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      Abortion Arrives at the Center of the American Political Maelstrom

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      The Supreme Court’s decision not to block a Texas law banning most abortions left Republicans eager to replicate it. Democrats reeled, but sensed a winning issue in coming elections.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s decision not to block a Texas law sharply curtailing abortions abruptly vaulted the issue to the forefront of American politics on Thursday, reshaping the dynamics of elections in California this month, in Virginia in November and in midterms next year that will determine control of Congress and statehouses.Republicans hailed the court’s 5-to-4 decision, explained in a one-paragraph middle-of-the-night ruling, as a tremendous victory, allowing a nearly complete ban on abortions to stand in the nation’s second-largest state.For Democrats, it was a nightmare come true: A conservative Supreme Court, led by three appointees of former President Donald J. Trump, had allowed a highly gerrymandered, Republican-controlled state legislature to circumvent Roe v. Wade, the half-century-old decision that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right.Suddenly, supporters of abortion rights found themselves grappling not only with the political and policy failures that had led to this point, but also with the prospect that other Republican-controlled legislatures could quickly enact copycat legislation. On Thursday, G.O.P. lawmakers in Arkansas, Florida and South Dakota promised to do so in their next legislative sessions.Yet Democrats also embraced the opportunity to force an issue they believe is a political winner for them to the center of the national debate. After years of playing defense, Democrats say the Texas law will test whether the reality of a practical ban on abortions can motivate voters to support them.Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, a Democrat up for re-election in 2022, said people in her state had fought to protect women’s reproductive freedom and would vote accordingly. “If a Republican is going to go to Washington to roll those freedoms back, I will make it an issue,” she said in an interview. “I don’t think you should underestimate the impact that this issue has to Nevadans.”Republicans held up the Texas law as an example for the country to follow. “This law will save the lives of thousands of unborn babies in Texas and become a national model,” said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas. “I pray that every other state will follow our lead in defense of life.”Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who is considered a potential Republican candidate for president in 2024, said she had directed her office to “make sure we have the strongest pro-life laws on the books.”Senate Democrats’ campaign arm has signaled that it will use abortion rights as a cudgel against Republicans running in key states like Nevada, where Senator Catherine Cortez Masto faces re-election in 2022.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesThe court’s decision, which did not address the substance of the Texas law, creates new urgency for President Biden and congressional Democrats to do more than issue public statements vowing to defend women’s reproductive rights.“The temperature just got a lot hotter on this issue, and I certainly now expect Congress to join in these fights,” said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, the chairwoman of the Democratic Governors Association. “Our voters expect us all to do more.”Yet Senate Democrats do not have the votes to eliminate the filibuster, which would be necessary to change federal abortion law in the evenly divided chamber.In Washington on Thursday, Democratic leaders dutifully scrambled to show their determination to push back against the possibility that the Texas law could be replicated elsewhere — or to respond if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights when it rules on a Mississippi law that seeks to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, two months earlier than Roe and subsequent decisions allow.Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to bring a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would effectively codify abortion rights into federal law.And Mr. Biden pledged “a whole-of-government effort” in response to the Texas law, directing the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department to identify possible federal measures to help ensure that women in the state have access to safe and legal abortions.“The highest court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities,” Mr. Biden said. “The impact of last night’s decision will be immediate and requires an immediate response.”Vice President Kamala Harris added, “We will not stand by and allow our nation to go back to the days of back-alley abortions.”The first election that could test Democrats’ capacity to energize voters over abortion rights comes on Sept. 14 in California, where voters will determine the fate of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall effort. Mr. Newsom warned on Twitter that the Texas abortion ban “could be the future of CA” if the recall were successful.In Virginia, Democratic candidates for the state’s three statewide offices and House of Delegates pounced on the issue on Thursday. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is running to recapture the office in November, said the fight for abortion rights would help motivate Democratic voters who might be complacent after the party captured full control of state government in 2019 and helped Mr. Biden win the state last year.“We are a Democratic state. There are more Democrats,” Mr. McAuliffe said. “But this is an off-off-year, and getting Democrats motivated to come out, that’s always the big challenge.”Eyeing 2022, the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm has signaled it will use abortion rights as a cudgel against Republicans running in states like Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada and North Carolina. Democrats planning campaigns for governor next year are preparing to brand themselves as the last line of defense on abortion rights, particularly in states with Republican-controlled legislatures.“People are now waking up to the fact that the battle will now be in the states, and they recognize that the only thing, literally the only thing standing in the way of Pennsylvania passing the same ban that Texas just passed, is the veto pen of our Democratic governor,” said Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, a Democrat who has said he expects to enter the race to succeed Gov. Tom Wolf. “I’ve given up on the politicians in Washington. I don’t think we can count on them anymore.”Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who is running for his old post this year, believes abortion access will be a motivating factor for voters.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesThough Republicans have long made overturning Roe a central political goal — as a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump predicted that his eventual Supreme Court appointees would do so — there was still a palpable sense of shock among Democrats. Despite the court’s 6-to-3 conservative majority, many Democrats seemed mentally unprepared for Wednesday’s ruling.“You can’t plan for a blatantly false or unconstitutional court ruling like this,” said Representative Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who is running for his state’s open Senate seat next year.Understand the Texas Abortion LawCard 1 of 4The most restrictive in the country. More

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      Conservative Group, Seizing on Crime as an Issue, Seeks Recall of Prosecutors

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      A group backed by undisclosed donors is targeting three Democratic prosecutors in Northern Virginia for recall campaigns in a test of what could be a national strategy in 2022.WASHINGTON — A Republican-linked group said on Monday that it was beginning a recall campaign backed by undisclosed donors to brand Democrats and their allies as soft on crime by targeting progressive prosecutors.The initial focus is three prosecutors who were elected in the affluent Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington in 2019 amid a national wave of pledges by Democrats to make law enforcement fairer and more humane.The group, Virginians for Safe Communities, said the targets of the recall effort were Buta Biberaj of Loudoun County, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti of Arlington County and Steve Descano of Fairfax County, all of whom hold the position of commonwealth’s attorney.The campaign faces uncertain prospects, starting with clearing signature-gathering requirements and legal hurdles.But the organizers described it as part of a broader national push to harness voters’ concerns about rising crime rates in cities and a backlash to anti-police sentiment.“All things in politics have their time, and now is the moment that people who are for law enforcement have woken up,” said Sean D. Kennedy, a Republican operative who is the president of Virginians for Safe Communities. He called the recall efforts in Northern Virginia a “test case to launch nationwide.”He said the group had raised more than $250,000, and had received pledges of nearly another $500,000. He would not reveal the identities of donors to the group, which is registered under a section of the tax code that allows nonprofit groups to shield their donors from public disclosure.Mr. Kennedy, who has worked for Republican campaigns and committees, is an official at the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, but he said the new group was independent from that one. Others involved in the new group include the former F.B.I. official Steven L. Pomerantz and Ian D. Prior, who was an appointee at the Justice Department during the Trump administration and before that worked for well-funded Republican political committees.Mr. Kennedy cast Virginians for Safe Communities as something of an antidote to a political committee funded by the billionaire investor George Soros, a leading donor to Democratic causes. His group, Justice and Public Safety PAC, has spent millions of dollars in recent years backing candidates in local district attorney elections who supported decriminalizing marijuana, loosening bail rules and other changes favored by progressives.The spending upended many of the races, which had previously attracted relatively little funding and attention from major national interests.Mr. Soros’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment.His PAC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars each supporting the campaigns of Ms. Dehghani-Tafti, Mr. Descano and Ms. Biberaj in 2019, when they swept into office promising a new approach to criminal justice.Their victories came at a time when politicians from both parties were re-examining tough-on-crime policies that enacted harsh sentences for drug crimes and laid the groundwork for the mass incarceration that disproportionately affected Black communities. In late 2018, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the most consequential reduction of sentencing laws in a generation. The next month, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then preparing to run against Mr. Trump, apologized for portions of the anti-crime legislation he championed as a senator in the 1990s.The skepticism of law enforcement and the criminal justice system was further catalyzed by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, after which calls to “defund” law enforcement echoed from racial justice marches to the halls of Congress. Many Democrats, including President Biden, have rejected the “defund the police” movement.But, a year and a half after Mr. Floyd’s death, American cities are facing a surge in gun violence and homicides that began during the throes of the pandemic and has continued into this year.Republicans have sought to pin the blame on Democrats and their allies, and have tried to reclaim the law-and-order mantle that politicians of both parties had embraced in the 1980s and 1990s, but later downplayed amid concern about police misconduct and disparities in the criminal justice system.Conservatives “have basically sat on the sidelines of this issue,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It has been dominated by one side, and our side had basically unilaterally disarmed.”He accused the three Northern Virginia prosecutors of enacting “dangerous policies” that are “undermining the public’s faith in our justice system.” He cited an increase in the homicide rate between the end of last month and the same time last year in Fairfax County.Ms. Dehghani-Tafti, the head prosecutor for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church, said in an email that she was “doing exactly what I promised my community I would do — what I was elected to do — and doing it well: making the system more fair, more responsive and more rehabilitative, while keeping us safe.”Some of the more progressive planks in her campaign platform and those of Ms. Biberaj and Mr. Descano — ending prosecutions for marijuana possession and not seeking the death penalty — were at least partially codified statewide this year. Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia signed legislation abolishing the death penalty and legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana.Ms. Dehghani-Tafti accused Mr. Kennedy’s group of using undisclosed “dark money” and “relying on misinformation” to “overturn a valid election through a nondemocratic recall.”Recalls are rare in Virginia, requiring the collection of signatures from a group of voters equal to 10 percent of the number who voted in the last election for the office in question, followed by a court trial in which it must be proved that the official acted in a way that constitutes incompetence, negligence or abuse of office. In the case of the prosecutors, the signature requirement would range from about 5,500 in Arlington to 29,000 in Fairfax.Mr. Kennedy said his group intended to pay people to gather signatures starting as soon as this week, with the goal of reaching the thresholds by Labor Day.Recent efforts to defeat or recall progressive prosecutors have so far not been successful in other jurisdictions, including Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and a pending grass-roots effort to recall the three Virginia prosecutors has not gained much apparent traction. More

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      Biden to Campaign for Terry McAuliffe in Virginia

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      President Biden made a gleeful return to the campaign trail on Friday evening, joining former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who is seeking to regain his old job in November, for his first campaign event since his inauguration.In a park in Arlington County, a short drive from Washington, Mr. Biden appeared to be back in his electoral element, shedding his necktie, whipping up the crowd and repeatedly casting Mr. McAuliffe as a crucial ally in his fight for a sprawling agenda to remake American capitalism.“I need him,” Mr. Biden said as Mr. McAuliffe beamed behind him. “I need him.”Mr. McAuliffe easily won the Democratic nomination for the Virginia governor’s race in June, hoping to return to the office four years after he served his term. The state does not permit governors to run for consecutive terms.Mr. Biden won Virginia handily last year on his way to the White House, but some Democrats are worried about Mr. McAuliffe’s prospects this year against the Republican nominee, Glenn Youngkin, a political newcomer and former private equity executive. Mr. Youngkin has the ability to spend millions of dollars of his own money to help make the race competitive.Trading his more serene presidential demeanor for a fiery campaign one, Mr. Biden sought to tie the coming elections to his own political project. Instead of his typical practice in White House speeches of leaning into the microphone and whispering to emphasize his points, the president leaned in and shouted.“We’re going to have to go out and win, win this thing, win races up and down the ticket,” he implored the crowd.Mr. Biden repeatedly praised his coronavirus relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, including the direct checks that were sent to low- and middle-income workers. He also pitched his suite of proposals to overhaul American capitalism, including reducing prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies and making two years of community college free for all students, paid for by raising taxes on corporations and high earners.In each case, Mr. Biden called Mr. McAuliffe a partner in his vision. “Terry and I share the same basic truth,” Mr. Biden said. “Trickle-down economies never work.”He leaned on policy to draw contrasts with Republicans. “In this election and in 2022, the question the American people are going to be asking is whether or not we’re helping them and their families,” Mr. Biden said. He added: “We have to show we do understand, and we’re delivering for them. And we’re keeping our promises.”Republicans sought to criticize Mr. McAuliffe over the visit. In a news release on Friday, the Republican National Committee called Mr. Biden and Mr. McAuliffe “swampy career politicians with failed records who are now tripping over themselves to embrace the radical left as quickly as possible.”Mr. McAuliffe, who mulled a presidential run in 2020 but passed and endorsed Mr. Biden, has sought to make the race a referendum on former President Donald J. Trump, who has backed Mr. Youngkin enthusiastically. Mr. Trump remains popular with Republicans in the state’s rural areas but has alienated moderates in the Washington suburbs.Mr. McAuliffe has sought to tether Mr. Youngkin to Mr. Trump, joking that he would pay for the fuel for Mr. Trump to visit the state and campaign for Mr. Youngkin. And the former governor has embraced Mr. Biden, expressing hope that the president will campaign for him multiple times before November.In his speech introducing Mr. Biden, Mr. McAuliffe accused Mr. Youngkin of founding his campaign “on an election integrity plan that was based on Donald Trump’s conspiracy theory about the 2020 election, and for five months that is the only plan that he had on his website.”“Let me clear it up for you,” Mr. McAuliffe said. “Joe Biden won that election.”Mr. McAuliffe later drew cheers for vowing to raise Virginia’s minimum wage to $15 an hour within the next three years, an echo of Mr. Biden’s unsuccessful attempts to raise the federal minimum wage to that level.Then he yielded to Mr. Biden, who commanded the stage for almost exactly a half-hour. When the president finished — with a more energetic-than-normal version of his typical request for God to bless America and its troops — he turned to embrace Mr. McAuliffe, then wheeled back to the crowd, smiling and waving. More

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      How Trump’s Political Legacy Is on the Ballot in the Virginia Governor’s Race

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      Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, will try to tie his opponent, Glenn Youngkin, to former President Donald Trump, while Mr. Youngkin will try to sidestep Mr. Trump but not reject him.CHESAPEAKE, Va. — There is a far-reaching and oh-so-familiar shadow stretching across Virginia’s political landscape that could have profound implications for the election of a new governor, a contest that figures to be the only major competitive race in the country this fall.Former President Donald J. Trump won’t be on the ballot in Virginia, but his political legacy will be.Glenn Youngkin, an affable former private equity executive, is testing whether a Republican can sidestep Mr. Trump without fully rejecting him and still prevail in a state where the former president lost re-election by 10 points but where he remains deeply popular with conservative activists.And in what could be an equally revealing strategy, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat seeking to reclaim his old job, is going to determine whether linking Republicans to Mr. Trump — a tactic that helped turn Virginia’s suburbs a deeper blue during the last four years — is as potent when he’s no longer in the Oval Office, or even on Twitter.Both questions reflect a larger issue: how strong a tug the country’s polarized and increasingly nationalized politics can have on an off-year state race of the type that is usually consumed by debates over taxes, transportation, education and the economy.It’s a real-life political science experiment that is all the richer because it’s taking place in a state that was once solidly conservative, and where for many years it was the Democrats who had to distance themselves from their national party.But Virginia, which supported only Republicans for president from 1964 until 2008, is a state transformed thanks to its expansive metropolitan growth. George W. Bush was the last G.O.P. presidential nominee to carry the state, and Democrats control every statewide office and both state legislative chambers.If Republicans are to win back the governorship and reclaim a foothold in this increasingly Democratic state, this would seem to be the year.Mr. Youngkin is leading a unified party, can saturate the airwaves using millions of dollars from his own fortune and has never run for office, let alone cast a vote as a lawmaker, denying opposition researchers the grist for attack ads. That’s to say nothing of Virginia’s decades-long history of electing governors from the opposite party of whoever won the White House the previous year.That’s a challenge that Mr. McAuliffe takes seriously.After he clinched an easy victory in the Democratic primary Tuesday night, Mr. McAuliffe — who is seeking to replace Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who is constitutionally barred from seeking another term — sought to rouse his party by warning them that Mr. Youngkin’s ability to self-finance is a threat that must be taken seriously. “There are 75 million reasons why Glenn Youngkin could win,” Mr. McAuliffe told supporters, alluding to how much the Republican could spend on the campaign.If Mr. Youngkin is able to spend enough money to define himself to voters before Democrats do it, and if President Biden’s popularity wanes by November — as it did with former President Barack Obama in 2009, the last time Republicans won the governorship here — Mr. Youngkin will be positioned to at least make the race close.In contrast to the last two Virginia governor’s races, the G.O.P.’s conservative and more establishment-aligned factions are united behind Mr. Youngkin.“This is totally winnable for Republicans,” said Jerry Kilgore, a former state attorney general and a Republican who once ran for governor himself. “But if he loses, there will be a lot of depressed people, because there’s a lot of optimism right now.”To prevail, Mr. Youngkin will have demonstrate some Simone Biles-like footwork when it comes to answering for his party’s brand and, in particular Mr. Trump, the former and potentially future standard-bearer.“I don’t think he’s coming this year,” Mr. Youngkin said in response to a question of whether he wanted Mr. Trump to campaign with him.Standing outside a country-music-themed bar in the Tidewater region in the state’s southeast, where he grew up before amassing his fortune at the Carlyle Group in Washington, Mr. Youngkin was plainly more interested in contrasting his lack of political experience with Mr. McAuliffe’s decades as a party insider.And after recently winning a hard-fought Republican nomination contest, Mr. Youngkin also appeared mindful of Mr. Trump’s grip on the party and did not want to slight a party leader who is famously sensitive to slights.“I don’t think his schedule is — I think he has his schedule and is set to go to other places,” Mr. Youngkin tried again.But, he was asked a second time, did he want to stand with Mr. Trump in Virginia?“I think if he were to come, fine; if he doesn’t come, fine,” Mr. Youngkin said, settling on an answer. (In a separate interview, the exuberant Mr. McAuliffe said of Mr. Trump and Virginia: “I’d pay for the gas for him to come.”)Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee for governor, is determined to link his rival to Mr. Trump, a president the state’s voters rejected.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesMr. Youngkin was more direct when asked if he still thought Mr. Trump was the leader of the G.O.P. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a leader of our party,” he said.That answer triggered an unprompted clarification from an aide, who requested anonymity to say that what the candidate had meant was “that the Republican Party does not solely rely on one individual or leader” and that “Glenn really is the leader of the Republican Party in Virginia, as the party truly has come together around him.”If he’s not willing to fully break with Mr. Trump — in fact, he gladly accepted the former president’s endorsement the day after claiming the nomination — Mr. Youngkin clearly wants to project a sunnier style of politics to the suburban voters who will decide Virginia’s election.“I believe that Virginians are like Americans, are ready to come out of this pandemic and are ready to look ahead and think about hope and optimism and opportunity and not spend time basically tearing each other down,” he said.Mr. McAuliffe, though, is determined to remind this state’s voters of the president they twice rejected. In his victory speech Tuesday, he cited Mr. Youngkin’s warmer words for Mr. Trump during the Republican nomination process. And in his final barnstorming tour of Virginia before the primary concluded, he ignored his intraparty rivals and lashed Mr. Youngkin to the former president.Asked in an interview why he was still focused on Mr. Trump, Mr. McAuliffe said: “He may be out of office, but he’s the most powerful person in the Republican Party,” pointing to the Senate G.O.P.’s filibustering of a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.“Are you kidding me?” he said, adding: “This man is as big with the Republican Party as he’s ever been. He has dominance over this party.”Whether that’s enough to deter Virginians from electing a Republican governor is another question, though.“As many people that died with Covid, including my mother — yes; yes, it’s still powerful,” Gaylene Kanoyton, a state Democratic Party official, said when asked whether invoking Mr. Trump was a successful strategy. “Our families and friends would have still been here if we had a different president.”Other Democrats, though, are skeptical that waving the bloody flag of Trumpism will prove sufficient with voters who are eager to move on from his presidency.“Talking about Trump in 2021 is really stale and won’t be enough to win swing voters,” said Ben Tribbett, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist, noting that even when Mr. Trump was president, Democrats had still used much of their advertising budget to highlight policy issues.The question of how much Mr. Trump can be weaponized may be determined by whether he shows up in Virginia.If he doesn’t, Mr. McAuliffe’s advertising campaign and stump speech attack lines may offer the best evidence. Already, the former governor is pairing his references to Mr. Trump with efforts to portray Mr. Youngkin as culturally out of step with a state that just eliminated the death penalty, imposed stricter gun laws and legalized marijuana.“He’s proud of being a lifelong member of the N.R.A. — brags about it; I brag that I’m the first Democratic nominee to get an F rating,” Mr. McAuliffe said.Ultimately, the governor’s race in Virginia may turn on whether a lavishly funded candidate can win without making any concessions to the political nature of his state. That’s what Republican governors like Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts have done to win in blue states and what Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, did to win in deep-red Louisiana.Asked where he differs from his party, Mr. Youngkin did not offer up any specific issue but said his emphasis was on jobs, schools and public safety.Yet he called his politics “conservative,” declined to say whether he supported same-sex marriage and answered a question about background checks for gun purchases by criticizing more aggressive restrictions.“Virginians don’t want a government to ban guns; they don’t want a government to ban ammunition; they actually don’t want a government to come seize people’s guns,” he said before adding that “having background checks for criminals to make sure that criminals do not get guns is something people want.”Asked about the race and identity issues galvanizing his party’s base, Mr. Youngkin denounced “identity politics” but then made sure to introduce a reporter to the Republican nominees for lieutenant governor — Winsome Sears, a Black woman — and for attorney general: Jason Miyares, the son of a Cuban immigrant.“This is the ticket; this is the ticket,” Mr. Youngkin said. “This is the Republican Party in Virginia.”For Democrats, particularly those who remember the contortions of their own candidates in an earlier day, Mr. Youngkin’s reluctance to accommodate the leftward drift of the state is something no amount of money can overcome.“Republicans in Virginia have to show they’re a different kind of Republican, and so far that’s not the Youngkin approach,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Virginia-reared Democratic strategist. “But their base won’t let their candidates create distance from the party or Trump.” More

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      Virginia Primary Election Results

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      Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe is running for his old job and faces four Democratic opponents for the nomination: Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, State Senator Jennifer McClellan, State Delegate Lee Carter and former State Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy. Republicans have already selected their nominee, Glenn Youngkin, a former private-equity executive. More