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      Harris condemns Senate Republicans for blocking IVF bill; VP calls Ohio attacks a ‘crying shame’ – live

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      Kamala Harris said that Senate Republicans refusal to vote in favor of protecting IVF “is not an isolated incident”:
      Every woman in every state must have reproductive freedom. Yet, Republicans in Congress have once again made clear that they will not protect access to the fertility treatments many couples need to fulfill their dream of having a child.Congressional Republicans’ repeated refusal to protect access to IVF is not an isolated incident. Extremist so-called leaders have launched a full-on attack against reproductive freedom across our country. In the more than two years since Roe v Wade was overturned, they have proposed and passed abortion bans that criminalize doctors and make no exception for rape or incest. They have also blocked legislation to protect the right to contraception and proposed four national abortion bans.Their opposition to a woman’s freedom to make decisions about her own body is extreme, dangerous and wrong. Our administration will always fight to protect reproductive freedoms, which must include access to IVF. We stand with the majority of Americans – Republicans and Democrats alike – who support protecting access to fertility treatments. And we continue to call on Congress to finally pass a bill that restores reproductive freedom.
      Arizona’s top elections official said Tuesday that a newly identified error in the state’s voter registration process needs to be swiftly resolved, as early ballots are scheduled to go out to some voters as soon as this week.Election staff in the Maricopa county recorder’s office identified an issue last week, which concerns voters with old drivers licenses who may never have provided documentary proof of citizenship but were coded as having provided it and therefore were able to vote full ballots. The state has a bifurcated system in which voters who do not provide documentary proof of citizenship cannot vote in local or state elections, only federal ones.Because of the state’s very close elections and status as a swing state, the issue affecting nearly 100,000 voters will likely be the subject of intense scrutiny and litigation in the coming weeks. Arizona has more than 4.1 million registered voters.Governor Katie Hobbs directed the motor vehicles division to fix the coding error, which the secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said was already resolved going forward.It’s not clear if any of these voters have unlawfully cast a ballot or if they have already provided proof of citizenship. People who register to vote check a box on registration forms, under penalty of perjury, declaring they are citizens.“We have no reason to believe that there are any significant numbers of individuals remaining on this list who are not eligible to vote in Arizona,” Fontes said in a press conference Tuesday. “We cannot confirm that at this moment, but we don’t have any reason to believe that.”The error, reported by Votebeat on Tuesday, relates to several quirks of Arizona governance.Since 1996, Arizona residents have been required to show proof of citizenship to get a regular driver’s license. And since 2004, they have been required to show proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections.State drivers licenses also do not expire until a driver is age 65, meaning for some residents, they will have a valid license for decades before needing renewal. These factors play into the error.The issue has split the Republican recorder in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, and the Democratic secretary of state. Recorder Stephen Richer is arguing that these voters should only be able to cast a federal-only ballot, while Fontes says the state should keep the status quo of allowing them to vote full ballots given how soon the election is. Fontes directed counties to allow these residents to cast full ballots this year.Read more here:Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said that Republicans would do well to help avert a looming government shutdown.The path to preventing a shutdown, as ever, remains shrouded. House leader Mike Johnson’s current proposal – which extends funding while also folding in a Republican measure requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in national elections – lacks even enough Republican votes to pass.Non-citizen voting is already illegal and voter fraud by non-citizens is virtually non-existent, and the inclusion of the measure, which would add barriers to voting for US citizens, is a nonstarter for Democrats in the Senate.Meanwhile, far-right Republicans say Johnson’s proposal doesn’t go far enough in pushing their agenda, and see the threat of shutdown as an opportunity to push Democrats to compromise on immigration and other issues.Since Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid in July, Democrats have showered her campaign with cash. Last month alone, the vice-president raised $361m, tripling Donald Trump’s fundraising haul of $130m for the month. According to Harris’s campaign, she brought in $540m in the six weeks after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.Democratic congressional candidates appear to be benefiting from this financial windfall as well, as Republicans sound the alarm about their fundraising deficit in key races that will determine control of the House and Senate in November.But in one crucial area, Republicans maintain a substantial cash advantage over Democrats: state legislative races. In recent years, Republicans have controlled more state legislative chambers than Democrats, giving them more power over those states’ budgets, election laws and abortion policies.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which supports the party’s state legislative candidates, has raised $35m between the start of 2023 and the end of this June, the committee told the Guardian. In comparison, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which invests in an array of state-level campaigns, such as supreme court races, in addition to legislative campaigns – has raised $62m in the same time period.That resource gap is now rearing its head in key battleground states, the DLCC says. In Pennsylvania, a crucial state for the presidential and congressional maps, Republican state legislative candidates have spent $4.5m on paid advertisements, compared with $1.4m for Democratic candidates.“When we think about the context of what’s at stake, we think about more than 65 million people being covered by our target map this year,” said Heather Williams, president of the DLCC. “And that means that the rights of all those people will be determined by who’s in power the day after the election.”Read more here:A national voter poll from Monmouth has found that there are fewer “double haters” – voters that dislike both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates – since Kamala Harris joined the race.Only 7% of voters polled in this latest round favored neither Donald Trump nor Harris – compared to 16% of disliked both Trump and Joe Biden.“Senate Republicans put politics first and families last again today by blocking the Right to IVF Act for the second time since June,” said Emilia Rowland, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee.Rowland warned that Donald Trump, who claimed to be a “leader” on IVF during his debate against Kamala Harris last week, would jeopardize access to fertility treatments if he wins in November.“Voters know the difference between words and actions,” she said. “And between now and November, they will turn out against Republicans from the top to bottom of the ballot.”JD Vance is scheduled to speak in an hour at an event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.The last time I was at this event space was for one of Kamala Harris’s inaugural rallies, which was held on the sprawling grounds adjacent to the hall where Vance will speak today.Cathy Weber, a retired farmer and military serviceperson, said she came to see Vance speak to get a better sense of who he is as a politician. When I asked about Vance’s comments about Haitian immigrants, she said she thought “he misspoke,” and chalked it up to being a younger politician – which she viewed as an asset.“He’s 39,” said Weber. “I said to my son: ‘That’s your generation, that’s our future.’”As the Guardian’s Robert Tait reported earlier this month, JD Vance has a history of opposing IVF – in contradiction to the Republican party and Donald Trump’s current stance that they support it:In 2017, months into Trump’s presidency, Vance wrote the foreword to the Index of Culture and Opportunity, a collection of essays by conservative authors for the Heritage Foundation that included ideas for encouraging women to have children earlier and promoting a resurgence of “traditional” family structure.The essays lauded the increase in state laws restricting abortion rights and included arguments that the practice should become “unthinkable” in the US, a hardline posture the Democrats now say is the agenda of Trump and Vance, who they accuse of harbouring the intent to impose a national ban following a 2022 supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade and annulling the federal right to abort a pregnancy.The report also includes an essay lamenting the spread of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other fertility treatments, with the author attributing them as reasons for women delaying having children and prioritising higher education rather than starting families.IVF has emerged as an issue in November’s presidential race after Trump said last week that he favoured it being covered by government funding or private health insurance companies – a stance seeming at odds with many Republicans, including Vance, who was one of 47 GOP senators to vote against a bill in June intended to expand access to the treatment.Kamala Harris said that Senate Republicans refusal to vote in favor of protecting IVF “is not an isolated incident”:
      Every woman in every state must have reproductive freedom. Yet, Republicans in Congress have once again made clear that they will not protect access to the fertility treatments many couples need to fulfill their dream of having a child.Congressional Republicans’ repeated refusal to protect access to IVF is not an isolated incident. Extremist so-called leaders have launched a full-on attack against reproductive freedom across our country. In the more than two years since Roe v Wade was overturned, they have proposed and passed abortion bans that criminalize doctors and make no exception for rape or incest. They have also blocked legislation to protect the right to contraception and proposed four national abortion bans.Their opposition to a woman’s freedom to make decisions about her own body is extreme, dangerous and wrong. Our administration will always fight to protect reproductive freedoms, which must include access to IVF. We stand with the majority of Americans – Republicans and Democrats alike – who support protecting access to fertility treatments. And we continue to call on Congress to finally pass a bill that restores reproductive freedom.
      Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, pointed to the failure of the IVF bill today as proof that Republicans’ promise to protect access to in vitro fertilization is hollow:Meanwhile, John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, called the bill “an attempt by Democrats to try and create a political issue where there isn’t one”.Before its convention this year, the Republican party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood, while also, contradictorily, encouraging support for IVF. But the platform does not explain how IVF could be legally protected if frozen embryos are given the same rights as people.Senate Republicans voted to block a bill that would have ensured access to in vitro fertilization nationwide.Every Republican, except Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against the measure. Though a majority of 51 voted in favor, the bill needed 60 votes to pass.Democrats had brought the measure back to the floor after Republicans previously blocked it from advancing in June.Democrats have been pushing the issue this year after the Alabama’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children under state law, leading several clinics in the state to suspend IVF treatment.Republicans, including Donald Trump, have scrambled to counter what could be a deeply unpopular stance against IVF. More

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      Senate Republicans block bill to ensure IVF access for second time

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      Senate Republicans voted on Tuesday afternoon to block a bill that would have ensured access to in vitro fertilization nationwide.Every Republican, except Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against the measure. Though a majority of 51 voted in favor, the bill needed 60 votes to pass. Democrats had brought the measure back to the floor after Republicans previously blocked it from advancing in June.Democrats have been pushing the issue this year after Alabama’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children under state law, leading several clinics in the state to suspend IVF treatment.Republicans, including Donald Trump, have scrambled to counter what could be a deeply unpopular stance against IVF.“Senate Republicans put politics first and families last again today by blocking the Right to IVF Act for the second time since June,” said Emilia Rowland, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee.The vote marked Democrats’ latest election-year attempt to force Republicans into a defensive stance on women’s health issues.The bill had little chance of passing, but Democrats are hoping to use the do-over vote to put pressure on Republican congressional candidates and lay out a contrast between Kamala Harris and Trump in the presidential race, especially as the former president has called himself a “leader on IVF”.Rowland warned that Donald Trump would jeopardize access to fertility treatments if he wins in November.“Voters know the difference between words and actions,” she said. “And between now and November, they will turn out against Republicans from the top to bottom of the ballot.”The push started earlier this year after the Alabama supreme court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Several clinics in the state suspended IVF treatments until the Republican-led legislature rushed to enact a law to provide legal protections for the clinics.Democrats quickly capitalized, holding a vote in June on the congressional bill from the Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth and warning that the US supreme court could go after the procedure next after it overturned the right to an abortion in 2022. The legislation would also increase access to the procedure and lower costs.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on the floor on Tuesday morning that the vote was a “second chance” for Republicans.“Americans are watching, families back home are watching, and couples who want to become parents are watching, too,” Schumer said.Meanwhile, Republicans have scrambled to counter Democrats on the issue, with many making clear that they support IVF treatments. Trump last month announced plans, without additional details, to require health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the fertility treatment.In his debate with Harris earlier this month, Trump said he was a “leader” on the issue and talked about the “very negative” decision by the Alabama court that was later reversed by the legislature.But the issue has threatened to become a vulnerability for Republicans as some state laws passed by their party grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process. Before its convention this summer, the Republican party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood through the constitution’s 14th amendment, which grants equal protection under the law to all US citizens. The platform also encourages supporting IVF but does not explain how the party plans to do so.Democrats say that if Trump wants to improve access to the procedure, then Republicans should vote for their legislation.Duckworth, a military veteran who has used the fertility treatment to have her two children, has led the Senate effort on the legislation. “How dare you,” she said in comments directed toward her Republican colleagues after the first vote blocking the bill.Republicans have tried to push alternatives on the issue, including legislation that would discourage states from enacting explicit bans on the treatment, but those bills have been blocked by Democrats who say they are not enough.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Democrats face campaign dilemma after second apparent Trump assassination plot

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      In comments to Fox News Digital on Monday, Donald Trump blamed Democrats for the repeated attempts on his life. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out,” he said.Also on Monday, the former president released a list of quotes that the campaign described as incendiary. At the top of that list was a quote from Kamala Harris saying: “Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”The election is seven weeks away. Though Democrats want to place the threat of a repeat of political violence such as the January 6 attacks at the center of their political argument, Trump can adopt the language of victimhood, because he is a victim in this case – the target of a second apparent assassination attempt in less than two months. Democrats face a dilemma about how to effectively campaign against a candidate who has been the target of violence and who continues to claim that the other side’s rhetoric is inciting that violence.Democrats still talk about Trump as a threat to democracy. But they don’t lead with it any more. Instead, Trump is “weird”. Project 2025 is nightmarish and unpopular. Abortion will be illegal. It’s harder for Trump to allege that Democrats are inciting violence when they’re talking about unpopular policies.Leaders can also effectively reinforce social norms against violence, said Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins University, who studies political violence in the US electorate. “It can be pretty simple. You can just say ‘political violence has no place in a democratic election,’” she said. “Make it very clear, and often a very simple rejection of violence will make people step back.”Joe Biden delivered just that message Monday, condemning political violence in remarks in Philadelphia at the National HBCU Week Conference.There is “no place for political violence in America – none. Zero,” Biden said. “In America, we resolve our difference peacefully at the ballot box, not at the end of a gun.” Violence “solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.”Anti-violence political messaging is most effective when it comes from the political perspective of those who have committed violence, Mason said. “The problem with these attempts on Trump is that it’s really perpetrators who are not clearly from one side or the other.”Such is the apparent case with Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old entrepreneur from Hawaii who had donated to Democrats and supported Ukraine’s war against Russia, but also voted for Trump in 2016 and advocated for Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy to win the Republican nomination.Louisville mayor Craig Greenberg remembers how people reacted when a gunman shot at him in his campaign headquarters as he was running for office two years ago. There was an outpouring of support from both Democrats and Republicans, he said.“I think extremists on all sides need to turn down the heat of their rhetoric,” Greenberg said. “I think antisemites and racists have no place in political discourse.”Quintez Brown, a social justice activist running for the Louisville metro council, walked into Greenberg’s office on Valentine’s Day and shot at him six times. One bullet passed through Greenberg’s sweater before staffers could barricade the door. Support for Greenberg was bipartisan, though the rhetoric wasn’t always nonpartisan.“I think candidates and elected officials should be held to the highest standards and encourage civil discourse that does not fan the flames of hatred and violence,” Greenberg said. “This often happens, sometimes directly, more often indirectly, with dog whistles and metaphors and tweets.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStill, some see the need for Democrats to tread carefully as unnecessary, given Trump’s history of inciting violence.The idea that Trump – after the events of January 6 and recent fabrications about the conduct of Haitian refugees that have led to school closures amid threats – could offer criticism on incitement raised the rancor of David Brand, a Democratic activist and operative in Atlanta.“We have strongly condemned in the strongest possible term what he did, what this individual did and called for swift justice,” Brand said. “It is ironic also that he is being prosecuted by a Haitian American immigrant who will be protecting Donald Trump’s civil rights. Donald Trump never gave Paul Pelosi the same respect that we are giving again, and the same respect for the rule of law.”But Trump’s campaign described criticism of this contradiction as itself an incitement.But concerns among Democrats about how to effectively campaign may be short-lived. The most surprising thing about political violence right now is how quickly people move on, Greenberg said.“Whether it’s with the assassination attempts now on President Trump or other acts of political violence or violence in general,” he said. “I mean, just look at Georgia two weeks ago. [A] horrible school shooting. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but how quickly people seem to forget how much gun violence is impacting our country.” More

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      Why Republicans are raising double the money in down-ballot races

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      Since Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid in July, Democrats have showered her campaign with cash. Last month alone, the vice-president raised $361m, tripling Donald Trump’s fundraising haul of $130m for the month. According to Harris’s campaign, she brought in $540m in the six weeks after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.Democratic congressional candidates appear to be benefiting from this financial windfall as well, as Republicans sound the alarm about their fundraising deficit in key races that will determine control of the House and Senate in November.But in one crucial area, Republicans maintain a substantial cash advantage over Democrats: state legislative races. In recent years, Republicans have controlled more state legislative chambers than Democrats, giving them more power over those states’ budgets, election laws and abortion policies.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which supports the party’s state legislative candidates, has raised $35m between the start of 2023 and the end of this June, the committee told the Guardian. In comparison, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which invests in an array of state-level campaigns, such as supreme court races, in addition to legislative campaigns – has raised $62m in the same time period.That resource gap is now rearing its head in key battleground states, the DLCC says. In Pennsylvania, a crucial state for the presidential and congressional maps, Republican state legislative candidates have spent $4.5m on paid advertisements, compared with $1.4m for Democratic candidates.“When we think about the context of what’s at stake, we think about more than 65 million people being covered by our target map this year,” said Heather Williams, president of the DLCC. “And that means that the rights of all those people will be determined by who’s in power the day after the election.”A race to fill the funding gapDemocratic party leaders seem aware of the high-stakes surrounding state legislative races. Earlier this month, the Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced a transfer of $25m in funds to help down-ballot candidates, including $2.5m for the DLCC. Williams said the transfer represented the party’s largest investment to date focused solely on winning state legislative chambers.“The underlying story here is that the Harris campaign, our federal officials [and] the party believe that we need to win up and down the ballot,” Williams said. “We know that our freedoms are on the line, that democracy is on the line in the states, and so investing in state legislatures is really an emerging cornerstone of Democrats’ strategy to protect against Maga [‘Make America great again’] extremism.”But the $2.5m investment, while significant, does not come close to closing with DLCC’s resource deficit against the RSLC. Democratic-aligned outside groups, such as the States Project and the Super Pac Forward Majority, are trying to help close that gap: Forward Majority is now on track to spend $45m this election cycle on promoting Democratic state legislative campaigns, the group announced on Wednesday. The States Project has also announced plans to spend $70m this cycle, after investing heavily in state legislative races two years ago.Forward Majority formed in 2017, after Republicans notched significant victories up and down the ballot in 2016. At the time, Democrats controlled 31 legislative chambers compared with Republicans’ 68. In the years since, Democrats have chipped away at that disadvantage, now controlling 39 chambers.“It was incredible in that decade or so to see people pay more attention to it, to recognize this level of the ballot is critically important,” said Leslie Martes, chief strategy officer at Forward Majority.Despite that progress, Martes warned against complacency, as Republican-aligned groups have shown a willingness to invest heavily in state legislative races as well. During the legislative races in Virginia last year, the conservative Pac Americans for Prosperity spent $2.2m, which represented the largest contribution of any outside group.“We can’t let the Republicans flood the zone with late money,” Martes said. “They have access to it, and we can never underestimate their ability to come in late.”Post-Roe momentumDemocrats had a good year in 2022 when it came to state legislative elections. They flipped the Minnesota senate and both chambers of the Michigan legislature, giving them governing trifectas in both states thanks to the Democratic governors there. Some of that momentum was attributed to Democratic voters’ increased focus on state legislatures after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf the 22 states that currently enforce an abortion ban of some kind, 19 of them are fully controlled by Republicans. (A judge struck down North Dakota’s abortion ban on Thursday, but the law had not yet been enjoined as of Friday afternoon.) Meanwhile, several states controlled by Democrats – including California, Minnesota and New Jersey – have expanded abortion rights since Roe was overturned. That contrast has enlightened many voters on the importance of state elections, Martes argued.“I think most people did not believe that Roe was going to fall,” she said. “And I think it’s been incredibly impactful for people to now know it’s up to the states … I think that’s really helped people focus in on state legislatures.”Williams hopes that greater awareness will translate into electoral success down ballot, as Democrats look to sustain the trifectas they won in 2022 and flip more legislative chambers.The DLCC’s to-do list for November is long. Democrats want to keep their control of the Michigan house and the Pennsylvania house, where they repeatedly defended their slim majority through several special elections since 2022. The party also hopes to break a Republican supermajority in North Carolina, where the state legislature was able to override the Democratic governor’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban. And in Arizona, Republicans have only one-seat majorities in both chambers, giving Democrats an opportunity for their first governing trifecta in the state since 1966.It is no coincidence that much of Democrats’ state legislative map overlaps with their presidential and congressional maps, Martes said.“The key to winning back Congress also runs through a path of picking up state legislative seats and protecting important incumbents,” Martes said.While leaders of both political parties are fond of saying that every vote matters, the truism is particularly relevant when it comes to state legislative races. Because the voting pool is smaller compared with a congressional or presidential race, a couple hundred votes often separate the winner from the loser in state legislative elections.In one stunning case that arose in 2018, a tied Virginia legislative election was decided by pulling a name out of a bowl, and the lucky Republican winner gave his party control of the house of delegates.While the narrow margins of such races may seem daunting, they can also be motivating, Williams argued.“It’s going to take one vote at a time and one legislative win over and over in all of these states,” Williams said. “I think we’re at such a moment where those efforts – seemingly small efforts – will make a huge difference. And we’ll be able to protect the rights of millions of people across the country.” More

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      There’s a danger that the US supreme court, not voters, picks the next president | David Daley

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      It’s frighteningly easy to imagine. Kamala Harris wins Georgia. The state elections board, under the sway of its new Trump-aligned commissioners, grinds the certification process to a slow halt to investigate unfounded fraud allegations, spurring the state’s Republican legislature to select its own slate of electors.Perhaps long lines in Philadelphia lead to the state supreme court holding polls open until everyone has a chance to vote. Before anyone knows the results, Republicans appeal to the US supreme court using the “independent state legislature” (ISL) theory, insisting that the state court overstepped its bounds and the late votes not be counted.Or maybe an election evening fire at a vote counting center in Milwaukee disrupts balloting. The progressive majority on the state supreme court attempts to establish a new location, but Republicans ask the US supreme court to shut it down.Maybe that last example was inspired by HBO’s Succession. But in this crazy year, who’s to say it couldn’t happen? The real concern is this: if you think a repeat of Bush v Gore can’t happen this year, think again.There are dozens of scenarios where Trump’s endgame not only pushes a contested election into the courts, but ensures that it ends up before one court in particular: a US supreme court packed with a conservative supermajority that includes three lawyers who cut their teeth working on Bush v Gore, one whose wife colluded with Stop the Steal activists to overturn the 2020 results, and another whose spouse flew the insurrectionist flag outside their home.That’s why those scenarios should cause such alarm, along with very real actions and litigation over voting rolls already under way in multiple states. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Arizona, Texas and elsewhere, Republican legislators and boards that might otherwise fly under the radar are busy changing election laws, reworking procedures, altering certification protocols, purging voters and laying the groundwork for six weeks of havoc after Americans vote on 5 November but before the electoral college gathers on 17 December.Lower courts may brush aside this mayhem, as they did after the 2020 election. But if the election comes down to just one or two states with a photo finish, a Bush v Gore redux in which the court chooses the winner feels very much in play. The court divided along partisan lines in 2000; its partisan intensity, of course, has greatly intensified in the two decades since.What’s terrifying is that the court has already proved the Republican party’s willing ally. The Roberts court laid much of the groundwork for this chaos in a series of voting rights decisions that reliably advantaged Republicans, empowered Maga caucuses even in swing states, then unleashed and encouraged those lawmakers to pass previously unlawful restrictions based on evidence-free claims of voter fraud.Right now in Georgia, a renegade state election board – with Trump’s public gratitude – has enacted broad new rules that would make it easier for local officials to delay certifying results based on their own opinion that “fraud” occurred. Democrats have filed suit to block these changes; even the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, has sought to rein them in. But if those efforts fail, it could create a cascade of litigation and missed deadlines in perhaps the closest state of all.That, in turn, could jeopardize the certification of Georgia’s slate of electors – and even encourage the Republican state legislature, a hotbed of election denialism in 2020, to select their own.If that creates a terrifying echo of Bush v Gore, it should. In his influential 2000 concurrence, then chief justice William Rehnquist noted that Florida’s legislature would have been within its rights to name electors if court challenges threatened the state’s voice from being heard as the electoral college met. (A young Brett Kavanaugh explained the nascent independent state legislature theory to Americans during Bush v Gore; on the bench two decades later he would elevate it in a Moore v Harper concurrence that weaponized it for this post-election season.)Georgia’s not-so-subtle chicanery was enabled by the court’s 2013 decision in Shelby county v Holder, which freed state and local entities in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere from having to seek pre-approval before making electoral changes.This was known as preclearance. It was the most crucial enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act and required the states with the worst histories on voter suppression to have any changes to election procedures pre-approved by the Department of Justice or a three-judge panel in Washington DC.Its evisceration has had far-reaching consequences. Nearly all of them have helped Republicans at the ballot box by allowing Republican legislatures or other bodies to change the rules and place new barriers before minority voters, most of whom vote overwhelmingly Democratic.If preclearance remained intact, these changes – and a wide variety of voter ID schemes, voter purges in Texas, Virginia and elsewhere that confuse non-citizens and naturalized citizens and perhaps intimidate some from voting, as well as new laws about absentee ballots and when and how they are counted – would have certainly been rejected by the Biden justice department. Much of Trump’s predictable post-election madness could have been brushed aside before it did damage.That’s not the case now. Make no mistake: many actions underway at this very moment, with the very real risk of sabotaging the count, slowing the process and kicking everything into the courts, are Shelby’s demon chaos agents, bred for precisely this purpose.Whether enabling extreme gerrymanders, freeing radicalized lawmakers to change procedures they could not touch without supervision only a few years ago, or transforming Rehnquist’s footnote into the dangerous ISL theory, the conservative legal movement and the court’s own decisions, time and again, have made it easier for a contested election to land on its doorstep.And in that case, 180 million Americans might vote for president this fall, but the six Republicans on the US supreme court will have the final say. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if those robed partisans manufacture the theory to ensure the winner they prefer.

      David Daley is the author of the new book Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50 Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count More

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      Biden’s green policies will save 200,000 lives and have boosted clean energy jobs, data shows

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      The environmental policies of Joe Biden’s administration will save approximately 200,000 Americans’ lives from dangerous pollution in the coming decades and have spurred a surge in clean energy jobs, two independent reports outlining the stakes of the upcoming US presidential election have found.The first full year of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sprawling climate bill passed by Democratic votes in Congress in 2022, saw nearly 150,000 clean energy jobs added, according to a new report by nonpartisan business group E2.Nearly 3.5 million people now work in these fields in the US, more than the total number of nurses nationwide, with 1m of these jobs centered in the US south, a region politically dominated by Republicans.Clean energy jobs grew by 4.5% last year, nearly twice as fast as overall US employment growth, and account for one in 16 new jobs nationally, the report found. New roles in energy efficiency led the way, followed by an increase in jobs in renewable energy, such as wind and solar, electric car manufacturing and battery and electric grid upgrades.But the future of the IRA, which provides tax credits and grants for new clean energy activity, is a flashpoint in the election campaign, with Donald Trump vowing to “terminate Kamala Harris’s green new scam and rescind all of the unspent funds”.The former president and Republican nominee has accused Harris, his Democratic opponent, of waging a “war on American energy” and called for an end to incentives encouraging Americans to drive electric cars.Harris, who has promised in unspecified ways to build upon the IRA, has attacked Trump for “surrendering” on the climate crisis as well as in the US’s attempts to compete with China, the world’s clean energy manufacturing powerhouse.Bob O’Keefe, executive director of E2, said the IRA has helped lead “an American economic revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations”.“But we’re just getting started,” Keefe added. “The biggest threats to this unprecedented progress are misguided efforts to repeal or roll back parts of the IRA, despite the law’s clear benefits both to American workers and the communities where they live.”Should Trump return to the White House, he will need congressional approval to completely repeal the IRA, although his administration could slow down and even claw back funding allocated but not yet released for clean energy projects, such as the $500m pledged for a green overhaul of a steel mill in JD Vance’s home town of Middletown, Ohio.A new Trump administration would have more discretion, though, over the future of air pollution regulations set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Biden. “One of the things that is so bad for us is the environmental agencies, they make it impossible to do anything,” Trump has complained while on the campaign trail.Any major rollbacks will have a heavy toll upon public health, however, with a new analysis of 16 regulations passed by the EPA since Biden’s term started in 2021 finding that they are on track to save 200,000 lives and prevent more than 100m asthma attacks by 2050.The analysis, conducted by the Environmental Protection Network, a group founded by retired EPA staff, calculated the public health benefits of the suite of new rules that aim to limit pollution flowing from cars, power plants and oil and gas operations.Jeremy Symons, a former climate policy adviser at the EPA and a co-author of the report, said the findings were “jaw-dropping”. He added: “The EPA’s accomplishments have been nothing short of lifesaving over the last four years. These are real people who wouldn’t be alive if not for the non-partisan work of the EPA to start doing its job again after the last administration.”It’s unclear what Trump’s exact plan for the EPA would be should he regain power but he attempted to radically cut the agency’s budget when he was president, only to be rebuffed by Congress, and oversaw the elimination and weakening of a host of pollution rules.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has directly promised oil and gas industry executives a fresh wave of deregulation should he return to the White House, in return for $1bn in campaign contributions.Project 2025, a conservative blueprint authored by many former Trump officials but disavowed by the Trump campaign, demands the dismantling of parts of the agency, a rollback of environmental rules and a politicization of decision making.“This would put polluters in charge of air regulations and put millions of Americans at needless risk of cancer, heart disease and asthma,” said Symons.“Several of the authors of Project 2025 used the years of working at the EPA under Trump as a training ground for more reckless plans should they get their hands on the agency again. This plan would be a wrecking ball to the EPA.”Asked to comment, the Trump campaign criticized the Biden-Harris administration on inflation and what it called its “war on energy”.“Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which actually created the worst inflation crisis in a generation. She proudly helped Joe Biden implement all of his disastrous policies including his war on American energy that is driving up prices astronomically for American consumers,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary.“President Trump is the only candidate who will make America energy dominant again, protect our energy jobs, and bring down the cost of living for all Americans,” Leavitt added.An EPA spokesperson said: “We appreciate the work of the Environmental Protection Network and look forward to reviewing their report. EPA remains committed to protecting public health and the environment by implementing science-based pollution standards that address climate change and improve air quality for all Americans.” More

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      Biden says ‘good Republicans’ are scared out of pro-LGBTQ+ stances by far right

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      Joe Biden believes “good Republicans … who don’t have a prejudiced bone in their body” are letting far-right elements of their political party intimidate them out of stances that would protect LGBTQ+ rights, he said in the first interview that a sitting US president has given to an LGBTQ+ news outlet.In a conversation that the Washington Blade published on Monday, Biden also said Donald Trump “was a different breed of cat” who had been “anti-LGBTQ … across the board”.The Democratic president’s remarks about his Republican predecessor and the Maga (Make America Great Again) movement behind him come as Trump seeks a return to the White House in the 5 November election.Trump has offered contradictory comments on LGBTQ+ rights, claiming to be “fine” with same-sex marriage during his victorious 2016 campaign but then stripping away protections for medical patients who are transgender once he was in the Oval Office.Then, in June 2023, three US supreme court justices appointed to the bench during Trump’s presidency joined three conservative colleagues in dealing a major blow to the LGBTQ+ community by ruling that a Colorado law that compels groups to treat same-sex couples equally violated the constitutional right to free speech.Republican-led state legislatures, meanwhile, have enacted a broad array of laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth and, in some cases, adults. They have also placed barriers to schoolchildren to express their gender, whether by the pronouns they use or the sports team on which they compete.Without naming anyone, Biden told the Blade he met “a lot of really good Republicans” in particular when he previously served as a US senator. He said they “don’t have a prejudiced bone in their body about this but are intimidated – because if you take a position, especially in the Maga Republican party now, … they’re going to go after you”.“Trump is a different breed of cat,” Biden added. “I mean, I don’t want to make this political, but everything he’s done has been anti, anti-LGBTQ – I mean across the board.”Biden ruled out running for re-election in July and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to succeed him. Drawing a contrast with Trump, the president said that the Biden-Harris administration had made a number of decisions to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.He singled out the Respect for Marriage Act, which he signed in 2022 and in part required all states to recognize the validity of same-sex marriages. He also alluded to how the Food and Drug Administration during his presidency implemented a new rule allowing sexually active gay and bisexual people to donate blood so long as they had not had sex with new or multiple partners.Biden furthermore touted what he described as having appointed a record-breaking number of LGBTQ+ officials across his administration, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. And the president also noted how – days after his inauguration in 2021 – he issued an executive order reversing the Trump administration’s ban on transgender military service members.“They can shoot straight,” Biden said to the Blade, which described the president as lowering his voice for emphasis. “They can shoot just as straight as anybody else.” More

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      Trump recounts apparent assassination attempt as new details emerge

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      Donald Trump has given his first detailed account of what he experienced on Sunday during what the FBI has said “appears to be an attempted assassination of the former president”, as authorities revealed new details about the incident at his West Palm Beach golf club.Trump said he was playing golf with friends, including businessman Steve Witkoff, when he heard gunshots.“Everything was beautiful, nice place to be, and all of a sudden we heard shots being fired in the air, and – I guess probably four or five – and it sounded like bullets but what do I know about that? But Secret Service knew immediately it was bullets,” Trump told cryptocurrency personality Farokh Sarmad during a livestream on X.In his first public event since the apparent assassination attempt, Trump thanked the Secret Service, saying that soon after the shots were heard: “We got into the carts and we moved along pretty good. I was with an agent and the agent did a fantastic job, there was no question that we were off that course.”“The secret service did a great job, everybody did a great job,” he said later.Trump said the gunshots were the sound of another agent firing at the barrel of a gun he had seen pointing out of bushes at the golf course, and that “the other one never got a shot off”, appearing to refer to the suspected shooter.Cellphone records show that the alleged gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped out near the golf course for about 12 hours with food before being confronted by a Secret Service agent. In court documents unsealed on Monday, officials said Routh’s phone was shown near the tree line at Trump’s golf course from 1.59am until 1.31pm on Sunday, around which point a Secret Service agent shot at him after seeing his rifle through the foliage, reported the Associated Press.Trump’s account – given on X during the launch of a cryptocurrency platform owned by his sons, broadly matched what authorities said on Monday. Ronald Rowe Jr, the US Secret Service acting director, said earlier that the alleged attacker did not fire any shots but that an agent discharged their firearm after spotting a rifle poking through the fence on the golf course perimeter.“He [the suspect] did not fire or get off any shots at our agent,” Rowe Jr said. “With reports of gunfire, the former president’s close protection detail immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.”Rowe also told reporters that Trump was “out of sight of the gunman” during his unscheduled visit to the golf club.Trump also praised the civilian who captured the suspect’s license plate, which helped authorities to track his car down. “The civilian did a phenomenal job”, he said.Where Trump differed from authorities was in his description of the political views of Routh and Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman killed in the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania on 13 July.Asked what he made of this being a potential second attempt on his life, he said: “Well there’s a lot of rhetoric going on, a lot of people think that the Democrats when they talk about ‘a threat to democracy’ and all of this, and it seems that both of these people were radical lefts.”Routh, the man suspected of carrying out the second apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, has professed a variety of political convictions that elude partisan definition.Although records show the 58-year-old former roofing contractor making small financial donations to Democratic candidates in recent years, Routh has acknowledged voting for Trump in his 2016 election before subsequently embarking on a ideological odyssey the aims of which appear incoherent and confused.Thomas Matthew Crooks’s motivation remains unclear. In July, investigators said they were examining a social media account with antisemitic and anti-immigrant posts that they suspected might be connected to Crooks, according to the FBI deputy director, Paul Abbate.Earlier on Monday, Trump sought to blame president Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris for the shooting. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out,” Trump told Fox News Digital.“These are people that want to destroy our country,” he added. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”Harris, her campaign, her running mate Tim Walz and the Biden administration have condemned political violence. The White House said earlier Biden had called Trump, “and conveyed his relief that he is safe. The two shared a cordial conversation and former president Trump expressed his thanks for the call.”Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection on 6 January 2021 but was later acquitted when he secured enough Republican support in the senate.In the X event on Monday evening, Trump repeated his complaints about Biden choosing to drop out of the presidential race. He said he had spoken to Biden on Monday, saying “he couldn’t have been nicer”.However, Trump went on to attack his rival presidential candidate, Harris, saying: “We can’t have a Marxist Communist president”. More