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      Indiana supreme court clears way for Republican abortion ban

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      The Indiana supreme court ruled on Friday that the state’s abortion ban does not violate the state constitution, removing a major hurdle to enforcing the ban Republicans approved last summer.The court’s decision overturns a county judge’s ruling that the ban probably violates the state constitution’s privacy protections, which she said are stronger than those found in the US constitution. That judge’s order has allowed abortions to continue in Indiana since September, despite the ban.An opinion from three of the court’s five justices said that while Indiana’s constitution provides some protection of abortion rights, the “General Assembly otherwise retains broad legislative discretion for determining whether and the extent to which to prohibit abortions”.All five Indiana supreme court justices were appointed by Republican governors.The Republican state attorney general, Todd Rokita, issued a statement praising the decision: “We celebrate this day – one long in coming, but morally justified. Thank you to all the warriors who have fought for this day that upholds LIFE.”Although the court’s decision strikes down the injunction blocking the ban, it was not immediately clear how soon the ban would take effect. The justices returned the case to the county judge for further action, and left open the possibility of a narrower challenge to the ban.Indiana’s abortion ban also faces a separate court challenge over claims it violates the state’s 2015 religious freedom law signed by GOP the then governor, Mike Pence.Indiana became the first state to enact tighter abortion restrictions, acting in August, after the US supreme court’s eliminated federal protections by overturning Roe v Wade in June 2022.Most Republican-controlled states have enacted tighter abortion restrictions since the US supreme court’s ruling last summer. All the restrictions have been challenged in court.In the past year, judges in Arizona, Iowa and South Carolina have ruled that the bans are not permissible under the state constitutions.Besides Indiana, enforcement of restrictions are on hold as courts decide the cases in Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah and Wyoming. In North Dakota, lawmakers hav since adopted a different ban to replace the one that was blocked. In South Carolina, another ban has been put into place and put on hold by a court. And in North Carolina, a federal judge weighed whether to temporarily block parts of new abortion restrictions set to take effect on Saturday.Democratic-led states, such as Indiana’s neighbors of Illinois and Michigan, have mostly taken steps to protect abortion access.The Indiana ban would eliminate the licenses for all seven abortion clinics in the state and ban the vast majority of abortions even in the earliest stages of a pregnancy. It includes exceptions allowing abortions at hospitals in cases of rape or incest before 10 weeks post-fertilization; to protect the life and physical health of the mother; and if a fetus is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly.The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which represented Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinic operators, argued before the supreme court in January that the state constitution’s liberty protections provide a right to privacy and to make decisions on whether to have children.The state attorney general’s office countered that Indiana had laws against abortion when its current constitution was drafted in 1851 and that the county judge’s ruling would wrongly create an abortion right.The Indiana supreme court’s decision said the state constitution “protects a woman’s right to an abortion that is necessary to protect her life or to protect her from a serious health risk”.The majority opinion, however, also found that the constitution “generally permits the General Assembly to prohibit abortions which are unnecessary to protect a woman’s life or health, so long as the legislation complies with the constitutional limits that apply to all legislation, such as those limiting legislation to a proper exercise of the police power and providing privileges and immunities equally”.A separate court challenge to the ban is ongoing as another county judge in December sided with residents who claim it violates the state’s religious freedom law, which Republican legislators pushed through in 2015 and sparked a widespread national backlash as critics argued it allowed discrimination against gay people.The state supreme court in January turned down a request from the attorney general’s office that it immediately take up the religious freedom lawsuit. The state’s intermediate court of appeals is scheduled to hear arguments over that lawsuit on 12 September.The Marion county judge Heather Welch in December agreed with five residents who hold Jewish, Muslim and spiritual faiths and who argued that the ban would violate their religious rights on when they believe abortion is acceptable. For now it only directly affects those plaintiffs – legal experts say anyone else claiming religious protections of their abortion rights would need their own court order. More

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      Republicans claim Democrats can’t keep us safe – crime data disagrees

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      Be it congressional campaigns or defending Donald Trump from his many legal entanglements, Republicans have kept up a consistent message to the US: Democrats can’t be trusted to keep you safe.“Alvin Bragg … is going after President Trump when you have all kinds of things happening in his town that are harmful to families who live there,” Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, one of Trump’s top allies in Congress, said on Fox News after the Democratic Manhattan prosecutor in March indicted Trump for allegedly falsifying business records. Jordan, who chairs the House judiciary committee, appeared to be ignoring data that shows New York is one of the safest cities in the country.As the Covid-19 pandemic upended the American economy and day-to-day life in 2020, homicides shot up by 30%, the largest one-year jump on record. Republicans used that spike, along with broader crime concerns, as a cudgel against Democrats to successfully regain control of the House of Representatives two years later.But Third Way, a center-left thinktank, has found that states which voted for Trump in the 2020 election had overall higher murder rates than those which supported Joe Biden. This trend, called the “red state murder gap”, has been consistent for 20 years. The pattern remains the same even if the most populous county in each red state is excluded – undercutting an argument common on the right that large cities, which tend to be led by Democrats, are to blame for homicides.“There’s a narrative out there that the crime problem is a blue states, blue city crime problem,” said Jim Kessler, Third Way’s executive vice-president for policy and an author of the study. “We thought, ‘OK, let’s challenge that, let’s see if it’s true.’ And it’s not.”What’s harder to tease out is why this split exists, and even the degree to which political factors are to blame for it. Many of the worst-affected states are in the south, a region that has had historically higher murder rates. And though crime may be a national political issue, in reality, local authorities such as mayors and police officials often have the most powerful roles in ensuring public safety.“I think it’s very difficult to put a partisan spin on this,” said Jeff Asher, a co-founder of AH Datalytics, which tracks criminal justice data. “I think that you can maybe say that places with state legislatures that are not focused on finding effective solutions to gun violence, you could place that blame on them. But generally … gun violence is local, and it’s usually local causes rather than statewide or federal causes.”Before Mississippi overtook it in 2019 and 2020, Louisiana led the nation in homicides per capita from 2000 to 2018, with its most populous city, New Orleans, ranking among the most murder-plagued in the nation. Asher, who lives in the city, blamed that on a range of factors, from the police department’s failure to solve many homicides to a lack of employment and educational opportunities there.And while Louisiana’s electoral votes have gone to Republicans in every election since 2000, it currently has a Democratic governor and was viewed as a blue state in the 1990s, as were many other southern states that are now considered Republican strongholds.“These issues were here in the 90s, when Louisiana was voting twice for Bill Clinton. These issues have not suddenly become issues,” Asher said.When Nick Suplina, the senior vice-president for law and policy at the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety, looks at the states leading the country’s homicide rate, he sees a map reflecting loose gun laws. Firearms were used in almost 80% of homicides in 2020, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, but in much of the south, state legislatures are controlled by Republicans who have in recent years made it easier to buy a gun, and carry it where one pleases.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“When you’re seeing homicides rates going up, in 2020, for instance, that’s driven by gun homicides, that’s driven by easy access to firearms, predominantly by people who shouldn’t have access to firearms,” Suplina said. “And so, really, what you’re seeing in this study isn’t so much about politics or voting proclivities, but, rather, what states have strong gun laws and what states have weak ones.”Third Way’s study covers the 2000-2020 time period, during which the National Rifle Association pushed state lawmakers to remove or oppose regulations over firearm background checks, permitting and safe storage. Many states also have preemption laws on the books that prevent mayors from enacting tighter gun legislation within their city limits.And even when states pass stricter gun laws, they are easily skirted. “Our gun laws are only as strong as the weakest gun laws of a neighboring state,” Suplina said. “We have porous state borders in this country. And so in states like Illinois, and specifically with respect to Chicago, most of their crime guns are starting in Indiana and quickly making their way across the border.”There are signs that the pandemic-era wave of murders has crested. Statistics from AH Datalytics indicate murder rates in 90 US cities until the end of May have fallen by about 12% year on year, including in New York City, where Jordan convened a hearing of the judiciary committee into the city’s purported crime problem shortly after Bragg brought his charges against Trump.“If chairman Jordan truly cared about public safety, he could take a short drive to Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron or Toledo in his home state, instead of using taxpayer dollars to travel hundreds of miles out of his way,” Bragg’s office said in a statement before the hearing convened, referring to cities in Jordan’s home state that all have higher murder rates than New York. More

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      The Republican race for 2024: can anyone stop Trump? – podcast

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      When Donald Trump announced that he would be running for the presidency in 2024, millions of his devoted fans rallied to his cause. Once again, he finds himself way out in front in opinion polls of who Republican voters would choose to represent them in the 2024 presidential election. Joan E Greve tells Michael Safi that Donald Trump’s strongest opponent could be the US justice system. He’s been beset by legal strife as prosecutors hover and indictments pile up. He faces accusations that he illegally retained classified documents and obstructed justice. For a normal candidate in a normal presidential race the indictments would be enough to end a political career. But Trump has not only survived the episode, he is using it as part of his anti-establishment campaign. Meanwhile, the rest of the Republican field is faced with a dilemma: attack Trump and risk alienating his army of supporters, or try to soft-pedal the accusations and hope none of the scandal sticks to their campaigns. Whatever they appear to be trying, Trump remains hot favourite for the Republican nomination. More

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      Biden condemns ruling against race-conscious admissions: ‘This is not a normal court’ – live

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      From 5h agoSpeaking at the White House, Joe Biden condemned the supreme court’s conservative justices for their decision released today against race-based admissions.“In case after case, including recently, just a few years ago in 2016, the court has affirmed and reaffirmed this view that colleges could use race, not as a determining factor for admission, but as one of the factors among many in deciding who to admit,” the president said, adding that “the court once again walked away from decades of precedent.”“The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” he said.There are “still a lot of really good Republicans” in the Senate, Joe Biden said during his interview on MSNBC.Biden said that six Republican senators have come to him since he was elected “to tell me, ‘Joe, I agree with you but if I’m seen doing it, I’ll lose a primary’”. He added:
      I’m an eternal optimist. I still think there’s going to come a moment when they’re going to be able to break.
      During his interview on MSNBC, Joe Biden admitted he knew his polling numbers “are not good” but argued that “they were the same way when I ran and won”.Biden said he had “great faith” in the American people and that it was “important that they know that my value set is very different than the new Maga Republican party”.He added:
      Everybody thought I was gonna get clobbered in the primary. I got 80 million votes in the last election.
      Here’s the clip:Joe Biden refused to say whether he knew ahead of time about Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to march on Moscow.“Every president is amazed that America is the lead in the world”, he told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.He said he had focused on holding Nato together and on expanding the alliance to make sure that “the most significant invasion since world war two does not succeed”.In an interview on MSNBC, Joe Biden was asked about a report that said senior officials at the justice department resisted investigating the possible involvement of Donald Trump and his associates in the January 6 Capitol attack.Biden said he had made a commitment that he would “not in any way interfere” with the justice department, adding that he had “not spoken one single time with the attorney general on any specific case”.He said he had “faith that the justice department will move in a direction that is consistent with the law”.Joe Biden has said the supreme court has “gone out of its way” to “unravel basic rights” following its ruling on Thursday to strike down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard.In an interview on MSNBC, Biden was asked what he meant at a press conference earlier today when he said the supreme court was “not a normal court”. He said:
      What I meant by that is it has done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.
      He said he found this court “so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”.
      Across the board, the vast majority of American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court has made.
      Biden said that although he believes the conservative majority on the court “may do too much harm”, he opposes expanding the court because it will “politicize the court forever in a way that is not healthy”.Biden says he knows his polling numbers “are not good”, but argues that “they were the same way when I ran”.
      Everybody thought I was going to get clobbered in a primary.
      Biden says he’s “not spoken one single time” with the attorney general “on any specific case”.Biden says he thinks if we start the process of trying to expand the court “we’re going to politicize it in a way that’s not healthy”.Biden says he thinks it’s a “mistake” to expand the court. He says:
      What I’ve done is I have appointed 136 judges, and … I picked people who are from various backgrounds.
      We’ve appointed more women to the appellate courts, Black women to the appellate courts, than every other president in American history.
      Biden says the vast majority of American people don’t agree with the supreme court’s ruling.He says it “finds it so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”.Biden is asked what he meant when he said earlier today that the supreme court is “not a normal court”.Biden says the court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court”, pointing to its ruling last year to overturn Roe v Wade.Joe Biden will in a few minutes appear from MSNBC’s New York City studios for a live interview with anchor Nicolle Wallace.While Biden often responds to questions from reporters as he comes and goes from the White House or at the tail end of his speeches, he has done few press conferences compared with his recent predecessors, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Follow along here as the Guardian’s Léonie Chao-Fong covers the interview live. More

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      in Elections

      Top Georgia official to meet special counsel investigators over Trump’s 2020 election plot – live

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      From 2h agoDonald Trump has now been indicted twice, first by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for allegedly falsifying business documents, and the second time by special prosecutor Jack Smith over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. While the former president has said he will not relent from his latest campaign for the White House even if convicted, a guilty verdict on any of those charges would nonetheless be a huge development.Yet it’s possible neither trial is resolved before the November 2024 general election, where Trump could appear on ballots nationwide, assuming he wins the Republican nominating contest.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that his trial in federal court over the Mar-a-Lago documents may be delayed until next spring:
      Federal prosecutors in the classified documents case against Donald Trump have asked for a tentative trial date in December, but the complex nature of the US government’s own rules for using such secrets in court, and expected legal challenges, could delay the trial until at least the spring of 2024.
      Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.
      The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure.
      That Joe Biden makes gaffes and misstatements when speaking in public is nothing new. But as he stands for a second term in office, Republicans are seizing on every mistake to press their case that the 80-year-old president is in no position to serve another four years.GOP-aligned Twitter accounts were quick to jump on Biden this morning after he incorrectly said Iraq when referring to Ukraine in remarks to reporters. So, too, were some Republican lawmakers, like Missouri’s senator Josh Hawley:Bloomberg News reports this isn’t the first time he’s made that particular mistake:As he left the White House for Chicago, Joe Biden shared his views on how the weekend rebellion against President Vladimir Putin in Russia has affected his grip on the country – and also made yet another gaffe:So just what is “Bidenomics”?According to the White House, “It’s an economic vision centered around three key pillars”, specifically “Making smart public investments in America, empowering and educating workers to grow the middle class [and] promoting competition to lower costs and help entrepreneurs and small businesses thrive.”“While our work isn’t finished, Bidenomics is already delivering for the American people. Our economy has added more than 13 million jobs – including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs – and we’ve unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom,” the White House said in a fact sheet distributed today, also noting the drop in inflation and rise in small business activity.The president is scheduled to make a speech outlining these accomplishments at 1pm Eastern Time in Chicago, setting the stage for them to be a key part of his re-election campaign.Despite all that, Biden struck a curious tone when taking questions from reporters at the White House this morning when asked about the term – which isn’t all that different from the “Reaganomics” moniker used to refer to former Republican president Ronald Reagan’s policies.Here’s the exchange, as captured by the Hill:Joe Biden may be planning to campaign on his economic record, but polls indicate that argument may not work for many Americans.Biden’s approval rating has been underwater for almost two years, but Americans are particularly distrustful of his handling of the economy. Consider this survey from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released last month.Its data shows the president’s approval at a typically low 40% – but when it comes to his handling of the economy, it’s even worse, with only 33% of American adults approving of what he’s done so far.Joe Biden is on his way to Chicago right now from Washington DC to make what his administration is billing as a major speech on his economic accomplishments, but as he left the White House, the president took time to call out a conservative Republican senator.The target was Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, who tweeted this morning about how happy he was that his state would receive money to expand broadband access from a $42bn federal government program:But that program is paid for by the national infrastructure overhaul Congress approved with a bipartisan vote in 2021 – which Tuberville did not vote for.That fact clearly did not escape Biden’s social media team, who invited the lawmaker to attend a public event with the president:While Donald Trump could still face charges over the January 6 attack, Reuters reported yesterday on a newly released report that shows US security agencies failed to see the insurrection coming:A new report detailing intelligence failures leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol said government agencies responsible for anticipating trouble downplayed the threat even as the building was being stormed, in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The 105-page report, issued by Democrats on the Senate homeland security committee, said intelligence personnel at the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies ignored warnings of violence in December 2020.Such officials then blamed each other for failing to prevent the attack that ensued, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.Donald Trump has now been indicted twice, first by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for allegedly falsifying business documents, and the second time by special prosecutor Jack Smith over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. While the former president has said he will not relent from his latest campaign for the White House even if convicted, a guilty verdict on any of those charges would nonetheless be a huge development.Yet it’s possible neither trial is resolved before the November 2024 general election, where Trump could appear on ballots nationwide, assuming he wins the Republican nominating contest.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that his trial in federal court over the Mar-a-Lago documents may be delayed until next spring:
      Federal prosecutors in the classified documents case against Donald Trump have asked for a tentative trial date in December, but the complex nature of the US government’s own rules for using such secrets in court, and expected legal challenges, could delay the trial until at least the spring of 2024.
      Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.
      The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure.
      Good morning, US politics blog readers. Special counsel Jack Smith has already brought federal charges against Donald Trump over his involvement in hiding documents at Mar-a-Lago, but his investigation of the former president is far from over. Smith was tasked by attorney general Merrick Garland to also look into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection and the wider effort to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and new details have emerged of the direction of those inquiries.Smith’s investigators will be interviewing Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger today in Atlanta, the Washington Post reports, while Rudy Giuliani has already spoken to them, according to the Associated Press. The two men played starkly different roles in the legal maneuvers Trump attempted in the weeks after his election loss, with Raffensperger resisting entreaties from the president to stop the certification of Biden’s victory in Georgia, and Giuliani acting as a proxy for the president in his pressure campaign. We’ll be keeping our eyes open to see if more details of the investigation emerged today.Here’s what else is going on:
      Biden is heading to Chicago for a speech at 1pm Eastern Time on “Bidenomics” – the accomplishments in employment and wages he intends to campaign on as he seeks another term in the White House.
      A judge appeared disinclined to move to federal court the case brought against Trump by the Manhattan district attorney for allegedly falsifying business records, denying the former president another opportunity to have the charges dismissed.
      White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton will take questions from reporters sometime after 9.30am. More

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      McCarthy says Trump ‘stronger today than in 2016’ after doubting his ability to win earlier – live

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      From 6h agoThe impacts of the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper extend to redistricting, and beyond.Its most immediate effect is to preserve longstanding norms over state courts’ ability to weigh in on legislatures’ actions when it comes to federal elections, as the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:
      The 6-3 decision in Moore v Harper is a blow to North Carolina Republicans who had asked the court to embrace the so-called independent state legislature theory – the idea that the US constitution does not allow state courts to limit the power of state legislatures when it comes to federal elections. Such a decision in the case would have been a major win for Republicans, who control more state legislatures than Democrats do. Some of the conservative justices on the court had urged the bench to embrace the idea.
      “We will have to resolve this question sooner or later, and the sooner we do so, the better,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissent at an earlier stage in the case that was joined by Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. “If the language of the elections clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections.”
      The court’s decision means that state courts can continue to weigh in on disputes over federal election rules. State courts have become increasingly popular forums for hearing those disputes, especially after the US supreme court said in 2019 that federal courts could not address partisan gerrymandering.
      But Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political science professor focusing on American elections, sees broader implications in the justices’ rejection of the fringe independent state legislature (ISL) theory, which Republican lawmakers from North Carolina has asked them to endorse in the case:Here’s more from Sam on the case:A New York appeals court has ordered that Ivanka Trump be dismissed from a civil fraud case filed by New York attorney general Letitia James against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization and three of his adult children.James’ lawsuit, filed last September, accused Trump of lying from 2011 to 2021 about the value of his properties, including his Mar-a-Lago estate and Trump Tower penthouse, as well as his own net worth, to receive favorable loans. The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s children were involved in a conspiracy to commit the crimes.The lawsuit seeks at least $250m in damages from the former president, his sons Donald Jr and Eric, his daughter Ivanka, the Trump Organization and to stop the Trumps from running businesses in New York.The appellate division in Manhattan, in today’s unanimous ruling, dismissed the claims brought against Ivanka Trump by James, noting that those claims were barred by New York’s statute of limitation. It said:
      The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016. Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely.
      The appeals court has returned the case to the state supreme court judge presiding over the case to determine whether the claims against the other defendants should be limited.A trial is scheduled to begin 2 October.Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has said “what’s happening with the Uyghurs is disgusting” after her rival, Francis Suarez, appeared not to have heard of the persecuted Chinese minority group.Haley, during a foreign policy speech about China in Washington, said:
      We promised never again to look away from genocide, and it’s happening right now in China. And no one is saying anything because they’re too scared of China.
      Part of American foreign policy should always be that we fight for human rights for all people. And what’s happening with the Uyghurs is disgusting. And the fact that the whole world is ignoring it is shameful.
      Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has insisted that Donald Trump is “stronger today than he was in 2016”, hours after he appeared to question whether the former president was the strongest GOP nominee to win the 2024 election.McCarthy, in an interview with Breitbart News, said:
      As usual, the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans as our committees are holding Biden’s DoJ accountable for their two-tiered levels of justice.
      He pointed to a Morning Poll published today that showed Trump with a three-point lead over Joe Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head match. McCarthy said:
      Just look at the numbers this morning – Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016.
      It comes after he was asked, in an interview earlier today with CNBC, whether Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles. McCarthy replied:
      Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer.
      Investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s office are set to interview Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in Atlanta, as part of the federal investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his advisers to overturn the 2020 election results.Raffensperger’s interview, first reported by the Washington Post, will be his first with US justice department investigators.Smith’s office subpoenaed Raffensperger back in December, but NBC News reports that the move was for documents and not for him to appear or testify in person.In a phone call after the 2020 election, Trump demanded Raffensperger “find” the votes needed for him to win Georgia – a state Joe Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes.Trump told Raffensperger:
      All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.
      A new federal law that requires employers to provide accommodations to pregnant and postpartum employees took effect on Tuesday, providing protections to millions of eligible people.The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires that employers with more than 15 workers provide “reasonable accommodations” to people who are pregnant, postpartum or have a related medical condition, NBC News reported.The legislation covers accommodations for a myriad of pregnancy-related conditions including morning sickness, pregnancy loss and postpartum depression.Examples of possible accommodations include being able to sit and drink water, having flexible hours and having uniforms that fit properly, according to information from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.Accommodations could also include time off for childbirth recovery and time to access an abortion, the 19th News reported.Under the act, a pregnant employee can request accommodations from their employer, with both parties having a discussion on if the accommodation can be granted.Read the full story here.Kamala Harris is out with a statement cheering the supreme court’s decision in the Moore v Harper case out of North Carolina, but acknowledging that more must be done to safeguard voting rights across the United States.Here are the vice-president’s thoughts:
      Voting is the bedrock of our democracy. Today’s decision preserves state courts’ critical role in safeguarding elections and protecting the voice and the will of the American people. We know that more work must to (sic) be done to protect the fundamental right to vote and to draw fair maps that reflect the diversity of our communities and our nation. The President and I will keep fighting to secure access to the ballot box, but we cannot do this alone. We continue to call on Congress to do their part to protect voters and our democracy and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.
      If the supreme court had ruled in favor of Republicans in a major election law case decided today, it would have represented a “truly horrible” blow to American democracy, a congressman from North Carolina, the state at the heart of the decision, said in an interview.Speaking to the Guardian’s US politics live blog, Wiley Nickel, a first-term Democratic House representative from the Raleigh area, said that while the decision handed down might represent a victory in the battle against partisan gerrymandering, he still expects Republicans who control North Carolina’s state legislature to proceed with redrawing congressional maps to their advantage.“We had something truly horrible that didn’t happen and it would have been the beginning of the end of democracy in America if the court had sided with Tim Moore in the Moore v Harper case,” Nickel said, referring to the Republican speaker of the state’s House of Representatives whose name was on the supreme court case.But because the US supreme court has now ruled against North Carolina’s Republicans and declined to endorse a fringe theory that could have prevented state courts from weighing in on federal election rules, “It’ll mean that we have a check with the courts and with our constitution … it just moves us on to the next stage of the fight to make sure that we get fair maps in this next election.”Nickel was elected last year after North Carolina’s supreme court struck down a GOP-drawn congressional map and replaced it with one that produced a 7-7 split between Republicans and Democrats in the state’s delegation following the midterm election. While Democrats still lost control of the US House, that ruling was one of many factors that helped the party’s lawmakers across the country perform better than expected.In North Carolina, the GOP has since taken the majority on its top court, which, together with the party’s control of the House and Senate, will allow it to move forward with a partisan gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts.Nickel expects that the boundaries of his district, which leans slightly Republican, will remain pretty much the same, but other Democratic congressional representatives may be at risk.“It goes back to our state legislature and they’re going to draw maps and it’s going to be, I think, bad overall for Democrats,” he said. How bad it is will be yet another factor determining whether Joe Biden’s allies are able to retake control of the House in the next election, set for November 2024.In the long run, Nickel supports federal legislation to end partisan gerrymandering, but acknowledges that among the current crop of Republicans in the House, “The majority of them right now, if anything, they’re going in the opposite direction.”He takes some solace from another supreme court ruling released earlier this month that maintains parts of the Voting Rights Act and could help Democrats hang onto some districts in North Carolina and elsewhere in the south. Nickel also noted that if the Tar Heel State’s Republicans push too hard to make maps that disadvantage Democrats, it raises the chances a legal challenge against them will succeed.“Every single time we talk about maps in North Carolina, the real question is, how greedy are they going to get? And if they get too greedy, the state courts, federal courts are going to get involved,” he said.The third “Florida Man” in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez, suffered an embarrassment during an interview with a conservative radio host when he was asked about the plight of the oppressed Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China.“The what?” Suarez replied when asked by the presenter Hugh Hewitt if he would be talking about them during his campaign, reported by the Miami Herald.“The Uyghurs,” Hewitt repeated.“What’s a Uyghur?” Suarez asked.“OK, we’ll come back to that. You gotta get smart on that,” Hewitt said.“What did you call it, a Weeble?” Suarez asked at the conclusion of the 15-minute conversation.In a later tweet, Hewitt called Suarez’s interview “pretty good for a first conversation”, apart from the “huge blind spot” on the Uyghurs.In a statement, Suarez claimed he had merely misheard. “Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China,” he claimed.“China has a deplorable record on human rights and all people of faith suffer there. I didn’t recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used. That’s on me.”You can listen to the interview here.Speaking of Donald Trump and 2024, Kevin McCarthy made a curious comment this morning in an interview with CNBC.Asked if he thought Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles, the Republican House speaker replied, “Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer. But can … anybody beat Biden? Yeah, anybody can beat Biden. Can Biden beat other people? Yes, Biden can beat them.”Make of that what you will. Here’s the full clip:During his campaign swing through New Hampshire, Ron DeSantis was asked about his views on the January 6 insurrection.Donald Trump has repeatedly insulted DeSantis, who is his closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination next year, but that apparently isn’t enough to earn the Florida’s governor’s condemnation of the former president’s involvement in the attack on the Capitol:Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, has also praised the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper.Posting to Twitter, Pelosi said:
      Today, the Supreme Court rejected a fringe, far-right assault on a sacred pillar of American Democracy: the right to vote.
      With its ruling in Moore v. Harper, the Court refused the MAGA Republicans’ radical theory and reaffirmed our Founders’ vision of checks and balances.
      The White House has responded to the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper, calling it a “critical” move for voting rights.White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton said the “extreme” legal theory would have let politicians undermine the will of the people.Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at a campaign event in Hollis, New Hampshire, also vowed to tear down Washington’s traditional political power centers, AP reports.Asked about people who had voted twice for Donald Trump because of promises to “drain the swamp” in the nation’s capital, DeSantis replied:
      He didn’t drain it. It’s worse today than it’s ever been.
      He said he would take power out of Washington by instructing cabinet agencies to halve the number of employees there, adding:
      I want to break the swamp.
      Florida governor Ron DeSantis has vowed to succeed where Donald Trump failed and to “actually” build the wall between the US and Mexico, as the two held dueling campaign events in New Hampshire.DeSantis, at a town hall in Hollis, spoke about his new immigration policy proposal which includes calling for ending birthright citizenship, finishing the border wall and sending US forces into Mexico to combat drug cartels, AP reports.He said:
      We’re actually going to build the wall. A lot of politicians chirp. They make grandiose promises and then fail to deliver the actual results. The time for excuses is over. Now is the time to deliver results and finally get the job done. More

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      Republican executive blogged about ‘conversion therapy’ for extremist group

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      The executive director of a Republican-linked non-profit wrote blog posts for an extremist organization in which he advocated so-called “conversion therapy”, the supremacy of biblical rules on marriage over “man-made law”, and expressed a general theocratic view that divine law as interpreted by US evangelical Christians trumps secular law.The since-deleted posts by Mark Trammell – now executive director of the self-styled civil rights group Center for American Liberty (CAL) – were written for Liberty Counsel, dubbed an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its work “to ensure that Christians can continue to engage in anti-LGBT discrimination in places of business under the guise of ‘religious liberty’”.The Guardian has previously reported on the financial relationship between CAL and CEO Harmeet Dhillon’s law firm, which a non-profit expert described as “problematic”, and the lack of transparency in the non-profit’s arrangements with a PR firm.But CAL’s extremist links, and other CAL attorneys links to groups like the Proud Boys and the Claremont Institute, raise questions about the organization’s recent pivot to suits that seek to limit transgender rights.Theocratic postsIt was while Trammell was working as director of public policy at another rightwing non-profit, Liberty Counsel Action, that Trammell wrote a number of blogposts for an affiliated organization, Liberty Counsel. Those posts, published in 2013 and 2014, have since disappeared from the organization’s website, but were exposed in a data breach of the organization’s website, and revealed now by the Guardian.In a September 2013 post, Trammell complained about laws passed in California in 2012 and New Jersey in 2013 that were the first in the country to ban so-called “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy”, a scientifically discredited practice whose practitioners falsely claim to be able to change the sexual orientation of same-sex-attracted people.In the post, Trammell wrote: “In both California and New Jersey, by statute, licensed physicians are not permitted to provide reparative therapy to minors, under the age of 18, who struggle with an unwanted same-sex attraction and who desire such reparative therapy.”He continued: “This restriction on therapy is a viewpoint-based content restriction aimed at silencing Christian views on human sexuality.”In other posts, Trammell criticized Republicans for moves that in his view failed to acknowledge the supremacy of biblical over secular law, even if they were ostensibly defending conservative moral positions.In a March 2014 post on efforts by Republicans including Ted Cruz and Mike Lee to limit the power of the federal government to enforce same-sex marriage in states where it did not yet exist, he wrote that the proposed Defense of Marriage Act was “not the answer”.Rather, Trammell wrote, “as a component of the Natural Law, authored by God, the institution of marriage is beyond the ability of mankind to change. Simply put, it is a law given to us by God and since God’s ways are justice and His ways are higher than our ways.”Further on in the post, Trammell continued his advocacy of theocracy, writing: “For one to state that the Tenth Amendment reserves the authority for states to define marriage according to the will of the citizens of that state is to say that the Constitution had authority over the Natural Law. Such a conclusion is contrary to the essence of the Natural Law and is contrary to Scripture.”In a post that May, Trammell criticized the supreme court for its Town of Greece v Galloway decision that month, which upheld the right of the New York town’s board to open its meeting with a prayer, providing it did not exclude representatives of minority faiths from officiating in those prayers.Whereas the court defined the prayers as “ceremonial” and intended to “place town board members in a solemn and deliberative frame of mind”, Trammell wrote that the prayers were to “invoke divine guidance in town affairs”.He further wrote that the court was wrong in “concluding that the purpose of prayer is civic in nature and bifurcated from God”, adding that, “Legislative prayer is not about government; it is about God. Its purpose is not to solemnize the occasion or acknowledge religious leaders; it is to humble ourselves before God, seeking Him and His guidance.”Neither Mark Trammell nor Liberty Counsel responded to emailed requests for comment.Heidi Beirich is co-founder and chief strategy officer at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) and an expert on the North American and European far right.In a telephone conversation, she said that Liberty Counsel was “crudely anti-LGBTQ” and that “everything the organization does is part of a crusade to strip LGBTQ people of their rights”.On Trammell’s blogposts, Beirich said: “He essentially doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state,” and pointed to the view of the UN’s independent expert on gender and sexuality that conversion therapy “may amount to torture”.Lawyer for the Christian rightExcept for brief stints as a congressional intern and a county-level law clerk, Trammell has spent his entire career working for a string of rightwing organizations. They include Young America’s Foundation (YAF), where as assistant general counsel he secured Dhillon’s services in suing UC Berkeley over the university’s cancellation of a speech by the conservative firebrand Ann Coulter in 2017.Much of his early career, however, was spent in the service of organizations that are directly affiliated or historically connected to Liberty University, an institution founded by the rightwing Baptist televangelist Jerry Falwell in 1971.Falwell’s son, Jerry Falwell Jr, was president of Liberty from the time of his father’s death in 2007 until 2020, when he quit amid media reports of a long-running affair in which his business partner would have sex with his wife, Becki, while Falwell looked on.Despite its former president’s outre personal life, Liberty’s honor code forbids students from “sexual relations outside a biblically ordained marriage, romantic displays of affection with a member of the same sex … and actions confirming denial of biological birth sex”.Liberty Counsel was founded by Matthew Staver in 1989, when he was dean of Liberty University Law School, and it has pursued lawsuits advancing a Christian right agenda under the banner of religious liberty. Its anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and activism is the reason for the SPLC listing.Liberty Counsel Action is a 501(c)(4) non-profit affiliated with Liberty Counsel, a 501(c)(3). According to US tax law, 501(c)(4) entities can engage in politically partisan activities and campaigning in a way that is prohibited to 501(c)(3) bodies.Other extremist linksOther lawyers associated with CAL have their own history of extremist associations.New Jersey-based Ron Coleman first met Dhillon at the 2019 Trump White House social media summit and joined her law firm in August 2020, according to a YouTube video posted by Dhillon Law.He is currently representing the Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes in a lawsuit against the SPLC over their listing of the all-male street-fighting fraternity as a hate group.Coleman is also acted for extremist-friendly social media site, Gab and its founder Andrew Torba against Google, after the tech giant banned Gab’s app from its Play Store in the wake of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.Gab achieved infamy after Robert Bowers announced his murderous attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. Bowers was convicted on all charges related to that attack last week.The Guardian emailed Coleman’s Dhillon Law address for comment but received no response.On Coleman’s representation of McInnes and Gab, Beirich, the extremism expert, said that pursuing litigation was a “choice to affiliate with someone”, that McInnes is “absolutely a racist extremist” and the group he founded is a “white supremacist group”. She also described Gab as a “cesspool of hate”.CAL board member Lee Cheng has worked on lawsuits against admission policies in San Francisco since the 1980s, first winning a case against affirmative action quotas in the city’s school district in 1994, then winning another case in 1994 after the San Francisco United School District tried to change selective admission policies at Lowell high school to a lottery.He has advocated more broadly against affirmative action in education, including at a panel convened by the far-right Claremont Institute, where he appeared alongside the University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax. UPenn attempted to withdraw Wax’s tenure this year over her long record of racist statements, including claims that “on average, blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites”.The Guardian emailed Cheng to ask about his apparent criticisms of diversity issues, and his speaking engagement alongside Wax.Cheng responded: “I’m not sure why you would conclude that I say that diversity initiatives are bad. I think racial discrimination is bad. I’ve never said diversity per se, defined as diversity of experience and perspectives, are bad.”Cheng added: “Diversity initiatives are good as long as they do not use race determinatively and predominantly to favor or disfavor any race.”Dhillon, meanwhile, has spread baseless conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi last October, joined election-denying legal efforts by Donald Trump and Kari Lake, and has been acting for far-right media figure Tucker Carlson since his ouster from Fox News.Beirich described Dhillon’s associations as “palling around with extremists”. More

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      Ron DeSantis accused of ‘stupid’ move with timing of New Hampshire event

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      Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is struggling in the crucial state of New Hampshire and may have made the situation worse by scheduling an event on Tuesday in competition with a speech by Donald Trump to Republican women, prompting one prominent strategist to call the move “stupid”, Politico reported.“It’s the worst strategic move he has exhibited thus far,” the New Hampshire Republican strategist, Mike Dennehy, told the website. “It’s just stupid, actually. You don’t take on the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women.”An unnamed adviser to a rival candidate chimed in, saying: “If there’s one thing you don’t do in New Hampshire, it’s piss off the grassroots women.“Don’t mess with them, they remember everything. Rookie move.”The hard-right governor of Florida formally launched his first presidential campaign last month. He remains a clear second to Trump in polling but trails by about 30 points in most averages, Trump’s state and federal indictments having failed to significantly dent his support.Detailing DeSantis’s “stumbles” in New Hampshire – the second state to vote in the GOP primary, traditionally a bastion of libertarian-minded conservatives – Politico said: “There are signs that even inside DeSantis’s orbit, they see New Hampshire as a challenge.”Politico and other outlets noted that DeSantis’s culture war-heavy record in office, featuring use of state power to regulate private behaviour (abortion) or to punish corporations which oppose his policies on issues including LGBTQ+ rights and teaching (Disney), would probably land heavily in libertarian New Hampshire.John Kasich, the former Ohio governor who came second to Trump in New Hampshire in 2016, told NBC: “I’ve never thought that all this social issue stuff was really a winner.”A Super Pac supporting DeSantis has paused advertising in the state, Politico said, though its founder, Ken Cuccinelli, told the site New Hampshire remained “literally in the top priority tier”.DeSantis, who did not comment, is due to visit New Hampshire on Tuesday, appearing in Hollis two hours before the state women’s group stages its annual lunch in Concord, with a headline speech from Trump.Last week, Christine Peters, the group’s events director, said: “It has always been a New Hampshire hallmark to be considerate when scheduling events. To have a candidate come in and distract from the most special event [the group] holds in the year is unprecedented.”Politico said DeSantis sources rejected the criticism, as he would appear elsewhere and at a different time.Another state Republican operative, Matthew Bartlett, told NBC the competition between DeSantis and Trump was “absolutely intensifying. This is game on. This is presidential politics. This is smash-mouth. You better bring your A game. It’s not amateur hour.”But polls have shown another Trump alternative, the former New Jersey governor and experienced political brawler Chris Christie, improving his standing in New Hampshire.Another state GOP operative, Dave Carney, told Politico: “Right now, Trump’s the guy to beat in New Hampshire – that’s just a fact. It doesn’t mean he can’t be beat. But right now … no one’s beating him.”DeSantis also trails Trump in Iowa, the first state to vote, and South Carolina and Nevada, other key targets among early primary contests.Dennehy said DeSantis had to “turn it around” – or face a political “death by a thousand cuts”. More