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      North Dakota governor signs law banning nearly all abortions

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      North Dakota on Monday adopted one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the US as the Republican governor Doug Burgum signed legislation banning the procedure throughout pregnancy, with slim exceptions up to six weeks’ gestation.In those early weeks, abortion would be allowed only in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency, such as ectopic pregnancy.“This bill clarifies and refines existing state law … and reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state,” Burgum said in a statement.Last year’s US supreme court ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide has triggered multiple state laws banning or restricting the procedure. Many were met with legal challenges. Currently, bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy are in place in at least 13 states and on hold in others because of court injunctions. On the other side, Democratic governors in at least 20 states this year launched a network intended to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the supreme court decision that eliminated women’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy and shifted regulatory powers over the procedure to state governments.The North Dakota law is designed to take effect immediately, but last month the state supreme court ruled a previous ban is to remain blocked while a lawsuit over its constitutionality proceeds. Last week, lawmakers said they intended to pass the latest bill as a message to the state’s high court signaling that the people of North Dakota want to restrict abortion.Supporters have said the measure signed Monday protects all human life, while opponents contend it will have dire consequences.North Dakota no longer has any abortion clinics. Last summer, the state’s only facility, the Red River Women’s Clinic, shut its doors in Fargo and moved operations a short distance across the border to Moorhead, Minnesota, where abortion remains legal. The clinic’s owner is still pursuing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of North Dakota’s previous abortion ban.It’s expected that this new ban will also be the subject of legal challenges.Republican Senator Janne Myrdal, of Edinburg, sponsored the latest state legislation.“North Dakota has always been pro-life and believed in valuing the moms and children both,” Myrdal said in an interview. “We’re pretty happy and grateful that the governor stands with that value.”Liz Conmy, a Democratic representative, voted against the bill and said she had hoped Burgum would not sign it.“I don’t think women in North Dakota are going to accept this and there will be action in the future to get our rights back,” Conmy said. “Our legislature is overwhelmingly pro-pregnancy, but I think women in the state would like to make their own decisions.” More

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      Senator calls on Republican mega-donor to explain Clarence Thomas gifts

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      The Democratic chairperson of the US Senate finance committee, Ron Wyden, has written to the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow demanding an end to “unacceptable” secrecy around his gifts to the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.“The secrecy surrounding your dealings with Justice Thomas is simply unacceptable,” Wyden, from Oregon, wrote in the open letter.“The American public deserves a full accounting of the full extent of your largesse towards Justice Thomas, including whether these gifts complied with all relevant federal tax and ethics laws.”Crow’s friendship with and gifts to Thomas have long been known, but bombshell reporting this month by ProPublica placed the issue firmly back in the spotlight.A first report detailed extensive gift-giving including travel on yachts and planes and stays at luxury resorts. A second report described how Crow bought from Thomas a house in which the justice’s mother lives. Almost no such gifts were declared.Thomas denied wrongdoing, saying he had been advised he did not have to declare such largesse. Crow claimed never to have discussed politics with Thomas – or his wife, the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas, a beneficiary of Crow’s donations – or to have discussed business before the court.Observers said Thomas broke the law. Outlets including the Guardian reported ways in which groups linked to Crow did have business before the court, or lobbied it through amicus briefs, while Thomas was on it.Confirmed in 1991, Thomas is the senior conservative on a court now tilted 6-3 to the right after three appointments by the Donald Trump White House. Progressives have demanded action against Thomas over the Crow affair, including impeachment and removal. But as Republicans hold the US House, and as the supreme court essentially governs itself, the chance of serious consequences remains remote.The Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, Dick Durbin, has invited the chief justice, John Roberts, to testify on 2 May.“History is going to judge the Roberts court by his decision as to reform, and I think this is an invitation for him to present it to the American people,” Durbin told NBC on Sunday.But other Democrats have said invitations, and perhaps subpoenas, should have gone to Thomas and Crow instead.In his letter to Crow, Wyden said he was seeking “information related to reports of undisclosed gifts and payments for the personal benefit” of Thomas, “including private real estate transactions and the complimentary use of your private jet and super-yacht.“This unprecedented arrangement between a wealthy benefactor and a supreme court justice raises serious concerns related to federal tax and ethics laws.”Wyden also cited federal tax law, writing: “While ethics experts disagree with Justice Thomas’s assertion that these benefits provided by you qualify under the ‘personal hospitality’ exception in ethics rules, the Internal Revenue Code provides no such exceptions for transfers of a gratuitous or personal nature.“… While there are exemptions from the gift tax … none of these exemptions appear to apply to any gifts you made to Justice Thomas.”Requesting extensive details of Thomas’s travel with Crow and the Georgia property deal, Wyden also asked for “detailed accounting of federal gift tax returns filed with the IRS for any gifts made to Justice Thomas”, including details of any gifts or payments over $1,000 not covered by the questions about travel and property. More

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      Supreme court justices think selves exempt from rules, top Democrat says

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      Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee leading a push for supreme court ethics reform, accused the top court of being a panel of “nine justices [who] believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure”.His claim came amid growing criticism of the conservative justice Clarence Thomas, whose judicial record is under scrutiny after he became embroiled in scandal over taking undeclared gifts from a Republican mega-donor.The last US Congress considered a bill demanding the inclusion of the supreme court in existing judicial conference regulations but it did not clear the Senate and the chief justice, John Roberts, has been mostly silent on the issue.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Durbin said he hoped Roberts would take advantage of an invitation to testify before the judiciary committee on 2 May, to explain how he intended to handle ethics reform.“This is John Roberts’s court,” the Illinois Democrat said. “We are dealing with a situation where history will remember it as such. He is an articulate, well-schooled man when it comes to presenting his point of view. I’m sure he’ll do well before the committee.“But history is going to judge the Roberts court by his decision as to reform, and I think this is an invitation for him to present it to the American people.”Asked why he didn’t ask Thomas to appear, Durbin said: “I know what would happen to that invitation. It would be ignored. It is far better from my point of view to have the chief justice here.”Durbin’s statement that he thought all nine justices considered themselves above ethics standards came when he was asked what a code of conduct might look like.“[It] would look an awful lot like the code that applies to the rest of federal government and other judges, and basically would have timely disclosures of transactions like this purchase of the justice’s mother’s home,” he said, referring to Thomas’s failure to declare the sale to the mega-donor Harlan Crow.“It would also give standards for recusal so that if there’s going to be conflict before the court and recusal, it’d be explained publicly, and investigations of questions that are raised. It’s the same across the board code of conduct, ethics laws, applied to the court.“Why this supreme court, these nine justices, believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure, I cannot explain.”Durbin’s invitation to Roberts did not mention Thomas, referring instead to “a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally”.The court’s “decade-long failure” to address those problems has “contributed to a crisis of public confidence”, Durbin wrote.He said the 2 May hearing would focus on “the ethical rules that govern the justices of the supreme court and potential reforms to those rules”, noting that the “scope of your testimony can be limited to these subjects, and that you would not be expected to answer questions from senators regarding any other matters”. More

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      Democratic states stockpile abortion pills as legal fight for access looms

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      Despite a reprieve by the US supreme court, a growing number of Democratic states are stockpiling abortion pills as the legal fight for access to the abortion drug mifepristone is set to continue.On Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication.Nevertheless, as the case continues to wind through America’s court system and remains challenged by anti-abortion groups, more Democratic states are now stockpiling abortion pills amid an unpredictable legal battle.Earlier this month, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction that suspended the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, calling it a drug that is used to “kill the unborn human”.Swiftly after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Democratic states have been stockpiling abortion pills including mifepristone as well as misoprostol, the second drug in the abortion regimen which can also be used on its own, although less effectively.At the Massachusetts governor Maura Healey’s request, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has purchased approximately 15,000 doses of mifepristone. The stockpile is expected to offer “sufficient coverage” in the state for over a year.“Mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years and is the gold standard. Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” Healey said last week.Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of New York and California both announced plans to stockpile misoprostol in attempts to safeguard their states’ abortion access.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that New York will be purchasing misoprostol in order to stockpile 150,000 doses, a five-year supply.Hochul also pledged that if mifepristone is removed from the market, New York will commit up to an additional $20m to providers to support other abortion methods.In a similar move, governor Gavin Newsom of California announced last week that the state has secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2m misoprostol pills“We will not cave to extremists who are trying to outlaw these critical abortion services. Medication abortion remains legal in California,” Newsom said, adding that California has shared the negotiated terms of its misoprostol purchase agreement to assist other states in securing the pill at low cost.Since then, additional Democratic states have followed suit.The governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, recently announced a partnership with the University of Maryland’s medical system to purchase a “substantial amount of mifepristone”.“This purchase is another example of our administration’s commitment to ensure Maryland remains a safe haven for abortion access and quality reproductive health care,” said Moore, who also released $3.5m in previously withheld funding for the state’s abortion care clinical training program.On Thursday, Oregon made a similar announcement, with its governor Tina Kotek revealing the state has secured a three-year supply of mifepristone, regardless of the supreme court’s ruling on the pill.“Here in Oregon, I will make sure that patients are able to access the medication they need and providers are able to provide that medication without unnecessary, politically motivated interference and intimidation,” Kotek said.With Democratic states rushing to stock up on abortion pills, the tumultuous legal fight for abortion access is far from over. In the last nine months, 13 states have banned abortion. With anti-abortion groups fighting for increased pill restrictions nationwide, even states that have legalized the procedure may become affected.Following the supreme court’s decision to temporarily block mifepristone restrictions, the next stage of the litigious battle over the drug will take place in the fifth circuit, with oral arguments scheduled for 17 May. The case will then likely return back to the supreme court.In a statement to the New York Times, Erik Baptist, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization representing a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors, pledged to continue fighting against abortion care.“The FDA must answer for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is and unlawfully removing every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions,” he said about the 23-year-old FDA-approved drug.Meanwhile, the Joe Biden administration and civil rights organizations promised to continue fighting for reproductive rights.“I’ll continue to fight attacks on women’s health. The American people must also continue to use their vote as their voice and elect a Congress that will restore the protections of Roe v Wade,” Biden tweeted shortly after the supreme court issued its decision.The American Civil Liberties Union echoed similar sentiments, with Jennifer Dalven, ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project director saying: “Make no mistake, we aren’t out of the woods by any means … And as this baseless lawsuit shows, extremists will use every trick in the book to try to ban abortion nationwide.”Dalven added: “But if our opponents think we will allow them to continue to pursue their extreme goals without fierce backlash, they are sorely mistaken.” More

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      US supreme court blocks ruling limiting access to abortion pill

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      The supreme court decided on Friday to temporarily block a lower court ruling that had placed significant restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone.The justices granted emergency requests by the justice department and the pill’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, to halt a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in Texas. The judge’s order would significantly limit the availability of the medication as litigation proceeds in a challenge by anti-abortion groups.The decision offered a victory to the Biden administration as it defends access to the drug in the latest fierce legal battle over reproductive rights in the US. The president praised the decision and said he continues to stand by the FDA’s approval of the pill.“As a result of the supreme court’s stay, mifepristone remains available and approved for safe and effective use while we continue this fight in the courts,” Biden said in a statement. “The stakes could not be higher for women across America. I will continue to fight politically driven attacks on women’s health.”The court’s ruling means that access to mifepristone will remain unchanged at least into next year as appeals play out and patients can still get medication abortions with the drug in states where it was previously available.Reproductive rights groups celebrated the ruling, while cautioning it does not necessarily herald the final outcome of the case. “This is very welcome news, but it’s frightening to think that Americans came within hours of losing access to a medication that is used in most abortions in this country and has been used for decades by millions of people to safely end a pregnancy or treat a miscarriage,” said Jennifer Dalven, director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Make no mistake, we aren’t out of the woods by any means. This case, which should have been laughed out of court from the very start, will continue on.”The decision came in the most pivotal abortion rights case to make its way through the courts since Roe v Wade was overturned last year. More than half of abortions in the US are completed using pills.The case was brought by a conservative Christian legal group arguing the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone more than 23 years ago.The Biden administration vigorously defended the FDA against the charge, emphasizing its rigorous safety reviews of the drug and the potential for regulatory chaos if plaintiffs and judges not versed in scientific and medical arguments begin to undermine the agency’s decision-making.Conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, with Alito writing that the Biden administration and Danco “are not entitled to a stay because they have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the interim”.The order granting the stay was unsigned, so it is not known how each of the other seven justices voted.The case has moved quickly through the courts in recent weeks, as contradicting rulings have thrown the future of the drug into question.In early April, a federal judge in Texas, Matthew Kacsmaryk, first ruled in the lawsuit brought by a coalition of anti-abortion groups to suspend the FDA’s 23-year-old authorization of mifepristone entirely, writing that the agency wrongly approved the drug. After a challenge by the Biden administration in the fifth circuit court of appeals, a divided three-judge panel said the drug’s approval could stand, but imposed restrictions on it, limiting its use to seven weeks of pregnancy instead of the current 10-week limit, and banning delivery of the pill by mail.The Biden administration then asked the supreme court to intervene before the restrictions went into effect. Alito twice stayed the lower court ruling, keeping access to mifepristone unaltered while the court deliberated.Complicating matters, another federal judge issued a ruling directly contradicting Kacsmaryk’s, ordering the FDA to refrain from making any changes to the availability of mifepristone in 18 jurisdictions.That judge – Judge Thomas O Rice, in Washington – reaffirmed that order after the fifth circuit’s ruling.Both the Biden administration and pharmaceutical companies have warned of regulatory chaos around drug approvals, should the supreme court allow the restrictions on mifepristone to go into effect.“If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks,” president Biden said in a written statement after the Kacsmaryk’s decision in early April.The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, echoed the point in a statement responding to the appellate decision: “If this decision stands, no medication – from chemotherapy drugs, to asthma medicine, to blood pressure pills, to insulin – would be safe from attacks.” More

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      Feinstein absence blocks push for supreme court chief Thomas testimony

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      Asked if he would subpoena the chief justice of the US supreme court for testimony over corruption allegations against the conservative justice Clarence Thomas, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee made clear his frustration with a continued absence from the panel that has left Democrats unable to make such a move.“It takes a majority,” Dick Durbin of Illinois said on Thursday. “I don’t have a majority.”Democrats do not have a committee majority because of the absence of Dianne Feinstein, the 89-year-old California senator who has been hospitalised with shingles.Some Democrats have called for Feinstein to resign, while others have labelled such calls as sexist. Feinstein has said she hopes to return.But Republicans blocked a move for a temporary committee replacement and the situation has slowed Democrats’ pace in confirming federal judges, a priority after four years in which Donald Trump sent conservatives to courts around the US.Thomas is the senior conservative on a supreme court tilted 6-3 to the right after three confirmations under Trump. This month, he has been the subject of bombshell reporting from ProPublica, about his long relationship with and acceptance of gifts from Harlan Crow, a rightwing megadonor and collector of Hitler memorabilia.Crow’s links to Thomas’s wife, the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas, have also come under the spotlight.Thomas and Crow deny wrongdoing, the justice saying he was advised he did not have to declare gifts, the donor saying he and Thomas did not discuss politics or business before the court.On Thursday, the Guardian detailed business a conservative group affiliated with Crow has had before the court in the period of his friendship with Thomas.Observers have said Thomas broke the law. But though supreme court justices are subject to federal ethics rules, they essentially govern themselves.On Thursday, Durbin said he had invited the chief justice to testify about the Thomas allegations on 2 May. The senator also said Roberts could send another justice in his place, pointing to testimony by justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer in 2011.Speaking to reporters, Durbin said: “There’s been no discussion of subpoenas for anyone at this point.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans opposed the request.John Cornyn of Texas said: “I would not recommend that the chief accept his invitation because it would be a circus.”Josh Hawley of Missouri said Durbin was trying to “turn the screws” on Roberts and claimed the situation was “inching toward” a constitutional crisis.But there is pressure on Democrats to act over what Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has called the “unacceptable” way in which “the supreme court has exempted itself from the accountability that applies to all other members of our federal courts”.Writing to Roberts, Durbin described “a steady stream of revelation regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally”.Earlier this week, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut suggested Thomas and Crow should be the ones to receive subpoenas. More

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      US supreme court to decide on abortion pill access after extending deadline

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      The supreme court is poised to decide whether to preserve access to a widely used abortion medication, after extending its deadline to act until at least Friday.Less than a year after the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade and eliminated a constitutional right to an abortion, the justices are now weighing new legal questions in an escalating case in Texas with potentially sweeping implications for women’s reproductive health and the federal drug approval process.For now, the court is not weighing the merits of a legal challenge brought by abortion opponents seeking to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone. At issue before the court is whether to allow restrictions on the drug imposed by a lower court that would sharply limit access to the drug, including in states where abortion remains legal.The justices had initially set a deadline of 11.59pm on Wednesday, but that afternoon, Justice Samuel Alito issued a brief order extending the court’s deadline by 48 hours. The one-sentence order provided no explanation for the delay but indicated the court expects to act before midnight on Friday.The legal clash began in Texas, with US district judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a drug first approved more than two decades ago and used by more than 5 million women to end their pregnancies.The Biden administration immediately appealed the decision, which it assailed as an unprecedented attack on the the FDA’s decision-making. The US court of appeals for the 5th circuit then temporarily blocked the Texas decision, preserving access to mifepristone while the legal case plays out, but reversed regulatory actions taken by the FDA since 2016 that expanded access to the pill. Those changes include allowing patients to receive the drug by mail, and extending its use from seven to 10 weeks of pregnancy.The Biden administration and drugmakers next asked the supreme court to pause the lower court’s ruling, arguing that reimposing the barriers would create chaos in the marketplace and cause confusion for providers and patients.Alliance Defending Freedom, a coalition of anti-abortion doctors and organizations, has argued that the FDA failed to follow proper protocols when it approved mifepristone and has since ignored safety risks of the medication. Medical experts have said the claims are dubious and not based on scientific evidence.Complicating the legal landscape around this case, a federal judge in Washington state, Thomas Rice, issued a contradictory ruling in a separate lawsuit brought by Democratic attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The order, which Rice reaffirmed after the appeals ruling in the Texas case, blocked the FDA from limiting the availability of mifepristone in those states.Since the fall of Roe, more than a dozen US states have banned or severely restricted abortion. But many other states have moved in the opposite direction, approving legislation and ballot measures that protect abortion rights. Amid the patchwork legal landscape, attention has turned to medication abortion, which can be obtained by mail and administered at home.Mifepristone is the first pill in a two-drug regimen that is the most common method of ending a pregnancy, accounting for more than half of all abortions in the US. Decades of research and data from hundreds of medical studies have shown that it is both a safe and effective way to end a pregnancy.The drug first won FDA approval in 2000, and over the years the agency has loosened restrictions on its use. Those changes include allowing the drug’s use from seven to 10 weeks of pregnancy, lowering the dosage of mifepristone needed to safely end a pregnancy, allowing the pills to be delivered by mail, eliminating the in-person doctors visit requirement and approving a generic version.Depending on how the justices rule, those changes could be reversed, at least while the case proceeds through the courts. On Wednesday, GenBioPro, the manufacturer of the generic form of mifepristone, sued the FDA to keep the drug on the market, setting up a new front in the legal battle over access to abortion medication. More