks records here.The race continues to appear close in Georgia, with polls suggesting the Republican nominee holds a one-point lead in the state. Trump has made multiple appearances in Georgia and has a rally with Turning Point Action planned in Gwinnett county, outside Atlanta, next week.However, the National Rifle Association canceled a planned Saturday rally with Trump in Savannah, citing a “scheduling conflict”. Trump has also canceled several news interviews over the last week.The Trump campaign has angrily pushed back against a suggestion raised by a staffer that Trump had been exhausted by the appearances. But Harris has seized the idea as a rallying cry.“And now, he’s ducking debates, and canceling interviews because of exhaustion,” Harris said. “And when he does answer a question or speak at a rally, have you noticed that he tends to go off script and ramble, and generally for the life of him can’t finish a thought? … Folks are exhausted with someone trying to have Americans point their fingers at each other. We’re exhausted. That’s why I say it’s time to turn the page on that.”View image in fullscreenHarris returned to familiar themes on a day of perfect Atlanta weather, describing the “opportunity economy” as one that brings down the cost of living for prescription medication, groceries and housing through anti-price-gouging initiatives, while providing financial support for new parents and entrepreneurs.Extending Medicare coverage for home healthcare services would prevent working adults from having to quit a productive job or spend down savings to take care of aging parents. “It’s about dignity,” she said in the city’s Lakewood Amphitheater.Harris will attend services Sunday at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a majority-Black megachurch in the heart of Atlanta’s Black suburbs in south DeKalb county. New Birth and other large Black churches in Georgia traditionally organize a “souls to the polls” push on Sunday early voting days.As of 5pm Saturday, about 1.3 million Georgians had cast ballots early in person, more than double the 2020 pace on the fifth day of early voting in Georgia. In 2020, about 2.7 million out of 5 million voters cast ballots early in person, with more than two-thirds of votes cast before election day. Absentee ballots are down sharply, however, a reflection of the end of the pandemic and changes to absentee ballot rules.Early voting provides real-time feedback for campaign strategists hoping to target voters who have not yet cast a ballot. Democrats pressed their supporters in Georgia to vote early in 2020 and 2022, a strategy that helped lead the party to victory in the 2020 presidential race and Georgia’s two vital wins in the US Senate.“Georgia, out of nowhere, we made a way,” said the US Senator Jon Ossoff. “This is an election that will determine the character of our republic. This is much deeper than Democrats versus Republicans. Former president Trump is unfit for the presidency.”But so far this year, early voting in rural and ex-urban areas of Georgia, rich in Republican votes, have outpaced core Atlanta turnout rates. Donald Trump has pointedly encouraged his supporters to vote early this year, a tacit acknowledgement of the strategic error of 2020.Early voting also began on Saturday in Nevada, where Barack Obama campaigned for Harris in Las Vegas. The former president also poked fun at Trump, telling the audience “we don’t need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump with no guard rails looks like.”In Georgia, early voters among Democrats have been vocal about abortion policy driving their votes. The deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, two Georgia women who couldn’t access timely maternal health service or legal abortions, have resonated in the rhetoric of the election.“Let us agree, one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree: the government should not be telling her what to do,” Harris said. The rally rolled clips of Thurman’s family describing their grief, and then of Trump mocking their loss in a town hall interview hosted by Fox News.“He belittles their sorrow, making it about himself and his television ratings,” Harris said. “It’s cruel.”But the Lakewood rally was plainly about driving turnout and enthusiasm among Black voters. Usher, an iconic Atlanta-based R&B musician and dancer, spoke early to the crowd, calling on people to vote early for Harris, and to reach out to friends and family.“How we vote – I mean, everything that we do in the next 17 days – will affect our children, our grandchildren, of the people we love the most,” Usher said.Ryan Wilson, the co-founder of private networking hub the Gathering Spot and a notable Atlanta entrepreneur, discussed the Harris proposal to offer up to $50,000 in grants to Black entrepreneurs. “That would have been a game changer for me,” he said. “Vice-President Harris’s opportunity agenda for Black men who provide folks like me the tools to achieve generational wealth, lower costs and protect their rights. And what would Donald Trump do? I think it’s fair to say: nothing.” More

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      Judge slaps down Florida effort to ban abortion ad: ‘It’s the first amendment, stupid’

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      Florida’s health department can’t block a TV advertisement in support of a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, after the department sent letters to local TV stations commanding them to stop airing the ad or risk criminal consequences.“The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false’,” US district judge Mark E Walker wrote in his ruling. “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”Florida is one of 10 states set to vote on abortion-related ballot measures in November. If enacted, Florida’s measure would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution and roll back the state’s six-week ban on the procedure, which took effect in May.Earlier this month, Florida’s health department sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations running an ad by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the campaign behind the measure. In the ad, a woman named Caroline speaks about being diagnosed with cancer while pregnant.“The doctors knew if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life and my daughter would lose her mom,” Caroline says in the ad. “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine.”The letters said the claim that women can’t get life-saving abortions in Florida was “categorically false”, since Florida’s ban permits abortions in medical emergencies. “The fact is these ads are unequivocally false and detrimental to public health in Florida,” Jae Williams, the Florida department of health communications director, said in an email late on Thursday.However, doctors across the country have said abortion bans are worded so vaguely as to force them to deny people medically necessary abortions. A New York doctor recently said that she had treated a woman with an ectopic pregnancy – which is nonviable and potentially life-threatening if left untreated – who had been turned away from a Florida hospital.In response to the letters, Floridians Protecting Freedom sued the Florida surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, and John Wilson, the former general counsel for the state health department. At least one TV station stopped airing the ad, the coalition’s lawsuit alleged.On Thursday, Walker granted a temporary restraining order blocking Ladapo from taking any further action against broadcasters or other media outlets that might air ads by Floridians Protecting Freedom.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Of course, the surgeon general of Florida has the right to advocate for his own position on a ballot measure,” Walker wrote. “But it would subvert the rule of law to permit the state to transform its own advocacy into the direct suppression of protected political speech.”Over the last several weeks, Florida’s government, run by Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor, has sent law enforcement officials to investigate people who signed a petition to get the measure on the ballot, set up a webpage urging people not to vote for it, and issued a report suggesting the measure got on the ballot due to “a large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions”. Floridians Protecting Freedom has denied wrongdoing.Anti-abortion activists have since filed a lawsuit to remove the measure from the ballot or nullify votes cast for it. More

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      Can ex-governor’s anti-Trump stance swing key Senate seat for Republicans?

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      At a conservative thinktank on 14th Street in Washington DC, awaiting Larry Hogan, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Maryland, one staffer turned to another. “It’s nice having something to vote for, for a change,” the staffer wryly said. Shortly after, the former governor arrived for his speech at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (Jinsa), part of his campaign to win in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1980.When he left the executive mansion in Annapolis last year, Hogan told his friendly audience, he had governed for eight years as a popular moderate but had not been looking for another job – “And frankly, I didn’t yearn to be a part of the divisiveness and dysfunction in Washington,” he said.“But when I saw a bipartisan package to secure our border and to support Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan and other American allies fail because people were told [by Donald Trump] to vote against a critical [immigration] bill that they claimed to be for, it made me frustrated enough that I knew I had to step up and try to do something about the mess in Washington.”Washington is not Maryland but the Old Line State is just a few miles up 14th from Jinsa. There, Hogan faces the Prince George’s county executive, Angela Alsobrooks, for an open seat in November – a race in which the Democrat, who if she wins will be only the third Black woman ever elected to the US Senate, enjoys significant polling leads.The race has become potentially decisive in determining Senate control, and a test of anti-Trump sentiment on the right. Significant spending and endorsements are pouring in. Highly regarded as a local leader and “tough on crime” Democrat, Alsobrooks defeated a DC establishment candidate, the congressman David Trone, in her primary and is now piling on praise from party grandees. She recently released an ad featuring Barack Obama and secured support from the Washington Post.On Thursday night, the two candidates will meet for a high-stakes debate.In practical terms, it takes 51 votes – or 50 if your party holds the presidency – to control the Senate. Democrats currently hold it 51-49 but face tough contests to hold seats in Republican-leaning states such as Montana and Ohio. It means Maryland counts this year, and Hogan’s toughest challenge may lie in persuading enough Democratic voters they can trust him should Republicans retake the chamber with him as the 51st vote. In turn, Democrats know that if they cannot hold so deep blue a state as Maryland, they will in all likelihood lose control of the Senate.Hogan is therefore seeking to depict himself as an antidote to Trump – and his rival as too far left. At Jinsa, talking foreign policy, he criticized Trump but he also knocked Alsobrooks, including for “repeatedly demand[ing] that Israel enact an immediate and unilateral ceasefire, and [for calling] for cutting off critical military aid”.As popular as Hogan is – he stepped down as governor with a 77% approval rating – polling suggests that message is not landing. According to 538, since one tied poll in August, Alsobrooks’s lead has ranged from five to 17 points.Hogan begged to differ. “I think it’s a very close race,” he said. “I’ve always been an underdog in every one of my races.“There are people out there that we’ve still got to convince,” he added, “and we’ve got [then] 34 more days to do it, and I feel confident we’re going to win the race. It’s tough, though. I mean, we’re a very blue state, and we’re overcoming a huge deficit at the top of the ticket.”Trump has been called many things, but “huge deficit” may be a new one. Hogan has said he won’t vote for Trump (or Kamala Harris), but must nonetheless fend off persistent questions about the man who rules his party. One recent ad from Hogan’s campaign deplored the “horror” of January 6. And yet, as Republicans from Trump and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, on down know, sometimes a candidate must be allowed away from the party line.In Maryland, Hogan is free to be Hogan. That’s to his advantage. To his disadvantage, Democrats from the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to Alsobrooks on down know Hogan has a bigger problem.View image in fullscreenIn June 2022, in the case Dobbs v Jackson, the US supreme court to which Trump appointed three hardliners removed the federal right to abortion. Two years on, Hogan insists he will not let his party go further.“[Alsobrooks’s campaign] want[s] to focus on making it a cookie-cutter Democratic talking points race but it’s not, because I have a different position than most Republicans,” he said at the Jinsa event. “And so, you know, I’ve promised to be a sponsor to codify Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that previously safeguarded abortion rights, so that nobody comes between a woman and her doctor in any state in America, and to sponsor a bill to protect IVF.”He also insisted that “most people are concerned about the economy. They’re concerned about affordability, inflation, they’re concerned about crime in their communities, and they’re concerned about securing the border and fixing [the] broken immigration system.”Among Democratic rejoinders: while a member of the executive committee of the Republican Governors Association, Hogan worked to elect allies in states that now have stringent abortion bans. In his own state, in 2022, he vetoed a bill to expand abortion access. The same year, he said Trump “nominated incredible justices to the supreme court”, a comment Democrats have brought back to haunt him. Hogan says he was not referring to Dobbs but Alsobrooks is happy to keep the spotlight on the issue. As she recently said: “I think my opponent’s record is very clear where abortion care is concerned.”Many Americans fear a national abortion ban, should Trump be president again. Hogan said he had been against that for decades “and I’ll be the one of the ones standing up, regardless of who the president is or who’s in control of Senate”. But he also said he would not support reform to the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes for most legislation, in order to codify Roe.“I think it’s a terrible idea, because it’s actually something that … my opponent and Donald Trump both agree on. They want to be able to jam things through on a 51-vote [majority]. ”Right now, [the Senate is] a deliberative body where we actually have to find bipartisan cooperation and common sense and kind of common ground for the common good. That’s what I did in Maryland with a 70% Democratic legislature. We got things done.”A few days after Hogan’s event at Jinsa, about 40 miles (65km) north-east in Baltimore, Democrats gathered at a canvassing hub. Once a wedding venue, the Majestic Hall of Events was surrounded by less-than-majestic auto shops and down-at-heel churches. Inside, Alsobrooks addressed a crowd organized by D4 Women in Action, linked to Delta Sigma Theta, one of the Divine Nine Black women’s sororities, to which Alsobrooks belongs.View image in fullscreenIn her speech, Alsobrooks spoke about her links to Baltimore and “the number one issue across our state, and the thing that people most desire to have: economic opportunity”. She also took shots at her opponent. “What did he do [as governor] when he had the opportunity to stand up for all of our families in Baltimore? He sent back $900m to the federal government.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat was a reference to a 2015 decision to scrap a light rail project, a call that attracted lawsuits. But Alsobrooks also looked to the national stage, and the issue she wants foremost in voters’ minds.“This race is bigger than both of us,” Alsobrooks told the Guardian. “Bigger than Larry Hogan the person. It’s bigger than Angela the person. It’s about issues and about the future. It is about reproductive freedom.”Alsobrooks listed other policy priorities – “sensible gun legislation … economic opportunity” – as part of a platform “that really does favor hard-working people, middle-class families, and that is about preserving freedoms and democracy”. But protecting abortion rights was a theme to which she returned.At Jinsa, Hogan said Democrats were trying to turn a state race into a national contest. Alsobrooks embraced the charge: “The former governor thinks he’s running to go back to Annapolis. We’re actually running to go to Washington DC, and we would represent Marylanders there.”She added: “This [Republican Senate] caucus is led by people like Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rick Scott, Mitch McConnell, and they … have really proclaimed war on the reproductive freedoms of women. They have very clear records, and [Hogan has] aligned himself with the party whose policies do not align with the average Marylander.”Much has been made of the warm relationship Hogan and Alsobrooks enjoyed when Hogan was governor. Asked about an unearthed Hogan comment – that Alsobrooks was a better Prince George’s county executive than his own father, the late congressman Lawrence Hogan – Alsobrooks said: “He has become, in a lot of ways, the kind of politician he says he despises, one who’s very disingenuous.“But I think that people see through it. Marylanders are very savvy and they have seen how he has changed … and I think they will see through the disingenuous nature of his campaign, and will again vote to keep Maryland Democratic.”Keeping Maryland Democratic will require turning out the vote. At the canvassing hub, one phone-banker wearily said: “Put in two shifts this morning.” A friend smiled back: “Only a hundred more to go.”The same Jinsa staffer who earlier had said it was “nice to have something to vote for” with Hogan also said that he hadn’t felt so good about a Senate race since 2006 – which was still a defeat – in which “getting more than 40% felt like a moral victory”.Back then, Ben Cardin, the Democrat retiring this year, beat Michael Steele, a Hogan-esque GOP moderate. Steele went on to chair the Republican National Committee, then became an MSNBC host and Never Trumper. Asked for his view of the current Maryland race, Steele was not as convinced of an Alsobrooks win as many other observers.“This race was not a competitive race until Larry got into it,” Steele said. “He is a popular two-term governor who left, I think, an important mark on how politics play out in Maryland for Republicans and made this very competitive out of the gate, largely because people had come to trust his style of governance.“It’s open, it’s compassionate, it’s concerned … I think a lot of people remember that.”Steele said Hogan had a good chance of attracting split-ticket voters – rare beasts, precious to any campaign, in this case prepared to back Harris for president but Hogan for Senate.It all added up to a warning for anyone expecting a comfortable Democratic win.“I think the latest polling has Alsobrooks up by 11,” Steele said. “I don’t believe that, largely because when I’m out in neighborhoods talking to people, and from everything I can piece together, this race is a lot tighter than the traditionalists who look at Maryland think it to be.”

      This article was amended on 11 October 2024. It originally stated that Larry Hogan chaired the Republican Governors Association. He was actually a member of its executive committee. More

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      in US Politics

      In the US, rats could soon have better birth control access than women | Arwa Mahdawi

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      The fight for rat-productive rightsEric Adams, we recently learned, seems to have spent the bulk of his time as mayor of New York trying to wangle criminally cheap business class tickets from Turkish Airlines. But while Adams may have made history by becoming the first sitting mayor of New York to be indicted on federal corruption charges, the fact that he has a slightly wonky moral compass is old news. Even before being appointed mayor, there were questions about Adam’s truthfulness, including a long-running debate about whether the swagger-obsessed candidate lived in Brooklyn, as he insisted he did, or New Jersey.Still, let’s give the mayor his due, shall we? It would be unfair to say he’s spent the entirety of his time in high office trying to live the high life. Adams, who appointed New York City’s first “rat tsar” last year, has also spent a lot of time thinking about the city’s rodent problem. “I don’t think there’s been a mayor in history that says how much he hates rats,” he grandly proclaimed during New York City’s inaugural Rat Summit in September. “I dislike rats.” Adams added that he was confident New York could “look forward to a new paradigm in urban rat management”.Wheelie bins are part of that exciting new paradigm in urban rat management. There was much mirth on social media over the summer when it transpired that New York City had paid McKinsey over a million dollars to figure out whether it might be a good idea to put loose rubbish in a bin. (Or, in management consultant speech, “containerize” it.) Now the brainiacs in Adams’s orbit have come up with an exciting new paradigm shift: the city council recently greenlit pilot schemes to deploy ContraPest, a type of rodent birth control.The irony that New York is investing in rodent contraceptives at a time when women’s access to reproductive services across the US is under fire hasn’t gone unnoticed. Social media has been filled with wry observations along the lines of “it’s easier to get reproductive rights as a rodent in New York than it is for a woman to get reproductive rights in most of the country”.Because pedants never take a day off I will note that quip isn’t strictly true. At least for the moment it isn’t. But if Donald Trump wins the election and the extremists backing him have their way then it might very well be true that rats will soon have better access to birth control in the US than women. Over the past few years, rightwingers have started to speak more openly about the possibility of banning birth control. In 2022, for example, an Idaho Republican leader suggested he’d consider banning certain forms of birth control, including the morning-after pill. Around the same time the governor of Mississippi refused to rule out future contraception bans during an interview on NBC.This isn’t just all talk. Over the years the right has managed to undermine access to birth control in a number of alarming ways. In 2022, for example, an appeals court ruled that federally funded family planning centers in Texas must receive parental consent before prescribing birth control to teenagers. (Previously federal courts had found that the national title X program guaranteed minors the right to access birth control without parental involvement.) Then, this summer Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have recognized a legal right to contraception.Perhaps most importantly, anti-abortion activists have also been doggedly trying to argue that certain birth control methods, such as Plan B and certain intrauterine devices (IUDs), are abortifacients because they may prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs. While it’s unlikely that we’ll see any sort of direct push to outlaw access to contraceptives, expect to see anti-abortion laws sneakily widen to restrict access to birth control. As advocates have noted, Roe was not toppled in a day–and access to contraceptives won’t be overturned imminently. But anti-abortion extremists have made clear what their endgame is. And when these people tell you who they are, you’d better believe them.‘I’ve never worn trousers up a mountain, and I never will’I find cycling in a dress awkward. Meanwhile, Cecilia Llusco, one of Bolivia’s first female Indigenous mountain climbers, scales icy peaks in a pollera: a traditional voluminous floral skirt. Don’t miss this wonderful Guardian feature on the Cholita climbers of Bolivia–it has some incredible photographs.Melania Trump wants you to know she is passionately pro-choiceIn her new memoir the former first lady writes, “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body.” Good question Melania! Ever tried asking your husband that? Speaking of which, Melania’s decision to speak out about abortion rights a month before the election feels part of a calculated strategy by the Trump campaign to soften its rhetoric on abortion.Prominent Palestinian journalist Wafa Aludaini killed in an Israeli airstrikeWafa was killed alongside her husband, her five-year-old daughter and her seven-month-old son. As Reporters Without Borders recently noted: “At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza, there will soon be no-one left to keep you informed.”India’s government thinks criminalizing marital rape would be “excessively harsh”One in 25 women in India have faced sexual violence from their husbands, the BBC reports. And, of course, nothing happens to most of these men because marital rape is not a criminal offence in India. For years now, campaigners have been petitioning India’s supreme court to try and change this but have faced enormous resistance from the government, religious groups, and men’s rights activists. An affidavait submitted by India’s Interior Ministry on Thursday argued criminalizing marital rape “may seriously impact the conjugal relationship and may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage.” It also said that while a man “does not have any fundamental right to violate the consent of his wife” including marital rape under anti-rape laws would be “excessively harsh” and “disproportionate”.Mexico’s first woman president announces reforms to battle gender discriminationOn her second full day in office, Claudia Sheinbaum said her government had proposed reforms to broaden women’s rights, including a constitutional guarantee of equal pay for equal work.EU court rules gender and nationality enough to grant Afghan women asylumAn important ruling by the European court of justice recognizes Afghan women as a persecuted group.The week in podtriarchyIn 2012 Melania Trump famously posted a photo of a smiling beluga whale with the caption “what is she thinking?” Despite the fact that entire podcast episodes have been devoted to this question, we still don’t know. Scientists have recently discovered, however, that bottlenose dolphins ‘smile’ at each other to communicate during social play. The open-mouth expression is meant to signal fun and avoid conflict. So, in other words, dolphins have better social skills than many politicians. More

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      What is Melania Trump’s game in suddenly defending abortion rights?

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      When news broke on Wednesday evening that Melania Trump supports abortion rights – and apparently has for her entire adult life – it was greeted with surprise and confusion.Melania’s husband, Donald Trump, is trying to rapidly recalibrate his approach to abortion as he races towards election day. Is his wife trying to help him? Hurt him? Or neither?In her forthcoming memoir, Melania Trump went into extensive detail about her support for the procedure.“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” she wrote. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”Shortly after the Guardian broke the news, Trump uploaded a black-and-white video of herself to social media, set to stirring music.“Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth,” she said. “Individual freedom. What does my body, my choice really mean?”The news of Melania Trump’s support for abortion rights comes at a time when her husband is striving to convince voters that he can be trusted to protect abortion rights.In the years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, abortion has become Republicans’ achilles heel. It cost Republicans victories in the 2022 midterms, while abortion rights supporters have won a string of ballot measures even in states as red as Kentucky, Kansas and Ohio.Earlier on in his campaign, Trump attempted to be all-things-abortion to everybody, alternately bragging about his role in overturning Roe – by appointing three of the justices who voted for its demise – and grousing that hardline positions on abortion were costing the GOP elections. But since Kamala Harris, an extraordinarily effective messenger on abortion, became the Democratic nominee for president, he has abandoned that approach in favor of garbled support for abortion rights.“WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTH, CONFIDENT AND FREE!” Trump recently posted on Truth Social. “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES.”Melania Trump’s revelation, then, could be intended to reassure undecided voters who are disinclined to vote for Harris but support abortion rights – as a majority of Americans do. But Tresa Undem, a pollster who has surveyed people on abortion for more than two decades, said the odds of such comments appealing to moderates or abortion-supporting conservatives were “fairly slim”.After all, regardless of her personal convictions, it seems unlikely that Melania Trump has any real sway over her tempestuous husband’s policies. Her pro-abortion rights beliefs did not stop Donald Trump from helping to demolish Roe. It also doesn’t help that Melania and Donald Trump’s relationship is, at least in public, far from cozy. (He recently indicated, despite having written the foreword, that he hasn’t read the book.)“Nothing Republicans say will distract the American people from the reality they see with their own eyes: story after story of victims of rape and incest being forced into pregnancy, doctors forced to turn away patients during miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies and women literally dying because of Trump’s abortion bans,” Emilia Rowland, Democratic national committee press secretary, said in a text.View image in fullscreenMelania Trump’s disagreement with her husband is also not as novel as it may seem. Betty Ford, the wife of the Republican president Gerald Ford, was an adamant supporter of abortion rights, said Mary Ziegler, a University of California Davis school of law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. It didn’t end up making much of a difference in Gerald Ford’s campaign.“I think people understand that Melania and Donald Trump are very different people,” Ziegler said. “I could see independent and swing voters saying: ‘Wow. It’s bad that even Donald Trump’s wife doesn’t like Donald Trump’s position.’”What Melania Trump’s news seems to have done is anger the anti-abortion activists who have made up some of Trump’s most reliable supporters. These activists were already annoyed by Trump’s recent attempts to paint himself as an abortion rights champion.“Melania Trump’s support of abortion is anti-feminist and clearly outside the teaching of our Catholic faith. She is wrong,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the pro-life organization Students for Life of America, posted on X. “What a lost opportunity to inspire a generation of young women.”Melania Trump’s strategy, such as it is, may be much more straightforward than activists and politicos may think. She has never seemed particularly interested in being first lady, and she doesn’t appear to be invested in winning the job back, seeing as she has largely disappeared from the 2024 campaign trail.But Trump does seem interested in doing at least one thing: selling books. Suggesting that there is controversy within her memoir’s pages probably helps move copies.Or not. In her post, Hawkins added: “I won’t be buying Melania’s book.” More

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      Melania Trump’s abortion views baffle both sides: ‘Hard to follow the logic’

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      The revelation on Wednesday evening that Melania Trump’s forthcoming memoir includes a full-throated defense of abortion rights, an issue her husband Donald Trump has repeatedly flip-flopped on during his presidential campaign, left people on both sides of the issue less than impressed.“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body,” Melania Trump wrote in her memoir. “I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”Melania Trump also defended the right to abortion later on in pregnancy – a procedure that her husband has repeatedly demonized. (Less than 1% of abortions occur at or past 21 weeks of gestation.)“Sadly for the women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in an email. “Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear: If he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women and restrict women’s access to reproductive health care.”Melania Trump’s remarks also took anti-abortion activists by surprise.“It’s hard to follow the logic of putting out the former First Lady’s book right before the election undercutting President Trump’s message to pro-life voters,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the powerful Students for Life of America, posted on Twitter/X on Wednesday night. “What a waste of momentum.”Over the last several weeks, anti-abortion activists have grown increasingly fed up with the former president, who has struggled, alongside the rest of the Republican party, to redefine his messaging on abortion rights amid outrage over the overturning of Roe v Wade.Earlier in his campaign, Trump bragged about appointing three of the US supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe, branded himself the “most pro-life president ever”. After Kamala Harris became the presidential nominee, however, Trump has pledged that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights” as well as vowed not to sign a national abortion ban – just weeks after refusing to say that he would veto one.Melania Trump’s comments may feel like a further insult to the anti-abortion voters who feel abandoned by Trump, said Republican campaign strategist Liz Mair, adding anti-abortion advocates run potent get-out-the-vote operations. Those advocates were key to Trump’s 2016 victory.“This might be just another thing that piles on to make pro-lifers think: ‘I just can’t with this guy.’ A lot of them were single-issue voters anyway,” Mair said. “He’s not really giving them much of an incentive to show up and do anything to his benefit.”When Tresa Undem, a pollster who has surveyed people about abortion for more than two decades, heard the comments, she immediately thought: “Wow”. Then she thought: “It’s a campaign move.”However, Undem is not sure who, exactly, the move is for – especially given the Trumps’ sometimes frosty relationship in public. Melania Trump has rarely aired her political views and has largely vanished from Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.The odds of Melania Trump’s comments comforting moderate or conservative voters who support abortion rights are “fairly slim”, Undem said.“These strong feelings – they did not suddenly appear this year, right? So she clearly has had no influence on him when it comes to policy related to abortion,” Undem said. “I don’t think she’s ever been positioned, or voters ever think of her, as having any kind of policy position or weight or influence on Trump.” More

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      Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir

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      Melania Trump made an extraordinary declaration in an eagerly awaited memoir to be published a month from election day: she is a passionate supporter of a woman’s right to control her own body – including the right to abortion.“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the Republican nominee’s wife writes, amid a campaign in which Donald Trump’s threats to women’s reproductive rights have played a central role.“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”Melania Trump has rarely expressed political views in public. The book, which reveals the former first lady to be so firmly out of step with most of her own party, Melania, will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.View image in fullscreenHer decision to include a full-throated expression of support for abortion rights is remarkable not just given her proximity to a Republican candidate running on an anti-abortion platform, but also given the severe deterioration of women’s reproductive rights under Donald Trump and the GOP.In 2022, in the supreme court case Dobbs v Jackson, three justices installed when Donald Trump was president voted to strike down Roe v Wade, the ruling which had protected federal abortion rights since 1973. Republican-run states have since instituted draconian abortion bans.Donald Trump has tried to both take credit for the Dobbs decision – long the central aim of evangelical and conservative Catholic donors and voters – and avoid the fury it has stoked, saying abortion rights should be decided by the states.But Democrats have scored a succession of election wins by campaigning on the issue, even in conservative states, and threats to reproductive rights, among them threats to fertility treatments including IVF, are proving problematic for Republicans up and down this year’s ticket.Amid a blizzard of statements opponents deem misogynistic and regressive, JD Vance, Donald Trump’s pick for vice-president, has indicated he would support a national abortion ban – a move it seems his boss’s wife would be against.Donald Trump himself recently got into a tangle over whether he would vote in November to protect abortion rights in Florida, a ballot his wife will also cast given their residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. He eventually said he would vote no. Judging by her own words, Melania Trump appears likely to vote yes.Her memoir is slim, long on descriptions of her youth in Slovenia, life as a model in New York and love for the man whose third wife she became, correspondingly short on policy discussion. But Donald Trump provides a blurb, praising his wife’s “commitment to excellence … insightful perspective … [and] entrepreneurial achievements”.Before discussing abortion, Melania Trump says she disagreed with her husband on some aspects of immigration policy, not least as an immigrant herself.“Occasional political disagreements between me and my husband,” she says, are “part of our relationship, but I believed in addressing them privately rather than publicly challenging him.”And yet, later in her book, she states views on abortion and reproductive rights diametrically opposed to those of her husband and his party.“I have always believed it is critical for people to take care of themselves first,” Melania Trump writes of her support for abortion rights. “It’s a very straightforward concept; in fact, we are all born with a set of fundamental rights, including the right to enjoy our lives. We are all entitled to maintain a gratifying and dignified existence.“This common-sense approach applies to a woman’s natural right to make decisions about her own body and health.”Melania Trump says her beliefs about abortion rights spring from “a core set of principles”, at the heart of which sits “individual liberty” and “personal freedom”, on which there is “no room for negotiation”.After outlining her support on such grounds for abortion rights, she details “legitimate reasons for a woman to choose to have an abortion”, including danger to the life of the mother, rape or incest, often exceptions under state bans, and also “a congenital birth defect, plus severe medical conditions”.Saying “timing matters”, Melania Trump also defends the right to abortion later in pregnancy.She writes: “It is important to note that historically, most abortions conducted during the later stages of pregnancy were the result of severe fetal abnormalities that probably would have led to the death or stillbirth of the child. Perhaps even the death of the mother. These cases were extremely rare and typically occurred after several consultations between the woman and her doctor. As a community, we should embrace these common-sense standards. Again, timing matters.”More than 90% of US abortions occur at or before 13 weeks of gestation, according to data from the CDC. Less than 1% of abortions take place at or after 21 weeks.On the campaign trail, Republicans have blatantly mischaracterized Democrats’ positions on abortion. Last month, debating Kamala Harris, Donald Trump falsely said his Democratic opponent’s “vice-presidential pick … says that abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. [Tim Walz] also says: ‘Execution after birth’ – execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born – is OK.”He was factchecked: it is not legal in any state to kill a baby after birth.On the page, Melania Trump issues a distinctly un-Trumpian appeal for empathy.“Many women opt for abortions due to personal medical concerns,” she writes. “These situations with significant moral implications weigh heavily on the woman and her family and deserve our empathy. Consider, for example, the complexity inherent in the decision of whether the mother should risk her own life to give birth.”Recent reporting has highlighted cases of women who have died in states where abortion has been banned.She goes on to appeal for compassion.“When confronted with an unexpected pregnancy, young women frequently experience feelings of isolation and significant stress. I, like most Americans, am in favor of the requirement that juveniles obtain parental consent before undergoing an abortion. I realize this may not always be possible. Our next generation must be provided with knowledge, security, safety, and solace, and the cultural stigma associated with abortion must be lifted,” writes the former first lady.Finally, Melania Trump offers an expression of solidarity with protesters for reproductive rights.“The slogan ‘My Body, My Choice’ is typically associated with women activists and those who align with the pro-choice side of the debate,” she writes. “But if you really think about it, ‘My Body, My Choice’ applies to both sides – a woman’s right to make an independent decision involving her own body, including the right to choose life. Personal freedom.” More