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      Kamala Harris says Trump ‘guilty’ of ‘stealing’ abortion rights at rally – as it happened

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      Harris emphasized the importance of turning out to vote in November to protect abortion access so that places like Maryland remain havens for reproductive healthcare.Pointing to the statistic that one-in-three American women live in a state with abortion restrictions, she said: “Today our daughters know fewer rights than their grandmothers. This is a healthcare crisis, and we all know who to blame: Donald Trump.”Making her case that Trump was “guilty” of stripping abortion access, which was previewed by the campaign before her appearance, Harris said Trump appointed three supreme court justices with the intention of overturning Roe v Wade.“It was premeditated,” Harris said from a stage, where a sign that said “Trust Women” hung behind her.“Trump has not denied, much less shown remorse, for his actions,” she added.Later this afternoon, Harris will go to battleground state Arizona for a second event marking the Dobbs anniversary.Democrats went on the attack as they marked the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision, in which the supreme court’s conservative justices overturned the constitutional protections on abortion guaranteed by Roe v Wade. At a speech near Washington DC, Kamala Harris said Donald Trump was “guilty” of “stealing” reproductive rights from American women with his appointment of three of the justices who supported doing away with the precedent. Joe Biden, who is days away from his Thursday presidential debate with Trump, called his predecessor the “sole person responsible for this nightmare”. Meanwhile, neither Trump nor any top Republicans in Congress said anything about the anniversary of the court’s decision.Here’s what else happened today:
      Trump plans to rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, the day after his debate with Biden. His campaign believes the state is winnable in November, even though it voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020.
      The supreme court will hear a challenge brought by the Biden administration against state-level bans on gender-affirming care for minors …
      … but first it will release decisions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, almost certainly on at least some of the high-profile cases the justices have yet to decide.
      The fall of Roe upended life for aspiring doctors who hoped to provide abortions.
      A top White House official signaled that Biden supports an effort by Senate Democrats to repeal the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that a second Trump administration might use to ban abortion nationwide.
      Meanwhile, in Florida, the judge handling Donald Trump’s stalled prosecution over the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort is in the midst of a major hearing that could determing the case’s trajectory. Here’s the latest on what the two sides are arguing, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell: The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution for retaining classified documents is expected on Monday to consider modifying his conditions of release to include a prohibition on making statements that could endanger the safety of FBI agents involved in the case.The request to the US district judge, Aileen Cannon – the first time prosecutors have sought to limit Trump’ public remarks in this case – raises the stakes for Trump. Unlike in his other cases, where prosecutors sought gag orders, a violation of release conditions carries a risk of jail.The latest dispute over Trump’s inflammatory statements stems from his blatantly false characterization of the FBI’s use-of-deadly force policy when they executed a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago club in August 2022 and retrieved more than 100 classified documents.The order, which limits FBI agents to use deadly force only if they face extreme danger and became public after the FBI’s operational plan for the search was unsealed, used standard language that is routinely used in hundreds of warrants executed across the country.But Trump and some allies twisted the limiting language to claim the FBI was authorized by the Biden administration to shoot him when they searched Mar-a-Lago, even though Trump was not there during the search and the language is standard US justice department policy.The supreme court has indicated that the justices may release more decisions on Thursday and Friday, as several politically weighty cases await rulings.The justices were already expected to issue decisions on Wednesday, thus bringing to three the number of days this week that we can expect to hear from the court. The conservative-dominated body has a bunch of matters outstanding, which touch on everything from Donald Trump’s legal fate, to the scope of government regulation. Here are a few:
      Trump’s petition for immunity from the federal charges brought against him by special prosecutor Jack Smith for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
      Where the Biden administration can require federally funded hospitals to perform emergency abortions, even in states like Idaho, which the case centers on, that have strict abortion bans.
      A challenge to a longstanding doctrine underpinning many federal regulatory decisions.
      Whether municipalities can make it illegal for people to sleep outside, even when there is insufficient shelter space, in a case that could upend homeless policies nationwide.
      Decisions on some, all, or theoretically none of these cases could come before the end of the week.Donald Trump and Joe Biden will hold the first of two debates they have scheduled on Thursday.The day after, the former president is scheduled to hold a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, a state that Biden won overwhelmingly in 2020, but which Trump’s campaign argues is within his grasp this year.Trump will “speak with the people of Virginia about how he will reverse the devastating effects of Joe Biden’s failed presidency,” his campaign announced.“President Trump will ease the financial pressures placed on households and re-establish law and order in this country! We can Make America Great Again by tackling lawlessness head-on, ceasing the endless flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border, and reversing the detrimental effects of inflation by restoring people’s wealth.”Polls have lately showed a close, perhaps tied, race between Trump and Biden in Virginia, though there have been none released so far showing the former president with the advantage.Democrats are continuing to press their message against Republicans over their support for the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v Wade, and allowed states to ban abortions.“Two years ago, the extreme right-wing Supreme Court majority issued one of the most egregious rulings in our nation’s history,” the Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said.Here’s more:
      The Dobbs decision undermined reproductive freedom for women all across America as part of the extreme MAGA Republican plan to criminalize reproductive health care, outlaw contraception and march us toward a nationwide abortion ban. The decision by the out of control Supreme Court majority to take away the long-held right to an abortion represents an assault on freedom, the Constitution and the values shared by a majority of Americans. House Democrats will continue to fight until reproductive freedom is the law of the land and the extreme MAGA Republican effort to impose a nationwide abortion ban is crushed.
      Still not a peep from Donald Trump and most leading Republicans on the second anniversary of Roe v Wade’s overturning, but that’s not stopping the Biden campaign.Their official account has spent the day tweeting out past instances where Trump has taken credit for orchestrating the downfall of the precedent, which prevented the sorts of abortion restrictions now commonplace in Republican-controlled states.From his town hall in Iowa earlier this year:And what appears to be one of the many videos Trump has posted on his Truth Social account:Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, the GOP nominee for a Senate seat in the state, was one of the few Republicans to mark the second anniversary of the US supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade.Hogan, in a statement shared by the Washington Post, said that if elected, he would work on bipartisan legislation to “codify Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.”He noted that as governor, he “reaffirmed my commitment to uphold Maryland law protecting access to abortion,” adding that he was “proud to make Maryland the first state in America to provide over-the-counter birth control covered by insurance.”Hogan, who last week tried to reject Donald Trump’s endorsement in his Senate race, also promised to protect women’s reproductive rights.“A woman’s health care decisions are her own,” he said.
      Whether it be the decision to start a family with the help of IVF, or exercise her reproductive rights, nothing and no one — especially partisan politics — should come between a woman and her doctor.
      Planned Parenthood will spend $40m ahead of November’s elections to bolster Joe Biden and leading congressional Democrats.The group will initially target eight states: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, where Biden is seeking to defend 2020 victories, as well as North Carolina, which the Biden campaign to flip, and Montana, New Hampshire and New York, which have races that could help determine control of the Senate and House, it told Associated Press.Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, said:
      Abortion will be the message of this election, and it will be how we energize voters. It will be what enables us to win.
      A six-week abortion ban in Texas was linked to a 13% increase in the number of infants who died in their first year of life, a new study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics suggests.The study, published two years to the day since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and permitted more than a dozen states across the country to outlaw almost all abortions, is one of the first glimpses into how strict abortion bans impact babies’ health.The study also estimated that the ban may have led the number of infants in Texas who died within their first month of life to rise more than 10%.Because Texas enacted its six-week abortion ban in September 2021, months before Roe’s demise, scholars have studied what has happened in Texas for clues about how post-Roe abortion bans are now affecting the rest of the nation. Some of the researchers involved in the Monday study have previously concluded that the Texas ban also led to 10,000 additional births.The study found a 23% jump in infant deaths due to congenital anomalies – the kind of conditions that are often identified in utero and lead to abortions in states where the procedure is legal, since they can be incompatible with life. But that choice is no longer available to pregnant Texans.Two hundred and sixteen more infant deaths occurred due to the Texas six-week abortion ban, the researchers estimated.Kamala Harris has warned that abortion bans in states across the country are cutting women off from essential reproductive care and causing a “health care crisis”,In an interview with MSNBC aired today alongside reproductive rights advocate Hadley Duvall, Harris reflected on her experience visiting a reproductive care clinic in Minnesota in March.
      In those clinics that are trusted in the community, there is — you can get a Pap [smear] … breast cancer screening, HIV screening, the things that where people want to be able to walk into a health care facility and be treated with dignity and without judgment so they can address their health care concerns.
      She continued:
      That’s what these clinics do. And in states where they have passed these Trump abortion bans, these clinics are closing, which means that there is a reduction of very essential health care across the board for a lot of people.
      Democrats are on the attack as they mark the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision, in which the supreme court’s conservative justices overturned the constitutional protections on abortion guaranteed by Roe v Wade. At a speech outside Washington DC, Kamala Harris said Donald Trump was “guilty” of “stealing” reproductive rights from American women with his appointment of three of the justices who supported doing away with the precedent. Joe Biden, who is three days away from his Thursday presidential debate with Trump, called his predecessor the “sole person responsible for this nightmare”. Meanwhile, neither Trump nor any top Republicans in Congress have said anything about the anniversary of the court’s decision.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      The supreme court will hear a challenge brought by the Biden administration against state-level bans on gender-affirming care for minors.
      The fall of Roe upended life for aspiring doctors who hoped to provide abortions.
      A top White House official signaled that Biden supports an effort by Senate Democrats to repeal the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that a second Trump administration might use to ban abortion nationwide.
      Kate Cox, the Texas mother who was denied an abortion under the state’s near-total ban last year, introduced Kamala Harris at her speech in Maryland.“Every minute that I stayed pregnant, the risk to my health and to a future pregnancy were growing,” Cox said.“My state chose to drive me out of my home, my community, away from my children and my doctors, rather than to let me access care,” she said, adding: “I never imagined having to fight for something so basic as a procedure to save my health.”As a young student and mother “just trying to stay afloat,” Cox said she didn’t always make time to vote.“I will never again miss an opportunity to vote. I will cast my ballot in every election like my life depends on it,” Cox said.Growing emotional, Cox then shared that she is pregnant again, expecting a child in January. The crowd erupted in applause, as many stood to cheer for her.“And I hope that by then, when we welcome our baby into the world, we will have a world led by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” she said.She then welcomed Harris on to the stage as a “champion of the cause” for reproductive freedom.“You are a hero of this movement,” Harris told Cox.Harris emphasized the importance of turning out to vote in November to protect abortion access so that places like Maryland remain havens for reproductive healthcare.Pointing to the statistic that one-in-three American women live in a state with abortion restrictions, she said: “Today our daughters know fewer rights than their grandmothers. This is a healthcare crisis, and we all know who to blame: Donald Trump.”Making her case that Trump was “guilty” of stripping abortion access, which was previewed by the campaign before her appearance, Harris said Trump appointed three supreme court justices with the intention of overturning Roe v Wade.“It was premeditated,” Harris said from a stage, where a sign that said “Trust Women” hung behind her.“Trump has not denied, much less shown remorse, for his actions,” she added.Later this afternoon, Harris will go to battleground state Arizona for a second event marking the Dobbs anniversary.Harris took the stage to chants of “four more years.”She then said Trump was “guilty” in “the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America”, and went on to lay out what she said are the stakes for abortion access if Trump is re-elected.“Understand as much harm as he has already caused, a second Trump term will be even worse,” she said. “His friends in the United States Congress are trying to pass a national ban that would outlaw abortion in every single state in states like New York and California, and even right here in Maryland.”She called Republicans who have passed state-level bans Trump’s “accomplices”, and said voters shouldn’t be fooled by Trump’s wavering on abortion, but should focus on what he has said. And she warned that he would go even further, curtailing access to contraception and IVF.“If there were a second Trump term, he has admitted that he is ‘looking at restrictions on contraception,’” she said. “And pay close attention to how his friends in the United States Senate obstructed a bill to protect the right to contraception, not once, not twice, but three times.” More

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      Anger, fear and desperation: people reflect on two years since fall of Roe

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      After Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022, Daphne did not want to leave anything to chance.Abortion is currently legal until 18 weeks in Utah, where the 38-year-old lives – but the state has a 2020 trigger law banning almost all abortion care that is currently under appeal.Daphne knew she didn’t want children so she decided to undergo surgical sterilization in October 2022, to have “peace of mind that [she] physically cannot become pregnant”.“My husband could have gotten a vasectomy for less money and an easier recovery time. However, that doesn’t change the outcome if I were to be assaulted. Living in Utah, I could not and would not risk having to seek an abortion, likely having to leave the state to do so, after an already traumatic event,” Daphne said.The procedure, which was not fully covered by her health insurance, left her around $1,000 out of pocket.“I’m lucky I was able to take these measures, and most cannot,” she added.Almost two years after the supreme court decided there is no constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, patients have increasingly been forced to travel out of their state in order to access abortion care, while others have carried unwanted pregnancies to term. A study earlier published in January estimated there have been nearly 65,000 pregnancies from rape in states with abortion bans.Interstate travel for abortion care in the US doubled between 2020 and 2023, from one in 10 to almost one in five people leaving their state to access treatment, data from the Guttmacher Institute shows.In states where it is possible, many go to neighboring states. Hanz, a 30-year-old who works as a clinical social worker in an abortion clinic in Illinois, but lives in Missouri, found out they were pregnant in late July 2022, they recalled: “As soon as I saw the two lines on the test, I knew I had more rights standing in Illinois than I would when I got home that night. Abortion rights had already got so much worse in recent years – and then Roe was overturned.” (Missouri passed a trigger law in 2019 that banned abortions except in medical emergencies.)Hanz wanted a child, but felt it wasn’t the right time. “I was really weighing what I wanted and what felt like the right decision. It was very hard for me to terminate the pregnancy, but I had a difficult time growing up and didn’t feel I could bring a child into the world and not be able to give them the quality of life I wanted to,” they said.After spending a month carefully weighing their options, they crossed into Illinois to terminate the pregnancy at the beginning of September at nine weeks.“Making the decision was much harder than having the actual abortion,” Hanz said, adding that fears remain about crossing the border to receive care.“I’ve talked to people who thought they may be arrested when they returned to their home state – you’re not breaking the law by crossing the state,” Hanz said.For others, the introduction of abortion restrictions has meant they are not having children they may have had. Over the last few years, Brie, 41, had been considering having another child – but after Dobbs, she felt she could not undergo the risk of a pregnancy at her age in the state of Texas.“My husband and I had dreamt of a third child. Now, I know it’s definitely not going to happen,” Brie said, adding that she felt she could not risk a pregnancy in Texas, which has a near-total abortion ban.Her medical history adds to her fears: she had a complicated first pregnancy, including experiencing pre-eclampsia, and needed an emergency C-section.“It was scary and dangerous,” she said. “With my history, there’s no way I’d trust having this pregnancy in Texas or the south. I’d have to move.”The loss of the constitutional right to abortion has taken the choice out of her hands, she feels. “Our seven-year-old son is asking for a younger sibling,” Brie said. “I know I’m in a privileged position – we have two wonderful, healthy kids – but I don’t appreciate the state making my family planning decisions.”Abortion is an issue that divides her family. “The last two years have been a very volatile time, even having these discussions within my extended family,” she said. The issue is at odds with other values prized in Texas, she believes: “People here are very concerned with freedom. But there’s this huge conflict here between concern with personal freedom, and the approach to women and fertility. The only acceptable carveout is women that are pregnant.”Every month, she feels anxious about the chance of pregnancy. “It’s constantly on my mind and has been since Dobbs: am I going to be thrown under the bus by my state this month?“You play scenarios out, what if, where would I go, who would I tell. It’s a big wall of separation between who could you trust. I think that’s the goal: to isolate and put women in a position of insecurity.”For some, the fall of Roe was a call to action. Paul, in his mid-50s and living in North Carolina, knew little about abortion rights when he heard the news two years ago.“Up until then, it was not something I cared about – it was obvious that women should have the right to choose,” he said. He had thought abortion was a “settled issue”.When he heard the news, he remembers that he and his wife “stared at each other in silence, and thought, what the hell happens next? It doesn’t affect us personally, but it does affect millions of women. I went in completely blind.”Compelled by a need to take action, by November 2022, Paul had begun volunteering with a group that offered logistical assistance to people requiring abortions, often picking up patients who had travelled from states with more restrictive laws and driving them to clinics.“I’ve driven young teens with their parents who are absolutely petrified; women in their 20s who accept it’s something they have to do, and others to whom it’s no big deal. Everyone has a different set of circumstances – you don’t have to explain your reason to me,” he said.After North Carolina reduced the limit from 20 to 12 weeks in May 2023, the number of patients traveling to the state dwindled until the service disbanded. Now, Paul volunteers most weeks as a clinic escort.“More Saturdays than not, I can be found wearing a rainbow-striped vest, shielding women behind umbrellas as I walk them into the clinic. I have been called a murderer, a baby killer … And I’ll happily do it again next weekend as well,” he said. “A lot of men don’t want to acknowledge that men have a role to play in fixing this – it’s not up to just women.”For Jane*, a woman from Texas in her 60s, the writing was on the wall before Dobbs as she watched restrictions chip away at abortion rights year after year. ​Between 1973 and May 2022, 1,380 abortion restrictions were enacted in states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, with more than 630 of these enacted since 2011.Jane became involved in direct action in 2018, driving people in need of abortion to appointments: “I became involved because I realised pro-choice is just that – it doesn’t address access. It’s a limited way at looking at reproductive justice. Seeing the impact of restrictions on abortion, I felt that to do nothing is to be complicit.”After Texas passed a bill outlawing abortion following the detection of cardiac activity – usually around six weeks – in 2021, Jane was galvanized to take further action. Toward the end of that year, she reached out to Las Libres, a Mexican network that mails pills for self-managed medical abortion.“The inhumanity of restrictions just raised my temperature and made me increasingly angry and willing to stick my neck out and do something to help,” she said. “Dobbs was the logical next step after increasing regulations permitted under Roe. [Access] was very effectively overturned before Dobbs.”Jane has been packaging and posting pills to states with abortion bans for the last two years.“It is empowering and effective to fight back,” Jane said. “Perhaps I am in denial about my own risk, but I have had a good life, I enjoy relative financial stability in my retirement, and who better than me to be in a position to fight back? Small actions matter, and allow me to maintain hope.”
      *Name has been changed More

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      Democrats move to repeal 1873 law they say could pave way for national abortion ban

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      Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday to repeal a 19th-century anti-obscenity law that bans mailing abortion-related materials, amid growing worries that anti-abortion activists will use the law to implement a federal abortion ban.The bill to repeal the Comstock Act was introduced by the Minnesota Democratic senator Tina Smith, whose office provided a draft copy of the legislation to the Guardian. The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto also back the bill, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the news of Smith’s plans. Companion legislation was also set to be introduced in the House.“We have to see that these anti-choice extremists are intending to misapply the Comstock Act,” Smith said in an interview. “And so our job is to draw attention to that, and to do everything that we can to stop them.”Passed in 1873, the Comstock Act is named after the anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock and, in its original iteration, broadly banned people from using the mail to send anything “obscene, lewd or lascivious”, including “any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring an abortion”. In the 151 years since its enactment, legal rulings and congressional action narrowed the scope of the Comstock Act. For years, legal experts regarded it as a dead letter, especially when Roe v Wade established the constitutional right to an abortion.But after the US supreme court overturned Roe in 2022, some anti-abortion activists started arguing that the Comstock Act’s prohibition against mailing abortion-related materials remained good law. Project 2025, a playbook written by the influential thinktank the Heritage Foundation, recommends that a future conservative presidential administration use the Comstock Act to block the mailing of abortion pills. Other activists have gone even further, arguing that the Comstock Act can outlaw the mailing of all abortion-related materials.Because abortion clinics rely on the mail for the drugs and tools they need to do their work, such an interpretation of the Comstock Act would be a de facto ban on all abortion.The Biden administration has issued guidance arguing that someone only violates the Comstock Act if the sender intends for abortion-related materials “to be used unlawfully”. However, although Joe Biden has focused his re-election campaign on reproductive rights, he has steered clear of addressing the potential return of the Comstock Act.Smith said that it “seems impossible” that her repeal bill will garner the 60 votes necessary to advance legislation in the Senate. Republicans recently stymied Democratic efforts to establish federal rights to contraception and in vitro fertilization.But Smith views her bill as a chance to raise awareness of the nationwide consequences of a Comstock Act revival, particularly among voters living in states where abortion rights are currently protected.“You talk to somebody in Minnesota or Nevada or Pennsylvania, places where people feel secure that they have control over their own decisions and their own potential to decide for themselves about abortion – and then come to find out that Donald Trump has a plan to take away that control that you have, even without a vote or an act of Congress,” Smith said. “It makes it much more real, what the difference is and what the contrast is, what the choices are for you even in those states where state law protects you. That could all change.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a New York Times April op-ed where she first aired her plans to repeal the Comstock Act, Smith suggested that she planned to introduce the legislation once the supreme court ruled on a case involving access to mifepristone, one of the two drugs typically used in US medication abortions and a top target of anti-abortion activists. In a unanimous opinion earlier this month, the supreme court ruled on technical grounds to let access to mifepristone remain unchanged for now. Although rightwing justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito brought up the Comstock Act during oral arguments in the case, neither the majority opinion nor a concurrence by Thomas ultimately mentioned the anti-obscenity law.“The court, in its decision, left the door wide open for future challenges based on Comstock,” Smith said, adding: “There was nothing in the court’s decision that gave me any sense of security.” More

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      Trump’s VP search reportedly down to four men – as it happened

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      Donald Trump appears to have narrowed his search for a vice-presidential candidate down to four men: North Dakota governor Doug Burgum; and Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina and JD Vance of Ohio, NBC News is reporting.The former president and presumptive Republican nominee for this year’s election has sent out “vetting materials” to the quartet, according to sources cited by the outlet.Another source told NBC that Trump was focusing on a three-way contest between Burgum, Rubio and Vance, with Scott out of the picture.The report also cautions: “Trump is working from a fluid shortlist that at times includes more than a half-dozen names. Additions, subtractions and the emergence of dark-horse candidates remain possible”.Burgum has been seen in Trump’s company increasingly frequently in recent weeks, while all three of the others have become prominent and enthusiastic cheerleaders for Trump during TV appearances following his conviction on 34 felony charges in New York last week.Some of those previously considered to be high on his list of VP “possibles” have fallen away, the NBC report suggests, most notably South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, whose star faded after the Guardian exposed in April how she shot and killed a rambunctious puppy in cold blood.Congress members Elise Stefanik of New York and Byron Donalds of Florida, have also been mentioned, along with Ben Carson, who served as Trump’s housing secretary.NBC notes Trump did not name former vice-president Mike Pence as his running mate until days before the 2016 Republican party convention, and said his decision this year is unlikely to be made public ahead of the July convention in Cleveland, Ohio.Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      Donald Trump appears to have narrowed his search for a vice-presidential candidate down to four men: North Dakota governor Doug Burgum; and Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina and JD Vance of Ohio, NBC News reported. The former president and presumptive Republican nominee for this year’s election has sent out “vetting materials” to the quartet, according to sources cited by the outlet. Another source told NBC that Trump was focusing on a three-way contest between Burgum, Rubio and Vance, with Scott out of the picture.
      Michigan’s Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib has condemned Joe Biden’s latest executive order that limits asylum seekers from crossing the US-Mexico border. In a post on X, Tlaib tweeted: “This executive order is outrageous. Seeking asylum is a human right. President Biden promised to end cruel Trump-era immigration policies, not resume them. We need to stop the dehumanization of migrants who are escaping violence and seeking a better life for their families.”
      The White House and the Biden campaign are not pleased with the Wall Street Journal’s story raising questions about whether he is fit to serve. On X, his re-election campaign noted that Kevin McCarthy, who in his former job as speaker of the House repeatedly met with the president, has previously said he was able to follow conversations and participate in meetings just fine.
      Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security secretary, spoke with MSNBC about the agreement between US and Mexico for the Mexican authorities to enforce anti-migration measures before people even reach the border. “We have built a very strong and productive partnership with Mexico, with President Lopez Obrador. We expect that strong and productive partnership to continue under the presidency of Claudia Sheinbaum,” Mayorkas said today.
      Joe Biden has congratulated the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and his National Democratic Alliance for their election victory to form a new government for a third straight term. He posted on X: “The friendship between our nations is only growing as we unlock a shared future of unlimited potential.”
      The White House office of management and budget just announced that Joe Biden supports the Right to Contraception Act, which the Democratic-led Senate is expected to vote on later today. “The Administration strongly supports Senate passage of S 4381, the Right to Contraception Act, which would protect the fundamental right to access contraception and help ensure that women can make decisions about their health, lives and families,” the office wrote.
      That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.The Congressional Black Caucus criticized Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rant about George Floyd in which she complained that Democrats are “worshipping” the “convicted felon.”In a video posted on X, Greene can be seen speaking to a reporter, saying, “We have Jamie Raskin in there accusing us of worshiping Trump, worshiping a ‘convicted felon’.” The reporter interjected, saying that Trump was indeed convicted.In response, Greene said: “Well yeah, so was George Floyd. And everybody, and you all too, the media worships George Floyd. Democrats worship George Floyd. There were riots, burning down the fucking country over George Floyd and Raskin is in there, saying we worship him [Trump].Following Greene’s comments, the Congressional Black Caucus condemned the Republican representative. “This is unhinged even for @RepMTG,” they wrote in an X post.“Her actions are unacceptable even by the lowest of Republican standards. George Floyd did not deserve to die, and a member of Congress should have the decency to acknowledge his humanity,” the Congressional Black Caucus continued.For the full story, click here:Michigan’s Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib has condemned Joe Biden’s latest executive order that limits asylum seekers from crossing the US-Mexico border.In a post on X, Tlaib tweeted:
      “This executive order is outrageous. Seeking asylum is a human right. President Biden promised to end cruel Trump-era immigration policies, not resume them. We need to stop the dehumanization of migrants who are escaping violence and seeking a better life for their families.”
      Byron Donalds recently came under fire for suggesting that Black families were stronger during the Jim Crow era, when racial segregation was legalized through much of the US, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.During a Trump campaign event in Philadelphia titled “Congress, Cognac and Cigars”, Donalds claimed that Black families were “more together” during Jim Crow and have been on the decline as Black people started to vote increasingly for the Democratic Party.“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative – Black people have always been conservative-minded – but more Black people voted conservatively,” Donalds said.“And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson – you go down that road, and now we are where we are,” Donalds added, referring to former president Lyndon B Johnson.The event was co-hosted with congressman Wesley Hunt of Texas, another Republican who is Black.Despite the latest report from NBC News, Trump’s search for a VP may be wider than reported. In addition to Rubio, Scott, Vance, and Burgum, other politicians have repeatedly come up as possible running mates for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida is still widely considered a possible choice for vice-presidential candidate.The first-term congressman has been a rising star within Republican the party and recently attended a campaign event for Trump in Philadelphia.Talking of the former president, my colleague Cameron Joseph’s latest Trump on Trial newsletter takes a look at how voters feel about his conviction last week on 34 felony charges, and how it might affect their decision for November’s election.It’s moderately good news for Joe Biden because of a slight uptick in support for the president in head-to-head surveys. In fact, more than half of voters approve of the guilty verdict, a trio of polls revealed, although there were mixed reactions in the crucial swing states of Wisconsin and Georgia, Guardian reporting found.It’s Cameron’s final newsletter before he leaves the Guardian to take up a new role elsewhere. You can read it here, and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already:Donald Trump appears to have narrowed his search for a vice-presidential candidate down to four men: North Dakota governor Doug Burgum; and Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina and JD Vance of Ohio, NBC News is reporting.The former president and presumptive Republican nominee for this year’s election has sent out “vetting materials” to the quartet, according to sources cited by the outlet.Another source told NBC that Trump was focusing on a three-way contest between Burgum, Rubio and Vance, with Scott out of the picture.The report also cautions: “Trump is working from a fluid shortlist that at times includes more than a half-dozen names. Additions, subtractions and the emergence of dark-horse candidates remain possible”.Burgum has been seen in Trump’s company increasingly frequently in recent weeks, while all three of the others have become prominent and enthusiastic cheerleaders for Trump during TV appearances following his conviction on 34 felony charges in New York last week.Some of those previously considered to be high on his list of VP “possibles” have fallen away, the NBC report suggests, most notably South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, whose star faded after the Guardian exposed in April how she shot and killed a rambunctious puppy in cold blood.Congress members Elise Stefanik of New York and Byron Donalds of Florida, have also been mentioned, along with Ben Carson, who served as Trump’s housing secretary.NBC notes Trump did not name former vice-president Mike Pence as his running mate until days before the 2016 Republican party convention, and said his decision this year is unlikely to be made public ahead of the July convention in Cleveland, Ohio.Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr could help Biden gain a bump in key swing states in the 2024 presidential election, according to a new survey, the Hill reported.With Kennedy as an option, Biden gains a slight advantage in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two major swing states ahead of November’s election.Here’s more information from the Hill:
      Polling from Mainstreet Research, PolCom Lab and Florida Atlantic University showed Trump with a slight lead over Biden in a head-to-head race in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But when Kennedy is added to the mix, Biden takes the lead in the states, according to the poll.
      Kennedy, an independent candidate, is not currently on the ballot in either state, which along with Michigan are seen as crucial to Biden’s hopes for reelection….
      Read the full article here.Ahead of today’s Senate vote to protect access to contraception, reproductive right activists have put up a 20ft- inflatable of an IUD to raise awareness.The gigantic contraception installation is currently on display at Union Station in Washington DC.CNN’s Haley Talbot posted a picture of the installation to X.The installation has caused a stir on social media.“Ahhhh that’s why it was ‘currently unavailable’ on Amazon,” wrote one user on X.Another simply commented: “Wow.”Today’s Senate vote is due at 3.45pm.Senate Democrats are teeing up a vote on legislation to protect access to contraception, which the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, argues is under threat from Republican lawmakers and rightwing supreme court justices. The White House said Joe Biden supports the bill, while Republican senator Katie Britt slammed it as part of a “summer of scare tactics” ahead of the November election. Meanwhile, top Democratic lawmakers are decrying a Wall Street Journal story that reported Biden showed signs of “slipping” in important meetings – a sensitive allegation for the 81-year-old president. His campaign attacked the report as well, and White House communications director Ben LaBolt wondered if it was published with nefarious intent.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said Biden’s immigration executive order signed yesterday was intended to discourage migrants from attempting to cross the border illegally.
      Advocates for migrants warned the new restrictions on asylum seekers could put lives at risk.
      Biden congratulated the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, on his election to a third term.
      Joe Biden yesterday signed an executive order that will temporarily close the southern US border to new asylum seekers when crossings reach a certain level. As the Guardian’s Maanvi Singh reports, advocates for migrants warn that it will put lives at risk:Joe Biden on Tuesday signed an aggressive new immigration order suspending asylum rights, signalling that “securing the border” was a central tenet of his re-election bid.At the southern US border, the policy is set to cause chaos and hardship for those seeking the protection of the United States.The executive order revealed on Tuesday revokes – at least temporarily – the country’s long-standing promise that anyone who sets foot on US soil can ask for refuge.Starting at 12.01am Wednesday, the government will be able to return people apprehended at the border to Mexico or their home countries within hours or days if a daily number of crossings is exceeded, giving them little chance to apply for asylum.On Tuesday afternoon, lawyers who work with people attempting to cross the border were still scrambling to understand how exactly the order would work – as detailed regulations had yet to be made public. But what was sure, they said, was that it would create panic and chaos at the border in the short term. The rush of people fleeing violence and chaos in their home countries is unlikely to stop overnight, they cautioned.“It can’t be counted on to reduce, or to stop, people from coming,” said Monika Y Langarica, a senior attorney with the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) based at the border in San Diego. “But it certainly will create confusion. It will create disorder, and it will put people’s lives in danger.”The White House and the Biden campaign is also not pleased with the Wall Street Journal’s story raising questions about whether he is fit to serve.On X, his re-election campaign noted that Kevin McCarthy, who in his former job as speaker of the House repeatedly met with the president, has previously said he was able to follow conversations and participate in meetings just fine:White House communications director Ben LaBolt wondered if there was nefarious intent behind the article’s publication: More

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      Louisiana’s move to criminalize abortion pills is cruel and medically senseless | Moira Donegan

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      This week, Louisiana moved to expand the criminalization of abortion further than any state has since before Roe v Wade was decided. On Thursday, the state legislature passed a bill that would reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol – the two drugs used in a majority of American abortions – as dangerous controlled substances.Under both state and federal classifications, the category of controlled substances includes those medications known to cause mind-altering effects and create the potential for addictions, such as sedatives and opioids; abortion medications carry none of this potential for physical dependence, habit-forming or abuse. The move from Louisiana lawmakers runs counter to both established medical opinion and federal law. Jeff Landry, the anti-choice Republican governor, is expected to sign the bill. When he does, possession of mifepristone or misoprostol in Louisiana will come to carry large fines and up to 10 years in prison.Louisiana already has a total abortion ban, with no rape or incest exceptions. But the Louisiana lawmakers are pursuing this new additional criminalization measure because while abortion bans are very good at generating suffering for women, they are not very good at actually preventing abortions. Data from the Guttmacher Institute suggests that the United States saw an 11% increase in abortions between 2020 and 2023 – a possible indication that pregnant people are still managing to obtain abortions in spite of post-Dobbs bans. As was the case in the pre-Roe era, women have continued to seek out ways to end their pregnancies, even in defiance of abortion ban laws.In the pre-Roe era, illegal abortions were often unsafe, and abortion bans caused a public health crisis: many hospitals had to open septic abortion wards, where women who had had incompetent or careless illegal abortions were treated for frequently life-threatening conditions. But the post-Dobbs reality is that advances in communications technology and medicine mean that illegal abortions need no longer be unsafe ones. Now, women living in states with abortion bans can access safe, effective abortion care in the comfort of their own homes, and often law enforcement and anti-choice zealots are none the wiser. Women can perform their own abortions, safely and effectively, without regard to the law’s opinion on whether they should be free to. They can do this because they can access the pills.The criminalization measure, then, is part of an expanding horizon of invasive, sadistic and burdensome state interventions meant to do the impossible: to stop women from trying to control their own lives. The Louisiana bill nominally will not apply to pregnant women – they’re exempted from criminal punishments for possession of the medications. But it will take square aims at the vital, heroic efforts of feminists, medical practitioners and mutual aid networks that have been distributing the pills in Louisiana: the people who have adhered to the principles of bodily autonomy and women’s self-determination even amid a hostile climate. These people’s courage and integrity is the greatest threat to the anti-choice regime, and so it is these people whom Louisiana’s new medical criminalization law will be used against first.But pro-abortion rights and women’s rights activists are not the only ones who will be hurt by the new law. For one thing, the criminalization of possession is likely to scare many Louisiana abortion seekers out of ordering the pills online, even if the bill itself technically excludes them from prosecution. These abortion seekers, dissuaded and threatened out of seeking the most reliable and safe method of self-managed abortion, may then turn to less safe options.But the new drug classification also has implications for a wide array of healthcare treatments. Mifepristone and misoprostol are not only used in elective abortions. They are also the standard of care for spontaneous miscarriages – the management of which has already become legally fraught for doctors in Louisiana, causing women to suffer needlessly and endanger their health. Misoprostol is used in labor, too, and in the treatment of some ulcers. The drugs’ needless, cruel and medically senseless reclassification as “controlled” substances will make these medical practices more difficult in a state that already has one of the worst rates of maternal mortality in the country. That’s part of why more than 200 Louisiana physicians signed a letter opposing the bill.The Republican legislators who have pushed the new criminalization do not pretend to actually believe that abortion drugs are habit-forming. Thomas Pressly, the state senator who introduced the bill, frankly said that his aim was to “control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs”.But there is something to the notion that abortion access might be “habit-forming”. In the Roe era, after all, women began to conceive of themselves as full persons, able to exercise control over their own destinies – as adults, that is, with all the privileges and entitlements of citizenship. They formed a habit of independence, a habit of imagining themselves as people entitled to freedom, equality, self-determination and respect. It is these habits that the Republican party is trying to break them of.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Colorado voters to decide on abortion rights after measure qualifies for ballot

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      Voters in Colorado will have a say on abortion rights this fall after supporters collected enough valid signatures to put a measure on the ballot, part of a national push to pose abortion rights questions to voters since the US supreme court removed the nationwide right to abortion.The Colorado measure officially made the ballot on Friday and would enshrine abortion rights into the constitution in a state which already allows abortion at all stages of pregnancy despite the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.Since that 2022 decision, most Republican-controlled states have new abortion restrictions in effect, including 14 that ban it at every stage of pregnancy. Most Democratic-led states have laws or executive orders to protect access.The announcement on Friday about Colorado’s measure making the November ballot came from the state’s top election official. It would also include requirements that Medicaid and private health insurers cover abortions.Supporters had said they gathered more than 225,000 signatures to put the issue on the ballot, nearly double the requirement of more than 124,000 signatures.Amending the state constitution requires the support of 55% of voters.Those backing a dueling measure – a law to ban abortion – did not turn in signatures, and that measure will not go before voters.The news in Colorado came a day after South Dakota announced voters would decide on abortion rights there this fall as well.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Arizona Democrat says enshrining abortion rights in constitution best remedy to 1864 ban

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      Repealing the 1864 near-total abortion ban that Arizona’s state supreme court recently ruled was enforceable would have little effect because “the damage is done”, the Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego said on Sunday.“Any initiative they pass right now wouldn’t even take effect for quite a while,” the US House member and Senate hopeful told NBC News on Sunday, referring to the 90-day delay such a maneuver would undergo before taking effect. He also said a repeal would be vulnerable to being neutralized by future iterations of the state legislature, remarking: “It could just get overturned later by another state house or state senate.”Gallego instead maintained that codifying abortion rights in Arizona’s constitution through a public referendum was the best countermeasure available for the state supreme court decision clearing the way for authorities to enforce a ban with exceptions for medical emergencies – but not for rape or incest.“The only protection we really, really have is to codify this and put this on the ballot and enshrine” the abortion rights once granted federally by the US supreme court’s landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973, Gallego added. “Protect abortion rights.”His comments came five days after the rightwing court’s ruling allowing enforcement of a ban that pre-dates Arizona’s statehood by nearly five decades.The law has not immediately taken effect but is bound to supersede a separate 15-week abortion ban that the state passed separately.An Arizona state lawmaker quickly moved to repeal the 1864 ban but has so far been blocked from advancing his proposal by fellow Republicans.The ruling in question was made possible thanks to the removal of abortion rights at the federal level in 2022 by a US supreme court counting on three conservative justices appointed during Donald Trump’s presidency.The elimination of federal abortion rights have driven Democratic victories in elections ever since. And confronted with the reality that most in the US support at least some level of abortion access, Republicans who cheered the reversal of Roe v Wade scrambled to distance themselves from the Arizona supreme court’s 9 April ruling.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat includes Kari Lake, the Republican who in the fall plans to run for the Arizona US Senate seat held at the moment by the independent Kyrsten Sinema.“This total ban on abortion the Arizona supreme court just ruled on is out of line with where the people of this state are,” Lake – who is endorsed by Trump – said in a video on Thursday. “This is such a personal and private issue.”Lake had previously expressed her approval of Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban after the US supreme court eliminated Roe v Wade – and before she lost the state’s 2022 gubernatorial election to her Democratic rival, Katie Hobbs.And Gallego has seized on that change of position, telling MSNBC recently: “Arizonans aren’t dumb. They know that Kari Lake is lying and is willing to say anything she can to win and to hold power, and they will not trust her with this.”Gallego’s campaign has helped a coalition of reproductive rights groups collect signatures aiming to put a referendum on Arizona’s ballot for the November elections proposing to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.The proposed constitutional amendment would establish a fundamental right to abortions up to about the 24th week of pregnancy, with exceptions to protect lives and physical or mental health of pregnant people.Ballot initiative campaign organizers say they have about 120,000 more signatures than needed to get the issue before voters in November. But that cushion is necessary because those opposed to the campaign have the right to scrutinize and challenge the validity of those signatures.An Iraq war veteran who served with the US marines, Gallego’s first term in the House began in 2015 and he has been representing his current district since early 2023.Both he and Lake are heavily favored to advance out of their respective parties’ Senate primaries in July to run in November for a seat being left vacant by Sinema, who chose to not seek re-election. More

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      Trump boasts ‘We broke Roe v Wade’ as abortion dogs GOP election hopes

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      Facing the press alongside the House speaker, fellow Republican Mike Johnson, Donald Trump bragged: “We broke Roe v Wade.”The former president made the stark admission about his dominant role in attacks on abortion rights at the end of a week in which the rightwing Arizona state supreme court ruled that an 1864 law imposing a near-total ban could go back into effect.Abortion rights were removed at the federal level in 2022 when a US supreme court to which Trump appointed three justices overturned Roe, which had stood since 1973. The issue has fueled Democratic wins at the ballot box ever since. This week, the Arizona ruling sent Republicans scrambling to minimise damage.Trump repeated his contention that the issue should rest with the states and there is no need for a national ban, a demand of the US’s political right. But he could not resist a boast on which his opponents are sure to seize.“We broke Roe v Wade,” Trump said. “Nobody thought was possible. We gave it back to the states and the states are working very brilliantly, in some cases conservative, in some cases not conservative, but they’re working. And it’s working the way it’s supposed to.“Every … real legal scholar wanted to have it go back to the states,” Trump claimed without offering evidence. “Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative. And we were able to do that … and now the states are working their way through it.“And you’re gonna, you’re having some very, very beautiful harmony, to be honest with you. You have, well, you have some cases like Arizona that went back to like 1864 or something like that. And a judge made a ruling, but that’s going to be changed by government. They’re going to be changing that. I disagree with that.”At the time of Trump’s remarks, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, was speaking in Arizona, hammering home Democratic attacks on Republican threats to reproductive rights. Her key message: Trump is to blame.“And just minutes ago, standing beside Speaker Johnson, Donald Trump just said the collection of state bans is, quote: ‘working the way it is supposed to’,” Harris said. “And as much harm as he has already caused, a second Trump term would be even worse.”Trump and Johnson appeared together at a time of intense legal jeopardy for the former president and great political danger for the House speaker that meant their intended message – a supposed need to focus on the canard of “election integrity” – seemed guaranteed to be drowned out.In New York on Monday, Trump will face trial on 34 of 88 pending criminal charges. The first ever criminal trial involving a former president will concern hush-money payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair.In Washington, Johnson must manage Congress with a tiny majority under pressure from an unruly Republican House caucus dominated by the pro-Trump right. The Georgia extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a motion to remove him.Opening the press conference at his Mar-a-Lago home, Trump exhibited his signature rhetoric on immigration, increasingly dehumanizing and vicious.View image in fullscreenJohnson said Republicans would seek to introduce legislation to “require proof of citizenship to vote”, claiming that if “hundreds of thousands” of migrants cast votes, it could affect the result of the elections.In reality, non-citizens voting is not even close to a problem.Some cities allow non-citizens to vote in municipal and non-federal polls. But non-citizen voting in federal elections is already illegal under a 1996 law. Offenders can be fined and jailed for up to a year. Deportation is possible.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Bipartisan Policy Center points to research by groups on the right and left which says non-citizen voting is exceptionally rare, saying: “Any instance of illegally cast ballots by non-citizens has been investigated by the appropriate authorities, and there is no evidence that these votes – or any other instances of voter fraud – have been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome.”Nonetheless, Johnson has long shown willingness to back Trump’s claims about elections regardless of reality, playing a key role in supporting the former president’s attempts to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.In a recent memoir, the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney said Johnson “played bait-and-switch” with colleagues to get them to support his legal efforts to have key state results thrown out while misrepresenting himself as a constitutional lawyer.Johnson said Cheney was “not presenting an accurate portrayal”. His legal work failed but even after the deadly January 6 attack on Congress by Trump supporters in early 2021, he was among 147 Republicans who voted to object to results in Pennsylvania and Arizona.On Friday, a statement released by the Trump campaign said Johnson had “agreed to hold a series of public committee hearings over the next two months … in advance of potential legislation to further safeguard our elections from interference”.Subjects of supposed concern included “mail-in voting processes and mail-ballot handling”, “voter registration list maintenance and how states will … prevent illegal immigrants and noncitizens from voting in the 2024 presidential election”; and “general preparations” for Trump’s rematch with Biden.Reporters raised other issues that have roiled Republican politics. Earlier, in Washington, Johnson oversaw passage of a bill to reauthorise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, including a key measure that allows for warrantless surveillance of American citizens. Trump and allies opposed the renewal, arising from his complaints about investigations of Russian election interference on his behalf in the 2016 race that sent him to the White House.Asked about the House bill, Trump said he still didn’t like Fisa and repeated his complaints about 2016. Johnson nodded behind him.Trump also opposes new aid for Ukraine, passed by the Senate but held up in the House. Johnson has said he wants to pass aid for Ukraine – but that could cause his downfall.At Mar-a-Lago, Trump kept the subject at arm’s length, verbally abusing Biden and claiming conflicts around the world would not have happened on his watch.He also castigated those prosecuting him criminally, including in the hush-money trial due to start in New York on Monday, over which he also complained about the judge. He was, he said, “absolutely” willing to testify in his own defence. More