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      Austin resolution aims to ‘decriminalize’ abortion if Roe v Wade is overturned

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      Austin resolution aims to ‘decriminalize’ abortion if Roe v Wade is overturnedGroup of city council members seeks to protect patients from criminal prosecution if supreme court ends abortion rights A group of Austin, Texas city council members is preparing a resolution to “decriminalize” abortion there in the event the US Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, a landmark case decided nearly five decades ago that protects the federal right to terminate a pregnancy.An unprecedented leaked supreme court draft decision showed a conservative majority of the nine justices are open to reversing Roe v Wade entirely. If that happened, 26 states would be certain or likely to ban abortion, including in Texas. The state has a “trigger” ban that would almost immediately ban abortion.A final supreme court decision is expected in June.“The resolution does two things – one, [it] restricts city funds from being used to essentially investigate any kind of alleged abortion crimes,” said José “Chito” Vela, an Austin councilman. “The other thing it does is to make the investigation of any abortion-related crime the lowest priority for our police department.”The resolution seeks to protect patients and medical professionals from criminal prosecution and would also advise Austin police not to assist other law enforcement, such as state police, in such investigations.Texas has already proven to be a legal pioneer in restricting abortion. The state banned abortion after six weeks gestation, before most women know they are pregnant, through a novel law that allows citizens to sue anyone, anywhere who “aids or abets” a woman in terminating a pregnancy.“We need them focusing on historically classic criminal activity – not politically disfavored groups that factions in the government want to harass and punish,” said Vela. “That’s the real core of what we’re trying to do.”Mainstream anti-abortion groups have long argued they oppose prosecution of women and cast women as victims of abortion providers. Similarly in Texas, the trigger ban would make the performing of an abortion a first degree felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison, an article likely to heavily impact medical providers.However, a vocal minority of abortion “abolitionists” , a word appropriated from anti-slavery campaigners, have also recently pushed lawmakers to classify abortion as murder.In May, Louisiana lawmakers considered a bill to charge women who have abortions with homicide. “We all know that it is actually very simple – abortion is murder,” one of the bill’s supporters, state representative Danny McCormicktold colleagues, according to CBS News. The bill was pulled after it failed 65-26.Although many anti-abortion groups say they oppose prosecution of women, anti-abortion restrictions and rhetoric have nevertheless resulted in more than 1,600 instances of women since 1973 being, “arrested, prosecuted, convicted, detained, or forced to undergo medical interventions that would not have occurred but for their status as pregnant persons,” National Advocates for Pregnant Women said in a recent brief to the supreme court.At least one recent, high-profile example from Texas, 26-year-old woman Lizelle Herrera was charged with murder via “self-induced abortion”, a criminal statute that does not appear to exist. Charges were dropped after public outcry. The prosecutor apologized.Austin’s Guarding the Right to Abortion Care for Everyone or “Grace” Act is still in draft form, and text is not expected to be immediately released. Vela said the council would likely consider the act after the supreme court releases its final decision in the highly anticipated abortion case.It is a case out of Mississippi, formally called Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the southern state has argued that the court should use the case to overturn Roe.“Whatever your thoughts on abortion, criminal prosecution of women who have abortion is absolutely unacceptable and abuse by the criminal justice system,” said Vela. TopicsTexasAustinAbortionUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Supreme court guts lifeline for prisoners who claim wrongful convictions

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      Supreme court guts lifeline for prisoners who claim wrongful convictionsDecision bars federal courts from hearing new evidence not presented in a state court as a result of ineffective legal counsel The US supreme court on Monday gutted constitutional protections that for years have provided a federal lifeline to innocent prisoners facing prolonged incarceration or even execution following wrongful convictions stemming from poor legal counsel given to them by the states.In a 6 to 3 ruling, the newly-dominant rightwing majority of the nation’s highest court barred federal courts from hearing new evidence that was not previously presented in a state court as a result of the defendant’s ineffective legal representation.The decision means that prisoners will no longer have recourse to federal judges even when they claim they were wrongfully convicted because their lawyers failed to conduct their cases properly.The decision eviscerated the supreme court’s own precedent in a move that the three liberal justices called “illogical” and “perverse”. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed the decision, warning it would leave “many people … to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel”.The ruling in Shinn v Ramirez was written by Clarence Thomas, the rightwing justice who has come to the fore as a result of the court’s sharp shift to the right following Donald Trump’s three appointments. He was supported by all five other conservative justices, including the chief justice, John Roberts.In his opinion, Thomas presented the case as one of states’ rights. He said that federal courts should not be allowed to override the states’ “core power to enforce criminal law”.That continues to be the case, the majority ruled, even where defendants are given bad legal advice by counsel provided for them by the very same states that are condemning them to long prison sentences or even execution.In future, they will have no recourse to a federal court to try and reverse their wrongful conviction.The case before the justices arose after state officials in Arizona petitioned the supreme court to prevent two of the state’s death row inmates – one with a strong case of proclaimed innocence, the other with a history of family abuse – from seeking relief in federal court from capital punishment.The state argued that the condemned men should not be allowed to present new evidence to a federal judge when they had failed to do so previously in state court.Lawyers for the condemned men pointed out that they had only failed to present the evidence in state court because the legal counsel they had been assigned by the state was woefully inadequate.If they were blocked from petitioning a federal court, the men would in effect be sent to the death chamber simply because incompetent lawyers had missed a filing deadline or failed to uncover a glaring truth.Monday’s majority ruling prompted an outpouring of angry and anguished criticism from innocence rights groups and death penalty experts.The Innocence Project said that overturning wrongful convictions was never easy, and that “today’s supreme court decision makes it that much harder to secure justice for wrongly-convicted people”.Thomas’s opinion also overturns previous supreme court rulings, in an abrogation of the court’s own adherence to the principle of stare decisis – that is, being faithful to precedent. In 2012 the supreme court ruled in Martinez v Ryan that prisoners could have access to federal court in cases where they had suffered from ineffective legal counsel in the state courts.“The supreme court seems hell-bent on disrespecting precedent and rolling back rights,” said Janai Nelson, president of LDF, America’s first civil and human rights law organization.In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor decried the ruling. “This decision is perverse. It is illogical,” she wrote.Sotomayor argued that under the court’s own precedent, prisoners cannot be held accountable – and effectively punished – for “their attorneys’ failures to present claims in state court”.She concluded that as a result of the majority decision from the nine-member supreme court bench, the Sixth Amendment to the US constitution’s guarantee that criminal defendants have the right to effective legal counsel at trial “is now an empty one”.In future, she said, prisoners who have had poor legal assistance would have no relief. “The responsibility for this devastating outcome lies not with Congress, but with this court.”TopicsUS supreme courtUS prisonsLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden says US recession ‘is not inevitable’ despite rampant inflation – as it happened

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      Joe Biden is warning Americans that the fight against inflation is “going to be a haul”, and that relief for soaring prices of goods, services and especially gasoline is unlikely to be immediate.But the president, speaking in Tokyo earlier today as he launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations, told reporters that he doesn’t believe a recession is “inevitable”.Biden is acutely aware that the inflation crisis is uppermost in voters’ minds ahead of November’s midterm elections. There was little comfort for him in a bleak new CBS poll released Monday that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.“This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time,” Biden told reporters in Tokyo. In response to a reporter’s question specifically about a recession, Biden said he did not think it was “inevitable”. With his own approval ratings at the lowest point of his presidency, Biden is under pressure to try to reverse the situation and avoid Democrats losing control of one, or both chambers of Congress ion November’s midterms. That he is focused on the crisis back home while on tour in Asia would appear to back up his assertion last week that inflation was his “top domestic priority”. Critics have been quick to point out that, last summer, Biden and acolytes including treasury secretary Janet Yellen were insistent that high inflation would likely only be temporary.But it has continued to spiral, with the annual inflation rate still close to a 40-year high according to figures earlier this month. My colleague Lauren Gambino has this look at how the president is attempting to tackle inflation as the clock runs down on the midterms. The message for voters seems to be that if you think things are bad now, Republicans at the wheel would be much worse:Biden pitches Democrats as saviors for US economy ahead of midterm electionsRead moreIt’s a wrap on Monday’s US politics blog. Thanks for joining us.Joe Biden sought to allay rising fears of a recession in the US, but admitted during a press conference in Tokyo that the fight against inflation and soaring prices “is going to be a haul”.But it was the president’s comments on Taiwan, and his pledge that the US would defend the island if it was attacked by China, that raised eyebrows and caused some confusion. White House aides were forced to step in and insist nothing had changed in the US approach to China.Here’s what else we followed:
      Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis suffered defeat at the appeals court over his law attempting to ban social media companies from removing politicians, and fining them $250,000 a day if they did.
      The House ethics committee is launching an inquiry into allegations that extremist Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn improperly promoted a cryptocurrency in which he had a financial interest, and engaged in an improper relationship with a staffer.
      The Washington DC attorney general is suing Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over “data harvesting” related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
      A Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than five appears closer after Pfizer-BioNTech said clinical trials showed three low doses generated a strong immune response, and was safe and well-tolerated.
      The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election result.
      Please join us again tomorrow on a big day for US politics, including intriguing midterm primary elections in Georgia, Texas and several other states.Water restrictions are coming to California, the state’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom warned Monday, if residents do not drastically reduce usage during an ongoing severe drought.“We all have to be more thoughtful about how to make every drop count,” Newson said in a statement about his meeting today with leaders of California’s largest urban water providers.“Californians made significant changes since the last drought but we have seen an uptick in water use, especially as we enter the summer months”.Until now, the agencies have had the power to set rules for water use in the cities and towns they supply, the Associated Press says, even as California enters its third year of severe drought.But Newsom says the lack of significant rain and snow from January to March, this year the driest in at least a century, and Californians not responding to his earlier calls for water conservation, are forcing a rethink. A spokesperson for Newsom’s office said the administration would reassess conservation progress in “a few weeks”. Read more:California water use leaps 19% in March, amid one of the driest months on record Read moreAnother day, another scandal for outgoing North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorn.The US House ethics committee is investigating allegations that Cawthorn may have improperly promoted a cryptocurrency in which he had a financial interest that he didn’t disclose, and engaged in an improper relationship with a staffer in his office, a statement from the panel said Monday. Democratic Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar will serve as the chairwoman of the panel leading the investigation, and Republican Mississippi congressman Michael Guest will be its ranking member, the statement added. The committee’s statement contained no other details into the allegations against Cawthorn.A pro-Donald Trump firebrand, Cawthorn has had his seat in the US House for one term but last week conceded defeat in a Republican primary challenge from North Carolina state legislator Chuck Edwards. His term, which began in 2021, is due to expire this upcoming January before giving way to the victor of the midterm election on 8 November. Edwards’ Democratic rival in that race is Jasmine Beach-Ferrara.Several Republican leaders abandoned Cawthorn’s side after he alleged on a podcast that he’d gotten invites to orgies during his time in Washington and had seen leading but unnamed political heavyweights in the nation’s capital abuse cocaine. He also drew ire from some quarters after calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy a “thug” following Russia’s invasion of his country in February.Furthermore, police stopped Cawthorn, 26, on driving citations three times, and he was caught with guns at airport checkpoints at least twice since last year, including last month. And videos during the primary campaign’s final weeks depicted Cawthorn in sexually suggestive poses.After conceding his loss, Cawthorn went on Instagram and called for “dark forces” of former president Trump’s Make America Great Again movement to take revenge against the Republican establishment. He wrote that he was “on a mission now to expose those who says and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering, globalist goal.”“The time for genteel politics as usual has come to an end,” Cawthorn added in his post, which thanked Trump for sticking by him, along with various other Republican congressional figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Rand Paul. Cawthorn’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has been handed a court defeat over his crusade to end what he calls censorship by social media companies.A three-judge appeals panel said key parts of DeSantis’s May 2021 law prohibiting politicians and prominent persons from being “deplatformed” was unconstitutional, the Orlando Sentinel reports.The 11th circuit court of appeal refused to lift an injunction placed earlier by a Donald Trump-appointed district court judge, who disagreed with DeSantis’s assertion that big tech companies had no right to remove content or users. “Put simply, with minor exceptions, the government can’t tell a private person or entity what to say or how to say it,” the court wrote in its 67-page opinion, the Sentinel said.When DeSantis signed it into law last year, free speech experts countered it was a blatant contravention of the first amendment to the US constitution, and predicted it would fall under legal challenge.Like other DeSantis “culture war” legislation, including his controversial “don’t say gay” bill and banning of “woke” math textbooks in classrooms, critics say it ignored real issues facing Floridians and was designed instead to appeal to the Republican base.The ruling strikes down $250,000 a day fines DeSantis wanted imposed on social media companies who banned political candidates. The judges allowed minor parts of the law to stand, including the right to a 60-day review period for those who are removed.Here’s a reminder of what Florida’s big tech law was about:Florida governor signs law against tech firms de-platforming politiciansRead moreLet’s take a quick look at where the day stands:
      Joe Biden caused confusion by stating the US would defend Taiwan if the disputed island was attacked by China. But White House aides are stressing nothing has changed.
      The Washington DC attorney general is suing Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over “data harvesting” related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
      A Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than five appears closer after Pfizer-BioNTech said clinical trials showed three low doses generated a strong immune response, and was safe and well-tolerated.
      The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election result.
      Joe Biden says the fight against inflation is “going to be a haul”, with immediate relief for soaring prices of goods, services and gasoline unlikely. But the president also said he doesn’t believe a recession is “inevitable”.
      My colleague David Smith has taken this look at the confusion created by Joe Biden’s comments at a press conference in Tokyo earlier appearing to undercut the US position of “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan.At a lunchtime Pentagon briefing, defense secretary Lloyd Austin said Biden’s comments were intended to stress the US commitment was “to help provide Taiwan the means to protect itself” rather than direct military intervention, and there was no change in the US’ “one China” policy.The somewhat routine press conference in Tokyo was winding down when the question came. “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”Many past American presidents would have deflected, demurred, declined to give a straight answer. Not Joe Biden. “Yes,” he replied bluntly, adding: “That’s the commitment we made.”Reporters at the scene were taken aback. Sebastian Smith, the White House correspondent for Agence France-Presse, tweeted that Biden’s answer “really raised adrenaline levels in that palace briefing room right now. Next we all get to try and explain what it all actually means.”One possible meaning is that America has abandoned its long-held position of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan. But Biden may have delivered not so much strategic clarity as strategic confusion. That would be on brand for a president who has made a habit of speaking without a diplomatic filter.China considers the democratic island of Taiwan its territory under its “one-China” principle, and says it is the most sensitive and important issue in its relationship with Washington.This is where strategic ambiguity comes in. While the US is required by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, it has never directly promised to intervene militarily in a conflict with China – but also never promised to stay out.This deliberate vagueness has – so far – helped deter China from invading Taiwan while also helping deter the self-ruled island from declaring full independence. Either scenario would trigger a major geopolitical crisis.Read the full story:Biden’s Taiwan vow creates confusion not clarity – and raises China tensionsRead moreThe fate of millions of women and American families hangs in the balance next month as we await the final ruling from the US supreme court in a pivotal case out of Mississippi, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health that includes a request for the historic abortion decision Roe v Wade to be struck down in its entirety.And millions of words have already been written about this, especially since the unprecedented leak in early May, via Politico, of the draft opinion written by hyper-conservative associate justice Samuel Alito and joined by four other right-leaning justices to give a super-majority in favor of overturning the national right to an abortion in the US.Here is the latest, very striking cover of New York Magazine.The Supreme Court will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, and the legal right to abortion will disappear in half the U.S. Abortion itself will not — and never has. In our new issue, we’ve compiled a practical guide to accessing an abortion, today and tomorrow https://t.co/RCi5xrH6T6 pic.twitter.com/8OmdsKUdjc— New York Magazine (@NYMag) May 23, 2022
      In warrior journalism mode, the magazine has an extraordinary article and interactive, noting:“The legal right to abortion is likely to disappear in half the country in a matter of weeks. Abortion itself, and the need for it, will not, and never has. The question is what it will cost medically, financially — and criminally……“…..What we’re offering here is not medical advice but a pathway to understanding your options and liabilities with a comprehensive guide to getting an abortion in the U.S. now. It will be regularly updated online to bring you the information you need.”You can read the magazine article, buy its The Cut section, here.On the subject of coronavirus and especially for all our blog readers who are missing Donald Trump not being on Twitter, here is the former president’s latest splurge on his little platform, Truth Social.Meanwhile on Truth Social this morning, Trump is slamming Dr. Birx and her scarf collection. Birx just came out with a book about the WH Covid response and talks about issues with Trump during the pandemic, like his comment about injecting bleach. pic.twitter.com/PIOOq4MRY9— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) May 23, 2022
      This recalls a tragic episode all around. Many look back at the moment they wish then-White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx had leapt out of her seat in 2020 and, physically if necessary, gagged or hustled Trump off the media briefing stage to stop him suggesting to Americans that perhaps things like sunlight and bleach taken “inside” the body could get rid of Covid-19. Or at least emphatically contradicted him at the podium.Last month Birx told ABC that the whole debacle was “a tragedy on many levels” as she was talking about the book she has out about her role during the pandemic, when she resorted to driving all around the country talking to state and local officials about how to curb the raging virus spread.Here’s the response to Trump’s latest words, from conservative commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin.He’s such a petty, small man. Factcheck: he never fired Dr. Birx. https://t.co/3HgrTzbbYw— Alyssa Farah Griffin 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@Alyssafarah) May 23, 2022
      US Senator Jeff Merkley has announced he has contracted the coronavirus. The Oregon Democrat attributed the mildness of his current symptoms to the fact that he is fully vaccinated and boosted.He urged everyone in the US to get similarly protected and warned, on Twitter: “Covid is still among us.”pic.twitter.com/r5XmUosx7i— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) May 23, 2022
      The US pushed through the world’s most successful program to develop vaccines against Covid in record time, approving the first safe and effective dose for emergency use in December, 2020, less than a year into the pandemic.Unfortunately, the country also has lost a million people to the virus, more than any other nation on record.The New York Times noted, using Australia as an example, that: “If the United States had the same Covid death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved.” The article noted a number of characteristic that influenced this number, including socio-political factors such as people’s collective trust in institutions and each other.Washington DC’s attorney general has sued Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to hold the Facebook co-founder personally responsible for his alleged role in allowing the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal data of millions of Americans during the 2016 election cycle.The suit, filed in the capital by the District of Columbia attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges that Zuckerberg directly participated in policies that allowed Cambridge Analytica to unknowingly gather the personal data of US voters in an attempt to help Donald Trump’s election campaign.“This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook’s wrongful conduct,” Racine said in a news release. NEW: We’re suing Mark Zuckerberg for his role in Facebook’s misleading privacy practices and failure to protect millions of users’ data.Our investigation shows extensive evidence that Zuckerberg was personally involved in failures that led to the Cambridge Analytica incident.— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) May 23, 2022
      Washington DC’s attorney general has sued Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to hold the Facebook co-founder personally responsible for his alleged role in allowing the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal data of millions of Americans during the 2016 election cycle.The suit, filed in the capital by the District of Columbia attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges that Zuckerberg directly participated in policies that allowed Cambridge Analytica to unknowingly gather the personal data of US voters in an attempt to help Donald Trump’s election campaign.“This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook’s wrongful conduct,” Racine said in a news release.“This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary, and sends a message that corporate leaders, including chief executives, will be held accountable for their actions.”Meta declined to comment.Racine has previously sued Facebook’s parent company, Meta, under the District of Columbia’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act. The act makes individuals responsible for violations if they knew about them at the time.The suit against Zuckerberg is based on hundreds of thousands of documents, including depositions from employees and whistleblowers, that have been collected as part of its ongoing litigation against Meta.“Since filing our landmark lawsuit against Facebook, my office has fought tooth and nail against the company’s characteristic efforts to resist producing documents and otherwise thwart our suit. We continue to persist and have followed the evidence right to Mr Zuckerberg,” said Racine.Read the full story:Zuckerberg sued by DC attorney general over Cambridge Analytica data scandalRead moreA firearms “buyback” hosted by California’s Sacramento police department to get weapons off the streets proved so popular that it ran out of money within 45 minutes, The Hill reports.Cops said they recovered 134 firearms during the weekend gas-for-guns buyback that offered a $50 gas gift card per weapon turned in. The event was scheduled to run five hours, but supplies of the gift cards didn’t last even one, and it closed down after four.Among the guns received were at least one assault weapon, numerous components for “ghost guns” and multiple illegally configured firearms, police said in a Facebook statement on Sunday. Police chief Kathy Lester said: “I truly believe violent crime prevention is a shared responsibility and today’s overwhelming community participation is evidence of the success we can achieve together”. Due to overwhelming response, we have exhausted our supply of gift cards for today’s gun exchange. We will still be accepting firearms but unfortunately we will not be providing gift cards from this point on. This event will be ending one hour early and will run until 4 p.m. pic.twitter.com/o9u7EohLXX— Sacramento Police (@SacPolice) May 21, 2022
      Read more about the scourge of California’s “ghost gun” plague here:Ordered online, assembled at home: the deadly toll of California’s ‘ghost guns’Read moreStarbucks is joining the exodus of western companies from Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters is reporting.The company will exit the Russian market after nearly 15 years as the Seattle-based coffee chain closes its 130 stores operated by its licensee Alshaya Group. It has almost 2,000 employees in the country.Starbucks’ decision to wind down its operation in Russia is different to the approach some other foreign companies have taken, Reuters says.McDonald’s last week said it was selling its restaurants in Russia to local licensee Alexander Govor to be rebranded under a new name, but will retain its trademarks, while French carmaker Renault is selling its majority stake in Russia’s biggest vehicle manufacturer with an option to buy back the stake.Other western companies, including Imperial Brands and Shell, are cutting ties with the Russia market by agreeing to sell their assets in the country or handing them over to local managers.Starbucks to exit Russia after nearly 15 years https://t.co/Y74uo47vti pic.twitter.com/qXoV4Gw073— Reuters (@Reuters) May 23, 2022
      The Guardian’s Alexandra Villarreal reports from Texas on the battle between a mainstream Democrat and progressive challenger that could shape the party’s approach to midterm elections in the state:Two nearly identical text boxes appear on the respective campaign websites for Henry Cuellar and Jessica Cisneros, the Democrats locked in a heated primary runoff to represent south Texas in Congress.Cuellar’s text box warns voters that Cisneros “would defund the police and border patrol”, which “would make us less safe and wreck our local economy”. Cisneros, in turn, blasts Cuellar for opposing “women’s right to choose” amid a nationwide crackdown on reproductive care.The parallel advisories read like shorthand for the battle that’s brewing among Democrats in Texas, where centrist incumbents like Cuellar are facing a mushrooming cohort of young and progressive voters frustrated by the status quo. “I want people to take away from what we’re doing … people-power – people – can go toe-to-toe with any kind of corporate special interest,” Cisneros told the Guardian. “And that we still have power over what we want our future and our narrative to be here in Texas, despite all odds.”Texas-28 is a heavily gerrymandered, predominantly Latino congressional district that rides the US-Mexico border, including the city of Laredo, before sprawling across south-central Texas to reach into San Antonio. During the primary election in March, voters there were so split that barely a thousand votes divided Cuellar from Cisneros, while neither candidate received the majority they needed to win.Now, the runoff on 24 May has come to represent not only a race for the coveted congressional seat, but also a referendum on the future of Democratic politics in Texas and nationally.Read the full story:Progressive v anti-abortion Democrat: Texas faces pivotal primary runoffRead moreApproval of a Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than five appears closer after Pfizer-BioNTech said Monday that a clinical trial showed three low doses generated a strong immune response, and was safe and well-tolerated.The companies said they plan to soon ask global regulators to authorize the shot for the age group, children for whom no vaccine is currently approved in most of the world, Reuters reports. Submission of data to the US food and drug administration (FDA) should come later this week.The trial involved giving 1,678 children ages six months to under five years smaller doses of the vaccine than given to older children and adults. “The study suggests that a low 3mg dose of our vaccine, carefully selected based on tolerability data, provides young children with a high level of protection against the recent Covid-19 strains,” BioNTech’s chief executive, Ugur Sahin, said in a statement.We published data indicating that a low dose of 3 µg of our #mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, carefully selected based on tolerability data, is effective and provides children under 5 years of age with a high level of protection against the recent #COVID19 strains. https://t.co/EenuqWzVLt pic.twitter.com/VyDDKqJJg8— BioNTech SE (@BioNTech_Group) May 23, 2022
      Vaccine take up in the US for the five to 11 age group is still at a worryingly low level, officials say, fueling fears of a summer surge of coronavirus cases among children.The FDA and federal centers for disease control and prevention signed off on booster shots for those children earlier this month. It could be seen as proof that Donald Trump’s popularity among Republicans is on the wane, or you could take it as a worthless straw poll of a few hundred already skewed voters. But either way, the former president finished second to Florida governor Ron DeSantis in a survey of Wisconsin Republicans as to who they want as their party’s 2024 presidential nominee.The result, a 122-104 win for DeSantis over Trump in a poll of 325 Republican activists at the Wisconsin state party’s weekend convention, reported by wispolitics.com, is hardly scientific proof of anything.But it does confirm the perception of DeSantis, who has signed into law a raft of “culture war” legislation in his state in recent weeks, as a rising star in Republican circles.The one-time Trump protégé, who faces a reelection fight as Florida’s governor in November, has long been considered a likely 2024 presidential contender. His recent policy “wins”, such as the “don’t say gay” bill outlawing classroom discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation, and the “racist” gerrymandering of Florida’s congressional maps has won him support from deep within Trump’s Maga base.In the Wisconsin poll of 2024 favorites, the only other politician to reach double figures was Nikki Haley, with a distant 24 votes. STRAW POLL NEWS: Wisconsin GOP activists are split on Donald Trump running for president in ’24.Even with him in the mix, @RonDeSantisFL was backed by a plurality of party activists who voted in the @wispolitics straw polls.See the full results:https://t.co/z80adZyizc— JR Ross (@jrrosswrites) May 21, 2022
      The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election results, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.The hearings are set to be a pivotal political moment for the country as the panel aims to publicly outline the potentially unlawful schemes that tried to keep the former president in office despite his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden.According to a draft schedule reviewed by the Guardian, the select committee intends to hold six hearings, with the first and last in prime time, where its lawyers will run through how Trump’s schemes took shape before the election and culminated with the Capitol attack.“We want to paint a picture as clear as possible as to what occurred,” the chairman of the select committee, Congressman Bennie Thompson, recently told reporters. “The public needs to know what to think. We just have to show clearly what happened on January 6.”The select committee has already alleged that Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States. But the hearings are where the panel intends to show how they reached those conclusions.According to the draft schedule, the June public hearings will explore Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, starting and ending with prime-time hearings at 8pm on the 9th and the 23rd. In between, the panel will hold 10am hearings on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 21st.The select committee appears to be planning for the hearings to be extensive affairs. The prime-time hearings are currently scheduled to last between 1.5 and 2 hours and the morning hearings between 2 and 2.5 hours.A select committee member will lead each of the hearings, the sources said, but top investigative lawyers who are intimately familiar with the material will primarily conduct the questioning of witnesses to keep testimony tightly on track.Read the full story:Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings as it aims to show how Trump broke lawRead moreJoe Biden is warning Americans that the fight against inflation is “going to be a haul”, and that relief for soaring prices of goods, services and especially gasoline is unlikely to be immediate.But the president, speaking in Tokyo earlier today as he launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations, told reporters that he doesn’t believe a recession is “inevitable”.Biden is acutely aware that the inflation crisis is uppermost in voters’ minds ahead of November’s midterm elections. There was little comfort for him in a bleak new CBS poll released Monday that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.“This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time,” Biden told reporters in Tokyo. In response to a reporter’s question specifically about a recession, Biden said he did not think it was “inevitable”. With his own approval ratings at the lowest point of his presidency, Biden is under pressure to try to reverse the situation and avoid Democrats losing control of one, or both chambers of Congress ion November’s midterms. That he is focused on the crisis back home while on tour in Asia would appear to back up his assertion last week that inflation was his “top domestic priority”. Critics have been quick to point out that, last summer, Biden and acolytes including treasury secretary Janet Yellen were insistent that high inflation would likely only be temporary.But it has continued to spiral, with the annual inflation rate still close to a 40-year high according to figures earlier this month. My colleague Lauren Gambino has this look at how the president is attempting to tackle inflation as the clock runs down on the midterms. The message for voters seems to be that if you think things are bad now, Republicans at the wheel would be much worse:Biden pitches Democrats as saviors for US economy ahead of midterm electionsRead moreGood morning! Welcome to a new week, and Monday’s US politics blog. Joe Biden is in Japan, but has his attention focused on a crisis back home, claiming that a recession in the US “is not inevitable”. That’s despite raging inflation, runaway gas prices and a particularly despondent new CBS poll that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.If there’s one thing Biden doesn’t have, of course, it’s time, with November’s midterm elections looming fast and the president’s personal approval ratings below 40%. We’ll take a look at his plans to try to reverse a desperate situation a little later in today’s blog.Here’s what else is happening:
      The 6 January House panel investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat to Joe Biden will hold six public hearings next month to lay out the former president’s illegal scheming to remain in power.
      The US Senate convenes later today, and Democrats in the chamber are moving towards a vote on Thursday on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act approved by the House last week in the aftermath of the massacre of 10 Black people by an alleged white supremacist in Buffalo, New York.
      Today should have seen the end of the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy halting refugees at the southern border because of Covid-19, but a federal judge blocked the Biden administration on Friday. The justice department is appealing the move.
      Title 42 is also standing in the way of a Covid-19 relief package making any headway in Congress. Republicans won’t budge on approving a deal to fund vaccines, tests and treatments without a vote to keep the immigration policy in place, despite a sharp recent rise in cases.
      We’re expecting one or more more minor rulings from the US supreme court today, ahead of what will be the blockbuster decision of the session in the coming weeks: whether the panel overturns the 1973 Roe v Wade protecting abortion rights.
      It’s the final day of campaigning in Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas ahead of tomorrow’s primaries. Former vice-president Mike Pence will rally in Kennesaw tonight for Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whom Pence’s former boss Donald Trump wants to take down for rejecting his election lies. More

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      Joe Biden says US recession ‘is not inevitable’ despite rampant inflation – live

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      Joe Biden is warning Americans that the fight against inflation is “going to be a haul”, and that relief for soaring prices of goods, services and especially gasoline is unlikely to be immediate.But the president, speaking in Tokyo earlier today as he launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations, told reporters that he doesn’t believe a recession is “inevitable”.Biden is acutely aware that the inflation crisis is uppermost in voters’ minds ahead of November’s midterm elections. There was little comfort for him in a bleak new CBS poll released Monday that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.“This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time,” Biden told reporters in Tokyo. In response to a reporter’s question specifically about a recession, Biden said he did not think it was “inevitable”. With his own approval ratings at the lowest point of his presidency, Biden is under pressure to try to reverse the situation and avoid Democrats losing control of one, or both chambers of Congress ion November’s midterms. That he is focused on the crisis back home while on tour in Asia would appear to back up his assertion last week that inflation was his “top domestic priority”. Critics have been quick to point out that, last summer, Biden and acolytes including treasury secretary Janet Yellen were insistent that high inflation would likely only be temporary.But it has continued to spiral, with the annual inflation rate still close to a 40-year high according to figures earlier this month. My colleague Lauren Gambino has this look at how the president is attempting to tackle inflation as the clock runs down on the midterms. The message for voters seems to be that if you think things are bad now, Republicans at the wheel would be much worse:Biden pitches Democrats as saviors for US economy ahead of midterm electionsRead moreIt could be seen as proof that Donald Trump’s popularity among Republicans is on the wane, or you could take it as a worthless straw poll of a few hundred already skewed voters. But either way, the former president finished second to Florida governor Ron DeSantis in a survey of Wisconsin Republicans as to who they want as their party’s 2024 presidential nominee.The result, a 122-104 win for DeSantis over Trump in a poll of 325 Republican activists at the Wisconsin state party’s weekend convention, reported by wispolitics.com, is hardly scientific proof of anything.But it does confirm the perception of DeSantis, who has signed into law a raft of “culture war” legislation in his state in recent weeks, as a rising star in Republican circles.The one-time Trump protégé, who faces a reelection fight as Florida’s governor in November, has long been considered a likely 2024 presidential contender. His recent policy “wins”, such as the “don’t say gay” bill outlawing classroom discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation, and the “racist” gerrymandering of Florida’s congressional maps has won him support from deep within Trump’s Maga base.In the Wisconsin poll of 2024 favorites, the only other politician to reach double figures was Nikki Haley, with a distant 24 votes. STRAW POLL NEWS: Wisconsin GOP activists are split on Donald Trump running for president in ’24.Even with him in the mix, @RonDeSantisFL was backed by a plurality of party activists who voted in the @wispolitics straw polls.See the full results:https://t.co/z80adZyizc— JR Ross (@jrrosswrites) May 21, 2022
      The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election results, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.The hearings are set to be a pivotal political moment for the country as the panel aims to publicly outline the potentially unlawful schemes that tried to keep the former president in office despite his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden.According to a draft schedule reviewed by the Guardian, the select committee intends to hold six hearings, with the first and last in prime time, where its lawyers will run through how Trump’s schemes took shape before the election and culminated with the Capitol attack.“We want to paint a picture as clear as possible as to what occurred,” the chairman of the select committee, Congressman Bennie Thompson, recently told reporters. “The public needs to know what to think. We just have to show clearly what happened on January 6.”The select committee has already alleged that Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States. But the hearings are where the panel intends to show how they reached those conclusions.According to the draft schedule, the June public hearings will explore Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, starting and ending with prime-time hearings at 8pm on the 9th and the 23rd. In between, the panel will hold 10am hearings on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 21st.The select committee appears to be planning for the hearings to be extensive affairs. The prime-time hearings are currently scheduled to last between 1.5 and 2 hours and the morning hearings between 2 and 2.5 hours.A select committee member will lead each of the hearings, the sources said, but top investigative lawyers who are intimately familiar with the material will primarily conduct the questioning of witnesses to keep testimony tightly on track.Read the full story:Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings as it aims to show how Trump broke lawRead moreJoe Biden is warning Americans that the fight against inflation is “going to be a haul”, and that relief for soaring prices of goods, services and especially gasoline is unlikely to be immediate.But the president, speaking in Tokyo earlier today as he launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations, told reporters that he doesn’t believe a recession is “inevitable”.Biden is acutely aware that the inflation crisis is uppermost in voters’ minds ahead of November’s midterm elections. There was little comfort for him in a bleak new CBS poll released Monday that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.“This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time,” Biden told reporters in Tokyo. In response to a reporter’s question specifically about a recession, Biden said he did not think it was “inevitable”. With his own approval ratings at the lowest point of his presidency, Biden is under pressure to try to reverse the situation and avoid Democrats losing control of one, or both chambers of Congress ion November’s midterms. That he is focused on the crisis back home while on tour in Asia would appear to back up his assertion last week that inflation was his “top domestic priority”. Critics have been quick to point out that, last summer, Biden and acolytes including treasury secretary Janet Yellen were insistent that high inflation would likely only be temporary.But it has continued to spiral, with the annual inflation rate still close to a 40-year high according to figures earlier this month. My colleague Lauren Gambino has this look at how the president is attempting to tackle inflation as the clock runs down on the midterms. The message for voters seems to be that if you think things are bad now, Republicans at the wheel would be much worse:Biden pitches Democrats as saviors for US economy ahead of midterm electionsRead moreGood morning! Welcome to a new week, and Monday’s US politics blog. Joe Biden is in Japan, but has his attention focused on a crisis back home, claiming that a recession in the US “is not inevitable”. That’s despite raging inflation, runaway gas prices and a particularly despondent new CBS poll that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.If there’s one thing Biden doesn’t have, of course, it’s time, with November’s midterm elections looming fast and the president’s personal approval ratings below 40%. We’ll take a look at his plans to try to reverse a desperate situation a little later in today’s blog.Here’s what else is happening:
      The 6 January House panel investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat to Joe Biden will hold six public hearings next month to lay out the former president’s illegal scheming to remain in power.
      The US Senate convenes later today, and Democrats in the chamber are moving towards a vote on Thursday on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act approved by the House last week in the aftermath of the massacre of 10 Black people by an alleged white supremacist in Buffalo, New York.
      Today should have seen the end of the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy halting refugees at the southern border because of Covid-19, but a federal judge blocked the Biden administration on Friday. The justice department is appealing the move.
      Title 42 is also standing in the way of a Covid-19 relief package making any headway in Congress. Republicans won’t budge on approving a deal to fund vaccines, tests and treatments without a vote to keep the immigration policy in place, despite a sharp recent rise in cases.
      We’re expecting one or more more minor rulings from the US supreme court today, ahead of what will be the blockbuster decision of the session in the coming weeks: whether the panel overturns the 1973 Roe v Wade protecting abortion rights.
      It’s the final day of campaigning in Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas ahead of tomorrow’s primaries. Former vice-president Mike Pence will rally in Kennesaw tonight for Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whom Pence’s former boss Donald Trump wants to take down for rejecting his election lies. More

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      Don’t believe those who say ending Roe v Wade will leave society largely intact | Laurence H Tribe

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      Don’t believe those who say ending Roe v Wade will leave society largely intactLaurence H TribeIf the high court adopts Alito’s draft opinion, it will be a legal tidal wave that sweeps away a swath of rights unlike anything America has ever seen Now that the dust has begun to settle after the initial explosive news that the US supreme court is poised to overrule the right to abortion and that Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization represents what a majority of the court initially voted to do, among the most revealing ways to understand the devastation the court appears ready to wreak on America’s long march toward “liberty and justice for all” is to examine the kinds of arguments being made in the opinion’s defense.The argument that such a ruling would simply return a divisive issue to the people had long since been widely dismantled. It certainly wouldn’t be returned to the people most profoundly affected once women were told they may have to remain pregnant despite whatever urgent reasons they might have for seeking a safe and legal abortion. It couldn’t be described as returning the abortion issue to the states, now that the possibility of a nationwide ban that the supreme court might uphold is on the horizon. And to the extent the issue is returned to the states, it would be returned to state legislatures so gerrymandered that they often represent the views of a distinct minority of the people anyway.Ending Roe v Wade is just the beginning | Thomas ZimmerRead moreThe argument that “only” abortion is involved because Alito’s draft assures readers that the supreme court’s opinion won’t be treated as precedent for anything that doesn’t involve killing an unborn human is both profoundly insulting and manifestly misleading. It insults every sentient person by minimizing the significance of commandeering the bodies and lives of half the population – and re-inserting government power into every family. And it misleads every reader of Alito’s words by suggesting that a court has the power to shape how future lawmakers and judges will build on its decisions and the reasoning underlying them. Alito’s hollow promise brings to mind similar assurances in notorious cases like Bush v Gore, is inconsistent with how the judicial process works, and wouldn’t offer any solace to anyone who might become pregnant or whose miscarriage might be treated as a crime scene for police to investigate.The foolishness of the argument that there’s nothing to see here other than the future of abortion law is underscored by some of what is said in its support. We’re told not to worry about the future of decisions like Loving v Virginia, ensuring the right to marry someone of a different race than your own because, after all, Justice Clarence Thomas is in an interracial marriage. We’re told not to worry about the right to same-sex marriage because, after all, Justice Brett Kavanaugh would never vote to overturn Obergefell v Hodges, the most iconic opinion written by his proud mentor, Anthony Kennedy – the man who left the court only after he had hand-picked Kavanaugh as his successor. We’re told not to worry about contraception (despite the way quite a few people view Plan B or IUDs as forms of abortion) because even supreme court nominees like Amy Coney Barrett, who were cagey about just how “settled” a precedent they deemed Roe v Wade, said they couldn’t imagine anybody today challenging Griswold v Connecticut. All that prognostication is cold comfort to the millions of people whose lives are profoundly affected by these shaky predictions.The most substantial argument is one that is equally fallacious but more sophisticated and in some ways more devious and dangerous: it is the argument that supreme court reversals of precedent, like the reversal of Plessy v Ferguson by Brown v Board of Education, are often to be welcomed as needed course corrections, and that this “course correction” wouldn’t be the first time the supreme court has rolled back decades-old constitutional rights. The many commentators who persisted in describing Alito’s draft in those terms – as an unprecedented retreat in the arc of ever-expanding rights – have recently been denounced as either inexcusably ignorant or deliberately duplicitous by distinguished scholars like Yale’s Akhil Amar, who says that every first-year law student learns that the very same thing happened during FDR’s second term as president, when the supreme court in 1937 in West Coast Hotel v Parrish overturned a long line of decisions that had blocked minimum wage and maximum hours and other worker-protection laws in the name of employers’ rights of “private property” and the “liberty of contract”. To be sure, Amar’s argument echoes that of the Alito draft, which cites Parrish and says, in effect, “nothing to see here, we did the same thing before” when we rolled back the liberty of contract line of decisions in 1937.Justice Alito and Professor Amar are simply wrong: profoundly so. That so-called (and quite misleadingly labeled) “switch in time that saved the nine” was nothing like the switch that Dobbs would represent. The 1937 “switch” was no sudden politically driven turnabout but was in fact the culmination of long-simmering movements in legal and economic thought – movements that were reflected both in scholarship and in judicial opinions from the earliest days of the 20th century in places like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ dissent in Lochner v New York insisting that “the 14th amendment does not enact Mr Herbert Spencer’s social statics,” movements that represented the growing conviction that the “freedom” to work at low wages and in miserable conditions was an illusion lacking both moral and legal foundations and one that simply helped perpetuate economic inequality and the exploitation of relatively powerless, not-yet-unionized workers by wealthy and powerful corporations.Indeed, it is noteworthy that West Coast Hotel v Parrish – the 29 March 1937 decision that is usually marked as the pivot point in the great constitutional upheaval – was handed down by precisely the same set of nine justices as the nine who had rendered a decision pointing in the opposite direction less than a year earlier, on 1 June 1936, in Morehead v New York ex rel Tipaldo. One justice of the nine, a moderate Republican named Owen J Roberts, who had been rethinking his position on the underlying legal theories, had foreshadowed his shifting views by writing a landmark opinion upholding milk price regulation, Nebbia v New York, by a 5-4 vote in 1934 – less than two months after the court had upheld a state mortgage moratorium law by a 5-4 vote in Home Building & Loan Ass’n v Blaisdell, a decision clearly foreshadowing the 1937 repudiation of Lochner’s legacy by reconceiving the meaning of the constitution’s clause forbidding all state impairments of the obligation of contracts.That history is important to keep in mind if one is to understand the depth of the error made by those who seek to compare the 2022 tsunami that Dobbs would represent with the gradual shift in current represented by the 1937 movement away from liberty of contract to protection of workers and consumers. The head-spinning and altogether untimely switch in the supreme court’s abortion jurisprudence that Dobbs would represent – if the decision the court announces late this June or early July is in substance what the leaked Alito draft indicated it would be – will reflect not the steady maturation of a long-developing jurisprudential movement but the crude payoff to a partisan political program to take over the federal judiciary, one beginning with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the Federalist Society, and advancing with supreme court appointments made by Republican presidents all of whom lost the popular vote (George W Bush, appointing Justice Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts; Donald J Trump, appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett), and made in circumstances of dubious legitimacy.Professor Amar treats as laughably naïve the observation by ACLU national legal director and Georgetown law professor David Cole that, although “Parrish took away some rights of business owners … its real effect was to expand rights protections for millions of Americans subject to exploitation by powerful corporations.” Amar’s rebuttal? He says, and I’m serious here, that it’d be equally legitimate to say that “Dobbs’ real effect would be to expand rights protection for millions of innocent, unborn Americans … unborn humans, subject to extermination by society.”It’s hard to know where to begin in unraveling that alleged parallel. Suffice it to note that the status as rights-bearing persons of embryos and fetuses remains a matter of profound sectarian controversy in America and throughout the world while no such controversy attends the status as rights-bearing persons of the array of workers whose rights, at least under laws designed to limit economic exploitation if not directly under the constitution itself, were indisputably expanded by virtue of the Parrish decision and the overturning of the Lochner line of cases.Perhaps no less important is the indisputable fact that, although there remain a few commentators who continue to think that Lochner was rightly decided and Parrish was wrong, there is a nearly universal consensus, certainly covering the ideological spectrum on the current supreme court, that the “rights” protected by Lochner and the other decisions that Parrish tossed into the dustbin of history were not constitutionally sacrosanct, and that inequalities of bargaining power prevented the common-law baseline that Lochner treated as immune to legislative modification from having any special constitutional status. At the same time, the notions of personal autonomy and bodily integrity that provide the constitutional foundation for the substantive “liberty” at stake in cases like Roe and Casey are almost universally accepted as real, although deep disagreements remain about whether, to what degree, and from what point in fetal development the protection of the unborn fetus can properly trump that liberty.The upshot is that the radical change in law and society that Dobbs would represent truly has no parallel in the history of the supreme court or in the history of the United States. As David Cole writes, the “proper analogy is not Brown overruling Plessy, but a decision reviving Plessy, reversing Brown, and relegating Black people to enforced segregation after nearly 70 years of equal protection.” For, as Jamelle Bouie rightly observed, “equal standing is undermined and eroded when the state can effectively seize your person for its own ends – that is, when it can force you to give birth.” Whether or not one compares that compulsion and forced labor to literal enslavement, as I did in my 1973 article on Roe v Wade, attempts to minimize the huge retrogression this would represent must be dismissed as little more than shameful efforts to camouflage the carnage the supreme court of the United States is about to unleash both on its own legitimacy and, even more important, on the people in whose name it wields the power of judicial review.
      Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University, the author of numerous books and articles, a distinguished supreme court advocate, and holder of 11 honorary degrees
      TopicsAbortionOpinionUS politicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)commentReuse this content More

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      Arkansas Republican admits abortion trigger law would cause ‘heartbreak’ if Roe is reversed

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      Arkansas Republican admits abortion trigger law would cause ‘heartbreak’ if Roe is reversedGovernor Asa Hutchinson signed near-total abortion ban bill, even though he disagreed with the lack of exceptions for incest and rape The Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, has admitted that an anti-abortion trigger law that he signed on to the books would lead to “heartbreaking circumstances” if Roe v Wade is overturned, in which girls as young as 11 who became pregnant through rape or incest would be forced to give birth.Hutchinson’s remarks give a revealing insight into the twisted human and political quandaries that are certain to arise should the US supreme court, as expected, destroy the constitutional right to an abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade when it issues its ruling next month. The governor told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that in 2019 he had signed the Arkansas trigger law, Senate Bill 6, which would ban almost all abortions the instant Roe were reversed, even though he disagreed with its lack of exceptions for incest and rape.Asked why he had put his signature on the law, despite the fact that it would prohibit all abortions other than in cases where a pregnant woman’s life were in imminent danger, he said: “I support the exceptions of rape and incest … I believe that should have been added; it did not have the support of the assembly.”Under intense questioning from the CNN host Dana Bash, the governor was asked why an “11- or 12-year-old girl who is impregnated by her father, or uncle or another family member be forced to carry that child to term?”He replied: “I agree with you. I’ve had to deal with that particular circumstance even as governor. While it’s still life in the womb, life of the unborn, the conception was in criminal circumstances – either incest or rape – and so those are two exceptions I think are very appropriate.”He added that if the supreme court does throw out the constitutional right to an abortion, then “these are going to become very real circumstances. The debate and discussion will continue, and that could very well be revisited.”But Bash pressed Hutchinson on what would happen if the absence of rape and incest exceptions can’t be revisited in the law that he had personally approved, pointing out that his term as governor comes to an end in January. “If you can’t change [the trigger law], that means girls who are still children, 11- and 12-year-olds, might be in that situation in a very real way in just a couple of months,” Bash said.“Those are heartbreaking circumstances,” Hutchinson replied. “When we passed these trigger laws we were trying … to reduce abortions, but whenever you see that real-life circumstances like that the debate is going to continue and the will of the people may or may not change.”A report by the Guardian this month found that at least 11 US states have passed laws that ban abortions without any exceptions for rape or incest. Such trigger laws are legally written in such a way that they would come into effect the second that the constitutional right to an abortion embodied in Roe were overturned.Earlier this month, a draft majority opinion of the supreme court written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to Politico. With the apparent backing of five of the six conservative justices on the nine-member court, it would eradicate federal abortion rights in the most aggressive terms.The court has insisted that the draft is not final and that changes to its wording or outcome are still possible. But the country on both sides of the abortion divide are bracing now for Roe to be undone and power over women’s reproductive choices to be handed to individual states like Arkansas.TopicsArkansasRoe v WadeAbortionUS politicsHealthRepublicansUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      Ending Roe v Wade is just the beginning | Thomas Zimmer

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      Ending Roe v Wade is just the beginningThomas ZimmerConservatives are animated by a vision of 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance – it is the only order they will accept for America The supreme court is set to overturn Roe v Wade, this much has been clear since a draft opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked earlier this month. An attempt to safeguard abortion rights via national legislation was blocked by a united front of Republicans plus Democrat Joe Manchin in the Senate last week. As a result, we must expect abortion to be banned in roughly half the country soon.It is very hard to overstate how significant this moment is. The US is about to join the very short list of countries that have restricted existing abortion rights since the 1990s – the overall trend internationally certainly has been towards a liberalization of abortion laws. And it’s also a basically unique development in US history: while the supreme court has often upheld and codified a discriminatory status quo, it has never actively and officially abolished what had previously been recognized as a constitutionally guaranteed right.The overturning of Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey constitutes the culmination of half a century of conservative legal activism, and rejecting Roe has been a key element of conservative political identity for decades. But the impending end of Roe will still not magically appease the right. Attempts to institute a national ban are likely to follow. The people behind this anti-abortion rights crusade consider abortion murder and the epitome of everything that’s wrong and perverted about liberalism – they will tolerate the right to bodily autonomy in “blue” America for only as long as they absolutely have to.And the conservative vision for the country goes well beyond outlawing abortion. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito rejects the legal underpinnings of many of the post-1960s civil rights extensions that were predicated on a specific interpretation of the 14th amendment. He targets the very idea of a right to privacy, employs an extremely narrow view of “substantive due process” and claims that the 14th amendment protects only those rights not explicitly listed in the constitution that are “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition”. Alito applies an arbitrary standard – one that birth control, marriage equality and even desegregation clearly don’t meet. The fact that he adds a throwaway paragraph claiming that these rights, all based on the very understanding of the 14th amendment Alito so explicitly rejects, are not in danger, shouldn’t put anyone at ease.Alito’s opinion precisely captures the essence of the supreme court’s role through most of history, and certainly today: an institution siding with tradition over change, with existing power structures over attempts to level hierarchies, with the old over the new. That’s the spirit the “deeply rooted in history and tradition” standard seeks to enshrine as dogma: established hierarchies are to be revered and protected, anything that threatens them is illegitimate. It’s a dogma that is utterly incompatible with the idea of a fully functioning multiracial, pluralistic democracy in which the individual’s political, social and economic status is not significantly determined by race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. For conservatives, that’s exactly the point, and it is how Alito’s opinion fits into the broader assault on the post-1960s civil rights order: it’s all part of a multi-level reactionary counter-mobilization against multiracial pluralism.It is only in this context that the whole weight of what this supreme court is doing is revealed. The conservative majority on the court operates as an integral part of a reactionary political project. Alito’s opinion should be a stark reminder of what that project is all about – and why the end of Roe is very likely to be just the beginning of a large-scale reversal that seeks to turn the clock back significantly. Conservatives could not be clearer about what their goal is: their animating vision for America is 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance.The evidence is in what Republicans have been pursuing on the state level. We are seeing a wave of red-state legislation rolling back basic rights and fundamental liberties, intended to eviscerate the civil rights regime that has been established since the 1960s – and banish, outlaw and censor anything that threatens white Christian male dominance. The reactionary counter-mobilization is happening on so many fronts simultaneously that it’s easy to lose sight of how things are connected. Ban abortion and contraception, criminalize LGBTQ+ people; install strict guidelines for education that are in line with a white nationalist understanding of the past and the present, censor dissent; restrict voting rights, purge election commissions. These are not disparate actions. The overriding concern behind all of them is to maintain traditional political, social, cultural and economic hierarchies. It’s a vision that serves, first and foremost, a wealthy white elite – and all those who cling to white Christian patriarchal dominance. It’s a political project that goes well beyond Congress and state legislatures: this is about restoring and entrenching traditional authority in the local community, in the public square, in the workplace, in the family.In all these areas, the assault on democracy and the civil rights order is escalating. Longstanding anti-democratic tendencies notwithstanding, the right has been radicalizing significantly in recent years. Why now? The more structural answer is that America has changed, and the conservative political project has come under enormous pressure as a result. The Republican hold on power has become tenuous, certainly on the federal level, and even in some states that had previously been solidly “red”. The right is reacting to something real: the political, cultural and most importantly demographic changes that have made the country less white, less conservative, less Christian are not just figments of the reactionary imagination.And recent political and societal events have dramatically heightened the sense of threat on the right. The first one was the election and re-election of the first Black president to the White House. Regardless of his moderately liberal politics, Obama’s “radicalism” consisted of being Black, a symbol of the imminent threat to the “natural” order of white dominance. The right’s radicalization must also be conceptualized as a white reactionary counter-mobilization specifically to the anti-racist mobilization of civil society after the murder of George Floyd. In the Black Lives Matter-led protests of 2020 that – at least temporarily – were supported by most white liberals, the right saw irrefutable proof that radically “un-American” forces of “woke”, leftist extremism were on the rise, hellbent on destroying “real” America.The American right is fully committed to this anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic vision – which they understand is a minoritarian project. Abortion bans, for instance, are not popular at all. About two-thirds of the population want to keep Roe and believe abortion should be legal at least in some cases; a clear majority supports a law legalizing abortion nationally. Meanwhile, a complete ban – a position many Republican-led states are taking – is favored by less than 10% of Americans.Conservatives are acutely aware that they don’t have numerical majorities for their project. But they don’t care about democratic legitimacy. And the Republican party has a comprehensive strategy to put this reactionary vision into practice anyway. In Washington, Republican lawmakers are mainly focused on obstructing efforts to safeguard democracy. It’s at the state level where the rightwing assault is accelerating the most.It all starts with not letting too many of the “wrong” people vote. That’s why Republican lawmakers are introducing hundreds of bills intended to make voting more difficult, and have enacted such laws almost everywhere they are in charge. All of these voter suppression laws are ostensibly race-neutral and non-partisan. But they are designed to have a disproportionate effect on voters of color, or on young people – on groups that tend to vote Democratic. If too many of the “wrong” people are still voting, Republicans want to make their electoral choices count less. Gerrymandering is one way they are trying to achieve that goal, and it has been radicalizing basically wherever the GOP is in charge.As that might still not be enough to keep the “wrong” people from winning, Republicans are trying to put themselves in a position to nullify their future wins: we are seeing election subversion efforts up and down the country – an all-out assault on state election systems. Republican-led state legislatures are re-writing the rules so that they will have more influence on future elections, election commissions are being purged, local officials are being harassed, people who are a threat to Republican rule are replaced by Trumpist loyalists. In many key states, Trumpists who aggressively subscribe to the big lie that the 2020 was stolen are currently running for high office.Republicans understand that such blatant undermining of democracy might lead to a mobilization of civil society. That’s why they are criminalizing protests, by defining them as “riots”, and by legally sanctioning physical attacks on “rioters”. The right also encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to suppress these “leftwing” protests by celebrating and glorifying those who have engaged in such violent fantasies – call it the Kyle Rittenhouse approach. Finally, Republicans are flanking all this by a broad-scale offensive against everything and everyone criticizing the legitimacy of white nationalist rule – past, present and future – by censoring and banning critical dissent inside and outside the education sector.Ideally, the supreme court would step in and put a stop to the escalating attempts to undermine democracy and roll back civil rights. But the conservative majority on the court is actually doing the opposite, providing robust cover for the reactionary counter-mobilization. This has established an enormously effective mechanism of how to turn the clock back to the pre-civil rights era: Republican-led states will abolish established protections and count on the supreme court to let them do as they please, even if it means overthrowing precedent. That puts the onus on Congress to enact nationwide legislation that would guarantee civil rights and protect democracy – legislation that has little chance to overcome Republican (plus Sinema/Manchin) obstruction. And so we keep spiraling further and further back, with the next round of state-level reactionary legislation always guaranteed to be right around the corner. The exact same dynamic has undermined voting rights across “red” states. This is how civil rights perish and democracy dies.Even now that the conservatives on the supreme court are about to end the right to abortion, I know such a statement strikes many people as extreme, or at the very least as alarmist. They won’t go that far, will they? But by portraying their opponent as a fundamentally illegitimate faction that seeks to destroy the country, conservatives have been giving themselves permission to embrace whatever radical measures they deem necessary to defeat this “un-American” enemy. We are in deeply dangerous territory precisely because so many on the right have convinced themselves they are fighting a noble war against unpatriotic, godless forces that are in league with pedophiles – and therefore see no lines they are not justified to cross. The white reactionary counter-mobilization against multiracial, pluralistic democracy won’t stop because the people behind it have some sort of epiphany that they shouldn’t go that far. It will either be stopped or succeed in entrenching white Christian patriarchal rule.
      Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
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      Nancy Pelosi: supreme court ‘dangerous to families and to freedoms’

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      Nancy Pelosi: supreme court ‘dangerous to families and to freedoms’House speaker rails against conservative judges appointed by Trump as justices prepare to finalize draft abortion ruling The supreme court is “dangerous to families and to freedoms in our country”, Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday, as justices prepare to finalize a draft ruling stripping almost have a century of abortion rights in the US.The House speaker railed against conservative judges appointed by former president Donald Trump in an interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, in which she urged Democrats to keep their “eye on the ball” to protect other freedoms she sees under threat.“Beware in terms of marriage equality, beware in terms of other aspects,” she said.“Understand this. This is not just about terminating a pregnancy. This is about contraception, family planning.“This is a place where freedom and the kitchen table, issues of America’s families, come together. What are the decisions that a family makes? What about contraception for young people? It’s beyond just a particular situation. It’s massive in terms of contraception, in vitro fertilization, a woman’s right to decide.”Speaking the day after hundreds of protest events took place nationwide, Pelosi insisted Democrats had done what they could in terms of protecting abortion rights through legislation. She pointed out the House had passed a bill before the women’s health protection act failed in the Senate on Wednesday, and she said she was still optimistic of a resolution with the support of pro-choice Republicans.But she said the 60-vote requirement in the Senate was “an obstacle to many good things”, and that Democrats needed to rally ahead of November’s midterm elections to “get rid of the damage” caused by conservative justices, including Trump’s three appointments, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.“Whoever suspected a creature like Donald Trump would become president, waving a list of judges he would appoint, therefore getting the support of the far right and appointing those anti-freedom justices to the court?” she said.“This is not about a long game. We played a long game, we won Roe v Wade a long time ago, we voted to protect it over time. Let’s not take our eye off the ball. The ball is this court, which is dangerous to families, to freedoms in our country.“The genius of our founders was to have a constitution that enabled freedom to expand. This is the first time the court has taken back a freedom that was defined by precedent and respect for privacy.”Independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, on NBC’s Meet the Press, said he remained hopeful that abortion rights legislation could be resurrected before the midterms.“Nobody should think this process is dead. We should bring those bills up again, and again and again,” he said.“People cannot believe you have a supreme court and Republicans who are prepared to overturn 50 years of precedent. What we should do is on this bill end the filibuster, do everything that we can to get 50 votes on the strongest possible bill to protect a woman’s right to control her own body.”An NBC News poll conducted after the leak of a draft opinion and reported by the network Sunday showed six out of 10 voters were in favor of abortion rights, and that 52% of voters were “less likely” to support a candidate who backed the supreme court’s draft ruling.But the poll found that inflation and the economy remained the biggest concerns for voters as the midterms approach.TopicsUS supreme courtNancy PelosiHouse of RepresentativesAbortionUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More