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      Under Pressure From Trump, Arizona Republicans Weigh Response to 1864 Abortion Ban

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      Facing mounting pressure to strike down a near-total abortion ban revived last week by Arizona’s Supreme Court, Republican state legislators are considering efforts to undermine a planned ballot measure this fall that would enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution, according to a presentation obtained by The New York Times.The 1864 law that is set to take effect in the coming weeks bans nearly all abortions and mandates prison sentences of two to five years for providing abortion care. The proposed ballot measure on abortion rights, known as the Arizona Abortion Access Act, would enshrine the right to an abortion before viability, or about 24 weeks. Supporters of the measure say they have already gathered enough signatures to put the question on the ballot ahead of a July 3 filing deadline.Republicans in the Legislature are under tremendous pressure to overturn, or at least amend, the 1864 ban. Former President Donald J. Trump, the national standard-bearer of the Republican Party, directly intervened on Friday, calling on Republican legislators, in a frantically worded post online, to “act immediately” to change the law. A top Trump ally in Arizona who is running for the Senate, Kari Lake, has also called for the overturning of the 1864 law, which she had once praised.Abortion rights have been a winning message for Democrats since the Supreme Court, with three justices appointed by Mr. Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. And even though it is an objectively unpopular aspect of his White House legacy, Mr. Trump has repeatedly bragged that he is personally responsible for overturning Roe.Republicans in Arizona, however, have already resisted efforts to repeal the 160-year-old law and are bracing for the potential for another floor battle on the ban that is looming for the Legislature, which is set to convene on Wednesday. The plans that circulated among Republican legislators suggest the caucus is considering other measures that would turn attention away from the 1864 law.The presentation to Republican state legislators, written by Linley Wilson, the general counsel for the Republican majority in the Arizona State Legislature, proposed several ways in which the Republican-controlled Legislature could undermine the ballot measure, known as A.A.A., by placing competing constitutional amendments on the ballot that would limit the right to abortion even if the proposed ballot measure succeeded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sununu Says Trump ‘Contributed’ to Insurrection, but Still Has His Support

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      Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said on Sunday that former President Donald J. Trump “absolutely contributed” to an insurrection and that Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “absolutely terrible” — but that nothing, not even felony convictions, would stop him from voting for Mr. Trump because the economy, border security and “culture change” were more important.The interview, on ABC News’s “This Week,” showcased Mr. Sununu’s transformation from Trump critic — while supporting Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, he said Mr. Trump was “worried about jail time” and “not a real Republican” — to loyal foot soldier.It is a transformation that has repeated itself time and again within the Republican Party, and one that Mr. Sununu previewed in January, when he was campaigning for Ms. Haley but said he would support Mr. Trump if he won the nomination.“No one should be surprised by my support,” he said on Sunday. “I think the real discussion is, you know, Americans moving away from Biden. That’s how bad Biden has become as president. There’s just no doubt about it, right? You can’t ignore inflation. You can’t ignore the border and say that these issues in the courthouse are going to be the one thing that brings Biden back into office.”The interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, pressed Mr. Sununu on why he was supporting a man who he said had “contributed to the insurrection” on Jan. 6.Mr. Sununu affirmed that he still believed that. But he said it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a Republican governor would support a Republican nominee, and suggested that Mr. Stephanopoulos was out of touch with public opinion if he thought concerns about democracy or felony convictions would sway voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Johnson Says the House Will Vote on an Israel Bill in the Coming Days

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      Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday after Iran’s overnight attack on Israel that the House would vote in the coming days on aid for Israel, and he suggested that aid for Ukraine could be included in the legislation.“House Republicans and the Republican Party understand the necessity of standing with Israel,” Mr. Johnson said on Fox News, noting that he had previously advanced two aid bills to help the U.S. ally. “We’re going to try again this week, and the details of that package are being put together. Right now, we’re looking at the options and all these supplemental issues.”U.S. funding for both Israel and Ukraine has languished in Congress; Mr. Johnson initially refused to take up a $95 billion aid package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan passed by the Senate, and the Senate refused to take up a House Republican proposal that conditioned aid to Israel on domestic spending cuts.In recent weeks, Mr. Johnson has repeatedly vowed to ensure that the House moves to assist Ukraine. He has been searching for a way to structure a foreign aid package that could secure a critical mass of support amid stiff Republican resistance to sending aid to Kyiv and mounting opposition among Democrats to unfettered military aid for Israel.But the attacks from Iran have ratcheted up the pressure on Mr. Johnson to bring some kind of package to the floor this week, potentially forcing him to make a decision he has been agonizing over for weeks.He left it unclear on Sunday whether the legislation he said the House would advance this week would also include aid for Ukraine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kristi Noem, South Dakota Governor and Trump VP Contender, Is Barred by Tribes

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      Four of South Dakota’s federally recognized Native American tribes have barred the state’s governor, Kristi Noem — a Republican whose name has been floated as a potential running mate for former President Donald J. Trump — from their reservations. The latest blocked Ms. Noem on Thursday.Three of the tribes barred Ms. Noem this month, joining another tribe that had sanctioned the governor after she told state lawmakers in February that Mexican drug cartels had a foothold on their reservations and were committing murders there.Ms. Noem further angered the tribes with remarks she made at a town hall event last month in Winner, S.D., appearing to suggest that the tribes were complicit in the cartels’ presence on their reservations.“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Ms. Noem said.The tribes are the Cheyenne River Sioux, the Rosebud Sioux and the Standing Rock Sioux and the Oglala Sioux, which in February became the first group to bar Ms. Noem from its reservation. Their reservations have a combined population of nearly 50,000 people and encompass more than eight million acres, according to state and federal government counts. Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the third tribal area to have restricted Ms. Noem’s access, extends into North Dakota.The tribes have accused Ms. Noem of stoking fears and denigrating their heritage when she referred to a gang known as the Ghost Dancers while addressing state lawmakers and said that it had recruited tribal members to join its criminal activities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Johnson Floats Voting on Senate Ukraine Bill, With Conservative Policies as Sweeteners

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      The Republican speaker has weighed bringing up a $95 billion Senate-passed bill to aid Ukraine and Israel in tandem with a separate package geared toward mollifying G.O.P. critics.Shortly after congressional leaders met with Japan’s prime minister in Speaker Johnson’s ceremonial office in the Capitol on Thursday morning, the conversation turned to Ukraine aid.Mr. Johnson was in the middle of another agonizing standoff with the ultraconservatives in his conference, after they had blocked legislation to extend a major warrantless surveillance law that is about to expire. His chief Republican antagonist, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, had intensified her threat to oust him. But on Ukraine, he offered his counterparts an assurance.“We’re going to get this done,” he vowed.His comments, confirmed by multiple people familiar with the meeting, were consistent with what Mr. Johnson has been saying for weeks, both publicly and privately: that he intends to ensure the House will move to assist Ukraine, a step that many members of his party oppose.Even as right-wing Republicans have sought to ratchet up pressure on their speaker, Mr. Johnson has continued to search for a way to win the votes to push through a Ukraine aid. He is battling not only stiff resistance to the idea among House Republicans, but also mounting opposition among Democrats to sending unfettered military aid to Israel given the soaring civilian death toll and humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.Mr. Johnson has yet to make any final decisions on how he plans to structure a new round of American military assistance to Ukraine.Some Republicans have increasingly expressed interest in structuring the aid as a loan, an idea that Mr. Johnson has publicly floated and that former President Donald J. Trump previously endorsed. Mr. Trump raised again the idea again after a private meeting with Mr. Johnson at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What is FISA, and What Does It Mean for U.S. Surveillance and Spying?

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      Under Section 702, the government is empowered to collect, without a warrant, the messages of Americans communicating with targeted foreigners abroad.The House on Friday passed a two-year reauthorization of an expiring warrantless surveillance law known as Section 702, reversing course after the bill collapsed days earlier when former President Donald J. Trump urged his allies to “kill” it.But disappointing privacy advocates, the House narrowly rejected a longstanding proposal to require warrants to search for Americans’ messages swept up by the program.Here is a closer look.What is Section 702?It is a law that allows the government to collect — on domestic soil and without a warrant — the communications of targeted foreigners abroad, including when those people are interacting with Americans.Under that law, the National Security Agency can order email services like Google to turn over copies of all messages in the accounts of any foreign user and network operators like AT&T to intercept and furnish copies of any phone calls, texts and internet communications to or from a foreign target.Section 702 collection plays a major role in the gathering of foreign intelligence and counterterrorism information, according to national security officials.Why was Section 702 established?After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush secretly ordered a warrantless wiretapping program code-named Stellarwind. It violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA, which generally required a judge’s permission for national security surveillance activities on domestic soil.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kennedy Campaign Fires Consultant Who Sought to Help Trump Win

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      The presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired a consultant, according to the campaign’s manager, after a video circulated of her urging an audience to support Mr. Kennedy on the ballot in New York because it would help former President Donald J. Trump defeat President Biden.The consultant, Rita Palma, had falsely identified herself as the New York state director of Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, Amaryllis Fox, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign manager and daughter-in-law, said late on Wednesday, adding that the campaign had fired Ms. Palma “immediately” after seeing the video “in which she gave an inaccurate job title and described a conversation that did not happen.”In that video, Ms. Palma — who Ms. Fox said had been hired as a ballot access consultant in the state — said that “the Kennedy voter and the Trump voter, our mutual enemy is Biden,” adding, “Whether you support Bobby or Trump, we all oppose Biden.”Encouraging the audience of Republicans to support Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Palma outlined a hypothetical scenario in which Mr. Kennedy would win enough electoral votes to prevent both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden from winning 270 electoral votes, pushing the decision to Congress in what is known as a contingent election.“Right now, we have a majority of Republicans in Congress,” Ms. Palma said in the video, referring to the House of Representatives. “So who are they going to pick? If it’s a Republican Congress, they’ll pick Trump.” In such a scenario, the Senate — which the Democrats currently control — would also elect the vice president.CNN reported earlier this week that Ms. Palma had also promoted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump, whom she repeatedly called her “favorite president.”Before saying that Ms. Palma had been fired, Ms. Fox said in a statement earlier in the week that “the video circulating was not taken at a campaign event.”She added: “Palma was speaking as a private citizen and her statements in no way reflect campaign strategy, the sole aim of which is to win the White House.”Allies of Mr. Trump have been discussing ways to elevate third-party candidates such as Mr. Kennedy in battleground states to divert votes away from Mr. Biden.Mr. Kennedy has also recently aligned himself closer to Mr. Trump by sympathizing with those who have been convicted of crimes in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol. Mr. Kennedy later retracted many of those comments, saying that his campaign made “unforced errors” when addressing the issue, but stood by his commitment to appoint a special counsel to “look at” the criminal cases of some of the rioters. More

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      Another Red-Blue Divide: Money to Feed Kids in the Summer

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      The governor was firm: Nebraska would reject the new federal money for summer meals. The state already fed a small number of children when schools closed. He would not sign on to a program to provide all families that received free or cut-rate school meals with cards to buy groceries during the summer.“I don’t believe in welfare,” the governor, Jim Pillen, a Republican, said in December.A group of low-income youths, in a face-to-face meeting, urged him to reconsider. One told him she had eaten less when schools were out. Another criticized the meals at the existing feeding sites and held a crustless prepackaged sandwich to argue that electronic benefit cards from the new federal program would offer better food and more choice.“Sometimes money isn’t the solution,” the governor replied.A week later, Mr. Pillen made a U-turn the size of a Nebraska cornfield, approving the cards and praising the young people for speaking out.“This isn’t about me winning,” he said. “This is about coming to the conclusion of what is best for our kids.”After meeting with young people, Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska reversed himself and accepted federal money for summer meals.Kenneth Ferriera/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated PressMr. Pillen’s extraordinary reversal shows the conflicts shaping red-state views of federal aid: needs beckon, but suspicions run high of the Biden administration and programs that critics call handouts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More