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      Wisconsin high court allows congressional maps in win for Republicans

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      The liberal-controlled Wisconsin supreme court on Friday rejected a Democratic lawsuit that sought to throw out the battleground state’s congressional maps, marking a victory for Republicans who argued against the court taking up the case.The decision not to hear the congressional challenge comes after the court in December ordered new legislative maps, saying the Republican-drawn ones were unconstitutional. The GOP-controlled state legislature, out of fear that the court would order maps even more unfavorable to Republicans, passed maps drawn by the Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Evers signed those into law on 19 February and urged the court to take up the congressional map challenge.The Elias Law Group, which filed the congressional challenge on behalf of Democratic voters, said the court’s decision on the legislative maps opened the door to them revisiting the other maps.But the court declined to take up the case.The court faced a tight deadline to act. Wisconsin’s elections commission has said district boundaries must be set by mid-March to meet deadlines for elections officials and candidates. Candidates can start circulating nomination papers on 15 April for the 13 August primary.In the legislative maps ruling, the state supreme court said the earlier conservative-controlled court had been wrong in 2021 to say that maps drawn that year should have as little change as possible from the maps that had been in place at the time. The lawsuit argued that decision warranted replacing the congressional district maps that were drawn under the “least change” requirement.Six of the state’s eight congressional seats are held by Republicans. In 2010, the year before Republicans redrew the maps, Democrats held five seats compared with three for Republicans.Only two of the state’s current congressional districts are seen as competitive.Western Wisconsin’s third district is represented by the Republican US congressman Derrick Van Orden, who won an open seat in 2022 after the longtime Democratic representative Ron Kind retired.And south-eastern Wisconsin’s first district, held by the Republican congressman Bryan Steil since 2019, was made more competitive under the latest maps but still favors the GOP.Both seats have been targeted by national Democrats.The current congressional maps in Wisconsin were drawn by Evers and approved by the state supreme court. The US supreme court in March 2022 declined to block them from taking effect. More

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      Trump says Texas governor Greg Abbott ‘absolutely’ on vice-president shortlist

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      Greg Abbott, the hard-right governor of Texas, is “absolutely” on Donald Trump’s shortlist for vice-president should Trump as expected win the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden.Calling Abbott a “spectacular man”, Trump told Sean Hannity of Fox News the three-term governor, an anti-immigration extremist, had “done a great job”, adding: “Yeah, certainly he would be somebody that I would very much consider.”“So he’s on the list?” Hannity said.“Absolutely, he is,” Trump said, as Abbott listened.Abbott has engineered showdowns with Democratic authorities, sending undocumented migrants to Democratic-run cities, and with the federal government, blocking border patrol access to the Rio Grande river at a common crossing point for migrants, then refusing to comply with orders to back off.“He really stepped it up,” Trump said of Abbott on Thursday, during a visit to the spot in question, a park in Eagle Pass, part of a Texas trip the same day Biden visited the border elsewhere.Abbott, Trump said, had “been amazing”.Abbott, however, told CNN last week “there’s so many people other than myself who are best situated” to be Trump’s running mate, adding that he would help Trump pick. On Wednesday, Abbott told CBS he intended to run for a fourth term in Texas.At Trump’s direction, Republicans are attempting to use conditions at the southern border for political gain in an election year, to the extent of the congressional GOP blocking a hardline, bipartisan deal negotiated in the Senate.In his own border trip, Biden said Trump should “join me” in addressing the problem.Trump’s dominance of his party is near-complete. This week he enjoyed a major victory when Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Republican Senate leader since 2006 but at odds with Trump since the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021, said he would step down this year.In Texas, Trump said Abbott should replace McConnell.“I’d rather be governor of Texas,” Abbott said.“I think you’re doing well,” Trump said. “I want to keep you in Texas.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is all but certain to again capture the Republican presidential nomination, having won all primary contests and with the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, his last opponent, seen as likely to drop out after Super Tuesday next week.Trump enjoys such dominance despite facing 91 criminal charges from four indictments, multimillion-dollar civil reversals over his business affairs and an allegation of rape a judge called “substantially true”, and attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting January 6, most recently in Illinois.Informal auditions for Trump’s running mate continue.Hannity asked Trump about his shortlist. Trump gave a less-than-glowing assessment of the presidential campaign mounted by the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, who dropped out early and pivoted to fawning support.“Tim, for himself, he was fine,” Trump said. “He did OK. I mean, he was OK as a candidate, but he didn’t want to talk about himself. He’s a very good man. For me, he’s unbelievable. He’s a surrogate.”Other candidates Trump has mentioned include Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota; Elise Stefanik of New York, the No 3 House Republican; the biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a former primary rival; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii; and Byron Donalds, a far-right congressman from Florida.Others said to be in the running include JD Vance, a populist senator from Ohio; Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas who was Trump’s second White House press secretary; and Katie Britt, a senator from Alabama. More

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      Mitch McConnell steps down, Donald Trump wins again – podcast

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      Sometimes there are weeks when the news just keeps on coming. This week, the longest-serving US senator, Mitch McConnell, announced he would step down, the US supreme court agreed to take up the claim that Donald Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Congress avoided another government shutdown and Donald Trump continued his winning streak in the Michigan primary.
      In some ways, the Republican party is the exact same one we saw get behind Trump in 2016 and then again in 2020, but there are many out there who see major events such as these as proof that it has changed – irreversibly.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the former Republican strategist and legendary political operative Mike Murphy about the state of the party he once served

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Biden calls for compromise while Trump goes full red meat at US-Mexico border

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      It might be seen as the first US presidential debate of 2024. Two candidates and two lecterns but 300 miles – and a political universe – apart.Joe Biden and Donald Trump spent Thursday at the US-Mexico border, a vivid display of how central the immigration issue has become to the election campaign. Since it is far from certain whether official presidential debates will happen this year, the duelling visits might be as close as it gets.And it was as clarifying about the choice facing voters as any verbal clash on the debate stage. Biden came to push legislation and appeal to the head. Trump came to push fear and appeal to the gut. It is sure to be a close-run thing.That they were at the border at all represented a win for Republicans, who have forced Democrats to play on their territory as the debate over immigration in Washington shifts further to the right.Border crossings have been at or close to record highs since Biden took office in January 2021, though they have dropped so far this year, a trend that officials attribute to increased Mexican enforcement and seasonal trends. Democrats have become increasingly eager to embrace restrictions as they are confronted by migrants sleeping in police stations and airplane hangars.Where the presidents went on Thursday, and who went with them, told its own story. Biden headed to the Rio Grande Valley city of Brownsville which, for nine years, was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. He was accompanied by the homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Republicans earlier this month narrowly voted to impeach over his handling of the border.Trump, who has echoed Adolf Hitler by arguing that immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”, travelled to Eagle Pass in the corridor currently witnessing the highest number of crossings – though they have fallen in recent months.The former president was joined by Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who deployed thousands of national guard troops and laid concertina wire and river buoys to deter illegal immigration through a programme called Operation Lone Star – sparking legal and political standoffs with the White House.It was also Abbott who vowed to “take the border to President Biden” by busing thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities, a move of diabolical genius that nationalised an issue which has, polls show, overtaken inflation as voters’ number one concern.In public remarks, Trump went full red meat, appealing to racist instincts in ways that offered a sobering reminder of the stakes of the election. “This is a Joe Biden invasion,” he said, insisting that “men of a certain age” were coming from countries including China, Iran, Yemen, DR Congo and Syria. “They look like warriors to me.”The former president – who favours travel bans and “ideological screening” for migrants – plucked assertions out of the air: “It could be 15 million, it could be 18 million by the time he gets out of office … A very big population coming in from jails in the Congo … We have languages coming into our country that nobody even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages.”View image in fullscreenTrump went on to describe the alleged crimes of illegal immigrants and claimed that Biden has “the blood of countless innocent victims” on his hands. It is safe to assume that, at this summer’s Republican national convention, a series of gratuitous and lurid stories will be told along with a parade of victims’ families.Biden, who has been on the defensive on the issue in recent months, had a very different objective. He wanted to shame congressional Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan effort to toughen immigration policies after Trump told them not to pass it and give Biden a policy victory.“Join me – or I’ll join you – in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill,” he said, attempting to turn the tables on Trump. “We can do it together. It’s the toughest most efficient, most effective border security bill the country has ever seen. So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done?”That’ll be the day. But in truth any president would have struggled with this escalating crisis. Congress has been paralysed on the issue for decades. Trump left vital agencies in disarray. Climate change, war and unrest in other nations, along with cartels that see migration as a cash cow, have conjured a perfect storm for Trump’s nativist-populist message to frame the conversation.Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice-president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, says: “It seems most people are hearing about the issue of immigration from Republicans rather than from Democrats. That means you are allowing your opponents to define what your position is and that would be political malpractice for any candidate or elected leader.”Last week a Marquette Law School Poll national survey found 53% of voters say Trump is better on immigration and border security, while only 25% favour Biden on the issue. And for the first time a majority (53%) said they support building a wall along the entire southern border – a promise that Trump has been making since he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015.The dynamic leaves Biden caught between trying to please the right while not alienating the left. Republicans and Maga media are demanding draconian measures and pushing emotional buttons by highlighting cases such as the arrest of Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.Biden duly embraced immigration policies that he ran against as a candidate in 2020 such as restricting asylum laws and promising to “shut down the border” if given new authority. But such measures were condemned by progressives and could put his own coalition at risk in a crucial election year.De Castro adds: “If you go back to the early 2000s, there was similarly a lack of alignment on this issue. It took work to get there, but then, for many years, Democrats were seen as aligned as the party that believed in legal immigration and a path to legality for immigrants here and smart enforcement. In some ways they have lost their voice on this, and they need to recoup that.”If Biden and Trump do share a debate stage later this year, America can only hope for a substantial debate on immigration policy. But the four-year electoral cycle and soundbite age are the enemy of the long-term reform that is sorely needed. This knottiest of political problems goes way beyond America’s borders.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a group focused on young voters, says: “Any immigration plan actually has to address the root causes. People are coming out of deep economic need and also fleeing very violent situations. Until you address that it doesn’t matter what kind of barriers they try and create physically at the border to make it more difficult. If they want real solutions, they have to address that.” More

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      Trump attacks Biden immigration policies in Texas speech as both visit US-Mexico border – live

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      Donald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border.Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country.He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.Joe Biden is now delivering remarks in Brownsville in South Texas.Biden begins by speaking about the devastating wildfires in the Texas Panhandle that has crossed into Oklahoma. He says he stands with everyone affected by these wildfires. “When disaster strikes, there’s no red state or blue state,” he says.He then moves on to his visit to the US-Mexico border. He says he has been briefed from officials from the border patrol, immigration enforcement and asylum officers, who he says are all doing “incredible work under really tough conditions”. They desperately need more resources, he says.Trump also speaks about the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was out on her morning run at the University of Georgia when authorities say a stranger dragged her into a secluded area and killed her.A Venezuelan man, identified as Jose Antonio Ibarra, has been arrested for the death of Riley. Ibarra is an immigrant who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.Trump has blamed Joe Biden and his border policies for the Augusta University student’s fatal beating.Donald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border.Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country.He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.Donald Trump has been meeting with officials from the national guard and the department of public safety as he tours Eagle Pass alongside Texas governor Greg Abbott.The lower house of Alabama’s legislature has passed a law to protect providers of in vitro fertilization care, the Montgomery Advertiser reports, after the state supreme court earlier this month ruled embryos used in the procedure were “children”.The court’s decisions raised the possibility that practices providing the care, which is typically used by people who struggle to have children, could face civil suits or criminal prosecution. The bill, backed by the legislature’s Republican majority, would prevent that by protecting providers from those consequences.Here’s more, from the Advertiser:
      The Alabama state House passed overwhelmingly passed legislation Thursday granting civil and criminal immunity to in vitro fertilization patients and medical professionals.
      The bill passed by a vote of 94-6.
      Filed by Terri Collins, R-Morgan County, HB237 reaffirms Attorney General Steve Marshall’s statement that the state has ‘no intention of using the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision as a basis for prosecuting IVF families or providers.’
      ‘This would at least keep the clinics open and the families moving forward,’ Collins said.
      The state Supreme Court in February ruled that frozen embryos are legally protected as children, a controversial decision that thrust the state into the national spotlight. The ruling has been condemned by both Democrats and Republicans.
      In the wake of the court’s ruling, multiple clinics that offer IVF care in the state halted all appointments indefinitely, including Alabama Fertility and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System.
      In Brownsville, Joe Biden is meeting with members of the border patrol on what looks to be the banks of the Rio Grande, which forms the border between Texas and Mexico:Joe Biden has arrived in Brownsville, Texas, before his meetings with federal officials and a speech about border security.According to the White House, he’s expected to meet with officers from US customs and border protection, immigration and customs enforcement and other federal agencies. He will deliver remarks at 4.30pm ET, where he will likely press Congress to act on a border security compromise that Republicans are presently blocking.Donald Trump has arrived in Texas, where he’ll be visiting the border with Mexico in the town of Eagle Pass:Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, will probably outline hard-line measures he would take to stop people from entering the country without permission, if elected. Such crossings have surged since Joe Biden took office, for a variety of reasons. Here’s more about that:The House of Representatives has just approved a measure that will push back government funding deadlines and ward off a shutdown that would have begun after Friday:It’s now up to the Senate to approve the bill, and Congress will then shift to considering full-year appropriations bills. Here’s more on that:Donald Trump’s latest ballot headache is in Illinois, where a judge ordered his name removed yesterday on 14th amendment grounds. The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports that he is appealing the ruling:Donald Trump has appealed a decision from an Illinois state judge who decided he should be removed from that state’s ballot because of the 14th amendment, an ongoing issue for Trump in the courts.Tracie Porter, the Cook county circuit judge, made the decision on Wednesday, reversing the previous decision by the Illinois state board of elections, which said Trump could stay on the ballot. The order was put on hold pending an appeal from Trump, which came swiftly on Thursday.The Illinois decision came after the Colorado supreme court ruled similarly, saying Trump couldn’t hold office again because he had participated in an insurrection while an officer of the United States. Another decision in Maine, by the state’s secretary of state, decided to keep Trump off the ballot there as well, though that is now on hold.The Colorado decision went before the US supreme court in February, which has yet to rule on the case, though the justices expressed a load of skepticism of the claims that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to run again.Expect Joe Biden and Donald Trump to outline very different visions for dealing with undocumented migration when they appear on Texas’s border with Mexico today, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:Joe Biden and his all-but-certain Republican challenger, Donald Trump, will make dueling visits to Texas border towns on Thursday, a rare overlap that sets the stage for an election season clash over immigration.In Brownsville, along the Rio Grande, Biden is expected to hammer Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border security deal after Trump expressed his vocal opposition to the measure. Hundreds of miles north-west, Trump will deliver remarks from a state park in Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a showdown between the Biden administration and the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.Hours before the president and former president arrived on the 2,000-mile stretch of border, a federal judge sided with the Biden administration and blocked a new Texas law that would give police power to arrest people suspected of entering the US unlawfully.Trump, who Republicans appear poised to choose as their nominee for a third consecutive time, has once again made immigration a centerpiece of his presidential campaign by describing the United States under Biden as overrun by undocumented immigrants who “poisoning the blood of our country”, rhetoric that echoes white supremacists and Adolf Hitler. While in Texas, the former president is expected to lay out his plans for an immigration crackdown far beyond what he attempted in his first term.Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both will appear on Texas’s border with Mexico later today to discuss their approaches to handling undocumented immigrants. They are visiting border crossings in cities experiencing starkly different situations, and the president is expected to press Republicans to support a bipartisan proposal that would tighten immigration policy in exchange for approving military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Texas blocked a law that would have allowed police to detain people who enter the state illegally, the latest skirmish in an ongoing fight between the Biden administration and Republicans who control Austin.Here’s what else is going on:
      Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, appeared before a House committee and acknowledged mistakes in how he had handled his hospitalization.
      Biden’s campaign will reach out to backers of a protest-vote effort in Michigan’s Democratic primary aimed at signaling discontent with the president’s support for Israel.
      Brian Fitzpatrick, a centrist House Republican, will try to force the chamber’s leaders to hold a vote on Ukraine aid and border security legislation.
      A federal judge has blocked a law enacted by Texas’s Republican-dominated government that would have allowed state police to arrest people who are suspected of entering from Mexico without authorization, the Associated Press reports.Here’s more:
      The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge David Ezra pauses a law that was set to take effect March 5 and came as President Joe Biden and his likely Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, were visiting Texas’ southern border to discuss immigration. Texas officials are expected to appeal.
      Opponents have called the Texas measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law that opponents rebuked as a “Show Me Your Papers” bill. The U.S. Supreme Court partially struck down the Arizona law, but some Texas Republican leaders, who often refer to the migrant influx as an “invasion,” want that ruling to get a second look.
      Ezra cited the Constitution’s supremacy clause and U.S. Supreme Court decisions as factors that contributed to his ruling. He said the Texas law would conflict with federal immigration law, and the nation’s foreign relations and treaty obligations.
      Allowing Texas to “permanently supersede federal directives” due to a so-called invasion would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority — a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War,” the judge wrote.
      Citing the Supreme Court’s decision on the Arizona law, Ezra wrote that the Texas law was preempted, and he struck down state officials’ claims that large numbers of illegal border crossings constituted an “invasion.”
      The lawsuit is among several legal battles between Texas and Biden’s administration over how far the state can go to try to prevent migrants from crossing the border.
      The measure would allow state law enforcement officers to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, they could agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the country or face a misdemeanor charge for entering the U.S. illegally. Migrants who don’t leave after being ordered to do so could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.
      After a write-in campaign in protest of Joe Biden’s support for Israel managed to win about 13% of the vote in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, a top official on the president’s campaign said this morning that they’d be reaching out to the organizers.But the comments on NPR by Mitch Landrieu, the Biden re-election campaign’s co-chair, did not go over well with one of the groups involved in the effort, which did not prevent the president from winning the swing state’s Democratic primary overwhelmingly.Asked to respond to the “uncommitted” votes, here’s what Landrieu had to say:
      We’re going to continue to talk to them. We’re going to continue to listen to what it is that they have to say. When you’re the commander in chief and when, in fact, you are representing the United States’ interests, there are no issues that are easy. And this is obviously a very painful issue for them and for lots of other folks in the United States of America. We’re going to continue to talk to them and then ask them to think about the choices and what the consequences are about electing somebody who wants to have a Muslim ban, electing somebody who is going to be much, much worse than the difficult circumstances that we have right now. The president is going to reach out, we’re going to continue to listen, and he’s going to continue to work with them as we find an answer to this very difficult problem.
      Here’s what Listen to Michigan, one of the groups supporting the write-in campaign, had to say about that: More

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      US House passes temporary funding bill to avert government shutdown

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      The House has passed a short-term funding bill, narrowly averting a partial government shutdown that would have taken place this weekend.The bill passed with a 320-99 vote on Thursday afternoon. Among Republicans, 113 voted yes and 97 voted no. Meanwhile, 207 Democrats voted yes and 2 voted against it.The two Democrats who voted against the bill were Mike Quigley of Illinois and Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts.The bill’s passage comes after congressional leaders from both parties, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; as well as leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees, announced the agreement on Wednesday.“To give the House and Senate appropriations committees adequate time to execute on this deal in principle, including drafting, preparing report language, scoring and other technical matters and to allow members 72 hours to review, a short-term continuing resolution to fund agencies through March 8 and the 22 will be necessary, and voted on by the House and Senate this week,” the statement said.With the House passing the temporary funding bill on Thursday, a congressional vote is now expected next week for six full-year appropriations bills that will extend funding for agencies under the departments of agriculture-FDA, commerce-justice and science, energy and water development, interior, military construction-veterans affairs and transportation-housing and urban development.“These bills will adhere to the Fiscal Responsibility Act discretionary spending limits and January’s topline spending agreement,” congressional leaders said on Wednesday.The remaining six appropriations bills set to be finalized and voted on by 22 March revolve around the departments of defense, financial services and general government, homeland security, labor-health and human services, as well as legislative branch and state and foreign operations.Following Thursday’s vote, Virginia’s Democratic representative Abigail Spanberger said that despite voting alongside colleagues who “understand our fundamental responsibility to keep our government functioning … Speaker Johnson’s leadership has our country yet again one week away from a partial government shutdown and within a month of the whole of the federal government shutting its doors.”“As our country remains on a collision course with a completely preventable potential shutdown, I will continue to press Speaker Johnson to bring bipartisan bills forward that would pass in the US House, pass in the US Senate, and get to the president’s desk,” she added.Before Thursday’s vote, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met with congressional leaders in attempts to help avert a partial government shutdown, which Biden said would “significantly” damage the economy.The bill will now head to the Senate, where the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the chamber could vote as early as Thursday evening.“Once the House acts, I hope the Senate can pass the short-term CR [continuing resolution] as soon as tonight, but that will require all of us working together. There’s certainly no reason this should take a very long time. So, let’s cooperate and get it done quickly,” Schumer said. More

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      ‘We did it in cattle’: Alabama Republicans’ bungled response to IVF patients

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      On Wednesday morning, some 200 Alabama in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients, doctors and advocates descended on the Alabama state house. Wearing orange and pink shirts for infertility awareness, they carried a variety of handmade signs: “You can’t cuddle an embryo”. “I just want to be a mom”.For these people and thousands of others in the state, the last two weeks have been tumultuous.Following the Alabama supreme court’s recent ruling that frozen embryos are considered “children”, IVF clinics in the state have paused their services, leaving people who were in the process of treatment in limbo. Embryo shipping companies have also stopped servicing the state, which means that patients who want to transfer their frozen embryos out of Alabama are unable to do so.The rally concluded with some direct conversations between advocates and lawmakers. In one such interaction, the Republican state representative Ben Harrison told families that a “solution” would be to freeze the sperm and egg separately, instead of freezing embryos, likening the former procedure to a process used on cows.“My personal opinion is that we keep them apart and only bring them together for what you need and what you’re willing to implant,” Harrison said. “We did it in cattle all the time.”The interaction pointed to the disconnect between families who are undergoing the IVF process, doctors who provide IVF services and lawmakers who may not understand the intricacies of and science behind IVF, but who ultimately can decide whether or not it remains legal.Dr Mamie McLean of Alabama Fertility in Birmingham has become one of the most vocal opponents of the supreme court decision. Flanked by other doctors and IVF patients, she spoke to those attending the rally before they headed into the state house.“As an infertility physician, I am used to difficult conversations, but these last two weeks have been absolutely heartbreaking,” she said. “Due to the uncertainty posed by the supreme court ruling, we have had to cancel embryo transfers for patients who are longing and praying for a child. We call on the state of Alabama to provide immediate, complete and permanent access to IVF care for the women and families of Alabama.”Resolve, the national infertility group that helped organize the rally, provided pamphlets and advised attendees on how to speak to legislators. “What happens here today in these offices will be looked at by the rest of the country,” said Barbara Collura, the group’s president and CEO. “This potentially could be a roadmap for other states to restrict access to IVF or a roadmap for how to protect access to IVF and family building. Please use your voice.”Collura said that some desperate families were leaving the state for treatment.“You’re on these medications for weeks and they cost a lot of money. It’s not covered by insurance for most of these people,” she said of the drugs used during IVF treatment. “You can’t just stop and start up next week, plus we don’t know when this will get fixed.”‘It could end my journey’Elizabeth Goldman, who stood with McLean and other advocates during the rally, was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome when she was 14. The rare disorder means that she was born without a uterus; doctors told her she would never be able to carry her own child. When the University of Alabama launched a uterus transplant program in 2020, Goldman applied, moving with her husband from Mobile to Birmingham (near the school’s campus) in the hope of being able to have a child. After receiving the uterus transplant and undergoing several rounds of IVF treatment and transfers, Goldman was able to conceive. Her daughter, who was with her at the rally, was born in October 2023.Transplant patients are able to keep the uterus for just one or two deliveries, because of the volatility of a foreign organ, Goldman said. She estimates that she has taken about 20,000 pills since her transplant 22 months ago to keep her body from rejecting the uterus.Her medical team cleared her to carry a second child, and had planned to proceed with her transfer this March. But the supreme court decision has put that at a standstill. Goldman was on her way to a transfer appointment when she found out through a notification that her clinic had closed.“With all of the transplant meds I take, it can start to cause kidney damage and other health problems,” she said. “It’s not a life-saving transplant, but a life-giving transplant. So basically, right now I’m healthy. My kidneys are good. But if it continues to drag on, it could end my journey.”Jamie Heard and Deidra Smith drove to the rally from Birmingham hoping to speak to legislators face to face. Heard used IVF to give birth to her now two-year-old son. She had already started her cycle for a second child when the news of the supreme court’s decision broke. Her clinic cancelled her appointments in the middle of treatment.“It was heartbreaking,” Heard said. “The emotions for the past few days – I feel like I’ve been grieving a loved one, that’s how heavy my emotions have been.”Brittany Pettaway and her husband Byron, of Montgomery, currently have eight frozen embryos. She said that this was their only chance of becoming parents. They attended the rally hoping that legislators would make things go “back to literally how it was two weeks ago”.“We’re just trying to protect that right, and what should be a natural, God-given ability to do,” she said. “It’s surreal, I feel like I’m waiting for someone to say it was a joke, a really horrible emotional nightmare.”‘I don’t know what the answer is’After the rally ended, advocates queued outside to make their way into the state house to speak to legislators directly. The floors with offices for senators and representatives were full of people dressed in orange and pink.Outside one office, a group of families engaged the Alabama state auditor, Andrew Sorrell, in a conversation about their struggles. As auditor, Sorrell reports the state’s receipts, claims and payments, taxes and revenues to the governor.“I don’t know exactly what the answer is, but we’ve got to find some way to protect the IVF industry while also maintaining our pro-life stance,” he said.Sorrell suggested women only make as many embryos as they want to use. The advocates explained “the numbers game”, in which a family may produce dozens of eggs, but ultimately only have one or two viable, healthy embryos. Sorrell also suggested the state pay to make it easier for people to adopt frozen embryos.Following the near immediate backlash to the court’s decision, Republicans across the country initially were mum on the issue. But as clinics across Alabama began to close, they turned heel, speaking out in support of IVF. Alabama’s attorney general promised not to prosecute IVF clinics or patients, while the former president Trump also spoke in support of the procedure. On Wednesday, several bills that would preserve IVF moved forward in the Alabama legislature. One bill, which will progress to the Alabama senate after it received a vote of 94-6 on Thursday, would protect clinics from lawsuits.But there is no comprehensive solution to preserving IVF in the state and, in the meantime, patients and families, even those mid-treatment, are left waiting. More

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      Trump to appeal ruling barring him from Illinois primary ballot over January 6 role

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      An Illinois state judge on Wednesday barred Donald Trump from appearing on the Illinois Republican presidential primary ballot because of his role in the attack at the US Capitol on January 6, but she delayed her ruling from taking effect in light of an expected appeal by the former US president.The Cook county circuit judge Tracie Porter sided with Illinois voters who argued that the former president should be disqualified from the state’s March 19 primary ballot and its 5 November general election ballot for violating the anti-insurrection clause of the US constitution’s 14th amendment.Illinois joins Colorado and Maine in attempts to disqualify Trump from running for president because of his role in the 6 January insurrection, in which Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to try to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.Trump is currently appealing those decisions to the supreme court, which is seen as likely to reject the states’ attempts to remove the former president from their ballots.The Colorado and Maine decisions are on hold while Trump appeals. Porter said she was also staying her decision because she expected Trump’s appeal to Illinois’ appellate courts, and a potential ruling from the supreme court.The advocacy group Free Speech for People, which spearheaded the Illinois disqualification effort, praised the ruling as a “historic victory”.A campaign spokesperson for Trump, the national frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, said in a statement that this “is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal”.In oral arguments on 8 February, the US supreme court appeared skeptical of arguments for removing Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot, and analysts suggested the court was poised to allow Trump to remain on the ballot.The court’s chief justice, John Roberts, suggested that if the supreme court allowed Colorado to take Trump off the ballot, then the “big, plain consequences” of the decision would be a scenario in which states regularly disqualified candidates from parties they opposed.“I would expect that a goodly number of states will say whoever the Democratic candidate is, you’re off the ballot, and others, for the Republican candidate, you’re off the ballot. It will come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election. That’s a pretty daunting consequence,” Robert said.“What’s a state doing deciding who other citizens get to vote for for president?” the liberal justice Elena Kagan said.The justices focused more on the potential consequences of their decision than on whether or not Trump engaged in insurrection on 6 January and thus should be barred from holding office.Colorado and Maine earlier removed Trump from their state ballots after determining he is disqualified under section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which was created in the wake of the US civil war.Section 3 bars from public office anyone who took an oath to support the US constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.In her opinion, Porter wrote that she had considered Colorado’s ruling in her decision, and noted that the court “did not reach its conclusions lightly” and that it “realized the magnitude of this decision”.Reuters contributed to this report More